Italy

Online pharmacy Newpharma wants to expand further across Europe and is thinking about launching its online shop in both Italy and Spain. Currently, the Belgian ecommerce company is active in six European countries.

Amazon has extended its anti-counterfeiting program Project Zero to Europe. With this initiative, which launches in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, the ecommerce giant wants to drive the number of counterfeits on its platform to zero.

Carrefour will offer its customers a 30-minute delivery service. In France, Spain, Italy and Argentina consumers will get their groceries a lot faster than before. The service is the result of a partnership between Carrefour and Spanish startup Glovo.

AliExpress has opened its marketplace to welcome non-Chinese sellers. The Alibaba-owned business-to-consumer marketplace has changed its business model to better compete with Amazon. Online retailers from Spain, Italy, Turkey and Russia now have access to the Chinese platform.

Fashion retailer Zalando will expand its relatively new beauty category in Europe. Over the next two months, the German ecommerce company will start selling its beauty products in Sweden, Denmark, France, Belgium and Italy.

ReBuy, an online platform for buying and selling refurbished consumer electronics, has expanded in Europe. The company has launched its online store in both Italy and Spain. The company already runs its online platform in German, the United Kingdom, France, Austria and the Netherlands.

Supermercato24, a same-day delivery service for online grocery, has announced a partnership with Lidl in Italy. Together, the two companies will allow Italian Lidl customers to order groceries from home and have them delivered at their doorstop on the same day, even within one hour.

Price comparison engine Idealo has achieved a growth of over 20 percent in Italy last year. The company generated an external sale in Italian ecommerce of almost 30 million euros, of which 32 percent was to the advantage of small Italian online shops.

Cdiscount Marketplace is busy expanding outside of France. The online marketplace now also delivers some items to Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain. This means, the 10,000 connected sellers suddenly get access to a new 200 million customer base.

Viniexport, an online marketplace from Italy that enables companies to buy and sell wine worldwide, has secured a 2 million euros funding round. With the money, the marketplace wants to pursue its European expansion.

The average conversion rate, also known as the percentage of website visitors that complete the purchase order, is 1.6% in Italy. During the online customer journey, Italian consumers leave ecommerce websites mostly because of poor usability or a lack of desired products.

Amazon has expanded its Amazon Business presence in Europe, by launching the B2B ecommerce website in Italy and Spain. The existence of the online platform in these two markets means that Amazon Business is now available in five European countries.

The business-to-consumers ecommerce turnover of Italy is still growing and is expected to be worth 23.1 billion euros at the end of 2018. This would mean an increase of 9 percent, which is significantly lower than the growth rates of the last few years.

The total value of online sales in Italy has doubled in the last four years. The online retail industry is now worth about 24 billion euros and accounts for 6 percent of the total retail industry in this Southern European country.

Consumers in Italy are more and more interested in shopping online. A recent study shows that two out of three Italians have visited an online store in January, while over half of Italians (53 percent) have purchased a product or service online during this period.