Busiest days for online stores in 2022: Black Friday grows, Christmas rush declines

The new year has begun, which means it’s time to look back at the past year. After two years in which COVID-19 had a major impact on the number of online orders, 2022 was more stable and predictable. This trend is clearly visible in the data. We compared the average number of orders across all Picqer user webshops in 2022 with 2021. Below, we reflect on the differences and highlight the busiest days of the year.

Busiest days of 2022

As usual, the top 10 busiest days in 2022 were largely dominated by Black Friday week and Cyber Monday. We also saw plenty of activity in the weeks leading up to Christmas. However, there was a shift. Last year, the Monday before Christmas was the second busiest day of the year. This year, it ranked fourth. Cyber Monday and the Sunday after Black Friday moved up to second and third place.

Comparing Black Friday week and Cyber Monday with the previous year, we saw a 3.79% increase. Even though more businesses are choosing Green Friday and intentionally opting out of Black Friday, there were still more orders placed.

In the 14 days leading up to Christmas (10 to 23 December), there were 4% fewer orders compared to 2021. Interestingly, physical stores saw record levels of debit card payments on the Friday before Christmas. This suggests that more people may have chosen to shop in physical stores for their holiday purchases.

Top 10 busiest days

Here are the 10 busiest days of 2022:

20% fewer orders in Q1

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, many stores had to close in the first quarter of 2021, which led to a sharp increase in online orders. In 2022, stores remained open. This resulted in a much more stable trend and a visible 20% decline in orders in Q1. From July to November 2022, we saw more orders than in 2021. In December, the number of orders once again dropped below the previous year's level.