Amazon on Tuesday hosted its third annual Prime Day, a massive shopping event exclusively for members of its Prime subscription service. The company said sales on July 11 surpassed Black Friday and Cyber Monday en route to becoming the biggest day ever in Amazon history.
Amazon hosted its first summer shopping "holiday" in 2015 to commemorate the company's 20th anniversary. The inaugural event was a bit of a letdown largely due to the bizarre collection of products placed on sale but Amazon redeemed itself in 2016 with a far better showing.
This year's Prime Day was "too big for 24 hours" so Amazon gave members 30 hours to shop. The results?
Amazon says this year's event grew by more than 60 percent compared to the same 30 hours last year (that comparison seems a bit unfair considering last year's Prime Day didn't span 30 hours).
Also of note is the fact that more new members joined Prime yesterday than on any single day in Amazon's history (although again, this could be marketing hype as we don't know how many shoppers utilized a free trial to join). Nevertheless, Amazon says that tens of millions of members made a purchase on Prime Day 2017 - more than 50 percent higher than last year.
Unsurprisingly, Amazon's own Echo Dot was the most popular item of the day. The Element 55-inch 4K TV with built-in Amazon Fire hub was the best-selling TV deal in Amazon history. Other top sellers included the Instant Pot pressure cooker, TP-Link Wi-Fi Smart Plug, SanDisk's Ultra Fit 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive, the OnePlus 5 smartphone and Seagate's 1.5TB portable external hard drive.
Did you pick up anything particularly interesting on Prime Day? If so, let us know in the comments section below. I grabbed an over-ear gaming headset and a set of neoprene cable management sleeves - exciting, right?