Black Friday 2022 in Numbers

Black Friday 2022 paints an all-round positive picture for online retailers and shoppers! We saw order volumes for the week increase compared to 2021, in line with online shopping trends from across the globe.

• US shoppers spent a record $9.12bn online on Black Friday
• Early figures suggest that spending was more reserved in Europe and the UK, but retailer John Lewis still averaged 5.5 products per second sold online
• Barclaycard Payments, which process £1 in every £3 spent in the UK, were up 3.2% on the previous year by 5pm, with a new all-time record for transactions-per-second between 12-1pm on Friday 25 November
• parcelLab notched up its own records with over 30.5 million emails sent globally for order tracking created between Black Friday and Cyber Monday

We also observed a less pronounced Friday peak with orders spread more evenly across the week, and both retailers and carriers seemingly well prepared…

• 47% faster fulfillment by retailers, averaging 2.96 days from time of order to delivery
• 19% faster delivery of orders by carriers, averaging 2.58 days from ready to pick up to delivered
• 99.6% on time deliveries by carriers

With online sales, fulfillment and delivery figures looking good, what about returns? To date, this is what we’ve observed about returns in 2022:

• January is the most popular month for returns globally with a mid-month spike of more than twice the annual average
• 44% of returns were due to bracketing, where customers buy the same item in different sizes or colors and return at least one
• 21 days is the average time it takes a customer to return an item, from the moment they receive it until it is back with the retailer

Whether the post peak season spike in returns in January will increase in line with the order volume rises we’ve seen this year remains to be seen, but it pays to be prepared:

Delivering positive returns experiences can lead to a 22-46% increase in profit per customer on average over six months, according to Accenture Analysts

To learn more about returns trends and performance in your market, download our 2022 returns studies here:

The State of Online Order Returns (US)
https://parcellab.com/en/research/us-returns-study-2022

Are the UK’s top retailers getting returns experiences right?
https://parcellab.com/en/research/uk-ecommerce-returns-experience-report-2022

E-Commerce Retouren Studie 2022 (DACH)
https://parcellab.com/en/research/german-e-commerce-returns-study-2022

parcelLab is the leading Operations Experience Management platform globally. We bring people and brands closer together by closing the experience gap post-sales and beyond, transforming operational complexity into opportunities to outperform for 800+ brands worldwide, including IKEA, Farfetch and Lidl.

To find out more about how we can help you elevate your post-purchase experience visit parcellab.com

Figures are based on parcelLab US data for the week of Black Friday (20-27 Nov 2022) vs the previous year, unless stated otherwise.