Following news regarding the launch of its own Black Friday store with exclusive deals for Prime members, Amazon announced this morning that it will actually begin selling its holiday deals this Friday, November 20. Typically, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving here in the U.S., meaning it would be November 27 this year, but Amazon says instead it will offer 8 days of holiday deals with 10 “coveted” (higher quality) deals starting at midnight on Thanksgiving, and up to 10 more on Black Friday.
In addition, the retailer will also be heavily pushing mobile and same-day delivery this season with a lineup of deals that can only be found via its mobile application, and support for two-hour delivery on select “Deals of the Day”.
When Amazon announced the Black Friday online store, many were disappointed to see it was initially filled with lower-quality Lightning Deals at the time of its debut. And getting early access to Lightning Deals is something Prime members can already take advantage of throughout the year, so it didn’t seem to have much of a draw at first glance.
But today, Amazon is revealing a larger lineup of discounted items, including, of course, deals on several of its own products like Kindle devices and the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, for example. It’s also offering deals on a number of TVs, and other electronics, including speakers, headphones, sound bars, cameras, laptops, Android tablets, printers and more. And there will be a range of discounts on other items for the home, kitchen, as well as baby, toys, and pet items, among other things.
Unfortunately, though better than the Lightning deals, not all the newly announced electronics deals are ground-breaking. There are several deals for LED TVs, for instance, but not the newer 4K TVs consumers may be craving this season. Plus, Amazon’s popular, connected speaker Echo is also missing from this early deal line-up – but this is not a full list of Amazon’s planned deals, so it’s possible we could still be surprised.
Because of the deluge of deals being offered, Amazon says it will offer consumers the ability to track those deals they want to be notified about via a “Watch a Deal” feature. This ties into the Amazon app on their mobile device and will send out a push notification when the deal goes live.
It’s interesting to see how heavily Amazon is promoting its mobile application this season. The company says that its total holiday sales from its shopping app doubled in the U.S., and Black Friday had the most rapid growth in mobile shopping. (Of course, its own sales holiday “Prime Day” broke even Amazon’s Black Friday records.)
This year, Amazon says there will be a good handful of app-only deals that you won’t be able to get on the web. Of the thousands of Lightning Deals, which are the lower-quality (i.e. not big-ticket items), 150 will be made available only within the Amazon mobile applications on iOS, Android and Fire OS. These deals, which will include a range of products from electronics to kitchen items, will be released beginning on Thanksgiving and will continue through December 9, and will arrive from 3 PM PT to 11 PM PT.
Well, that’s one way to boost mobile app installs, we suppose.
Select “Deals of the Day” will also be eligible for free, two-hour delivery in 20 metro areas across the U.S. through Amazon’s Prime Now mobile application, as well.
You can read through some of the planned deals here that will begin on November 20 and continue through Black Friday. However, those electronics deals that you might be more interested in include the following:
Meanwhile, if you’re looking for something a little more original, Amazon this morning additionally announced an expansion of its recently launched Etsy competitor “Handmade at Amazon,” which today offers 20,000 handcrafted items from over 10,000 artisans. The store now includes a new “Martha Stewart American Made store” which features a selection of curated products chosen by Stewart and her editors at Martha Stewart Living, says Amazon.
