Last Tuesday Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) held its third annual Prime Day with 30 hours of special deals exclusively for Amazon Prime members. Amazon reports that it was the biggest day ever in Amazon history, surpassing previous records set by Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Tens of millions of Prime members made purchases on Prime Day, more than a 50 percent increase over the 2016 event. In addition, Prime Day 2017 grew 60 percent over last year’s event, and more members joined on July 11 than on any single day previously.

Amazon says that the most popular purchase of the day was the Amazon Echo Dot, a small hands-free, voice-controlled device that uses Alexa to play music, make calls, search online and perform other tasks. Amazon also reports record sales for its other products including Echo, Fire tablets and Kindle devices. In the best-selling TV deal in Amazon history, the Element 55-inch 4K Ultra HD smart LED TV – Amazon Fire TV edition sold record units in less than four hours.

“To those customers who tried Prime for the first time and our long-time members, thank you for a great Prime Day,” said Greg Greeley, Vice President, Amazon Prime, in a statement. “Our teams around the world will keep working to add more and more to your membership, so Prime continues to make your life better every day. We are already looking forward to our Prime Day celebration next year.”

Prime Day 2017 highlights include:

• Prime members bought seven times more Amazon Echo devices than on Prime Day 2016.
• Members saved hundreds of millions of dollars on discounted products globally.
• More than 3.5 million toys were purchased.
• Tens of millions of customers used the Amazon App on Prime Day.
• The fastest Prime Now deliveries on Prime Day were in Sunnyvale and Berkeley, California and Kirkland, Washington. Those customers ordered snacks, writeable DVD packs and a Samsung Internal SSD. The orders were delivered in 12 minutes.
• More than 200,000 women’s dresses were purchased.
• More than 200,000 light bulbs were purchased.
• In China, the most popular purchase was the Fisher Price Soothe and Glow Seahorse.
• In Germany and Austria, the most popular purchases were PlayStation Plus memberships and Soda Stream.
• In Mexico, one of the most popular products was Nintendo Switch.
• In France and Belgium, the most popular purchases were PlayStation Plus memberships and Game of Thrones – The Complete Season 1 to 6 on Blu-Ray.

In addition to Prime Day deals, members streamed and downloaded more than two times the amount last year from Prime Video, Prime Reading, Amazon Music and Audible. The most downloaded Kindle Unlimited book was Stillhouse Lake, and the most streamed song on Amazon Music was “Something Just Like This” by The Chainsmokers featuring Coldplay.

Amazon reports that small businesses and entrepreneurs experienced another successful Prime Day, including Furbo Dog Camera of Bellevue Washington.

“We’re absolutely thrilled – our daily sales increased by over 500 times on Prime Day. Within the first six hours, Furbo Dog Camera shot up to the No.1 Best Seller in four categories including the highly competitive pet supplies and home monitor category,” said Victor Chang of Bellevue, Washington.

“So far, this year’s Prime Day sales increased 350 percent from last year’s. Getting the opportunity to offer lightning deals as a Handmade at Amazon artisan has been a boom to my business,” said Marcia Ricchiuti, Kahili Creations, Pahoa, Hawaii.

Investors also responded favorably to Amazon Prime Day. Amazon stock closed at $994.13 per share on July 11. As of 7:58 PM EDT yesterday, Amazon stock was up more than $30 at $1,024.45 per share. Well done, Amazon.

Insider Take:

Amazon Prime continues to be the gold standard for membership. Amazon offers its members a wide range of attractive benefits – free shipping, Amazon Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Photos, Amazon Dash for Prime, Prime Early Access, the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library – and much more. It regularly adds value with new benefits all the time, including offering exclusive deals to its members – like Prime Day. The continued success of this program is just another example of Amazon’s dominance in the online retail space.