This last week has been a pretty crazy one here at ShopSavvy. We’ve seen traffic explode and, with that traffic, we’ve gathered a lot of insight about how the 2011 shopping season is shaping up.
A hint: this weekend was a promising beginning.
So we’ve collected statistics about Black Friday 2011 and put it into infographic form.
Each year we have seen big increases in traffic on Black Friday, but as we have grown it has been harder and harder to keep up the pace of growth. You can only grow 100% for so long. We thought we hit that wall in 2010 when our Black Friday scan growth was only 317% compared to 415% in 2009. Somehow we broke through not only our 2010 number, but also our 2009 record – scan volume on Black Friday this year was 535% higher than our baseline (the baseline is our average scan volume during the day). Here is a nice graph:
We wondered what product categories would increase the most on Black Friday so we compared data from the week before Black Friday, Thanksgiving and Black Friday itself:
Consumer electronics and toys did very well, but we were surprised by this year’s HUGE increase in video game scans – 2000% increase in scans compared to normal traffic times. Wow.
We also looked at how users compared between Android and iPhone. Normally Android users scan a lot more (almost double) than iPhone users. But on Thanksgiving iPhone users reached parity with Android users and by Black Friday the iPhone users put Android users to shame – doing a LOT more scanning. Here is a relative graph:
More to come…
To show off ShopSavvy 5 and highlight the latest trends in mobile shopping in advance of Black Friday, we’ve put together some broadcast-quality b-roll of shoppers scanning products, comparing prices, buying products with one-tap shopping, and much, much more. You can also find a quick 3-minute overview of everything that’s new in ShopSavvy 5.
Check out the holiday shopping b-roll here!
This holiday season EVERY scan you make gives you an additional chance to win an iPad 2 or Kindle Fire (your choice). Each week until December 25th we will randomly select one winner – the more scans you make the more chances you have to win. The user with the most scans between now and December 25th will receive BOTH an iPad 2 and a Kindle Fire. To win you must setup a user account on ShopSavvy.
Contest Start: Today
Contest End: December 25th
Award(s): Apple iPad 2, Kindle Fire or Both
Rules: Open to any registered user (you must set up a user account in the app for your scans to count). One entry per unique scan for each weekly drawing. Each weekly winner will be notified by email and select either an iPad 2 or a Kindle Fire. The Grand Prize will be awarded to the user with the most unique scans by midnight CST on December 25th. Winners will be contacted by email and must respond within 72 hours and provide their birth date, mailing address and a headshot to claim their prize.
Ryan Kim from GigOm has the scoop in a post title, “ShopSavvy brings instant scan and buy to mobile shoppers.” The big news in ShopSavvy 5 (available both on iOS and Android) is our new wallet feature. We have built adapters that allow for ‘one tap’ purchasing from online retailers like Barnes & Noble and Buy.com. Think Amazon one-click for any retailer on mobile – i.e. one-tap.
We have built adapters for 49 retailers to date and we expect to bring on two to three retailers each week until 2012. Bigger retailers currently live are: Barnes & Noble, Buy.com, Toys ‘R Us, Babies ‘R Us, Radio Shack, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Sports Authority, Ace Hardware. Coming soon: Target and Walmart.
Here is an overview of ShopSavvy from me:
Finally, there is also an unannounced ‘beta feature’ in ShopSavvy 5. We aren’t going to publicize it until after Christmas, but power users should be pretty excited when they find it.
Here is a round up of the weeks coverage of ShopSavvy:
“Facebook’s Eduardo Saverin Invests in ShopSavvy”
November 4, 2011 – Barbara E. Hernandez – NBC Bay Area (Blog)
“Top Five Venture Plays of the Week”
November 4, 2011 -Kent Bernhard, Jr. and Kirsten Grind – Portfolio
“ShopSavvy Raises $7M in Series A Funding”
November 3, 2011 – FinSMEs
“Facebook Co-Founder Leads $7 Million Round in ShopSavvy” (CNET)
November 3, 2011 – News Hub Today
“Facebook Co-Founder Eduardo Saverin Invests in ShopSavvy”
November 3, 2011 – Luisa Kroll – Forbes
“ShopSavvy Grabs $7 Million”
November 3, 2011 – Patrick Hoge – San Francisco Business Times
“ShopSavvy Secures $7M in Funding”
November 3, 2011 – Zen Terrelonge – Mobile Entertainment
“Facebook Co-Founder Secures ShopSavvy Funding”
November 3, 2011 – BigmouthMedia
“The Daily Start-Up: Kaggle Attracts Gaggle of VCs”
November 3, 2011 – Wall Street Journal (Blog)
“ShopSavvy Scores $7M from Facebook Co-Founder Saverin”
November 3, 2011 – Lizette Chapman – VentureWire
“Facebook Co-Founder Eduardo Saverin Leads ShopSavvy’s $7M Round”
November 3, 2011 – By Ryan Kim – GigaOm
“ShopSavvy Gets Funding from Facebook Co-Founder”
November 3, 2011 – By Tim Rogers – D Magazine
“ShopSavvy Lands $7 Million from Eduardo Saverin”
November 3, 2011 – By Faith Merino – VatorNews
“ShopSavvy Secures $7M in Funding”
November 3, 2011 – By Lance Murray – Dallas Business Journal
“ShopSavvy Raises $7M from Facebook Co-Founder’
November 3, 2011 – Texas Tech Pulse
“Android Overload: Qualcomm Profits Climb 22%, LG Shares Drop 15%, ShopSavvy Raises $7 Mil and More”
November 3, 2011 – By Quentyn Kennemer – Phandroid
“Eduardo Saverin Leads $7M Funding in ShopSavvy”
November 2, 2011 – By Liz Gannes – All Things D
“Facebook Co-Founder Eduardo Saverin Leads $7M Round in Scanning and Product Search App ShopSavvy”
November 2, 2011 – By Leena Rao - TechCrunch
“Facebook Co-Founder Leads $7 Million Round in ShopSavvy”
November 2, 2011 – By Regina Sinsky – CNET
International
Mobile commerce on your phone today is “more frustrating than sitting in traffic or visiting the D.M.V.” say users in this NYT article. Wow! That’s horrible. Users want to buy from their phone, but can’t stand the experience.
At ShopSavvy we’ve found the same to be true. We see a lot of consumers using our app to find products they want to buy, but as soon as they see the merchant’s cumbersome credit card entry form on their phone, they abandon. The merchant loses a consumer. This even happens on “mobile optimized” commerce flows. People see form fields, and they leave.
This is why we created the ShopSavvy Wallet. We aimed to not only improve mobile commerce conversion but delight users in the process. Our initial qualitative research shows that it appears to be working. We asked users who purchased items through our ShopSavvy Wallet what they thought. 87% “loved it”! That’s so much better than the DMV or a traditional commerce experience.
Why did they love it? Because we blew away their expectations. 93% said it was “Faster than they expected”.
One user summed it up: “Right before I was going to buy an item I decided to scan it with ShopSavvy. It turns out I could buy it online for half the price and no shipping costs! So I did just that.” Better yet, we once users buy an item, we seeing them come back again and again.
Lessons learned: Delight your users and they will buy.. and they will come back.
The press release hasn’t hit the wire yet, but you may have read that we raised $7M from Eduardo Saverin (and other investors) in TechCrunch, CNET, AllThingsD or VentureBeat. Interestingly it was actually our Series A – i.e. we had managed to avoid taking outside capital for three years after launching the company back in 2008. Until now we survived on our original Google award money, revenue from early clients like Visa and funds from our co-founders.
Many of you know that we almost sold the business this summer. However, just before we did we met James Bailey and Eduardo Saverin and began talking about what the future of mobile shopping would look like. It was uncanny how similarly we saw the current landscape and the shape it would take in the future. Those conversations helped us realized that we wanted to be in business together. At the end of the day we decided that it would be a LOT cooler to build a billion dollar company with Eduardo.
The investment will be used to double the size of our engineering staff (half should be located in our San Francisco office and the other half in our Dallas office). Additionally, for the first time we will also be hiring a sales organization to help advertisers build amazing campaigns that leverage our unique ad framework.
Looking to change the face of retail? Want to join a fast growing startup with a future? We would love to talk to you. We are hiring developers and designers based in San Francisco (near South Park) and in Dallas. Skill set? iOS, Android, .NET and Photoshop to name a few. Email me at amuse -at- shopsavvy.com and I will pass your resume along to the right person. We would love to hear from you!
I was surprised to learn that ShopSavvy (formerly known as Big in Japan) has one of the top 20 most awesome offices in the world. We were ranked alongside other companies like Google, Facebook, AOL, Red Bull and YouTube. Nice. I don’t know much about the source, but I am certain they are qualified to judge us as awesome. Check it out for yourself HERE.
