LivePerson sees record-breaking 530 million visits over Cyber Weekend, up 11% over last year

NEW YORK, Dec. 1, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- LivePerson, Inc. (Nasdaq: LPSN), the leading provider of cloud mobile and online business messaging solutions, handled a record-breaking number of visitors on its platform during Cyber Weekend, the five-day period including Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, with 530 million site visits to brands serviced by LivePerson messaging, 11% higher than last year.

Notably, over a third of Cyber Weekend interactions occurred on tablets and smartphones, versus just 24.8% last year. This represents a 37.5% gain in the use of mobile devices rather than desktop computers for messaging with brands, compared to a year ago. Despite mobile chat being a newer and less widely deployed feature than desktop chat, and present on around 25% of sites analyzed over the extended weekend, mobile chats represented a disproportionately high 33% of all interactions.

This marks the first year that mobile interactions have been more popular than desktop on a per-visit basis. The shift to interactions on smartphones was even more significant, seeing an 83% increase over 2015.

As well as internal platform data, LivePerson also conducted a consumer survey of 1000 Americans on the Cyber Weekend period. It showed that almost 47% of Millennials completed a purchase over Cyber Weekend on a smartphone, versus 36% of those 35 and older. The reverse was true on tablets, where 30% of consumers over the age of 35 completed a purchase, versus 19% of Millennials.

The survey also uncovered that nearly three times as many women than men purchased 20+ items on Black Friday, and they were also more likely than men to make a purchase on a smartphone or tablet.

Increasingly, the choice to message with customer care representatives is becoming more and more natural for consumers. Counter to popular belief, more Millennials contacted customer service than those over the age of 35: 29.3% of younger people reached out to ask questions, versus 22.2% of older demographics in the survey data.

Overall, 6.5% of survey respondents said they shopped online while at the Thanksgiving table. 18-24 year olds were more likely than any other group to have hidden from family during Thanksgiving and shopped on their phones. Meanwhile, boomers 45-54 and young adults 25-34 were the most likely to eschew politeness and just do their shopping from the Thanksgiving table.

"As Cyber Weekend continues to play a hugely important role for businesses and consumers, we are excited to see record-breaking visits powered by LivePerson, and especially for the huge growth in mobile," said Robert LoCascio, founder and CEO of LivePerson. "Savvy consumers have multiple channels to not only get the best deals, but also get in touch with brands and have their questions answered. Holidays can be stressful on consumers, but our technology makes it possible for them to get answers immediately and directly from a trusted source."

As well as record-breaking overall visitors, the company's systems handled record-breaking concurrent visits with ease: 1.32 million visitors on Black Friday and 1.59 million visitors on Cyber Monday.

"This extended weekend period is critically important for companies doing business online, and enterprise-class software needs to work flawlessly," said Eran Vanounou, LivePerson CTO. "The LiveEngage platform maintained 100% uptime throughout these key shopping days, underscoring its position as the premier business-to-consumer messaging platform for major brands."

About LivePerson
LivePerson is a leading provider of mobile and online messaging business solutions, enabling a meaningful connection between brands and consumers. LiveEngage, the Company's enterprise-class, cloud-based platform, empowers consumers to stop wasting time on hold with 1-800 numbers, and instead message their favorite brands, just as they do with friends and family. More than 18,000 businesses, including Adobe, Citibank, EE, IBM, Orbitz, PNC, and The Home Depot rely on the unparalleled intelligence, security, and scalability of LiveEngage to reduce costs, increase lifetime value, and create stronger, more intuitive relationships with consumers.

Safe Harbor Provision
Statements in this press release regarding LivePerson that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual future events or results to differ materially from such statements.  Any such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to financial guidance, are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.  It is routine for our internal projections and expectations to change as the quarter and year progress, and therefore it should be clearly understood that the internal projections and beliefs upon which we base our expectations may change.  Although these expectations may change, we are under no obligation to inform you if they do.  Actual events or results may differ materially from those contained in the projections or forward-looking statements.  Some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements contained herein include, without limitation: potential fluctuations in our quarterly revenue and operating results; competition in the markets for digital engagement technology, and web and mobile based consumer-facing services, and online consumer services; our ability to retain existing clients and attract new clients; potential adverse impact due to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations; privacy concerns relating to the Internet that could result in new legislation or negative public perception; risks related to new regulatory or other legal requirements that could materially impact our business; our ability to effectively operate on mobile devices; responding to rapid technological change and changing client preferences; additional regulatory requirements, tax liabilities, currency exchange rate fluctuations and other risks as we expand internationally and/or as we expand into direct-to-consumer services; impairments to goodwill that result in significant charges to earnings; the adverse effect that the global economic downturn may have on our business and results of operations; our ability to retain key personnel, attract new personnel and to manage staff attrition; risks related to the ability to successfully integrate past or potential future acquisitions; our ability to expand our operations internationally; failures or security breaches in our services, those of our third party providers, or in the websites of our customers; risks related to the regulation or possible misappropriation of personal information belonging to our customers' Internet users; potential failure to meeting service level commitments to certain customers; technology systems beyond our control and technology-related defects that could disrupt the LivePerson services; risks related to protecting our intellectual property rights or potential infringement of the intellectual property rights of third parties; legal liability and/or negative publicity for the services provided to consumers via our technology platforms; risks related to technological or other defects disrupting our services; errors, failures or "bugs" in our products may be difficult to correct; increased allowances for doubtful accounts as a result of an increasing amount of receivables due from customers with greater credit risk; payment-related risks; delays in our implementation cycles; risks associated with the recent volatility in the capital markets; our ability to secure additional financing to execute our business strategy; risks associated with our current or any future stock repurchase programs, including whether such programs will enhance long-term stockholder value, and whether such stock repurchases could increase the volatility of the price of our common stock and diminish our cash reserves; our ability to license necessary third party software for use in our products and services, and our ability to successfully integrate third party software; changes in accounting principles generally accepted in the United States; our ability to maintain our reputation; risks related to our recognition of revenue from subscriptions; our lengthy sales cycles; risks related to our operations in Israel, and the civil and political unrest in that region; natural catastrophic events and interruption to our business by man-made problems; the high volatility of our stock price; and risks related to our common stock being traded on more than one securities exchange. This list is intended to identify only certain of the principal factors that could cause actual results to differ from those discussed in the forward-looking statements.  Readers are referred to the reports and documents filed from time to time by us with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a discussion of these and other important factors that could cause actual results to differ from those discussed in forward-looking statements.

Media Contact
Rurik Bradbury
rbradbury@liveperson.com
646-360-0197

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SOURCE LivePerson, Inc.