Despite website struggles, this year’s Amazon Prime Day broke sales records around the world.
Within minutes of the sale opening on July 16th, Amazon’s website crashed, with online shoppers unable to access the sales or make purchases for the first few hours.
However, this initial hiccup does not not seem to have deterred consumers from joining the fun, as according to an Amazon press release more than 100 million products were sold in 17 countries worldwide – a new record – and a record number of new members signed up for Prime too
According to the release, sales even surpassed last year’s Cyber Monday, Black Friday and Prime Day when comparing 36 hour periods.
One reason for the increased revenues might have been their expanded audience: Amazon noted that it was the first year Australia, Singapore, Netherlands and Luxembourg were able to participate in the sale.
Jeff Wilke, CEO of Amazon Worldwide Consumer, attributed the success to extending Prime Day to a day and a half this year – in comparison, Prime Day lasted 30 hours last year and only 24 hours in previous years.
Naturally, the day’s top-selling products were Amazon’s own, with millions of the Fire TV Stick and Echo Dot being sold globally.
In Canada specifically, the top four products included the Fire TV Stick, Instant Pot Duo Multi-Use Pressure Cooker, LifeStraw Personal Water Filter, and Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones.
The most successful categories, with more than 5 million items sold included Toys, Beauty Products, PCs and Computer Accessories, Apparel and Kitchen Products.
With such a successful 36 hours, it will be interesting to see what Amazon can do next year – provided there are no more technological glitches.