GSI's results driven by its proven e-commerce platform

02 Dec '09

5 min read

GSI Commerce Inc the leading provider of e-commerce and interactive marketing solutions, reported strong activity for the web stores on its e-commerce platform for the key five-day holiday shopping period of Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday. GSI provides e-commerce technology, fulfillment, customer care centers, interactive marketing, and private sales for many of the world's leading retailers and brands.

“Shoppers that visited a GSI Commerce-run web store from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday found an array of the most-sought after holiday products, terrific promotions, and a fun, easy and engaging consumer experience,” said Fiona Dias, executive vice president of strategy and marketing for GSI. “Our clients rely on GSI to deliver an industry-leading suite of products and services to help them maximize their online business. We're proud to have delivered successfully for our clients and their consumers during this key five-day period.”

GSI operates more than 100 web stores globally for leading retailers and brands. The company's scalable infrastructure ensured the web stores operated reliably throughout the weekend—all while experiencing record-breaking consumer traffic and 795 million page views. Collectively, the uptime of GSI's web stores was 99.95%.

The meaningful activity on web stores operated by GSI was reflected in the fact that consumers placed 789 orders during the peak minute on Cyber Monday – 60 percent more than 2008. Cyber Monday (Nov. 30) was GSI's single highest day for online sales for the five-day Thanksgiving weekend, followed by Black Friday (Nov. 27), Sunday (Nov. 29), Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 26) and Saturday (Nov. 28).

Cyber Monday is typically one of the biggest shipping days of the year for GSI. GSI operates seven fulfillment centers with nearly three million square feet of fulfillment space in North America and Europe. On Cyber Monday an average of 11-12 items per second were packaged across GSI's fulfillment network. Despite this heavy volume, ShipQuikSM, GSI's comprehensive, proprietary package-delivery program is expected to deliver holiday gifts to shoppers' doors in an average of 2.3 days in December.

Consumers also flocked to GSI web stores in much higher numbers in Black Friday's early morning hours (between midnight and 6 am) than in years past. “Rather than waking up early and fighting crowds in stores, shoppers knew they could find the same Black Friday deals online as early as Thanksgiving day, without having to spend money on gas or take time away from their families,” said Dias. “Previously, only a few retailers promoted Thanksgiving day deals. This year, the trend was quite different with many online retailers touting sales on Thanksgiving Day.”

“Consumers are embracing the idea that shopping online is the way to go,” said Dias. “Consumer behavior has changed with many people shopping whenever it's most convenient for them. On Cyber Monday, we saw consumers hit the one day sales with passion, starting early in the morning and continuing all the way through the end of the night.”

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