2018 vs 2019 Black Friday Sales

Pulled up data to compare this year and last year's sales:

2018 sale was 5 days, 30% off everything

2019 sale was 7 days, with a tiered discount:
15% off all custom 
25% off all pins, notepads, prints, totes etc
35% off all cards

General numbers comparing 2019 to 2018 (normalized over 7 days): 

A couple of learnings from this:  

• Increase in store visitors, repeat customers, and total orders signifies brand awareness + growth— (my spend for marketing increased by 6% so its mostly organic vs paid growth)
• Conversion rate is way down- why?? Need to look into it— I would suspect that new users are converting less because they are higher up in the sales funnel than previous visitors because of increased brand awareness this year and will they take longer time to purchase. 
• The refund incentive worked wonders to increase average order value. 2018 and 2019 AOV before sale week each year was the same. In 2018, sale week increased AOV by ~19%; this year sale week increased AOV by 54%.

 

Product-specific learnings:

• Stamp sales decreased YOY but I attribute it to the fact that stamps were 30% off last year vs 15% this year- I am sure when I pull 2019 numbers, stamps sales have increased a ton
• Tote sales have increased a bit (plus, I got a couple questions at craft fairs about them; I'm sorry I didn't bring them/sold out!!!) - might be worth designing new ones 
• Print sales have stayed the same— I don't think the current designs are worth re-ordering and I either should scrap the category or rethink what prints look like in Pickles
• PINS!!! (not shown on graph, but) 36% of the 2019 orders had PINS ...... compared to next highest 20% of orders had cards, and 15% had stamps. It basically confirms what I already learned while packing all the orders (and it's also very obvious from my excitement in my stories)— pins are HUGE and I will be making a lot more next year. 
• Cards have increased sales about 2x in an overall sales growth about 3x— pins are cannibalizing card sales a little, but it's healthy to see card sales still increase with introduction of a popular new product