The massive day of Cyber Monday bargains marks the end of the year's biggest shopping weekend, on the back of the mayhem of the US Thanksgiving holiday and Black Friday. Once the family celebrations are ended, waves of eager shoppers hit the high street, leading up to Cyber Monday.
The term "Cyber Monday" was coined more than a decade ago to encourage people to do more shopping online - web retailers offered more discounts, shoppers picked up more stuff, and the cycle has continued to get where we are today.
Last year was another record-breaker, according to the stats: the $3.45 billion that users spent online on Cyber Monday 2016 made it the biggest day in US ecommerce history, according to Adobe Digital Insights.
In the UK a quarter of all consumers were planning to pick up a discounted deal on Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year, and that strong interest shows no signs of abating just yet. Brace yourself for another busy day of online shopping this year.
When is Cyber Monday 2017?
First there's Thanksgiving on the Thursday, then there's Black Friday on the Friday, and then there's Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday 2017 will be on November 27.
Unlike Black Friday, where the focus is traditionally on high street stores as well as online retailers, Cyber Monday is more about shopping on the web. In fact the marketing term was first dreamt up as a way to get people to buy more of their stuff online, at a time when web shopping wasn't as familiar and as straightforward as it is now.
The whole weekend is seen as the last few days of major discounts before the run up to Christmas, and so people are often tempted to splurge the cash on gifts for themselves or friends and family - the total spending from last year was reportedly close to £6 billion in the UK (over both Cyber Monday and Black Friday).
Cyber Monday has become Cyber Monday because of good timing: shoppers are either clicking away back at work after a Thanksgiving break, or surfing the web during an extended holiday off the back of the weekend.
If you ever need to work out when Cyber Monday falls, Thanksgiving is always the fourth Thursday in November in the US. While the holiday isn't widely celebrated in the UK, the associated shopping days are now usually carried over the Atlantic.
Why Cyber Monday matters
Businesses and shoppers alike love Cyber Monday: it drives a strong uptick in sales for retailers, getting the massive holiday shopping season underway, and it gives the rest of us some very tempting bargains to cast our eyes over - it's a win-win for everyone concerned, so it's no surprise that Cyber Monday continues to get bigger and bigger each year.
And in the opinion of Dom Joseph, CEO of ad tech firm Captify: "What works very much in Cyber Monday's favour is that it is the last significant retail 'day' before Christmas, in which people have the opportunity to pick up a heavily discounted bargain."
You have to acknowledge the influence of Black Friday as well, because without Black Friday there's no Cyber Monday. If you've missed out on the weekend sales or not had time to get online, then you've got Cyber Monday to fall back on, and to a large extent it's about shoppers taking up the last opportunity to land a deal before December starts.
Cyber Monday just keeps getting bigger and bigger - or at least that's how it feels - and so many consumers now deliberately wait for the day (and Black Friday) to come around, saving their cash beforehand. That makes the battle between retailers even more competitive, which in turn should give us some very appealing deals to pick from.
Shopping on Cyber Monday 2017
All the usual benefits of online shopping apply to shopping on Cyber Monday 2017: you can do it from the comfort of your own home, you can compare dozens of products and prices in seconds, and you can purchase your goods almost instantly.
There's only one small downside, which is you might not get your gadgets immediately, but even so, with delivery times getting faster and faster and the risk of wasting your time queueing on the high street, many people would consider that a trade-off that's well worth it.
While a few Cyber Monday deals have some kind of time restriction on them, a lot are going to be running all day, stats from previous years show. You don't necessarily have to sneak out of the office to get your order in.
According to the experts, Cyber Monday also sees a broader range of deals across each individual retailer, so it's less about one-off discounts and more about lower prices across the board. That said, some stores will follow-up Black Friday discounts with further reductions on Cyber Monday if they still need to shift some stock.
