E-commerce sales in France soared by 16% during the second quarter of this year with the numberof online transactions continuing to rise by 20%, according to the quarterly survey of more than
128,000 websites by the country’s e-commerce association Fevad.Online purchases of physical goods and digital products totaled €12.2 billion in the April-June2013 second quarter as e-retail growth continued to be driven by an increase in both supply anddemand, the association explained.
What was also positive during the second quarter is that the average spend per purchase inFrance recovered to €87 per item after two years of consecutive decline and a 4% decline during thefirst quarter which represented a record low of €85 per item. The purchase frequency and theaverage amount spent per online shopper also continued to increase. On average, French onlineshoppers made 5.5 purchases and spent €476 during the last quarter which is a considerableimprovement compared to €453 during the corresponding quarter last year.
According to the Fevad figures, the number of French citizens shopping online continued to riseby 3% and the number of listed French web shops maintained a high 17% growth level with 5,000 newretail websites having been created in three months bringing the total number of websites acrossFrance to over 128,000. By the end of 2013, the figure is expected to surpass 135,000.
Online sales of clothes (fashion apparel) and the high-tech/household appliances sectorcontinued to grow by 7% and 13% respectively. Other growing markets included products of massconsumption. The number of internet users buying food via internet has increased by 3% compared to2012. This breakthrough of consumer product sales has contributed 2% to the overall e-commercegrowth in the first quarter of 2013.
The ‘iCE sites Fevad panel 40’, which measures the sales of the 40 top French websites recordeda 4% increase during the last quarter, which is an improvement compared to 2% growth during thefirst three months of this year. Web retailers selling consumer goods have seen their sales volumesgrow faster than during the first quarter but couldn’t reach the growth levels of 2012.
In this context, marketplaces play an increasingly important role for the activity of certainpanel websites, of which the sales are not calculated in the iCE 40. The index measuring salesvolumes of these marketplaces (iPM) shows an increase of 62% during this year’s second quartercompared to the corresponding quarter of 2012. The transactions on the market places now represent15% of the sales generated by the hosting websites, compared to 9% during the corresponding periodlast year.
Sales via mobile devices continued their strong growth with 120% year-on-year. In one year, theshare of purchases through mobile devices has doubled with the sales expected to grow sixfold thisyear compared to 2011. Today, mobile sales are rising twice as fast as sales via normal computersat the beginning of this decade.
