Ecommerce continues to ramp up its influence on businesses and consumers’ choices in all parts of the world. For instance, ecommerce in China is becoming very promising outlet for online business. In this post I would like to focus on ecommerce statistics in select countries of Europe and analyze the tendencies in ecommerce state in this part of the world.

For instance, the most active online buyers are now in Great Britain. With the Internet penetration rate about 70%, British online users are on top of ecommerce activities in Europe. In compliance with the survey of Internet bank Smile the average online user in the UK spends about 6 weeks a year in the Internet.

However, the highest population of Internet users is in Germany (53 million of users with the Internet penetration rate of nearly 65%). Online users in Germany, equally both male and female, contributed significantly to the growth of online sales in Europe in 2008. Online retail sales reached $20 billion in Germany in 2008 (according to the Gfk Group report).

 Italy and Spain together make up nearly 50 million Internet users (22.4 million in Spain and 26.4 in Italy according to eMarketer). Both countries are in the list of top countries with the highest Internet penetration rate (63% and 60% for Spain and Italy correspondingly). However, the authority of traditional media in these two countries is still very powerful and TV and print remain dominant advertising channels. This is the main difference here between these two countries and other European ecommerce powerhouses: online advertising in Italy and Spain is not as actively used by marketers as in other countries of Western Europe. Because of the uncertain economic situation, marketers in Spain and Italy prefer to promote products and services through time-tested traditional media and not to risk with online ads. Still however, youth brands, high-ends beverages, banks, movie studios and vehicle manufacturers reap benefits from their online presence as young and well-to-do audiences are really active online.

Then, one of the main obstacles for further development of ecommerce online activities in Europe is believed to be the Europeans’ devotion to the traditional habits of payment. However, Europeans are gradually overcoming their reluctance about making purchases online

IAB Europe research indicates that even though the European rates of online advertising in 2008 increased by 20%, 2009 will not probably show such relatively good results in the period of crisis. This tendency especially concerns huge European markets. The most impressive results of online advertising have been observed in Poland and Slovenia, where the spending on online advertising in 2008 were raised by 60% and 77% correspondingly.