Austria

Zalando customers who don't want to take their returns to the post office, can now have them picked up at their home by a courier service for free. The German online fashion retailer has just started this pilot project in Vienna.

The Austrian Post has further increased its market share in the parcel business. And again, Österreichische Post happened to grow faster than the market. Last year, the amount of parcels transported through Austria increased by 3.7% to reach a total of 156.8 million parcels. Of this amount, Österreichische Post handled 80 million units.

Outfittery has expanded its service throughout Europe by offering a free pick-up service. This will make it even easier for customers to return items they don't like: Outfittery will pick up the items at the customer's home without asking any fee for it.

Groupon closed the doors of 4  European websites. After closing its operations in Greece, Turkey and the Nordic countries, the American ecommerce marketplace is now shutting down in Ukraine, Portugal, Switzerland and Austria. Since yesterday, these websites no longer offer customers interesting deals from local retailers.

Germany, Austria and Switzerland are a lot alike when it comes to ecommerce. There are several big online stores that are very popular across these German-speaking countries. Let's have a look at the biggest online stores in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

DHL Parcel had announced plans to expand its service in Europe by opening its own parcel network in Austria by 2016. After the Benelux, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Austria is the latest market that will be entered by the European parcel division that was launched last year by Deutsche Post DHL Group.

The British electronica store Ao.com is building a new distribution center and offices for the European mainland. From there the retailer wants to expand in Germany and around. A launch in markets such as the Netherlands or Austria seems just a matter of time.

Online department store Fonq from the Netherlands has launched a website in Austria, making this the eighth country in Europe where Fonq sells its products. But Austria is only the fifth with a dedicated ecommerce site, after Fonq opened online stores in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany.

Shopping online using a smartphone is becoming increasingly popular in Austria. Although the amount of online sales that happen via mcommerce is still low, the growth rate increases rapidly. Mobile shopping in Austria has grown by 40% in 2015 compared to last year.

Otto, a subsidiary of Otto Group, has set out a multi-store strategy and this seems to pay off. Recently, with the launch of Privileg.de it now has six "sub stores" and together this niche portal generated net sales worth of 70 million euros. No wonder, one of these niches, Schlafwelt.de will now also launch in Austria and Switzerland.

AO, the British online retailer of domestic appliances, has launched its German website, but that’s not the only expansion it has planned. AO World is also looking at starting businesses in the Netherlands and Belgium. Austria, Switzerland and France are also potential targets for the retailer that reported some strong growth in revenue for the first half of the year.

The ecommerce industry in Central Europe has shown an average growth rate of nearly 23% last year. That is a better development than the average European growth of 17.5%. Together, the countries in Central Europe generated online sales worth 93.3 billion euros. Back in 2012 total sales were worth 75.9 billion euros.

Shinola has opened its ecommerce website for visitors from Europe. Now people from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom can order the Detroit-built watches, bicycles, journals, leather goods and shoe polish online. The expansion is a response to the growing international demand for the brand.

UPS has announced the expansion of UPS My Choice and the UPS Access Point network to 15 additional countries, including 12 in Europe. With these two services, online shoppers and global retailers have new personalized solutions to manage residential package deliveries.

What are the biggest online stores in leading ecommerce countries like Germany or the Netherlands and which players dominate the ecommerce industry in the Alps? We've got the answers for you and we can already give one thing away: Amazon is everywhere and seems very unstoppable.