Shopify had a massive Black Friday this year, with purchases peaking at $4.2M per minute. Yes, minute. That's insane!
Some of that shopping happened on Shop, Shopify's package tracker that was rebranded as a small-business discovery app back in 2020.
In terms of downloads, this year was big. Bigger than all previous years.
Shop added 2M new downloads during the two weeks between 11/20 and 12/3 (aka. Black Friday weeks) and 3M downloads in all of November. That's a 153% increase from November of last year.
As you'd expect, the majority of downloads in November, roughly 76%, came from the App Store and the rest from Google Play. Shop's popularity has declined on Google Play over the years as it turned from a utility to a shopping app. Quite the opposite of what's happening on the App Store.
The big surge is great for small businesses that utilize Shopify's platform for their website and are getting a mobile shopping experience and discovery for free.
As a user of Shop and a supporter of small businesses and buying as direct as I can, I can tell you many of those businesses who are getting free discovery aren't really harnessing it or utilizing it very well. But that's a great opportunity for both those businesses and Shop, and I'm sure we'll see more of that happening before next year's shopping season.
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