The Rapid Growth Of eCommerce

You’re in eCommerce because you know it works. You know that in this day and age it isn’t enough to sell physically in stores, you have to be online because that way you really can be everywhere at once, offering and delivering to customers all over the world. Here we’ll give you a few stats that back up your reason for running an eCommerce store and give you food for thought about the potential growth that is right there at your fingertips.

Did you know that while in 2012 only 1% of sites were responsive, in 2013 this figure grew to 16%? And that if you look at the major brands, on average the size of their physical stores has gone down by 25% because they are concentrating on online business potential.

Growth in eCommerce is up 16% whereas commerce, in general, has only seen a growth of around 5%, and in fact, 50% of stores have disappeared purely through not adopting the modern technologies that are available and keeping up with technological trends.

So what about the trends in customer behaviour?

Research tells us that 40-70% of the sales process happens for most customers even before they’ve even made their initial contact with the merchant. Nearly 80% of shoppers spend at least half of their shopping time by embarking on research to help them make the right decision. Makes you think about your content, doesn’t it?

And what about the platform and web design?

The stats prove that having a sign-up form with 5 lines means you’ll get 45% more conversions than with a sign-up of 9 lines. At Walmart, they discovered that a 5-second improvement on the load time of their web pages led to a 200% improvement in visitor retention. What’s more, 80% of shopping is done on a mobile device.

And as a final encouraging thought, one Magento merchant received a revenue increase of $31,000 in a single month simply due to the introduction of a series of cart abandonment emails.

You’re right to be in eCommerce. It’s retail at its most exciting!