Despite #PrimeDayFail Complaints, Amazon Says Prime Day Was Better Than Black Friday & Will Be Back

Amazon home page as it appeared on Wednesday’s Prime Day.

If you listened to consumers tweeting about #PrimeDayFail, it would appear Amazon’s one-day of deals for Prime members was a bust. But not according to Amazon. The company has announced, that as it had predicted, more units were sold on the site during Wednesday’s Prime Day than on Black Friday last year, and they will “definitely” hold another Prime Day again.

Customers took to Twitter on Wednesday using the #PrimeDayFail hashtag to complain about stock-outs and poor sale selection throughout the day.

As bad as the Lightning Deals are, there's still a waitlist to save 36% on a 16 bar pack of soap! #PrimeDayFail pic.twitter.com/PCHkH9u0WH

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) July 16, 2015

And yet, through the noise, sales broke all Black Friday records and drove “hundreds of thousands” more customers to sign up for Prime membership — more than any other single day in the program’s history — says Amazon.

ChannelAdvisor also confirms that “deal velocity” was at or greater than Black Friday levels among its retail customers, many of whom participated in Prime Day deals. Overall, on Prime Day, ChannelAdvisor customers achieved 97 percent of the sales they did on Black Friday in 2014 on a same-store sales (SSS) basis. Amazon US same-store sales grew 93 percent year-over-year, which compares to recent average SSS growth in the range of 25 percent. In the EU, SSS were up 53 percent from the same day last year. Benchmarking against Cyber Monday 2014, customers achieved 60 percent of sales on Prime Day, reported ChannelAdvisor.

“We will definitely be doing this again.”

Amazon Prime VP Greg Greeley announced this will not be the last Prime Day.

“Customers worldwide ordered an astonishing 398 items per second and saved millions on Prime Day deals. Worldwide order growth increased 266% over the same day last year and 18% more than Black Friday 2014 — all in an event exclusively available to Prime members,” said Greeley. “Going into this, we weren’t sure whether Prime Day would be a one-time thing or if it would become an annual event. After yesterday’s results, we’ll definitely be doing this again.”

Product Highlights Hint At The Random Assortment Of Prime Day Deals

Amazon’s Fire TV Sticks sold like hotcakes, along with Roomba robots and Bose Headphones. And so, apparently, did microfiber towels, food storage sets and the unrated version of Fifty Shades of Gray on Blu-ray.

Here are the US highlights from Amazon:

• Members ordered tens of thousands of Fire TV Sticks in one hour, making it the fastest-selling deal on an Amazon device ever.
• Fire tablet sales on Amazon exceeded sales on Black Friday last year.
• Members ordered thousands of e-readers and thousands of Echos in just 15 minutes.
• 56,000 Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy sets
• 47,000 televisions sold, which was 1300% year-over-year growth.
• 51,000 Bose Headphones, compared to 8 the previous Wednesday
• 28,000 Rubbermaid 42-Piece Easy Find Lid Food Storage Sets, compared to 428 the previous Wednesday
• 24,000 Instant Pot 7-in-1 Programmable Pressure Cookers, compared to 182 the previous Wednesday
• 14,000 iRobot Roomba 595 Pet Vacuum Cleaning Robots, compared to 1 the previous Wednesday
• 12,000 Fifty Shades of Grey Unrated Edition on Blu-ray, compared to 121 the previous Wednesday
• 10,000 Meguiar’s X2020 Supreme Shine Microfiber Towels, compared to 244 the previous Wednesday

The Prime Day Effect

ChannelAdvisor noted that other marketplaces such as BestBuy, Sears and NewEgg saw a lift from Amazon Prime Day. Best Buy SSS rose 200 percent year-over-year; Sears was up 88 percent; and NewEgg saw an increase of 40 percent compared to the same day last year. Consumer electronics drove activity for those marketplaces strong in that category.

In contrast, ChannelAdvisor says, eBay saw no lift from Prime Day, and their growth rate was in line with other days in June and July.

Google appeared to be getting an uptick in activity as of mid-day Wednesday, but ChannelAdvisor has not reported final results on AdWords and Google Shopping at this time.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin was formerly Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.