Online store

H&M has opened several new online stores in Europe. It now has dedicated websites in Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Luxembourg and Ireland. The fashion retailer offers the same range as it does in the physical stores, with complete collections for men, women and children, including accessories.

The 3SI Group, formerly known as 3 Suisses International, has decided to pull the plug on all of its retail activities in France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. It has changed its business strategy drastically and will now focus solely on service activities.

German discount retailer Aldi has expanded its range of products that it offers via its British ecommerce website. It added non-food items such as electrical goods and garden tools, after it entered the ecommerce scene in January by offering cases of wines for home delivery.

Ecommerce in Luxembourg is attracting more and more residents. Last year, 80% of the local internet users have made purchases online. This percentage was about 60 percent in 2006. The most online shoppers can be found in the group aged 25 to 34 years old, but more and more seniors are shopping online as well.

Iceland is the UK's top supermarket for online shopping, according to a recent survey of more than 7,000 shoppers. With 77%, the British supermarket chain earned the highest score among online supermarkets for the first time. The relatively new online service outranked more experienced rivals such as Waitrose or Ocado.

Coolblue, a popular retailer from the Netherlands, will now be reselling 'second chance' items, products which have been returned by customers, in its shops for a reduced price. It already sold these products through an outlet section on eBay-owned marketplace Marktplaats, but will now also mention and sell them on product pages in its online stores.

The online furniture industry in France is hot. Whereas the general ecommerce penetration in this country is still lower than in Germany or the UK, it is the opposite for online furniture. New data shows that 12 percent of sales in the furniture industry are made online, which is significantly more than the 6 or 7 percent achieved elsewhere in Europe.

For years we hear that mobile commerce is really breaking through now. And that cross-border ecommerce will become even more important. But what are the specific ecommerce trends for this year? Three CEOs from leading Nordic ecommerce companies share their thoughts.

For internet users in Germany, Amazon is the most popular, and at the same time, the most unpopular online store. Even if other retailers have lower prices, Amazon is for most people the most preferred online store. But it's also the most popular choice when people are asked where they don't like to shop but do nonetheless.

Groupon closed the doors of 4  European websites. After closing its operations in Greece, Turkey and the Nordic countries, the American ecommerce marketplace is now shutting down in Ukraine, Portugal, Switzerland and Austria. Since yesterday, these websites no longer offer customers interesting deals from local retailers.

The 'Freien Demokraten' from the city counsil of the German city Wuppertal asked for the Wuppertaler Stadtwerke, the city's municipal utility, to stop its online store in which it sells household appliances and energy-saving lamps. The ecommerce site is said to hurt the local retail industry.

Also has finally opened its online store in the United Kingdom. The discount retailer has kicked-off its online shopping store by offering cases of wines for home delivery. The online wine store was announced by Aldi in September last year.

Ikea is serious about ecommerce. The Swedish furniture retailer wants to expand its web business into all markets. The CEO of Ikea sees its website generating 10 percent of the company's total revenue by 2020. Currently the online business of IKEA accounts for about 3 percent of total sales.

Ecommerce platform Groupon has closed its operations immediately in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. This decision follows after its business has been in decline for months now. Things don't look so swell for Groupon, which has said goodbye to 1,100 employees and exited other international markets recently.

Zalando wants to become an open fashion platform and eventually even the number one tech company in Europe. That's what co-founder Robert Gentz said this week, answering questions about the future of Europe's biggest online fashion retailer.