Ecommerce in France

France is a prominent country in Europe as well as in the world. It’s part of Western Europe, and it is perfectly located, as it is adjacent to major countries like Germany, Italy, Spain and – although separated by a channel – the United Kingdom. There are some French-administered territories and departments outside of the European continent. These include islands like Guadeloupe, Martinique and the South American overseas region and department French Guiana.

Advertisement

Whitepaper: Banking on Borderless Payments
This FinXP whitepaper explains how payment strategy helps online merchants expand abroad. Learn about common payment and banking challenges, and revenue-increasing solutions. Download now!

Looking for ecommerce software for selling in Europe? Lightspeed and Shopify are both platforms that are well optimized for cross-border ecommerce.

Content:

• Ecommerce events in France
• Ecommerce customers in France
• The ecommerce market in France
• Big online stores in France
• Latest ecommerce news from or about France

Ecommerce events in France

Every year there are several ecommerce events being organized in France. We have a handy ecommerce events calendar, where you can find all the major online retail events in Europe. But you can also check out only the ecommerce events in France.

Ecommerce customers in France

PAYMENT METHODS – When ordering goods online, online consumers in France like to pay with their bank card, analysis from RetailX in 2020 shows. The bank card is, by far, the most popular payment in France, with 80 percent. It’s followed by online banking (11 percent), consumer credit (4 percent), bank transfer (1 percent) and other methods (a total of 4 percent).

ONLINE SHOPPERS – The same report from RetailX in 2020 showed that 77 percent of shoppers in France bought online the year before. That percentage was expected to grow with 2 percentage points in 2020, but the study also showed that online shoppers in France were spending more. In 2015, the average consumer spent 1,516 euros online, while it was already 2,266 euros in 2019.

Are you looking to do cross-border business? Get your free digital copy of Cross-Border Magazine now and stay informed.

PRODUCT CATEGORIES – Fashion is the product category with the highest share of people buying these items online. In 2019, it seemed that 58 percent of internet users bought fashion online. Cultural goods (50 percent) and travel/tourism (40 percent) were other categories with a high popularity online. Categories such as home services (7 percent) and glasses and contact lenses (also 7 percent) are significantly less popular online

The ecommerce market in France

France is one of the biggest ecommerce countries in the world. It’s ranked as the sixth biggest ecommerce market worldwide and in Europe only Germany and the United Kingdom are bigger. The Western European country has an online retail market that’s expected to reach over 115 billion euros by the end of 2020. According to data from the Centre for Retail Search online sales in France account for 6% of total retail sales. And ecommerce accounted for 4.27 percent of the country’s GDP in 2019.

Big online stores in France

Expectations are that there are more than 120,000 active ecommerce sites in France. The most visited online store in this country is Amazon, with more than 15 million unique visitors per month. Other big online players are Cdiscount, eBay, Fnac and Priceminister. Whereas fashion is a popular product category, retailers La Redoute and 3 Suisses are amongst the biggest fashion players in French ecommerce.

These are the top 10 of biggest online retailers in France in 2018: Amazon (€2.19 billion), Cdiscount (€2.08 billion), Vente-Privee (€1.89 billion), Auchan (€1.32 billion), Apple (€820 million), Fnac (€675 million), Showroomprivé (€588 million), La Redoute (€533 million), Carrefour (€494 million) and Zalando (€472 million).

Read all our articles about ecommerce in France.

Last update: May 2020