Sweden

Cyberphoto, a Swedish online retailer where customers can buy photography equipment, has won an award for best online retailer of the year. It has won this prize for the third consecutive year. Mobile payments company iZettle was rewarded the company of the year award, while Media Markt became the retailer of the year.

In Sweden, digital payments via card or a mobile app have become widely accepted. As a matter of fact, there are few Swedes who carry any cash at all. Even children often pay with their debit cards. Sweden is the uncrowned king of cashless trading.

Ikea is serious about ecommerce. The Swedish furniture retailer wants to expand its web business into all markets. The CEO of Ikea sees its website generating 10 percent of the company's total revenue by 2020. Currently the online business of IKEA accounts for about 3 percent of total sales.

Lesara, a Berlin-based online fashion and lifestyle retailer, has announced it will now also supply customers in the United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Bulgaria, The Republic of Ireland, Romania, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Poland, Czech Republic, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

Swedish startup iFoodbag developed an eponymous product which could revolutionize the online grocery industry. The iFoodbag is a temperature-controlled packaging solution that can protect chilled and frozen goods for up to 24 hours. With this, shopping online for groceries should be easier, as customers can now order products like frozen meat without any hassle.

If your shipments are damaged or lost during transport, who covers the loss? One might think the carrier covers the full value of the shipment, but this is far from the truth. And also, it depends on in which country the shipment takes place, how big your loss as a retailer will be.

Ecommerce platform Groupon has closed its operations immediately in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. This decision follows after its business has been in decline for months now. Things don't look so swell for Groupon, which has said goodbye to 1,100 employees and exited other international markets recently.

Consumers in the Nordic countries expect to conduct the majority of Christmas shopping offline. But Sweden is the notable exception, as a majority of consumers believe they will shop their gifts mostly online. In total, more than 80 percent of Nordic consumers will shop online this Christmas and almost a quarter of the Christmas shopping will be mobile.

Online sales of goods in Sweden increased by 16 percent during the third quarter of this year. It's expected that ecommerce in Sweden will be worth 50 billion Swedish kronor, or 5.36 billion euros, in 2015. Now slightly more than every fifth purchase in the Nordic country happens online.

Swish will become an integral part of Klarna's Checkout solution. As a result it will be possible to pay for ecommerce purchases with Swish. The app, which is owned by six Swedish banks, gets an update next month so it can be used for ecommerce transactions.

Ikea is an absolute household name in the retail industry, but it jumped on the ecommerce bandwagon a bit late. And that's something they don’t mind admitting. But the Swedish homeware retailer does have plans to grow its ecommerce business significantly over the next five years. "It will probably be 5 billion euros in 5-6 years from now."

Consumers in the Nordic region made online purchases for 4.29 billion euros during the second quarter of this year. This is an increase of more than 800 million euros or 23 percent compared to the same period last year. Domestic commerce in each respective country grew even harder, by 29 percent.

Chiquelle is one of the fastest-growing online fashion retailers in Sweden, but its home country isn't the only market Chiquelle has its focus on. It has marketing and sales activities in more than 20 countries across the world. We interviewed the CEO and owner of this ambitious and quite rebellious online fashion retailer.

Klarna continues to be a European success story. The Swedish ecommerce payment provider saw its revenue grow by almost 40 percent to hit 2.2 billion Swedish kronor, or 233 million euros. Meanwhile, profits also increased by 39 percent and are now worth 75 million Swedish kronor, which corresponds with 8 million euros.

Online sales of grocery in Sweden has totaled 3 billion Swedish kronor, or 320.3 million euros, in 2014. This means the industry has grown 41% compared with the previous year, when the industry was worth 224 million euros. Sales are expected to increase by 40% this year to 438 million euros.