Volusion, the industry-leading SaaS e-commerce provider, has released its H1 “State of E-commerce” – a look into the performance of its more than 40,000 customers, indicating strong performance for SMB online retailers.
With over 11 million transactions and $1.59B processed on the Volusion platform between January-June, during H1 2013, online SMB merchants experienced a 19.6% YoY increase in sales. “As this information demonstrates, SMBs continue to play a pivotal role in the growth of the e-commerce space, and is only expected to see increased gains moving forward, especially during the upcoming holiday season,” said Clay Olivier, CEO, Volusion.
Online sales growth varies across industries
Increased sales performance can be seen across a variety of industries within the online SMB space, including Sporting Goods, Industrial Equipment, and Food & Beverage. Other industries, such as Computers and Jewelry, are seeing opposite growth patterns, experiencing small to moderate sales declines YoY.
Analysis of YoY sales growth compared between H1 2013 and H1 2012 show the following performance by industry. Increased sales performance among online SMBs industries (measured in YoY per-day sales) are:
- Sporting Goods: +35.60%
- Industrial Equipment: +34.18%
- Food & Beverage: +22.08%
- Automotive: +17.77%
- Electronics: +17.60%
Industries seeing varying degrees of slowed sales growth in the online SMB space during the same period include:
- Computers: -16.28%
- Jewelry: -3.87%
- Non-profit: -2.63%
Holiday online sales for SMB e-commerce merchants projected to grow 20% for 2013 season.
The holidays have served as a bright spot for e-commerce sales for consecutive years, with shoppers turning online to take advantage of discounts, particularly on known sales holidays. Shoppers are also capitalizing on the convenient nature of online shopping, opting to skip the crowds in retail stores.
For the 2013 holiday season, Volusion expects that SMB e-commerce merchants will experience similar growth rates as seen through H1 of the year, projecting a 20% growth pattern for the season. As is typically the case, November and December will be the largest spending months due to big sales holidays like Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Free Shipping Day, along with the late-holiday rush.
Methodology: Merchant sales figures were collected via proprietary Volusion data, collected for H1 2013 and compared to H1 2012. Holiday projections were based on the same data set, forecasted into the holiday selling months of 2013.
Source: Volusion, Inc
