Akamai Releases 2014 Online Holiday Shopping Trends and Traffic Report

Holiday retail traffic peaks at almost 13 million page views per minute on Cyber Monday, half of all shoppers used mobile devices on Thanksgiving

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Akamai Technologies, Inc.

Mar 30, 2015, 06:30 ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 30, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the global leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, today released its 2014 Online Holiday Shopping Trends and Traffic Report. Based on data gathered from Akamai's Retail Net Usage Index (NUI) and Real User Monitoring (RUM) tools, which analyze the online and mobile traffic activity of global e-tailers, the report provides insight into eCommerce and mCommerce trends in the United States during the 2014 holiday shopping season.

In addition to continued growth in traffic volumes this year, the RUM data from Akamai's Intelligent Platform revealed that the height of mobile activity peaked at 50 percent at 5 p.m. ET on Thanksgiving Day, while Cyber Monday experienced the lowest mobile traffic average at 30 percent. Even so, Cyber Monday proved to be the most popular shopping day of the season, with overall retail traffic peaking at almost 13 million page views per minute (V/PM) according to Akamai's Retail NUI. This new high peak of page views per minute represents a 16 percent increase year-over-year from the 2013 holiday season record of 11.2 million page views per minute.

"While consumers are certainly embracing eCommerce across all devices, the specifics around how and when they use particular devices have become increasingly varied in this multiscreen landscape," said Jason Miller, Chief Strategist of Commerce at Akamai. "This means that retailers must optimize for all devices and all scenarios to ensure fast, reliable and secure user experiences. Reflecting on the past season's trends – as well as their own users' experiences – will help retailers to focus on meeting customers' expectations of a seamless experience across devices."

Other highlights from the report include:

The Monday before Thanksgiving (Nov. 24) saw the fourth highest peak page views per minute – and a 100 percent year-over-year uptick in activity – suggesting that many consumers are browsing and shopping well before the usual popular shopping days
Most average peak browsing times shifted from 1 p.m. ET in 2013 to 9 p.m. ET in 2014. This may represent a move away from the lunchtime desktop searches to the adoption and use of smaller or more mobile screens for browsing in the evening
Average mobile traffic during the busy shopping week was up two percentage points from 2013, at 37 percent mobile activity in 2014:
- Android usage grew to 9.3 percent in 2014 from 8.7 percent in 2013
- iPads accounted for 14.8 percent of traffic in 2014 versus 14.5 percent in 2013
- iPhones comprised of 13.4 percent of traffic in 2014 in comparison to 11.4 percent in 2013
While Cyber Monday experienced the highest peak traffic of the season, its mobile activity was the lowest, at 30 percent (versus desktop activity)
On Green Monday (Dec. 8), traffic peaked at 7.1 V/PM while on Free Shipping Day (Dec. 18), traffic peaked at 5.5 V/PM

In addition, Akamai saw the following retail security trends on Black Friday:

During the 2014 holiday season, volumetric attacks decreased while application layer attacks increased
There was a 12 percent increase in the number of proxy addresses in use on Black Friday 2014, potentially pointing to more malicious attackers' attempts to hide among the throngs of legitimate US-based shoppers
Black Friday saw more than 2.5 times the normal number of web application firewall (WAF) triggers, as measured against the 24-hour periods on the previous four Fridays
The most common attack vectors were cross site scripting and SQL injections

Akamai currently powers the eCommerce sites for 96 of the top 100 US online retailers, according to Internet Retailer Top 500 list. The full report can be found here. You can also hear the findings in detail by listening to the Holiday Story webinar.

About Akamai

As the global leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, Akamai makes the Internet fast, reliable and secure for its customers. The company's advanced web performance, mobile performance, cloud security and media delivery solutions are revolutionizing how businesses optimize consumer, enterprise and entertainment experiences for any device, anywhere. To learn how Akamai solutions and its team of Internet experts are helping businesses move faster forward, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter.