Ecommerce is Only Getting Started

This is normally the sort of article that I’d post in the Shopify Technology Blog or Global Nerdy, but I thought it was layperson-friendly enough and worth mentioning here on Accordion Guy.

If you’ve ever kicked yourself for not “getting in on the ground floor” of a great business opportunity, here’s your chance to make it up. Ecommerce, which we’re in the business of helping you with, represented almost 48 billion dollars of retail sales in the United States…for the second quarter of 2011 alone. And that’s not even the holiday quarter, when Black Friday happens! Even more impressive is that ecommerce is just getting started, as it represents less than 5% of all retail sales in America and it’s trending upward.

These figures come from a pretty reliable source: the U.S. Census bureau. Go ahead, read their PDF report, or if you prefer, here’s my quick summary:

• Total retail sales in the U.S. for second quarter of 2011: $1.04 trillion
• Increase in retail sales over first quarter of 2011: 1.2% (+/- 0.5%)
• Ecommerce sales in the U.S. for second quarter of 2011: $47.5 billion
• Ecommerce sales in the U.S. for second quarter of 2010: $40.4 billion
• Increase in ecommerce sales from 2Q 2010 to 2Q 2011: 17.6% (+/- 2.5%)
• Increase in total retail sales from 2Q 2010 to 2Q 2011: 8.1% (+/- 0.2%)
• Fraction of total retail sales that is made by ecommerce: 4.6%

The growth in ecommerce sales was double that of total retail sales over the past year, and it’s still a small, but growing piece of the retail pie. If you’ve been waiting for that “get in on the ground floor” opportunity, it’s ecommerce, and it’s happening now.

(And hey, I know a guy who can help get you started with this crazy ecommerce thing.)

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.