There are still a lot of opportunities the Belgian ecommerce industry needs to embrace, such as the mobile sector and social media usage, according to the present study.
Nine in 10 Belgian companies surveyed opine that online sales will grow even further in 2014, and forecasts point to the EUR 2 billion milestone. Almost 6 in 10 online store owners state that the internet will be the most important, if not the only, direct sales channel within two years. Only 2 in 10 companies thought the same in 2012, the study reveals.
A third of the online stores surveyed in 2013 had between 11 and 20 employees, while most of the companies had between 6 and 10 employees in 2012. The trend will continue as 87% of all companies surveyed is planning to hire more staff. They are particularly interested in e-marketing or IT specialists and customer service representatives.
For 6 in 10 orders placed online, the average value was more than EUR 100 and for 1 in 8 orders the value was even more than EUR 500. The most popular product categories in the Belgian ecommerce industry are clothing and accessories, home decor, multimedia and hardware, toys and kitchen appliances.
The most popular online payment methods are Visa, MasterCard and Bancontact/Mister Cash. Bpost is still the most popular logistics carrier in Belgium, as 59% of the companies surveyed made use of their services.
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