Amazon’s 2017 Prime Day Was Its Biggest Sales Day Yet

Seattle--Sales on Amazon Prime Day 2017, which officially kicked off Monday evening, surpassed Black Friday and Cyber Monday to make it the biggest sales day in company history, the e-tailer said Wednesday morning.

This year, Amazon made Prime Day bigger and broader in an effort to pull more consumers into its Prime membership.

It was 30 hours long, versus 24 last year, and offered in three additional countries--China, India and Mexico--bringing the total reach of the sales event to 13 nations worldwide.

It seems like the move was the right one, as sales this year were up by more than 60 percent when compared with the same 30-hour period last year, Amazon reported.

The company said year-over-year sales growth for small businesses and entrepreneurs who sell on the e-commerce site was even more than that.

While Amazon hasn’t provided specific sales figures for the day, Business Insider reported last week that JP Morgan analysts were estimating Amazon could rake in $1 billion on Prime Day, representing a 55 percent increase over last year.

What Amazon did report is that “tens of millions of Prime members made a purchase on Prime Day 2017,” representing more than a 50 percent increase on the prior year.  Additionally, more new members joined Prime than on any other single day in the e-tailer’s history (again, exact numbers weren’t revealed.)

Overall, the most popular purchase was the Echo Dot, Amazon’s audio-enabled speaker that can act as a personal home assistant (its price dropped $15 on Prime Day to $34.99.) In fact, Prime members purchased seven times more Amazon Echo devices globally than on Prime Day 2016.

Excluding Amazon devices, the top sellers in the U.S. were a multi-use programmable pressure cooker and a DNA test.

Interestingly, the pressure cooker also was a top seller in Canada, along with an eight-pack of rechargeable AA batteries.

Meanwhile, in the U.K. the best-selling products were a smart plug that works with Alexa and the Sony Playstation 4, and in France and Belgium they bought up PlayStation Plus memberships and the complete set of “Game of Thrones,” seasons 1 through 6, on Blu-Ray.

In the U.S., the most popular themes to shop by were Home Chefs, Techies and For the Home.

Amazon started Prime Day, a day of deep website-wide discounts open only to those who sign for the e-tailer’s Prime membership, in 2015.

The day has grown in sales every year