Shopify has offered a peek into its merchants’ performances over the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend, which saw an already fervent period of online sales balloon even more for users on the Ottawa e-commerce firm’s platform.
Shopify’s more than one million merchants cumulatively did more than $2.9 billion in sales over the four-day period, up from $1.8 billion in 2018. (All figures USD.) The Ottawa-based company’s platform only recently surpassed the million-merchant mark; at this time last year, Shopify had roughly 600,000 businesses using its technology to power their stores.
Sales over the weekend peaked just after 3 p.m. on Black Friday, when Shopify merchants recorded more than $1.5 million in sales per minute. The average cart value across the weekend’s activity was $83.05.
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Shopify’s data also shows the prevalence of mobile commerce over the busiest shopping weekend of the year: Some 69 per cent of sales on Shopify stores were made over mobile in the past four days.
Sharing the results of his merchants’ performance over the weekend, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke used the hashtag #ArmTheRebels. Though some have suggested Shopify’s push to build its own fulfilment network of distribution centres across the United States has set the company up to compete with Amazon, Lütke has suggested the company instead wants to help its merchants take on the e-commerce juggernaut.
The company has made a series of moves in the past few months to further its fulfilment network cause. In September, the company acquired fulfilment solutions firm 6 River Systems in a $450-million deal, and OBJ broke the news this past week that Shopify is looking to staff a test site for its warehouse operations in Ottawa.
