Amazon touts record Prime Day 2019 sales, device sales and provides boost for e-commerce overall

Amazon Prime Day 2019: The business strategy behind the sale ZDNet's Larry Dignan explains that, yes, Amazon Prime Day is a big shopping bonanza for 48 hours, but there are some business perks that come with launching one of the e-commerce giant's biggest events. Read more: https://zd.net/2XFm1G0

Amazon said its Prime Day 2019 sale moved more than 175 million items and surpassed Black Friday and Cyber Monday combine.

Prime Day 2019 ran for 48 hours.

Amazon doesn't provide figures, but data from Adobe indicated that the company had a big Prime Day and even boosted e-commerce sales for rivals. Amazon uses the Prime Day sale to add Prime subscribers and play into an overall recurring revenue strategy.

• Prime Day lifts sales for Amazon's large retail rivals
• Welcome to Amazon Prime Day 2019: Here's the strategy behind the e-commerce madness
• Amazon faces European antitrust investigation over use of retailers' data

Like previous Prime Days, Amazon said its own devices sold well. Top selling devices included Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote and Fire TV Stick 4K. In addition, more than $2 billion of products were bought from small and medium-sized businesses on the Amazon network.

Here are a few data points from Amazon that will be examined by analysts to estimate revenue.

• 18 countries participated in Prime Day.
• Amazon added more new Prime members on July 15 than on any previous day. July 16 added almost as many new subscribers.
• Top selling deals included iRobot's Roomba 690, MyQ Smart Garage Door Opener and Amazon Smart Plug.
• Customers were buying twice as many Ring and Blink devices from a year ago.
• A record number of Prime members shopped during the sale.

Prime Day has also become a big e-commerce opportunity for non-Amazon retailers and rivals. Amazon's data on Prime Day rhymes with what Adobe Analytics found. Adobe's biggest takeaway is that Prime Day also served as a sales booster for large retailers. Adobe noted:

• The second day of Prime Day saw US online sales jump 72% for large retailers with more than $1 billion in annual revenue compared to an average Tuesday. Day one of Prime Day was a 64% gain compared to a typical Monday.
• Small retailers saw e-commerce sales gain 25% on the second day of Prime Day compared to Monday's 30%.
• Day two of Prime Day saw better conversions as buyers were focused closing purchases and bigger baskets.
• Email was the primary vehicle to convert sales.
• Buy online and pick up in store order values were $126 on Tuesday and $131 on Monday for Prime Day 2019.
• Electronics had the most discounts across both Monday and Tuesday.