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08 Mar 2010
Online retail in the UK will enjoy a compound annual growth rate of 10 per cent over the next five years to reach a value of €40bn (£36bn) by 2015, according to figures from Forrester Research released today.
The analyst firm based its forecast on a survey of around 26,000 consumers in 17 of the largest markets in western Europe.
Forrester predicted that e-commerce sales will hit €114bn (£103bn) by 2014, and that the number of Europeans shopping online will rise from 141 million to 190 million over the period.
Nearly half of all UK consumers make monthly online purchases, the highest proportion in Europe and well above the average for the region of 32 per cent.
The report predicted that online retail in western Europe will grow at about 11 per cent a year, only slightly higher than the UK.
"To maximise that growth e-business professionals will have to enable a multichannel strategy that responds to consumers' increased desire to hop between the offline and online worlds, and their increasingly mobile and social behaviour," said Forrester Research vice president and principal analyst Sucharita Mulpuru.
"The retail innovators over the next five years will demonstrate customer enablement across all touch points, not just via a PC-based web browser."
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Forrester predicts bumper times for e-commerce
It is excellent news that according to the recent study by Forrester, the UK is leading the way with online spend in Europe, but I do believe that this is despite retailer?s best efforts rather than because of them. Consumers recognise in a difficult economic climate that they can find better deals online and also like the anonymity of the internet. It?s not that consumers have actually quelled their spending but are just getting savvy as to how they shop and take a bit more time to find that internet bargain. That said, the increase in spend online appears to be despite the frustrating experience that many consumers face when shopping. E-commerce sites are often very difficult to use and present usability barriers that customers are expected to navigate around. This ranges from poor navigation to lack of sufficient product information. Considering the bad usability of most online retail sites is it any wonder that average conversion rates hover around the five per cent mark? If more retail outlets invested in design and usability of these sites, conversion rates would surely rise. For some retailers even an increase of one per cent could lead to millions, if not billions of increased sales. So while it is great news for e-commerce retailers that UK spend is set to continue to grow, they should also remember that there is still plenty of money being left on the table. Andy Budd MD and founder of Clearleft Brighton, UK
Posted by: Andy Budd 11 Mar 2010