European ecommerce grew by 16% to €363bn in 2013

Ecommerce sales in Europe grew by 16.3% to 363.1 billion euros last year. This year an online revenue of 425.5 billion euros is expected and when the end of 2016 is reached, the European online revenue could have increased to around 625 billion euros, Ecommerce Europe thinks.

This is apparent from the European B2C E-commerce Report 2014, which was published today, during the Global E-Commerce Summit in Barcelona. “The growth forecast is enabled through the higher spending per e-shopper in mature countries as well as through an increase in the number of e-consumers in emerging countries”, Wijnand Jongen, Chairman of Ecommerce Europe’s Executive Committee, says.

The Big Three in European ecommerce
Of course, the countries with the highest ecommerce turnover were once again the United Kingdom (€107.1bn in 2013), Germany (€63.4bn) and France (€51.1bn). Together, these three countries represents 61% of the total B2C ecommerce sector in Europe. Other mature ecommerce countries with big turnover are Austria (€11bn) and the Netherlands (€10.6bn). When looking at the emerging ecommerce countries, the top list consists of Russia (€15.5bn), Spain (€14.4bn), Italy (€11.3bn) and Poland (€5.2bn).

The total Gross Domestic Product in Europe is estimated to have reached 16.4 trillion euros in 2013 and Ecommerce Europe estimates the share of the European B2C Internet economy at 2.2%. This percentage is probably to doubly by 2016 and to triple by 2020.

650,000 online stores in Europe
The umbrella organization for online retailers also took a look at the number of online stores in Europe. It estimates this number have grown to 650,000 at the end of last year. And for the upcoming years a yearly increase of 15-20% is predicted with regard to new online stores in Europe.

Although Western Europe represents almost half of the total European ecommerce market and it’s still the region with the highest ecommerce turnover in Europe, the industry expects a lot growth coming from the Eastern European region in the next years. This part of Europe showed a spectacular ecommerce growth of 47.4%. For comparison: Western Europe grew by 12.4%, while Central Europe (+22.7%), Southern Europe (+18.9%) and Northern Europe (+12.7%) also didn’t show such big growth as the Eastern European region, led by Russia.