The Black Friday shopping frenzy is just around the corner. Google, using store traffic data that it has collected, has given shoppers with a few tips on how to come out of the shopping holiday smiling instead of frowning.
The first tidbit that Google revealed is that, contrary to popular Black Friday images of shoppers waiting in line in the early morning as they wait for stores to open, the peak of store traffic is actually in the afternoon. Specifically, the traffic peaks for most stores is between the times of 2:00 PM and 4:00 PM. The second highest peak for the shopping holiday is not on the day itself, in fact, with the second time period that shoppers should avoid being the evening of Thanksgiving, which is the night before Black Friday.
To avoid the peak times, the best time for shoppers to visit stores on Black Friday would then be the morning of the holiday.
Google also revealed that Black Friday is not the day with the most traffic for all stores, with only mobile phone stores and consumer electronics stores seeing their peak traffic on the holiday. For other kinds of stores, the peak traffic days happen closer to Christmas, with the days being compared to Black Friday by Google being the last Saturday before Christmas and Christmas Eve.
For shopping malls, department stores, superstores, discount stores and dollar stores, it is busier in the last Saturday before Christmas compared to Black Friday. For dollar stores, Christmas Eve is also busier compared to Black Friday.
Shoppers that are thinking of skipping Black Friday altogether and would instead wait closer to Christmas before going out to buy their gifts for the holidays should think twice, as there is a chance that the crowd that they would find themselves in would be even worse compared to what they would see on Black Friday.
Google acquired the foot traffic data from an anonymized sample of users in the United States that have activate their Location History feature over the period of Nov. 1 to Dec. 25 of last year.
