Everything you need to know about the annual shopping bonanza, which this year falls on Monday, November 27.
You absolutely do not want to miss Cyber Monday this year, especially if you love a tech bargain — which we assume you do. It marks the end of the biggest shopping weekend of the year, kicked off by the US Thanksgiving holiday and Black Friday, and leading through a weekend where crowds of keen shoppers hit the high street in the hunt for bargains.
The term «Cyber Monday» was coined more than a decade ago to encourage people to do more shopping online — web retailers offered more discounts, shoppers picked up more stuff, and the cycle has continued to get where we are today.
Last year was another record-breaker, according to the stats: the $3.45 billion that users spent online on Cyber Monday 2016 made it the biggest day in US ecommerce history, according to Adobe Digital Insights.
In the UK a quarter of all consumers were planning to pick up a discounted deal on Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year, and that strong interest shows no signs of abating just yet. Brace yourself for another busy day of online shopping this year.
Unlike Black Friday, where the focus is traditionally on high street stores as well as online retailers, Cyber Monday is more about shopping on the web. In fact the marketing term was first dreamt up as a way to get people to buy more of their stuff online, at a time when web shopping wasn’t as familiar and as straightforward as it is now.
The whole weekend is seen as the last few days of major discounts before the run up to Christmas, and so people are often tempted to splurge the cash on gifts for themselves or friends and family — the total spending from last year was reportedly close to £6 billion in the UK (over both Cyber Monday and Black Friday).
Cyber Monday has become Cyber Monday because of good timing: shoppers are either clicking away back at work after a Thanksgiving break, or surfing the web during an extended holiday off the back of the weekend.
For the purposes of working out when Cyber Monday is scheduled to happen, remember that Thanksgiving always falls on the fourth Thursday in November in the States, and Cyber Monday then marks the end of that weekend. While the holiday isn’t as widely celebrated over here in the UK, the same big shopping days now apply on both sides of the Atlantic.
Cyber Monday is a win-win for shoppers and retailers alike, driving a strong uptick in sales as the holiday shopping season starts, and giving all of us some very tempting offers at the same time. It’s really no surprise that Cyber Monday continues to grow in scale every year.
And in the opinion of Dom Joseph, CEO of ad tech firm Captify: «What works very much in Cyber Monday’s favour is that it is the last significant retail ‘day’ before Christmas, in which people have the opportunity to pick up a heavily discounted bargain.»
You have to acknowledge the influence of Black Friday as well, because without Black Friday there’s no Cyber Monday. If you’ve missed out on the weekend sales or not had time to get online, then you’ve got Cyber Monday to fall back on, and to a large extent it’s about shoppers taking up the last opportunity to land a deal before December starts.
Cyber Monday just keeps getting bigger and bigger — or at least that’s how it feels — and so many consumers now deliberately wait for the day (and Black Friday) to come around, saving their cash beforehand. That makes the battle between retailers even more competitive, which in turn should give us some very appealing deals to pick from.
All the usual benefits of online shopping apply to shopping on Cyber Monday 2017: you can do it from the comfort of your own home, you can compare dozens of products and prices in seconds, and you can purchase your goods almost instantly.
There’s only one small downside, which is you might not get your gadgets immediately, but even so, with delivery times getting faster and faster and the risk of wasting your time queueing on the high street, many people would consider that a trade-off that’s well worth it.
While a few Cyber Monday deals have some kind of time restriction on them, a lot are going to be running all day, stats from previous years show. You don’t necessarily have to sneak out of the office to get your order in.
According to the experts, Cyber Monday also sees a broader range of deals across each individual retailer, so it’s less about one-off discounts and more about lower prices across the board. That said, some stores will follow-up Black Friday discounts with further reductions on Cyber Monday if they still need to shift some stock.
For the last few years we’ve been scouring the web on your behalf for the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, helping you nab the best tech at the best prices. These were some of the highlights from Cyber Monday 2016.
The PS4 Pro had only just arrived on the scene last year but retailers were still happy to knock a serious chunk of change off it — Amazon was knocking $60 off the console in the US, for example, one of several deals around.
Sony’s console wasn’t the only one that online stores were happy to flog for a discount, because the Xbox One S featured in many a deal too: on Amazon you could pick up an Xbox One S and two games for less than £200.
Dell was definitely getting into the spirit of Cyber Monday 2016, knocking a significant 12% off all of its laptops and computers (including one of our favorites) with the code SAVE12. Look for more of the same this year.
Speaking of laptop deals, Cyber Monday shoppers could get a bumper £200 knocked off the cost of the ASUS GL552VW 15.6 inch Gaming Laptop, down from £999.99 to just £799.99 during the course of the day.
Retailers weren’t leaving Apple products out of their Cyber Monday 2017 discounts — certain models were being knocked down on contracts so there was no up front cost to pay, just the monthly contract price.
With each passing year, online retailers get savvier when it comes to planning their Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns, but shoppers are getting more discerning too — as we’ve said, it’s already a win-win deal for both sides, but both sides are still continuing to try and get the best deals possible.
You can expect deals to be in place well before November as retailers and manufacturers get their ducks in a row, but they won’t go live until the actual day of Cyber Monday. That said, some deals will carry over from Black Friday, and some might go live on Sunday, so it’s a question of checking in as often as you can for discounts.
In recent years we’ve seen a pattern of sales and discounts continuing across the whole of December, so you can think of Cyber Monday as a starting gun for the Christmas sales — you don’t necessarily have to panic if you miss out on Cyber Monday itself.
Sales were up 12.1% on Cyber Monday 2016 compared with the year before, IBM analysts say, and we’re expecting another strong day of business in 2017. One trend to look for is more people buying from smartphones than on the desktop, making snapping up the bargains even more convenient.
Consoles are always primed for discounts come Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and 2017 should be no different. We’re expecting to see some deals done on the PS4 Slim, the PS4 Pro, and maybe even Microsoft’s Project Scorpio — if it’s out in time. Whether or not the new Xbox is around for Cyber Monday 2017, the old ones could well be discounted too.
TV tech continues to advance rapidly, with 4K and HDR now becoming the norm — given that pace, and the fact that expensive new models get out of date quickly, Cyber Monday 2017 could be the perfect time for you to pick up some hefty discounts on a brand new flat screen for your living room.
