Europe

Geo-blocking, which prevents consumers to purchase consumer goods and accessing digital content online from a certain country, is widespread in the European Union. A survey has shown that 38 percent of retailers selling goods and 68 percent of retailers selling digital content said they geo-block consumers located in other EU member states.

The Online Dispute Resolution platform, aimed to help online shoppers settling disputes with merchants across Europe, still doesn't offer exactly what it meant to do. The consumer tool was launched officially in February, but still five countries - including big ecommerce markets Germany and France - haven't connected yet.

Shopify has released a plugin for Wordpress, which enables owners of websites built on this CMS to add a shopping function to their website. The plugin is free to download and adds a "add product" button to the content management system of the popular blogging platform.

Western Europe is the second largest B2C ecommerce region in the world in terms of sales and is set to retain this position through 2019. But, due to an expanding share of Asia-Pacific, Western Europe is predicted to lose about one percentage point in its share of global B2C ecommerce. Nevertheless, it will still account for one quarter of the world's ecommerce sales.

After Google decided to eliminate paid-search text advertising on the right-hand rail of its search results, the cost per click for paid-search advertising had indeed increased, one agency says. Last month, Google stopped serving ads on the right side of its search engine query page and added a fourth paid-search ad above, and up to three beneath the organic search results.

Almost 8 out of 10 consumers in Europe abandoned their online shopping cart at least once within the last six months. Within the last month, the percentage is still 39 percent. And almost a third of people never returned to complete the purchase, new research shows.

Among the 50 largest online retailers around the world, 19 are originated in Europe. The biggest European online retailer is Otto, followed by Tesco from the UK and Casino from France. These three players ended in the top 10 of the list compiled by Deloitte.

There is a petition going on to let Shopify support VAT exemption, which it still doesn't do. Several Shopify users are frustrated by the fact that whenever an EU based customer with a valid VAT number places an order in a different EU country, VAT is added to the sales price. Shopify doesn't support a way to automatically validate VAT numbers during the checkout process.

Amazon is at the verge of opening a network of parcel lockers across Europe, so customers can pick up their own orders. Amazon already has such lockers in the United States and the United Kingdom, but it posted several job adverts recently suggesting it wants to have a broader range of pick-up options in continental Europe.

For years we hear that mobile commerce is really breaking through now. And that cross-border ecommerce will become even more important. But what are the specific ecommerce trends for this year? Three CEOs from leading Nordic ecommerce companies share their thoughts.

The American retail federation welcomes the new, tentative privacy agreement on transfers of personal data between the US and Europe and says officials should quickly implement this measure. “Failure to renew this agreement would create a new trade barrier that would bog down global commerce and drive up costs for businesses and consumers", NRF says.

Running an online marketplace from somewhere in Europe used to be very complex, with all the different tax rules. But since the beginning of last year each company that sells digital goods is forced to collect VAT based on the country of residence of each buyer. This didn't make it easier. A European startup explains why.

Although ecommerce is getting more and more popular with merchants, distributors have not massively responded to that shift with their own ecommerce channel. Streamlining the fulfilment process may be the most important priority for distributors this year, but growing their ecommerce sales is also on their wish list.

Amazon is not sitting on its hands in Europe. After creating over 10,000 new permanent jobs last year, the American retailer wants to create several thousand more new jobs in Europe this year. With the extra manpower it wants to expand its European fulfilment network, increase its research and development here and build new infrastructure.

About one in seven online consumers in Europe uses the click and collect option whenever it's available, with the French online buyers to be the most likely to use this delivery method. According to new research, European retailers need click and collect to thrive as it offers customers convenience.