Online store

The German hypermarket Kaufland, part of the Schwarz Gruppe which also owns Lidl and Handelshof, has opened an online shop in Germany. But for now, the online delivery service is only available in Berlin. The website will offer the same prices as in-store.

Swiss supermarket chain Volg will further expand its online trade in 2017. The retailer already lets customers in selected villages order their groceries online and the concept has proven to be successful. Soon, more customers in Switzerland can order their goods on a larger scale.

The .shop top-level domain will be generally available starting September 26, which means everyone can buy a .shop domain. If it's still available, that is. Lots of major brands and retailers already registered during the so called Sunrise phase, with applications for names including etsy.shop, walmart.shop and facebook.shop.

Bol.com, the biggest online store in the Netherlands, continued its strong performance and reported growth in net consumer sales again. Together with Dutch online grocer Ah.nl, both are owned by Ahold Delhaize, the online business showed more than 30 percent growth during the second quarter, compared to the same period last year.

During the last two years, 15.9 percent of the households in the Netherlands have bought their groceries online at least once. Almost half of these households bought their foods and drinks online more than once. This segment accounted for 80 percent of the total online revenue generated by supermarkets.

Amazon was voted as the best online retailer in Germany. Perfumery Douglas and shoe retailer Deichmann ranked second and third respectively. There are no pure online retailers to be found in the top ten, which is filled with the online stores of large retail chains.

Lidl has opened an online store in the Netherlands. Dutch consumers are now able to order all kinds of non-food products, such as fashion, tools, home accessories and  kitchen tools & gadgets via Lidl-shop.nl.  The German discount supermarket wants to expand its online assortment in stages.

Several European retailers aren't doing business in Ukraine, but there are online startups who sell these companies' goods in the Eastern European country. IKEA for example doesn't have an ecommerce site for Ukrainian consumers, so these people are now being helped by unsanctioned resellers.

Canadian retail business group The Hudson's Bay Company plans to open 20 new stores in the Netherlands over the next 24 months. The first stores are expected to launch in the summer of 2017 and are part of the company's all-channel retail model, so ecommerce websites will also be launched.

EKM, the largest hosted ecommerce provider in the UK, has announced it is partnering with Swedish payments company Klarna. Starting today, all new merchants who sign up for a store with EKM will be offered a store and payment solution powered by EKM and Klarna. The new store will have Klarna's checkout pre-installed and ready to go.

Supermarket chain Merkur from Austria has announced its plan to launch an online store next month. The ecommerce website will only accept orders from customers in the Vienna area for now. In the online shop of Merkur, customers can buy the full range of the physical stores, which consist of more than 20,000 items.

Clothes and accessories are by far the most popular product category to be bought online by 15- to 24 year olds in Europe. Also, footwear and tickets are popular items to shop online. The online purchase of clothes, accessories and footwear increases with age, level of education and income.

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.