Ecommerce sales in Europe will increase by 18.4% in 2015

The online retail industry in Europe will probably increase with the same growth rate as last year. Ecommerce sales grew from €131.61 billion to €156.28 billion last year, which corresponds with a growth rate of 18.4%. And it’s expected the ecommerce industry will increase with this same growth rate in 2015, so it will be worth €185.39 billion at the end of the year.

These predictions come from RetailMeNot, which analyzed the European ecommerce industry together with the Centre for Retail Research. The research also suggests that while online retail sales in Europe will increase by 18.4%, offline retail sales will decrease by 1.4%.

The study shows that European online buyers are expected to spend more per transaction. The average basket value will be worth €61.85, which is 6% more than it was last year. Online consumers in Europe are also expected to make more online transactions, 17.8 in 2015 compared to 15.8 last year. And the average online shopper in Europe is expected to spend 970 euros per year, while this amount was 874 euros last year.

Europe grows faster than the US
RetailMeNot did not only look at European countries, it also looked at how the ecommerce industry in Europe will grow compared to that of the US. Although the online retail industry is much larger (€224bn vs. €156bn in 2014), the European ecommerce industry will probably grow with 18% and 19% this year and next year, while these growth rates are both 14% for the US.

When we look at some individual  European countries, we’ll see that the United Kingdom, Germany and France are – of course – still the biggest ecommerce countries on this continent. Online sales in the UK are expected to grow by 16.2% this year, which is more than last year and probably will be more than the growth rate in 2016. The British ecommerce industry is expected to reach 61.84 billion euros this year. In Germany, the industry will be probably worth 52.79 billion euros and in France, ecommerce sales will reach 36.53 billion euros.

The hardest growth rate (year-on-year) can be found in Germany, where online sales is expected to increase by 23.1%. That’s quite surprising for such a big and mature ecommerce market. Also Poland (21%) and Italy (19%) show some lovely numbers. These are also countries where the growth rate will be even higher (respectively 22.5% and 19.7%).

The English version (in £) can be found here.