E-commerce is the fastest growing business sector in the world and new customers are finding themselves using one or the other e-commerce website to do buying or selling every passing minute. This is nothing short of a revolution. So how much do you know about this new marketplace?

Here are 30 interesting facts about e-commerce that would help you appreciate the dynamics of the Ecommerce space better:

1. Michael Aldrich is credited with the inception of e-commerce business and forming the first e-commerce marketplace. He did so by connecting a modified domestic television with a telephone line. Even he did not think at that moment that this little experiment of his would create a multi-billion dollar industry in future.

2. Though e-commerce now is the fastest growing business model across the globe, the first e-commerce website Amazon which was launched in 1995 did not make any profit for first seven years! Amazon recorded its first yearly profit in 2003. Rest they say is history.

3. It takes around 30 minutes to register as a seller on any e-commerce marketplace and upload the products that you want to sell there. Hence you can create various online stores with different names and sell your products in same or different e-commerce market-place at the same time.

4. Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (the founders of Flipkart) who are the youngest Indian billionaires have seen their wealth skyrocket within a few years. They were on 86th position in Forbes India Rich list in 2015 and climbed to 65th position in 2016 with an individual wealth of 1.24 billion each. They were recently overtaken as the youngest Indian billionaire by the founder of Ola Cabs.

5. Though Amazon can be said to be one of the first online market-places to have come into existence it was not the first business to start selling online. Pizza hut started offering to deliver pizzas to their customers on online order basis as early as in 1994! People have been ordering pizzas online before they started ordering books on Amazon.

6. Online sales from social media platforms have grown like clockwork in the past four years showing an average growth of 93% every year. Most first time millionaires in the past four years have emerged from e-commerce business sector.

7. Twitter ads have the most conversion rate of any social media platform when it comes to converting online advertisement into genuine sales.

8. USA was the initiator of eCommerce. CompuServe unveiled the Electronic Mall in the USA and Canada in April 1984, making it the first comprehensive electronic commerce service.

9. Most buyers today prefer buying through their mobile phones. This phenomenon is a direct result of mobile applications and their easy user interface. Buyers find it easier to download an App than logging on to a website from their laptop hence most e-commerce platforms today are focusing on developing interactive Apps. hire magento 2 developers to build an interactive app if you are running your eCommerce website on Magento platform.

10. E-commerce business as a sector today is the least corrupt of all other business sectors. Owing to the highly technologically advanced model, e-commerce businesses register only 0.8% fraudulent activities. That means if you are a seller who ships 1000 orders in a month than only 8 of those orders might be fraudulent. That’s almost negligible.

11. 62% of the U.S. women pay head to online discount and promotional news. That means, it is crucial to give discounts sometimes in a year to draw more buyers.

12. It is actually amazing that e-commerce businesses are still relatively young as is e-commerce sector as a whole, still their customer’s trust e-commerce stores more than actual brick and mortar store. In a survey conducted recently, 71% customers said they believed that they get better deals online than by visiting an actual store.

13. The online community is very responsive to e-commerce businesses of all kinds. In a survey conducted recently, 80% of the internet using population has bought something from an e-commerce store and 50% of the internet using population as bought something online more than once.

14. It is believed that by 2019 there will be 224 million online shoppers in the USA alone. That is huge considering the fact that market-places such as India and China which have far greater population than the USA are just starting to get to know e-commerce. The potential for E-commerce businesses is such countries are off the roof.

15. E-commerce sales in the USA were higher than $350 billion in 2017 and these sales are projected to grow even further in USA up-to $485 billion by 2021. E-commerce sellers are up for a huge boost in the coming years if they already aren’t having their hands full.

16. If you want to imagine what is the actual potential of e-commerce business as a sector consider this. Only 17% of the small and medium-size businesses have adapted to online selling till now, and this is only in the first world countries. Now imagine what happens to e-commerce as a business sector when the entire globe adopts this as a business model.

17. Businesses of yesteryears were dependent more on newspaper advertisements and television advertisements for making their brand known to a wider audience than their hometown. That incurred huge costs. 71% of online consumers recommend their favourite stores to others hence spreading a brand name to global audiences for free

18. Though online customers may seem to be very generous from the outside, they are actually very informed and very sensitive as well. 28% of online shoppers will abandon their carts never to shop from the same online store again if they find out that the pricing on your online store is too high compared to others in the same segment.

19. 54% of the e-commerce customers abandon their shopping carts if the shipping costs come out to be more than the cost of the actual product. Now a consumer from USA might not face this problem when buying from let’s say Canada. But if a customer resides in UK and is trying to ship a product from USA this factor will certainly be a big issue.

20. Since e-commerce customers generally use their cell phones these days to buy products from market-places such as Amazon or Alibaba they generally add products to their carts today even if they plan to buy the product later. Only 50% of these products convert to actual sales.

21. It is preferred that you show the shipping costs at the very beginning or display it with the price of the product. 34% of the customers have been known to abandon their shopping carts if the shipping costs are shown late in checkout.

22. Another factor which determines your popularity among your customers is the heaviness or eCommerce website design. Shocked much? Well, this is indeed true. 21% of all the online customers are known to abandon your online store or market-place if your website loads too slowly or is heavy.

23. Never be too greedy to get customers registered on your website if you actually want your online market-place to be popular among your target audience. 20% of the online buying community has been known to abandon an online market-place on being forced to register in order to shop.

24. Cart abandonment is actually a very big issue for e-commerce business sector as a whole. Cart abandonment accounts for a loss of $18 billion in sales for all e-commerce stores combined.

25. Baymard Institute recently conducted a study to get an in-depth analysis of how many customers abandon their e-carts while shopping online and the results were nothing if not eye-opening. A total of 68% of all online shoppers abandon their shopping carts. If this can be converted to actual sales, e-commerce businesses will boom even more

26. Abandonment rate for shopping through mobile is more than shopping through laptops or desktops. Though this is expected as most people while scrolling through an e-commerce market-place on their cell phone are generally doing it to kill time, yet 97% of mobile users abandon their shopping carts which is huge compared to 70% laptop users.

27. Trust is another major issue an online buyer faces while shopping online. 51% of the buyers abandon carts if forced to enter their credit card details rather than being given the option of cash on delivery. Though this trend is fast changing since online gateways such as PayPal are fast earning the trust of their customers.

28. Mobile e-commerce is growing like wildfire. The value of mobile e-commerce was $1.5 trillion in 2013 but it increased to a whopping $3.2 trillion in 2017. That’s a 213% increase in a matter of 4 years! Considering that not even 50% of the entire global population is using mobile phones till now, the potential for mobile e-commerce will only grow.

29. Most online buyers look for free shipping of their products, so much so that 44% of your potential buyers will remove your product from their shopping carts if you charge them for shipping.

30. In a recent survey conducted, when a seller gives the option of free shipping to its buyers, they end up spending 30% more per order. So if you are a new online seller, don’t be afraid to void the shipping charges to your customers, rather thrust them to make it up to you.

E-commerce business is growing like wildfire all across the globe and if you are a new seller in this industry then our advice to you is to be patient and honest with your customers and hire woocommerce experts to increase sales. If you are a new buyer be rest assured that online shopping will not disappoint you.

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