eCommerce Market in 2012

As we all know, ecommerce revenues are growing each year. But what are the details and challenges that ecommerce owners face? We'll take a look at the latest trends and numbers accross the globe in this detailed report. As a provider of performance solutions, we believe that ecommerce revenues are strongly connected to user satisfaction, website speed and conversion/sales numbers.

Image source: Mashable

The numbers

The numbers for ecommerce market look great this year, especially for large online retailers:

• Online retail is now nearly a $200 billion industry, growing at 16.1% last year alone (source: ClickTale)
• The top 500 web-only retailers grew by 32%, faster than any other merchant type (source:  ClickTale)
• The web was the fastest-growing channel for almost 90% of retail chains (source:  ClickTale)
• Average conversion rates are staying flat across the board at roughly 3.2% (source:  ClickTale)
• U.S. retail e-commerce spending was $1.042 billion on Black Friday. This year is the first time that Black Friday sales surpassed $1 billion in online spending, says comScore.
• In total, 57.3 million Americans visited online retail sites on Black Friday, representing an increase of 18 percent versus a year ago (source: TechCrunch)
• U.S. retail sales grew 5.6% last year (to $2.73 trillion), online retail grew 16.1% (to $194.3 billion). Furthermore, the top 500 web-only retailers
  grew faster than any other merchant type: 32% in 2011 to $73.39 billion (of which Amazon is responsible for $48.08  billion or almost  65 %). (source:  ClickTale)
• Forrester conducted a research about plans to replace the technology and the results are following:
  • 6% said they have a platform in the works;
  • 9% said they plan to change their e-commerce platform within 12 months;
  • 12% said in 12 to 18 months;
  • 25% said 18 to 24 months;
  • 20% said 24 to 36 months;
  • 5% said in more than 36 months
  • Another 17% said they have no plans to change their platform
  • 6% said they didn’t know what their plans were.
• Conversion rates are flat (average 3.22%, up from 3.18% last year – Amazon had 4.0%) – as potential customers spend more time shopping, but less time  buying, on more sites (source: ClickTale)

As seen above, ecommerce faces a stable growth, with mobile spending, social media promotions and overall usage growing. However, conversion rates are flat due to comparison shopping and more choices for the end consumer. Ecommerce owners must invest into conversion rate optimization, customer satisfaction and their overall performance if they want to keep the numbers growing.