While the fully aggregated results of the 2024 Cyber Week shopping extravaganza have yet to be fully analyzed, early indicators suggest that this year was a record breaker.
- E-commerce sales were up nearly 15% over last year, according to Mastercard’s SpendingPulse report.
- BlackFriday online sales in the U.S. rose 7% year over year to $17.5 billion, according to Salesforce.
- U.S. retail sales also increased by 3.4% compared to Black Friday in 2023.
- All-time high: $314.9 billion in global sales.
Impressive? You bet.
There is much more to this whole uptick story than meets the eye. Actually, this whole uptick story was made possible entirely by what met the eyes of the online shopper during Cyber Week.
This Black Friday, Cloudinary:
- Delivered an incredible 28.6 billion image views.
- Saw a 32% increase in video usage over the previous year.
- Delivered over 300 TB of images and videos to mobile devices alone.
- Mobile devices facilitated 70% of U.S. and worldwide online purchases – underlining the growing dominance of mobile-first experiences.
And:
- Cloudinary served 330,000 images per second, showcasing the unmatched scale and importance of high-quality visuals in today’s e-commerce landscape.
Mobile shopping rose this Cyber Week:
- 80%+ of e-commerce traffic came from mobile devices globally and in the U.S.
- Mobile orders drove 70% of sales, up from 67% in 2023.
- Mobile accounted for $220 billion globally and $53.3 billion in the U.S.
- Mobile wallet usage increased by 16% worldwide.
These numbers suggest that consumers are comfortable making big-ticket purchases using their mobile device. They also state loud and clear that the time for mobile optimization, or offering a mobile-first shopping experience was yesterday. Optimizing mobile sites or apps must go beyond adjusting for screen size, taking into account network conditions and device type and delivering a purposeful experience.
Shoppers obviously consume far more visual content on mobile than on desktop. To optimize customer satisfaction with mobile content, you must focus on the quality, format, and size of your digital assets. With Cloudinary, optimization is simple, not only enhancing your mobile web and app performance but also upping your SEO game and boosting customer satisfaction.
The numbers speak volumes about the scale of visual content on Black Friday:
- 28.6 billion image views is equivalent to every person on Earth viewing four images each.
- 300 TB of mobile content is enough data to stream Taylor Swift’s entire discography on Spotify for over 340,000 years.
- Delivering 330,000 images per second is faster than the average human blink (300-400 milliseconds).
Visuals are critical to e-commerce success, and high-volume days like Black Friday reinforce this. Shoppers expect their experience to be fast, immersive, and flawless. As we look toward 2025, brands need to double down on visual-first strategies to stay ahead of the competition.
If your visuals don’t move, neither will your audience. But with the right tools, you can deliver stunning, personalized content effortlessly across every channel. Let’s talk about how Cloudinary can help your brand shine.
