Black Friday / Cyber Monday retains its crown as the Amazon year’s largest event – here’s our Annual Analysis
In our last update, we talked about how Black Friday 2024’s later placement in the calendar offered Sellers a unique opportunity to sustain momentum through November and into December – and now we’ve had time to crunch the numbers properly? They speak for themselves…
Our award-winning team have conducted their annual analysis of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) Weekend and, as shared on LinkedIn by our CEO, Andrew Banks, this sales period didn’t just reaffirm its place as the highlight of the retail calendar with record-breaking results for Amazon – it also delivered unprecedented growth for Amazon brands.
The stats say…
Here’s what the data revealed from over £135m revenue across brands and categories:
Year-on-Year (2023 vs 2024)
- Sales Growth was up +54.82%
- Orders Growth was up +22.46%
- Average Order Value (AOV) was up +26.42%
And it also outperformed both Prime Day and October Prime Deals Days across key metrics:
Vs Prime Day 2024
- Sales Growth was up +19.24%
- Orders Growth was up +47.85%
- Average Order Value (AOV) was down -19.56%
Vs October Prime Deal Days
- Sales Growth was up +39.36%
- Orders Growth was up +51.82%
- Average Order Value (AOV) was down -14.44%
And, while Prime Day and October Prime Deal Days maintained a higher AOV, BFCM took the crown in both sales and orders, proving its unmatched, volume-driven power and cementing it as the ultimate Amazon event.
What this means for the future, Amazon Sellers
The late Black Friday date extended the sales season and enabled brands to align promotional efforts with evolving shopping behaviors.
The result? A perfect storm of sustained consumer demand, higher-value transactions and unparalleled volume.
To capitalise on this year’s lessons, look to:
- Volume-Driven campaigns – because, with orders growing by over 22% year-on-year, volume-focused strategies clearly deliver during this period. Consider bundling or discounted upsells to maximise basket sizes.
- Target high-value customers – because the 26% increase in YOY AOV says shoppers are spending more per transaction, so leverage this trend with premium product placements and well-timed Sponsored Ads.
- Carry momentum into December – because, with ever-decreasing downtime between Black Friday and Christmas offers, brands need to focus on staying visible and relevant, using targeted advertising and tailored promotions to maintain engagement through the season.
The Bottom Line
2024’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday Weekend wasn’t just a peak – it was a paradigm shift in how Q4 unfolds on Amazon.
The combination of late-season timing, extended sales momentum and record-breaking performance proves that the evolving retail calendar offers more opportunities than ever – if your brand adapts to meet them.
Are you ready to make 2025 even bigger?
Let’s chat about how we can bring our commercial clarity, rigour and vision to refine your strategy, optimise your campaigns and take your Amazon success to the next level.
How Amazon’s AI Features can help your brand win this Christmas – and beyond
Amazon’s latest AI tools are making Xmas shopping faster and easier than ever for customers this year, with features like Rufus (the conversational shopping assistant), AI Shopping Guides and Amazon Lens helping shoppers find the perfect gifts with less effort – and there are opportunities for brands here too…
Because while yes, these tools are designed to simplify the customer experience, there’s plenty of potential for those who know how to take advantage.
By optimising your listings for Amazon’s AI, your brand can improve visibility, engage potential customers more effectively and boost conversions through this critical sales period.
But how? We asked our award-winning experts and this is what they said…
Optimise for AI Shopping Guides
By highlighting key product features, explaining technical terms and consolidating customer-friendly information, Amazon’s AI Shopping Guides are designed to help buyers make confident decisions.
Make sure your brand is featured at its best by:
- Making product descriptions clear and concise, keeping your product benefits front and centre and avoiding jargon (unless it’s absolutely necessary, in which case you should team it with simple explanations).
- Emphasise your products’ key features in bullet points – AI prioritises the most relevant details, so this format makes the right content easy to extract.
- Leverage your customer reviews, because positive reviews with specific details about your product’s features or benefits can influence how your product is surfaced in AI guides. If, for some unknown reason, you’re not proactively seeking reviews from happy customers, now’s the time to start.
Be ready for Visual Shopping with Amazon Lens
Now Amazon Lens is here to help shoppers search by scanning barcodes, sharing screenshots and snapping photos, your brand needs to be capitalising on the possibilities by making your listings as visually appealing and relevant as possible.
Here’s how…
- Only use high-quality images, showcase your product from multiple angles and include close-ups of important details.
- Add alt text to your images, because it helps Amazon’s AI better understand what you’re showing – and that increases the chances your product/s will surface in visual searches.
- Focus on standout packaging or design features – products with distinctive visuals are more likely to catch a customer’s eye in an AI-powered result.
Tailor your listings for Rufus and Voice Search
Amazon’s conversational shopping assistant, Rufus, helps customers find tailored recommendations quickly – for brands? This means you need to be optimising your listings for natural language queries.
What to do…
- Build in conversational keywords, using phrases shoppers are likely to say, like “best gift for a tech lover” or “great stocking stuffer”.
- Focus on intent-driven language, including terms that reflect buying motivations, like “durable”, “easy-to-use” or “gift-ready.”
- Cover FAQs in your listing – begin by anticipating customer questions and continue by going through your reviews and answering queries, clearing confusion and tackling any issues directly within your content.
The Bottom Line
AI is changing how customers shop – and brands who optimise their listings to align with these tools can gain a serious competitive edge, not just this Christmas but far into 2025 and beyond.
From crafting clearer descriptions and using high-quality visuals to tailoring your content for voice and visual search, these small adjustments have the potential to drive big returns in an increasingly AI-powered marketplace.
Need help to get your listings AI-ready? Let’s chat about how our award-winning experts can help you thrive this holiday season and beyond.
Will new enhancements to Amazon Connect transform your Customer Service in 2025?
Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) have announced powerful new generative AI features for Amazon Connect, the cloud-based contact centre solution – innovations that promise to redefine how organisations handle customer service. As with all things, there are clear benefits to brands – and potential challenges. Dive deeper with us…
These new features are designed to make interactions more personalised, efficient and impactful – with lower operational costs as an added benefit.
But, while these updates bring plenty of good news for brands, our experts have highlighted some key considerations – here’s what’s new; and what to watch out for.
AI-Powered Personalisation
One of the standout updates is AI-powered segmentation, which allows brands to identify and proactively engage customer groups based on real-time and historical data.
This feature enables personalised outreach that anticipates customer needs and ensures timely, relevant communications – for example, say Amazon, an airline could use this tool to identify frequent flyers delayed by several hours and offer them priority rebooking, lounge access or tailored compensation based on loyalty status and past travel patterns.
What this means for you
- Proactive problem-solving helps you address customer pain points before they escalate.
- You can streamline and simplify your outbound communication with conversational commands and automated customer segmentation.
What to watch out for
- Data accuracy risks, because good personalisation relies on clean, accurate data. Misaligned or outdated customer information can lead to irrelevant or incorrect outreach – and that has the potential to damage your customer relationship and trust.
- Compliance challenges, because proactive outreach legally has to adhere to data privacy regulations like GDPR, and the onus is on you to ensure your data usage and segmentation practices meet legal requirements.
Generative AI for Self-Service
The new capabilities of Amazon Q in Connect bring a dynamic layer of generative AI to self-service interactions, where customers can receive tailored responses, proactive recommendations and personalised assistance – without the need for human intervention.
In another example from Amazon, when that stranded customer asks about rebooking options for their flight, Amazon Connect can analyse their frequent flyer status, ticket details and airline policies to offer a personalised solution in seconds.
And, if needed, the system ensures a smooth handoff to a live agent – and shares all the relevant context to eliminate repetitive explanations.
What this means for you
- Improved efficiency, as you reduce agent workloads with self-service options that resolve routine queries.
- Better customer experiences that delight, with quick, personalised solutions tailored to customer needs.
What to watch out for:
- An overreliance on AI – because, while AI-powered tools can handle routine enquiries effectively, they can struggle with complex or emotionally sensitive situations. Ensuring smooth escalation to your skilled agents is essential.
- The potential for errors, because the accuracy of Generative AI depends on the quality of its training data. That means you’ll need to monitor performance and deploy AI guardrails to prevent inappropriate or incorrect responses.
Tools for Managers
Amazon Connect’s new AI-powered evaluations and intelligent contact categorisation tools have been designed to help managers oversee customer service operations more efficiently – streamlining training and identifying service gaps by automating 100% of agent evaluations and providing actionable insights.
Amazon example – the system might flag an interaction as “lacking empathy during a sensitive moment,” enabling targeted coaching.
And managers can use natural language prompts to categorise contacts, uncover call trends and improve service quality.
What this means for you
- Actionable insights: Identify and address service gaps faster with comprehensive analytics.
- Enhanced training: Build stronger teams with focused coaching based on real feedback.
What to watch out for:
- Automated performance evaluations may raise concerns about fairness and accuracy among your staff, so it’s key to keep communication transparent and explain exactly how the tools are being used and their benefits.
- More overreliance because, while the tools are powerful, depending on AI alone to guide your training and evaluation? You risk missing all the nuances of human interaction.
The Bottom Line
Amazon Connect’s generative AI capabilities open exciting new possibilities for improving customer service, but they come with responsibilities.
It’s key that brands:
- Balance automation with human oversight, because Generative AI is a tool – not a replacement for skilled human judgement.
- Monitor AI outputs regularly to ensure quality and compliance.
- Stay flexible, because both customer expectations and AI capabilities evolve rapidly – a quickly adaptable strategy will help your brand stay ahead.
At Venture Forge, our expert team helps brands navigate complex tools like Amazon Connect to maximise their impact while minimising their risks.
Ready to explore how AI might transform your Amazon strategies? Get in touch today.
The Marketplace Awards 2025 – back bigger and better than ever!
We’re thrilled to announce that The Marketplace Awards is back for 2025—and this year, we’re taking things to a whole new level!
Now in its third year, The Marketplace Awards shines a spotlight on the brands, sellers and innovators driving the evolution of multi-channel retail.
With a focus on integrity and excellence, each award is judged by seasoned industry experts, ensuring a transparent and credible process that celebrates the very best in the marketplace community.
But this year? We’ve gone bigger and better than ever before…
More attendees, more marketplaces and more categories – plus a bigger venue for bigger celebrations – mean we’ll be shining an even wider spotlight on eComm success and applauding innovation, leadership and achievements in a way that sets the standard for recognising marketplace excellence.
So what’s new for 2025?
- More marketplaces – it’s not just Amazon anymore, now we’ll be celebrating achievements across the entire industry, including platforms like eBay, Etsy, B&Q and more.
- More categories – so that, from brands to leaders to agencies, we can laud the innovators driving the industry forward.
- More opportunities – for everyone involved to grow, connect and shine.
And this time, it’s Agency-independent…
Now that The Marketplace Awards has found its footing, Venture Forge is taking a step back as the sole organiser – instead, we’re working with a collaborative group of leading agency partners to ensure even greater inclusivity and scale.
Want to learn more?
The Marketplace Awards 2025 are shaping up to be a game-changing event for the retail and marketplace world – are you ready to be part of it?
Whether you’d love to enter your brand for an Award or are interested in partnering with the event, you’ll find all the info you need on our brand-new website!
