I have just joined Bolt as its Chief Revenue Officer. It’s an exciting time to start, right at the peak holiday season when many of our merchant partners are at their busiest and I’m seeing in real time the trends that are shaping the future of retail.
But you don’t have to take my word for it—just look at the data. At Bolt, we tracked the performance of Cyber Five (the days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday) across our network of hundreds of merchants. We compared this year’s data to last year’s, and we discovered five insights and trends that show us how the retail landscape has changed from 2021 to 2022:
1. Consumers are buying about the same numbers of items, but spending more per purchase.
The average cart size—meaning, the number of items in a cart at purchase—remained steady from 2021 to 2022, coming in at ~3.2 items per order. Here are the top cart sizes by verticals:
- Apparel & Accessories: 3.6
- Food & beverage: 2.8
- Home and garden: 2.5
- Hobbies, arts and crafts: 2.2
- Flowers, Gifts & Specialty Stores: 2.0
But both gross merchandise value (GMV) and average order value (AOV) were up, by 2% for GMV and 15 percent for AOV. Our observations and data were consistent with Adobe, taking into account the impact of inflation, which expected Cyber Week (the five days from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday) to generate $34.8 billion in online spend, up 2.8% from last year to this year.
2. Guest shoppers are abandoning checkout at a higher rate in 2022 versus 2021.
We tracked the behavior of shoppers who were logged in on an ecommerce site in the Bolt network compared to those who remained as guest shoppers throughout their purchasing journey, and we noticed a stark difference in checkout conversion.
Of shoppers going through guest checkout, even more of them abandoned the checkout process this year. Just 72% of shoppers who get to guest checkout made it to the shipping details page (compared to 76% last year), and just 53% of these high-intent guest shoppers end up completing their purchases (compared to 56% last year).
3. By contrast, almost three-quarters of logged-in shoppers complete their purchases.
Bolt recognizes when a Bolt account holder shops on any merchant's site within our network, automatically displaying a passwordless login prompt, giving those shoppers access to their saved shipping and payment information.
We call these “logged-in shoppers”—and the difference in behavior between them and guest shoppers is staggering. Of all logged-in shoppers who begin the checkout process, 98% of them make it to the shipping details page and 72% of these logged-in shoppers end up completing their purchases.
What do we take from this? Even the smallest amount of friction—being asked to input payment information, for instance, or typing in your address—can lead to shopper weariness. Logging-in removes that friction, and it reduces the gap between purchase intent and the actual purchase
4. “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) use is surging.
We know that Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) transactions skyrocketed this Cyber Five—Adobe reported a 68% increase in BNPL usage this year. Their data tracks with our’s, and we too saw a significant bump in BNPL usage on our network.
Affirm took first place as the alternative payment method of choice in the Bolt network. Here are the winners and losers (based on GMV):
- Affirm: Up by 51%
- Apple Pay: Up 16%
- PayPal: Down by 1%
- Amazon Pay: Down by 4%
5. Electronics spending is up significantly from last year, while home & shopping spend has declined.
Electronics saw the largest increase in average order value, up 48% from 2021 to 2022. Car junkies also spent more this year, a good 15% more per order. Big ticket verticals saw the largest gains in shoppers spending more per order. Home and garden as a category, however, was down in both AOV and GMV from last year to this year.
We know that the pandemic fueled massive growth in home gardening sales as folks focused on their plants through the lockdowns. The downward trend in year-over-year growth is likely due to the unprecedented spike last year.
Categories | Winners and losers by AOV:
- Electronics: Up by 42%
- Jewelry and watches: Up by 21%
- Automotive: Up by 14%
- Apparel and accessories: Up by 13%
- Home and garden: Down 30%
Categories | Winners and losers by GMV:
- Electronics: Up 33%
- Sporting good and fitness: Up 26%
- Hobbies, arts, and crafts: Up 25%
- Food & beverage: Down 18%
- Home and garden: Down 18%
To someone coming into my role, the numbers above are illuminating. They reveal a key competitive advantage for retailers who pay attention–namely that the stronger your relationship with your customer, the easier it is to grow revenue. Economic pressures haven’t dampened consumer enthusiasm for quality goods and services—but retailers will have to do more to ensure a friction-free buying experience.
That’s not just a data point—that’s opportunity! It shows us that what we're doing at Bolt can make an orders-of-magnitude difference, in a surprisingly short amount of time. I look forward to sharing more of these insights with you in the near future—and to working with our merchant partners to turn these insights into actions.