Online Shopping, eCommerce, and Internet Statistics (2021) You Should Know

WHSR is committed to providing readers with the most accurate information possible. In the course of our research we collect much data used to back up our articles. This is to ensure the highest levels of integrity as well as limit distortion in our findings.

We rely on qualitative data (numerical statistics such as numbers, percentages and such) to offer readers reliable proof of fact. This is optimal for analysis which requires you to base a business decision upon and can serve to minimize the possibility of errors.

All data recorded, as far as possible, is from reputable sources such as Alexa, Geek Wire, Statista, and Smart Insights.

Internet Usage & Penetration

• Global internet subscription penetration reached 104 percent in Q4 2018.
• Global internet users grew by 8.6 percent over the past 12 months, with 350 million new users contributing to an overall total of 4.437 billion by the start of April 2019.
• India accounted for the greatest share of growth in internet users in the first quarter of 2019.
• As of Q1 2019, there are 560 million active internet users in India .
• People in India spent an average of 7 hours 47 minutes using the internet via any device.
• Top 5 most visited websites globally: 1) Google.com, 2) Youtube.com, 3) Facebook.com, 4) Baidu.com, 5) Wikipedia.org.
• The number of those who access the internet exclusively on a mobile device will grow by 10.6% in 2019, reaching 55.1 million users.
• Internet users in the world by regiong: Asia 50.1%, Europe 16.4%, Africa 11.2%, LAt Am / Carib. 10.1%, North America 7.5%, Middle East 4.0%, Oceana / Australia 0.7%.
• There are 829,000,000 Internet users for Mar/2019, 58.4% penetration, per CNNIC.
• There are 560,000,000 Internet users in Mar/2019, 40.9% penetration, per IAMAI.
• In the UK, there are 63.43 million internet users as of 2019, with a 95% penetration rate. People spent an average of 5 hours 46 minutes using the internet via any device.
• The latest reported figures suggest that an average of almost 1 million people came online for the first time each day over the past year.
• WordPress accounts for 27% of all websites around the world, but only about 40% of WordPress sites are up to date.

Online Shopping & eCommerce

• eCommerce now comprise more than 13% of all retail revenue in 2019.
• Top 5 most visited shopping websites in 2019, according to Alexa: 1) Amazon.com, 2) Netflix.com, 3) Ebay.com, 4) Amazon.co.uk, and 5) Etsy.com.
• Amazon is the leading online retailer with net revenue of $232.88 billion in 2018. The company set a record for profits in the first quarter of 2019, reporting net income of $3.6 billion for the quarter, or $7.09 per share, crushing analyst expectations for earnings of $4.72 per share. Amazon continues to set a new high bar for profits every quarter, with the previous record of $3 billion set last quarter.
• It’s estimated that there will be 1.92 billion global digital buyers in 2019.
• eCommerce retail sales are expected to account for 13.7% of global retail sales in 2019.
• The total value of global retail eCommerce sales will reach $3.45T in 2019.
• Within retail eCommerce, general merchandise will account for about 67% of sales, or $401.63 billion.
• The fastest growth in retail eCommerce between 2018 and 2022 is expected in India and Indonesia.
• eCommerce retail sales are expected to account for 33.6% of total retail sales in China in 2019.
• PayPal had 267M active registered accounts by the fourth quarter of 2018.
• Southeast Asia's Internet economy hits $100 billion for the first time in 2019.
• The SEA Internet economy is expected to grow to $300 billion by the year of 2025 at a CAGR of 33%.
• Indonesia and Vietnam's Internet economies are growing in excess of 40% a year, the fastest-growing countries in Southeast Asia.
• Digital payments are expected to cross $1 trillion by 2025, accounting for $1 in every $2 spent in Southeast Asia.
• More than $37 billion of capital has flowed into the SEA Internet economy over the last four years with a majority has gone to eCommerce and Ride Hailing Unicorns.

How different generations spend online?

• Only 9.6% of Gen Z reports buying items in a physical store – considerably less than their older generations (Millennials at 31.04%, Gen X at 27.5%, and Baby Boomers at 31.9% respectively).
• Gen Z respondents spend 8% more of their discretionary income each month online than the global average – and tend to prefer online purchases to those made offline.
• Only 56% of Gen Z consumers made a purchase in a physical store in the last six months compared to 65% of all respondents.
• 30% of Gen Z buyers saw an ad about the product on social media, and 22% visited at least one of the brand’s social channels prior to making an in-store purchase.
• Only one-quarter (27%) of Baby Boomers or Seniors see the availability of financing as influential.
• As online experiences become more and more seamless, brands will look to build moats around themselves with high-quality and high-interactivity offline experiences. To account for all of the offline experience needs, expect an increase in hiring from older generations who once built the meccas of retail experiences in their heyday.

Consumer online shopping behaviors

• Conversion rates on various traffic source during Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2018: Email: 4.38%; Direct: 4.35%; Search: 3.60% and Social: 2%.
• In the last 6 months, 78% of global respondents to BigCommerce’s survey made a purchase on Amazon, 65% in a physical store, 45% on a branded online store, 34% on eBay and another 11% Facebook.
• For 36% of respondents, financing enabled them to buy a more expensive option than they were previously considering, and another 31% of consumers would not have made the purchase otherwise.
• When asked about their shopping behaviors prior to making a purchase in a physical retail store, 39% of digital consumers visited a brand’s website, 36% read customer reviews, 33% attempted to price match the product online, with 32% finding the brand on Amazon.
• eBay remains a valuable purchase destination in the UK, with more than half (57%) of survey respondents making a purchase on its marketplace over the course of the past six months.
• Cross-device targeting yields 16% more conversions for retail advertisers in the US.
• More digital buyers purchase clothing online in 2019, with online sales will increase 14.8% year over year, compared with brick-and-mortar growth of 1.9%.
• In the U.K., 30% of retailers are investing in technology so that customers can use the web to return what they bought in-store.
• 84% of people will abandon a purchase if they’re dealing with an unsecured website.
• 63% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from a site which has user reviews.
• Nearly 70% of shoppers surveyed say their most recent returns experience was “easy” or “very easy,” and 96% would shop with a retailer again based on that experience.
• More than two-thirds of shoppers say they’re deterred by having to pay for return shipping (69%) or restocking fees (67%), and 17% said they would not make a purchase without the option to return to a store.
• Mail is the most common way (74%) to return an online purchase.
• The average global cart abandonment rate in Q3 of 2018 was 76.9%.
• The average open rate for an abandoned cart email is 15.21%, and the average click-through rate is 21.12% for SmartrMail users.
• The average revenue per email for an abandoned cart email is $27.12 (for SmartrMail users).
• Abandoned cart emails are the most profitable type of email that you can send as an online retailer.

How Americans spend online?

• Retail eCommerce will account for 10.9% of total US retail spending across all merchants in 2019—about one-eighth the size of brick-and-mortar retail.
• 80% of Internet users in the US have made at least one purchase online.
• There are over 95 million Amazon Prime members in the United States.
• On average, two in five US consumers (41%) receive one to two packages from Amazon per week. That number jumps to half (50%) for consumers ages 18-25, and 57% for consumers ages 26-35.
• 83% of US online shoppers expect regular communication about their purchases.
• 61% of US consumers say that they have messaged a business in the last 3 months.
• 70% of the US consumers who message businesses expect a faster response than they would have gotten had they used a more traditional mode of communication.
• 69% of US consumers who message businesses say that being able to message a business helps them feel more confident about the brand.
• 79% of US consumers said that free shipping would make them more likely to shop online.
• 54% of US consumers under the age of 25 said that same-day shipping is their number one purchase driver.
• Only 15% of US consumers said that online retailers always offer shipping options that meet their expectations for speed of delivery, compared to 30% that report the same for Amazon.
• 53% of US online shoppers won’t purchase a product if they don’t know when it will arrive.
• 54% of US online shoppers will give repeat business to a retailer that can predict when a package will arrive.
• 42% of US online shoppers have returned an item they bought online in the last six months.
• 63% of US online shoppers said that they would not make a purchase if they couldn’t find the return policy.
• Nearly 70% of US online shoppers said that their most recent return experience was “easy” or “very easy,” and 96% would buy from that retailer again based on that experience.
• 59% of US online shoppers said that they want to receive notifications about the status of their refund.
• 41% of US online shoppers said that they “bracket” at least some online purchases (“bracketing” refers to buying multiple versions of the same item, then returning those that didn’t work).
• 58.6% of US online shoppers have abandoned a cart within the last 3 months because “I was just browsing/not ready to buy.”
• 29% of US online shoppers use or plan to use chatbots to shop online.
• The top three reasons US online shoppers give for abandoning a cart during checkout are high extra costs, the need to create an account, and a complicated checkout process (these are the survey results after removing the “I was just browsing/not ready to buy” segment).

Digital Marketing & Ad Spendings

• Over 90% of online experience begins with a search engine.
• A November 2018 survey from CPC Strategy found that roughly one in five internet users shopped for clothes via digital channels frequently.
• The high cost of paid media (Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.) and the difficulty in securing return on ad spend will make paid media teams ever-more important for ecommerce brands – and ever-more allusive and expensive to boot.
• Due to the high cost of paid media and paid media teams as well as consumers’ devouring of more top-of-funnel content, content and commerce will continue to be a money-maker for brands who invest appropriately.
• In Q3 2018, 77% of traffic on Shopify stores was coming through mobile devices.
• Potential reach of advertising on Facebook: 1,887 million.
• The average amount of time between a Google product search and a purchase is 20 days; whereas on Amazon, the number is 26 days.
• 35% of Google product searches turn into transactions within 5 days.
• Google Shopping ads spend was up 43% YoY in Q4 of 2018, making the quarter the fastest growth rate in two years.
• Google Shopping ads have a higher CTR than Amazon’s Sponsored Product and Sponsored Brand ads.
• 91% of retail brands use 2 or more social media channels.
• However, only 43% of online stores see significant traffic from their social media pages.

Mobile Internet Usage & Trends

• Globally, we saw 30 billion global combined app downloads — also the largest quarter ever, up 10% year over year.
• The top three messaging apps have user bases of 1 billion or more.
• In Q1 2019, global iOS and Google Play consumer spend surpassed $22 billion — the most lucrative quarter ever, up 20% year over year.
• There are 5.11 billion unique mobile users in the world today, up 100 million (2 percent) in the past year.
• There are now more than 5.1 billion people around the world using a mobile phone – a year-on-year increase of 2.7 percent – with smartphones accounting for more than two-thirds of all devices in use today.
• In Q4 2018, the total number of mobile subscriptions was around 7.9 billion, with a net addition of 43 million subscriptions during the quarter.
• The number of US smartphone users will reach 232.8 million in 2019, surpassing desktop/laptop internet users (228.9 million) for the first time.
• Over 230 million U.S. consumers own smartphones, around 100 million U.S. consumers own tablets.
• An estimated 10 billion mobile connected devices are currently in use.
• 59% of smartphone users favor businesses with mobile sites or apps that enable them to make purchases easily and quickly.
• As of January 2019, there are 53.60 million active mobile internet users in the UK.
• In India, there are 515.2 million active mobile internet users.
• There are 765.1 million active mobile internet users in China.
• 69% of smartphone users say they’re more likely to buy from businesses with mobile sites or apps that answer their questions.
• Google is responsible for 96% of all smartphone search traffic
• 90% of Southeast Asia's 360 million Internet users connect to the Internet primarily through their mobile phones.

People are buying more from their mobile

• Almost 40% of all eCommerce purchases during the 2018 holiday season were made on a smartphone.
• 80% of shoppers used a mobile phone inside of a physical store to either look up product reviews, compare prices or find alternative store locations.
• 80% of Americans are online shoppers. More than half of them have made purchases on mobile devices
• People who have a bad mobile experience with your business are 62% less likely to become your customer in the future.
• During Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2018, 66% of sales from Shopify merchants happened on mobile compared 34% on desktop.
• Compared to non-users, Instagram users are 70% more likely to make online purchases on their mobile devices.
• 6% of online shoppers prefer mobile wallets over other forms of payment.
• Customers Rely On Mobile While Shopping In Physical Stores.
• Two-Thirds of Shoppers Check Phones In-Store for Product Information, Skipping Store Associates.
• Mobile eCommerce is expected to account for 53.9 percent of eCommerce sales in the retail sector in the US by 2021.
• More than a third of online Black Friday 2018 sales were completed on smartphones.
• 79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile devices in the last 6 months.
• 20% drop in conversions experienced for every second of delay in mobile page load time.
• 53% of mobile visits are likely to be abandoned if load times are greater than three seconds.
• Mobile sites in Mainland China are the fastest in the region with an average load time of 5.4 seconds.
• 76% of people who search for something nearby on their smartphone visit a related business within a day, and 28% of those searches result in a purchase.
• Mobile searches for “store open near me” (such as, “grocery store open near me” and “auto parts store open near me”) have grown by over 250% in the last two years.
• Mobile searches for “on sale” + “near me” (such as, “tires on sale near me” and “houses on sale near me”) have grown by over 250% YOY in the last two years.
• Product pages and mobile design are the two high rated touchpoints in the mobile consumer journey for APAC mobile sites.
• 79% of consumers in APAC countries will still look for information online, even at the point of sale in stores.

Social Media Networks

• Total Number of active social media users: 3.499 billion.
• Total number of social users accessing via mobile devices: 3.429 billion.
• Social media user numbers have registered solid growth in 2018, increasing by more than 200 million since this time last year to reach almost 3.5 billion by the time of publication.
• Top 5 social media sites: 1) Facebook.com, 2) Twitter.com, 3) Linkedin.com, 4) Pinterest.com, 5) Livejournal.com.
• Active social media users as a percentage of total population: 45%.
• Facebook reported a total monthly active user base of 2.320 billion users on the core Facebook platform – i.e. not including figures for Instagram and WhatsApp.
• 51.7% of US social network users will be mobile-only in 2019.
• In the UK, there are 39 million mobile social media users as of January 2019.
• There are 45 million active social media users in the UK, with 67% penetration.
• Gen Z spends little on products they find from Facebook –– 11.8% compared to Millennials at 29.39%, Gen X at 34.21% and Baby Boomers at 24.56%.
• 44% of active Instagram users say they use social media to conduct brand research. That’s the highest percentage among the major social networks.
• 96% of fashion brands based in the US use Instagram to reach consumers.
• Instagram is ahead of Facebook with a median engagement rate of 1.60% per post for brands.
• June 2018, there were 400 million daily active Instagram Stories users. That’s 300 million more users since its launch in 2016.
• There are currently 326 million monthly active users on Twitter.

India

• Average daily time spent using social media in India: 2 hours 32 minutes.
• Total Number of active social media users in India: 310 million.
• There are 290 million active social media users accessing via mobile devices in India.

China

• There are 1.007 billion active social media users in China.
• Most active social media platforms in China: WeChat, Baidu Tieba, QQ, Sina Weibo, Youku.

Social media marketing

• The social marketer’s #1 challenge is still ROI. Return on investment is the top concern for 55% of social marketers.
• On the front lines with customers and prospects everyday, an overwhelming majority (88%) of social marketers understand the importance of customer service on social; more than half (45%) of consumer respondents have reached out to a company on social.
• More than half of social marketers don’t have access to all the software they need, and 65% of social marketers indicate needing a dedicated resource for content development.
• A whopping 97% of social marketers list Facebook as their most used and useful social network, and Instagram blows Snapchat out of the water by social marketer usership and consumer adoption.
• 83% of marketers use Instagram and 13% use Snapchat; 51% of consumers use Instagram and 30% use Snapchat.
• 83% of people say Instagram helps them discover new products and services. 81% say the platform helps them research products and services, and 80% say it helps them decide whether to make a purchase.
• Engagement between users and brands on Instagram is 10 times greater than it is on Facebook, 54 times greater than it is on Pinterest, and 84 times greater than it is on Twitter.

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