Cyber Monday 2017 is here and retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart and more are unleashing massive Cyber Monday deals across the board. Although, Cyber Monday is on its way to breaking records again this year, there are several noticeable fails and achievements that happened during this year’s Cyber Monday event.

#1 Fail: Cyber Monday Ads

Retailers were on the right track for the past few years with the release of Cyber Monday ads. With the popularity of Cyber Monday growing each year, the increase of ad scans was a good thing, especially for shoppers.

This year was a major disappointment! Some of the biggest retailers in the world didn’t release Cyber Monday Ads, this year around.

#1 Achievement: Lesser Known Retailers Stepped Up Their Game for This Year’s Cyber Monday Sale

When you think of Cyber Monday, you think of huge online sales at big box retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Target. etc. I am not trying to discredit any of the retailers mentioned above. However, consumers sometimes overlook smaller retailers because they assume the best deals will always be at popular retailers and that is not always the case.

Smaller retailers have definitely stepped up their game for Cyber Monday 2017. They had more deals, site-wide promotions, ad scans and, overall, were more organized. Hopefully, this will be a pattern that we will see, from them, for future Cyber Monday sales.

#2 Fail: Retailers are Confusing Shoppers with Pre Cyber Monday Sales, Cyber Monday Month, Cyber Week, etc.

We have been hearing these terms for the last few years when online Black Friday shopping started to become popular. These marketing tactics are indeed working but at the same time, they are confusing shoppers. Consumers don’t know which event to shop at or which event will have the best overall deals.

#2 Achievement: Retailers are Slowly Going Back to the Tradition of Cyber Monday

This year, we noticed some retailers weren’t advertising Pre-Cyber Monday deals or starting Cyber Week before Cyber Monday. I believe this is a good thing and hope all retailers transition back to the tradition of Cyber Monday. The same goes for Black Friday as well; leave Black Friday shopping for Brick & Motor and Cyber Monday shopping for online.

#3 Fail: Lack of Gift Cards w/ Purchases

This year’s Cyber Monday sale was a let down for Gift Cards with purchases compared to previous years. Gift Cards was one of the biggest highlights of last year’s Cyber Monday sale. I was hoping to see more retailers offer gift cards with purchases such as HDTVs, Laptops, iPads, etc. Let’s hope that they make up for it during next year’s Cyber Monday sale.

#3 Achievement: Site-wide Promotions & Free Shipping was this Year’s Biggest Highlights

On top of having deep discounts on thousands of items, retailers were offering some of the biggest site-wide sales that I have ever seen. I could say roughly half of every retailer that our team had covered was offering a site-wide promotion — a huge increase from last year.

Free Shipping is another big highlight of this year’s Cyber Monday sale. Many retailers brought down their minimum order amount in order to have shoppers qualify for free shipping. Some retailers went even further of offering free shipping on ALL orders for Cyber Monday 2017.

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