The world of Ecommerce is definitely here to stay. It steadily grows year-over-year for the purchase of goods and services worldwide. Take a look at some interesting bits and stats about e-commerce you might not have known.
Each consumer spends $1,200 to $1,300 in online shopping per year. Worldwide online sales hovered right at $1 trillion in 2012, a 26% increase over the previous year. In the US, retail ecommerce sales reached $263.3 billion in 2013 and these sales are projected to increase by 15.5% for 2014 reaching an estimated $304.1 billion.
Web shopping was actually invented by an individual named Michael Aldrich when he connected a modified TV to a real-time processing computer using a domestic phone line in 1979. This allowed “closed” corporate information systems to be opened to “outside” correspondents for transactions. This led to messaging (email) and other e-business a few years later.
Pizza Hut was one of the first major brands to experiment with E Commerce websites ordering and sales starting in 1994. Currently, 30% of all Pizza Hut’s business comes from digital channels, and half of that is using mobile devices. They have exceeded $6 billion in all-time digital sales.
E commerce cannot, and should not, be ignored by business owners – large or small – since it allows the business to operate 24/7/365 and comes with little to no overhead. E-commerce isn’t restricted to country, time zone or language and you can now use companies like ShipWire and Amazon Fulfillment to store and ship products.
There’s no need to wait – setting up an online store used to take tons of money and months of prep work but can now be done in minutes using a tool like WooCommerce.
Social media is king when it comes to online business. About 46% of online consumers use social media when making a purchase decision because they trust the recommendations of friends and family more than any kind of marketing. Online sales through social networks are projected to grow about 93% per year within the next four years.
All businesses, especially small ones, need to link physical store to online store in order to make the customer’s shopping experience seamless – one should be an extension of the other, using social media to forge that link. The business owner develops an authentic voice and builds their personality in a way that customers relate to and with.
Make use of tools like Google Analytics. Focus on points like “Bounce Rate” which is an indicator of the interest level of your site visitors. A high bounce rate can mean you aren’t attracting the right customers to your site.
Around 26% of all products added to an E Commerce shopping cart are abandoned and never purchased. This is where a business owner can use “Conversion Rate” analytics to show the amount of friction a visitor is experiencing on your site – usually during the check-out process.
Mobile is growing for ECommerce as it reached $42 billion in 2013 and will likely exceed $62 billion by 2016. More than half of mobile phone users in the US have a smartphone – make sure your site can publish to different devices. For your ECommerce websites.
