Spain

The self-appointed ‘biggest online music store in The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg’ is planning to spread throughout more countries in Europe. Earlier this year Bax-shop already launched online stores in France (Bax-shop.fr) and Germany (Bax-shop.de). Sweden, Italy, UK and Spain are on the list for next year.

The ecommerce industry is constantly changing. Similarly in Spain, where ecommerce still isn't as mature as in other big European countries. As a matter of fact, ecommerce in Spain only accounts for 5% of total ecommerce sales in Europe. But maybe the next six ecommerce trends may change this…

The rapid growth of ecommerce in Spain (and pretty much everywhere) has been a great incentive for small and medium businesses to step into the online world. But although a large percentage of companies already have an online presence, yet few have an ecommerce website.

Eight in ten Spanish inhabitants rate the general economic situation in Spain as bad or very bad. And 23 percent thinks that within a year the situation will be even worse than it is now. And it seems the situation isn't any better online. In the past twelve months, only 36.5 percent made a purchase on the internet.

Facebook is a very popular social network amongst European online retailers. Except for the United Kingdom, where online retailers are more active on Twitter. But Twitter is however still less popular in the UK than in other countries like Germany or Spain. These two countries have the most social media savvy online retailers, as 90% of them are on Facebook and 80% are on Twitter.

Inditex gets some serious competition, now Amazon has opened an online clothing store in Spain. It offers a 700,000-item catalogue featuring 2,000 labels. It's the fourth online clothing store Amazon opens in Europe, after the United Kingdom, Germany and France got their own Amazon clothing stores.

It may not have been all moonlight and roses for Southern Europe with the financial crises countries like Spain, Italy and Greece had to face, but in terms of ecommerce this European region is doing well. It’s expected that the total online economy of sold goods and service in Southern Europe in 2013 amounted to 39,5 billion euros.

The mobile retail audience in Europe grew by 43 percent over the past year, with 20 percent of smartphone users visiting online retail sites and apps using their mobile phone. Also 1 in 7 smartphone users from the five leading European markets (the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain)have completed a retail transaction on their phone in a month.