Visitor Task Completion Tumbles on Black Friday

Data from retail, consumer electronics, and e-commerce websites running 4Q show that the overall visitor task completion score for Black Friday 2008 stood at 65%, down sharply from the November average of 70%. This is consistent with data just released by Coremetrics, which highlight sharp drops in e-commerce activities on Black Friday 2008 relative to Black Friday 2007. In particular, Coremetrics reported that average session length fell by 18%, suggesting that e-tailers were struggling to keep visitors glued to their websites.

This comes on the heels of a report issued by comScore yesterday, which revealed that Black Friday online sales were up only 1% year-over-year, while earlier e-commerce data from comScore showed that online spending for the first three weeks of November was down 4% from 2007.

Last month, we released data warning that e-commerce sites were falling short in the critical area of task completion. In an expanded analysis of 4Q survey data that we prepared for the WSI Internet Marketing Summit, we showed how simple yet persistent problems (like insufficient content depth) were turning would-be buyers away in droves. At a time of historic economic contraction, brands are shooting themselves in the foot (and losing a chance to clear inventory) by not tailoring their websites to the needs of their visitors.

J.P. Morgan's has reported that close to 30% of online shoppers plan on spending less this holiday season. Let's hope that the theme of parsimony doesn't dampen today's Cyber Monday extravaganza. We'll update this blog with the Cyber Monday 2008 task completion numbers a little later this week.