• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, October 3, 2018

According to a survey published by digitalcommerce360, of 4,028 global consumers ages 18 and older who had shopped online within the last year, 63% of those polled shop online at least once a month and 23% shop online at least weekly, Nearly two-thirds of shoppers expect to make more online purchases this year than they did in 2017. 

There’s still plenty of roomon the web and in consumers’ pocket- books, says the executive summary, for new online retailers to enter the e-commerce fold and for smaller retailers to grow their sales. Online retail isn’t saturated by any means, says the report. Smaller players who take the time to distinguish themselves and seek out a niche to serve can enjoy access to a growing industry and a wide audience of online shoppers who only plan to spend more on the web. 

That’s what consumers are saying they do, and the numbers back it up, says the report. For example, in the fourth quarter and in 2017 as a whole, U.S. online retail grew faster than it has since 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. E-commerce represented 13% of total retail sales in 2017, when excluding items like cars and gas rarely purchased online, and 49% of the growth.  

Consumers spent $453.46 billion on the web for retail purchases in 2017, says the report, a 16.0% increase compared with $390.99 billion in 2016. That’s the highest growth rate since 2011, when online sales grew 17.5% over 2010. 

The report, commissioned by FedEx, says that nearly two- thirds of shoppers expect to make more online purchases this year than they did in 2017. That growth really jumps out during the all-important holiday season. For example, consumers spent at least $1 billion online on 58 days of the 61-day stretch of November and December last year, up from 53 $1 billion-dollar days in the 2016 holiday season. The only three days that consumers didn’t spend at least $1 billion online were Dec. 23, Dec. 24 and Dec. 25. 

Global online sales will grow from $1.3 trillion in 2014 to $4.5 trillion in 2021, says the report, and with consumers spending more online each year, there is a great opportunity for smaller merchants. For those that can offer something different than the competition, provide exceptional customer service or creatively take advantage of technologies available today to efficiently run their businesses, there’s a lucrative, and growing, place for them at the e-commerce table, says the report.

Internet Retailer editors and researchers interviewed a wide range of small and medium- sized online merchants for this report about what has worked, and hasn’t worked, to grow their small businesses online. 

And data shows consumers are open to shopping with small and medium-sized retailers, as well as newer retailers they have not purchased from before. In an exclusive survey of 1,000 consumers conducted for Internet Retailer in July, 60.6% said they had shopped at an online retailer they were visiting for the first time. And 70.7% of shoppers said they would shop at a smaller online retailer if the merchant offered products they couldn’t find elsewhere, the most popular answer.