Amazon Prime Day 2019 US: everything you need to know for the July deals event

[sincity]

Get ready to mark your calendar because Amazon Prime Day 2019 is only a couple of months away. The tech giant hasn't officially announced the date, but based on previous years we know the big shopping event will be held in mid-July. 

Prime Day first launched in 2015 and has grown into the biggest shopping day of the year with Prime Day 2018 even surpassing Cyber Monday and Black Friday. Last year's Prime Day had 89 million visitors that logged on to the site with 100 million products purchased during the sale event. Globally it was the biggest day of sales in Amazon’s history, and we expect Amazon Prime Day 2019 to be even bigger.

It didn't just increase in terms of territories or numbers, but the sale itself lasted longer too. Where 2017's Prime Day ran for only one day (well, 30 hours), 2018 ran for a day and a half (36 hours). We expect this year's sale to last even longer, so Prime members will have even more time snag the hottest deals of the year.

Last year's Prime Day was also the first year that discounts were extended to local Whole Foods Market stores. Prime members were able to save on popular grocery items and earned rewards and cash back through Amazon's site.

Read on to learn what we can expect for this year's Prime Day and everything we've learned from last year's Prime Day.

When is Amazon Prime Day 2019?

Even though Amazon hasn't announced the exact date of the big day, we can take a pretty good guess based on previous years. Last year Prime Day went live on Monday, July 16 at 3 PM ET and lasted for 36 hours. Past years the event only lasted for 24  or 30 hours and happened between July 10 and 12. Thanks to the World Cup, Prime Day started later in the month last year. We predict this year they'll stick to their original event dates and start Prime Day on Monday, July 8, although July 16 is our next best bet. The big question is whether the sale will be extended beyond past years. Each year the sale has been lengthened so we assume this year that you could see the longest Prime Day yet.

Last year Amazon didn't formally announce the dates of Prime Day till only a few weeks before the big event. Thanks to some snooping from the TechRadar team, we were able to figure out the date a full month before it was announced. 

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/831811ad822a4c1dae233baf7b1358a3.jpg

Image credit: Amazon

What were the best-selling items from Prime Day 2018?

Prime members around the world purchased more than 100 million products during the 2018 Prime Day event. The top-selling items from last year's Prime Day included a mixture of home goods, electronics, and Amazon devices. In fact, it was the biggest event ever for Amazon devices with the Fire TV Stick and Echo Dot leading the pack of best-selling items worldwide. The top selling products in the US from Prime Day 2018 consisted of the 6-Qt Instant Pot, Fire TV stick, Echo Dot, 23andMe DNA Test, and the LifeStraw personal water filter.

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/UhagiiFxgwY9DoxeirqaGT.jpg

Image credit: Shutterstock

Prime Day and Whole Foods

Last year Prime Day extended its sale from devices and electronics to discounts on groceries at the Whole Foods Market chain. Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017 and Prime Day 2018 was the first time they promoted the big sale event at the grocery store. Savings included price cuts on popular food items and discounts for first time users of the grocery delivery service Prime Now. Amazon also offered $10 back in Amazon credits to use on Prime Day for members that spent $10 at Whole Foods. Amazon credit card users also received double the rewards when they used their card at Whole Foods during the week leading up to Prime Day.

We expect this year to be more discounts on groceries in-store as well promotions with the Amazon Rewards Card and Prime Now.

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/CNgzfFXwxae3qhcf6PWhQ.jpg

Image credit: Shutterstock

How can I sign up for Amazon Prime?

To participate in the big shopping event, you must be an Amazon Prime Member. Your membership will not only let you partake in Prime Day, but you'll also have access to Amazon Prime movies, books, music, photos, and more. You can sign up here for a 30-day trial and cancel at any time. All you need is an Amazon account with a valid credit card tied to the account. Once you sign up for your free trial, you'll have access to all the Prime benefits, receive free two-day shipping and partake in the biggest shopping event of the year.

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/xvPq4qV6qh7KdFW9fzqdPA.jpg

Image credit: Amazon

What other retailers participate in Prime Day?

Every year more and more retailers are trying to compete with the tech giant by participating in their own version of Prime Day. You'll find discounts on clothing, tech, home goods and more from a variety of online and local retailers. Last year Walmart joined in on Prime Day by offering free two-day shipping without membership fees and free same-day pickup on qualifying items. They also discounted a wide array of products that included TVs, Google Home devices, kitchen appliances, laptops and much more. Other big retailers like Target, Best Buy, Macy's and eBay also promoted their own one-day sale with discounts on best-selling items throughout their site.

We expect this year that more retailers will participate in the July event and will even extend the one-day sale to a weeks worth of discounts.

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/3hjsMnZST5S5ugZpAGZVjW.jpg

Image credit: Amazon

How much money did Amazon make on Prime Day?

Amazon was predicted to gross $3.4 billion on Prime Day last year, although we don’t know if that prediction is accurate as Amazon doesn’t release such information. However, it did announce that third party sellers shifted a billion dollars of product in just one day. As for its own sales, Amazon was content to say that “sales this Prime Day surpassed Cyber Monday, Black Friday and the previous Prime Day, when comparing 36-hour periods, making this once again the biggest shopping event in Amazon history.” That’s a little sneaky, mind you: last Prime Day only ran for 24 hours, not 36.

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/CUsRFdReAahsufehUPAEAP.jpg

What were the best deals on Prime Day?

As ever, some of the best deals on Prime Day were on Amazon’s own devices. The Echo Show dropped from $229.99 to $129.99, the Echo Spot from $129.99 to $99, the Echo Dot from $49.99 to $29.99, the Echo from $99.99 to $69.99 and the Echo Plus from $164.98 to $99. There was a big drop on the Amazon-owned Ring video doorbell pro too, which went from $249 to $174, and on the Echo Look camera: that went from $199.99 to $99.99.

Kindles and Fire ranges got deep discounts. The Fire Stick went from $39.99 to $19.99 and the Fire TV Cube from $119.99 to $89.99 (we told you it was worth waiting a few weeks before Prime Day) while Fire Tablets dropped significantly: the Fire 7 went from $49.99 to an incredible $29.99, the Fire 10 from $149.99 to $99.99 and the Fire 7 Kids from $99.99 to $69.99. 

There were good deals on TVs too. In the US, the excellent TCL TVs were massively discounted and better known brands such as Hisense were chopped too: for example Hisense’s 43-inch 4K TV dropped from $349.99 to $239.99. 

The best phone deal we spotted in the US was a big drop on the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, which went from $799 to a much more affordable $549.

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/DGQQv34WGyeFF43CpNPFDC.jpg

Image credit: Amazon

Why did Amazon crash on Prime Day? Did the crash cost it money?

Amazon struggled to cope with traffic on Prime Day, an issue that affected not just the Amazon site but services such as Prime Video and Twitch. Customers found their shopping carts would suddenly empty, or links simply wouldn’t work, or they couldn’t access Amazon at all. The issues were largely confined to the US website and customers, although problems with Prime Video lasted well into the evening in the UK.

Some sites got their calculators out and concluded that the worst outage, which lasted for 63 minutes, cost Amazon just under $100 million in lost sales. Amazon disagrees, saying that the effect on sales was “minimal”. 

CNBC has seen internal documents that describe what happened. First, it didn’t secure enough servers to cope with the demand; secondly, that shortage caused a “cascading series of failures” that knocked out key services; and thirdly, Amazon temporarily killed all international traffic to reduce the load. All of those things happened within the first 15 minutes of Prime Day. 

The outage wasn’t the only issue Amazon faced on Prime Day. There were also strikes in protest at the way it treats its workers.

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/zDeRXMxKteqhAh7WnG3LHX.jpg

Image credit: Amazon

Why were workers striking and supporters urging Amazon boycotts on Prime Day?

Prime Day wasn’t the first time Amazon has been accused of terrible working practices, but it was a great day to get the issue into the papers. Workers in Spain and Germany went on strike over working hours and conditions while activists urged people to send Amazon a message on Prime Day by boycotting it altogether over its treatment of workers and its tax arrangements. It was also marked by a surge in health and safety complaints from UK workers. 

As you’d expect, Amazon denies the allegations, with a spokesperson telling us: These allegations and the data are just not accurate — safety incidents in our fulfillment centers did not increase around Prime Day, they actually decreased from the previous week. We’re proud of our team and our workplace, and invite anyone to come see for themselves – we offer public tours of our buildings and you can learn more at amazonfctours.com."  

Amazon also told Wired that the Organise campaign behind the publicity was indulging in fake news. “To our knowledge, Organise doesn’t verify that respondents actually work for the company they claim to work for.”

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/E5c2dvXdcrSctZFW53MhDc.jpg

Image credit: Amazon

What could Amazon have done better on Prime Day?

It should have anticipated and been able to cope with the load not just on its ecommerce site but on its cloud services too: we weren’t the only ones irritated because we couldn’t get our Preacher fix on Amazon Prime Video. It’s all the more embarrassing when you remember that Amazon provides the cloud infrastructure for many high-profile sites and services: Prime Day wasn’t a great ad for that side of its business.

Our main criticisms aren’t technological, though. Navigating the deals was hopeless and many of the deals were laughable, especially in gaming: we frequently found much better console bundles on AO.com’s eBay page than we did on Amazon. 

Here’s a great example. On Prime Day, one of the flagship deals we identified was $50 off a set of Bose QuietComfort 25 headphones. That brought the price down from $299 to $249. Just three weeks later, Amazon US was listing the same headphones for $169.

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/bTBHGzFAzG55BvAVPHNb4f.jpg

Image credit: Amazon

Will Amazon Prime Day 2019 do things differently?

Yes. CNBC reports that Jeff Wilke, Amazon’s CEO of worldwide retail, has already demanded improvements to prevent a repeat the previous Prime Day’s capacity problems: “tech teams are already working to improve our architecture”. 

We’d like to think that Amazon will also improve the navigation and discoverability of its deals for Prime Day 2019, although we aren’t holding our collective breath: both factors’ general rubbishness didn’t stop Prime Day breaking all records, so there’s not much incentive for Amazon to change it unless it decides better navigation will drive significantly higher sales. But that's why we're here to show you the best Prime Day deals!

It’s a safe bet that Prime Day 2019 will be longer. It’s already grown from one day to one and a half; further inflation seems inevitable.

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/oPYcMSyMD8ykMMWjbX8yuR.jpg

Image credit: Amazon

What does all this mean for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

It’s clear that Amazon is prioritising Prime Day over Super Black Friday Deals Month or whatever convoluted name it’s going to give its Black Friday sales period in 2019: according to Digitalcommerce360.com, 67% of this year's Prime Day deals were lower than comparable deals on the preceding Black Friday. 

That’s not to say Amazon won’t take part in Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It will, and it’ll offer the same kind of discounting that we’ve seen in recent years. But Prime Day is more important to the firm, and we’d expect its discounts to be deeper, especially on its own devices.

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/jXoeyBMLpDLNTiNzikK45b.jpg

Image credit: Amazon

Prime Day: why does it matter more to Amazon?

There are some crucial differences between Prime Day and Black Friday. The first is that Prime Day is Amazon’s own day. It’s right there in the name, which of course refers to Amazon’s Prime membership programme and associated services. Amazon doesn’t own Black Friday, and that means ultimately it’s just another retailer shouting for attention – a massive retailer with a really loud voice, of course, but Black Friday is a sales event for the entire retail sector. It’s much harder for rivals to muscle in on something that Amazon has effectively created from thin air.

The second and more important difference is that Black Friday doesn’t create new spending. It just moves it slightly. As we’ve discovered in recent years, the money people spend over the Black Friday period is money they were probably going to spend anyway: all Black Friday really does is concentrates pre-Christmas shopping in the last week of November. 

Prime Day spending is different in two ways. First of all, people aren’t spending the money they’d already planned to spend on Christmas presents. And secondly, they’re buying mainly for themselves, not for others. If you go back to the list of bestsellers there’s an awful lot of impulse buying in there: Instant Pots and Hue Lightstrips, frying pans and dishwasher tablets. This is new spending, not merely moving pre-planned spending. 

There’s another key benefit for Amazon. Its best-sellers on Prime Day weren’t just Amazon devices; they were Amazon devices that connect to Amazon services. Fire TVs, Kindle Fires, Echo devices, Alexa remotes. Each one of them connecting to Amazon Prime, and each one of them requiring a Prime membership to buy in the first place. So when Black Friday rolls around, Amazon will have a whole bunch of Prime members for whom shopping on Prime is the default, and who might want to enhance their Amazon-powered smart homes with Amazon-branded Black Friday deals.

Prime Day means that for Amazon, Christmas now comes twice a year.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/hA2khJgDgtM