Statistics are boring? Hell no! They can be very interesting, if you are interested in the ecommerce industry that is. Check out this category to see some stunning numbers and data about the ecommerce industry in different European countries or about a certain company.
Online retail spending in Germany has experienced notable growth. It is expected that online spending will continue to increase over the next four years, with an average annual growth of 4.2 percent. “Online retail is gaining momentum again – and the drivers are diverse.”
Online marketplaces dominate almost every stage of the purchase journey of consumers in the United Kingdom. In high-value purchases of more than 90 euros, 30 percent of shoppers in the country use marketplaces, ahead of physical stores and other websites.
According to a recent study, 95 percent of German retailers have experienced unfair customer reviews. These include false claims and personal attacks. Customers often use these reviews to put pressure on a business.
Amazon is the go-to place for Germans to do their Christmas shopping. Two-thirds of gift buyers shop at the American online retail giant during this holiday season, according to a new study. And 15 percent of consumers shop on one or more platforms from China, with their potential market share being even larger.
Return rates of online orders are an issue for many sellers. In the online fashion sector in the DACH countries, 87.7 percent of sellers report return rates of up to 50 percent. Around 80 percent of online sellers in the region do not expect that return rates will improve in the next three years.
The adoption of ecommerce varies widely across European regions: from 21.7 percent in Yugoiztochen, in the southeast of Bulgaria, to 91.5 percent in the Dutch province of Utrecht. A new map from statistics agency Eurostat clearly visualizes these differences.
Portuguese consumers have now spent around 11 billion euros on online shopping so far in 2025. This is about 1 billion euros more than last year. The estimate comes from the Associação de Economia Digital (AED).
In the second quarter of this year, 78 percent of Nordic consumers placed an online order at a store from abroad. Compared to the same period last year, this is an increase of 4 percent. Cross-border shopping is associated with lower prices, for most consumers in the Nordic countries.
Compared to September 2024, online sales in Switzerland have shown a cumulative increase of 9 percent up to and including the third quarter of this year. And over the first half of the year, ecommerce increased 8 percent. That is a much stronger growth than over the course of 2024.
Shein and Temu together sell around 3.3 billion euros worth of products in Germany, according to the German Retail Federation (HDE). One in five German consumers plans to make purchases from the Chinese platforms in the run-up to Christmas. “That is somewhat of a paradox”, says HDE director Stefan Genth.
In the third quarter of this year, more than half (53 percent) of all online orders in Denmark were completed on mobile phones. This was a strong increase compared to the same period last year, when 45 percent of Danes said that they used their mobile phone for online shopping.
Earlier this year, the amount of online stores in the Netherlands decreased for the first time since 2013. Growth now seems to be back on track, according to new figures from Statistics Netherlands (CBS). Nearly three thousand companies were added in six months. Online selling is more popular than ever, especially among self-employed professionals.
Ecommerce continues to expand rapidly in Portugal. According to the 2025 E‑Shopper Barometer by Geopost, 75 percent of Portuguese consumers now buy online, and nearly half are considered regular online shoppers. Each Portuguese online shopper makes around 39 online purchases per year, a slight increase from 2023 but still below the European average of 49.
Around 50 percent of online shoppers in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom have shopped at Temu or Shein this year. Compared to a year ago, the amount of shoppers using those platforms has not changed much. It seems that Temu’s and Shein’s growth in Europe has slowed down.
On average, online sellers are active on six different marketplaces. As 63 percent of consumers prefer marketplaces over brand sites, sellers need to make sure that their products are present there. However, selling on marketplaces comes with its own challenges as well.