With another major sales season just getting started, many brands are looking forward to what the next month or so can generate in terms of profits. However, brands have increasingly realized that the biggest opportunity for major sales occurs at the start of the holiday season, beginning with Black Friday.

Over the past several years, the entire week after Thanksgiving has become an opportunity for customers to find great deals and businesses to unload their inventories. As we’ve seen the promotions and deals expand from one day to several days, online retailers are increasingly referring to the period as Cyber Weekend, with deals occurring from Thanksgiving all the way through the following Monday.

Today, we’ll examine some lessons brands can learn from 2018’s Cyber Weekend.

The Market Continues to Grow

One of the biggest takeaways from Cyber Weekend is just how much the market online continues to grow – in particular, among mobile audiences. Nearly two-thirds of all sales during Cyber Weekend came via mobile devices, surpassing the broader share of online traffic coming from mobile devices. This means that mobile users were more likely to make purchases online than desktop users.

When pinging links to products and services, this is an important observation: at this point, it makes more sense to target mobile shoppers in many niches. Overall, the amount of purchases via mobile devices increased by 30-50% compared to last year’s sales season, which should tell brands that catering to mobile users is a worthwhile endeavor.

Keeping Inventory Flush Matters

While many brands see Cyber Weekend as an opportunity to clear out older inventory items, the reality is that it’s just as important to ensure select items are available. According to analysis conducted of thousands of online retailers, roughly 1 in every 50 pages visited rendered out of stock verdicts for shoppers. While losing out on 2% of potential sales may not seem like a lot, it’s important to consider just how much profit that can equate to when sales shoot through the roof during Cyber Weekend as a whole.

Strategically deploying your discounted and on-sale items while maintaining a well-balanced inventory can help mitigate some of these losses, as can a well-designed website that provides alternatives and recommendations to shoppers who can’t find the items they want.

Cyber Weekend Is a Global Affair

For many years, concepts such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday were unique American events, targeting consumers based on the Thanksgiving holiday. However, the sheer gravity of the process over time has transformed the sales season into a truly global affair, with dozens of countries seeing double-digit year-to-year increases in sales.

For brands that have been hesitant to target international audiences during Cyber Weekend, this year’s stats show that pinging links to them is certainly worth the effort. While some brands may not enjoy the logistical challenges of targeting different countries with ads and deals, the potential profit is too juicy to pass up in many cases.

Each year of holiday sales shows us new and exciting trends in the marketplace. With this year’s Cyber Weekend, we now see that there are many new opportunities to consider among mobile audiences and internationally for next year’s sales and beyond.