In March of 2023, the largest share of e-commerce shoppers in the United States consisted of adults aged 18 to 24 (**** percent), based on geolocated mobile user data. Adults between the ages of 25 and 34 made up almost ** percent of the e-commerce shopper mobile audience in the country.

Geolocated mobile user data from March 2023 revealed that men made up the majority of e-commerce shoppers in the United States with 53.1 percent. In comparison, almost 47 percent of e-commerce shoppers were women.

The number of users in the e-commerce market in the United States was forecast to continuously increase between 2025 and 2029 by in total 45.1 million users (+15.64 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the number of users is estimated to reach 333.5 million users and therefore a new peak in 2029. Notably, the number of users of the e-commerce market was continuously increasing over the past years.Find other key market indicators concerning the average revenue per user (ARPU) and revenue. The Statista Market Insights cover a broad range of additional markets.

In 2023, e-commerce comprised over 15.6 percent of total retail sales in the United States. Forecasts suggest that this proportion will continue to rise steadily in the coming years, reaching approximately 20.6 percent by 2027. Fashion fever The digital revolution has significantly changed how retail is done, impacting a wide range of product categories. Out of all e-commerce product categories, apparel and accessories are the most purchased online in the United States. As of February 2023, roughly 18 percent of all fashion retail sales took place online. Furniture and home furnishing, as well as computer and consumer electronics, ranked second, with over 15 percent of each product category purchased via the internet. The product categories that are least purchased online are office equipment and supplies (1.4 percent) and books, music, and video (5.1 percent). Shopping hotspots Amazon dominates the e-commerce industry in the United States, though other competitors still have significant market share. In December 2023, amazon.com was the most-visited e-commerce and shopping site in the United States. That month, around 45 percent of all visits to e-commerce sites were made to Amazon. Other popular shopping sites include ebay.com, walmart.com, etsy.com, and target.com. The staggering proportion of online retail sales in the country attributed to Amazon is quite remarkable. In 2023, Amazon's website accounted for almost half of all online computer and consumer electronics sales. Similarly, nearly one-third of online fashion purchases in the country were made on Amazon.

Geolocated mobile user data revealed that in March 2023, the largest share of e-commerce shoppers in the United States had a household income of less than 25,000 U.S. dollars at 34.9 percent. Those with a household income of 40,000 to 59,999 U.S. dollars made up the second largest share (17.7 percent).

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) score of the e-commerce website of Amazon.com has fluctuated since 2000. In 2024, the customer satisfaction score of the online retailer was 83 out of 100 ASCI points. Popularity contest Amazon is one of the most popular marketplaces worldwide. In April 2023, the U.S. domain for Amazon ranked the most visited e-commerce and shopping website by share of online visits, with around 13 percent. Ebay came in second with roughly three percent of the visit share, and the Japanese site amazon.co.jp came in third with 2.66 percent. In the same month, global online shoppers visited amazon.com around 2.2 billion times. Why Amazon? Amazon.com is the most used e-commerce website in the world, and in the U.S., the website is far ahead of its competitors. With a significant difference in website visitors of almost 45 percent, ebay.com is second to amazon.com. Furthermore, the retail giant Walmart trails behind with an online visit share of roughly six percent. Amazon is used for various reasons by its customers. For example, the online marketplace is ranked as the leading platform for product research in the U.S., surpassing even search engines in popularity. Low shipping costs, fast deliveries, and affordable product prices are the main reasons for shopping on Amazon.

In 2024, around ** percent of 25- to 45-year-olds in Germany had ordered and purchased products online in the past three months. They were also the largest age group of online consumers. 65- to 75-year-olds were the group that shopped online the least. Where are people shopping online? Some of the most visited fashion websites in Germany included zalando.de, hm.com, and vinted.de. Zalando is especially popular because it sells items from multiple different brands, allowing the consumer to find all different types of clothes, shoes, accessories, and more in one place. Another advantage of shopping online is that consumers are not just limited to shopping in the country in which they live. Products can be ordered from almost anywhere in the world (if, of course, consumers are willing to pay a little extra). If a better deal is available elsewhere or a product is not available anywhere in the home country, then this can be a good reason to make a purchase on a foreign website. Challenges of online shopping Online shopping, however, is not without its challenges. Retailers themselves continued to be worried about challenges facing e-commerce. These included customer reluctance to buy due to higher prices, as well as competitive pressure from other businesses and supply bottlenecks. Most customers preferred to return products they did not want to keep via an online self-service, which means declaring a return online and then dropping off the package, e.g. at the post, a return point located in another establishment or a package pick-up station. While the return option is an integral part of online shopping, it brings with it a multitude of issues. These include putting a significant strain on the environment, transportation and logistics, as well as staff involved.

This timeline shows the customer satisfaction with e-retail over the years, as measured in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) score. In 2024, customer satisfaction with electronic retail reached 80 points out of 100. A bustling e-commerce market With one of the largest economies globally, it is no surprise that the United States also is a leading market for e-commerce on the global scale. In 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau reported retail e-commerce sales reaching an estimated 275 million U.S. dollars, nearly doubling since 2019. This high number of sales is made possible by the 273 million e-commerce users in the country – over 80 percent of the population. U.S. online fashion shopping Of the most popular categories to buy online, apparel and accessories is by far the most popular. In 2024, apparel, footwear and accessories made up 20.2 percent of the country’s total retail e-commerce sales. In the same year, the category was forecast to generate a total 145 billion U.S. dollars in overall revenue.

In March of 2023, the largest share of e-commerce shoppers in Canada consisted of adults aged 25 to 34 (37.2 percent), based on geolocated mobile user data. Adults between the ages of 18 and 24 made up almost 32 percent of the e-commerce shopper mobile audience in the country.

Most of the latest online purchases from abroad among U.S. shoppers were made in China, according to a 2023 survey. 53 percent of the e-commerce users surveyed in the United States had made their most recent purchase from there. The United Kingdom ranked second, with 10 percent. In turn, the U.S. was the main market where Canadian cross-border shoppers last bought online.

The graph shows the cumulative number of online shoppers in China from 2013 to 2024. As of 2024, about *** million people in China had purchased goods online.E-commerce in ChinaThe past decade has seen rapid growth in the demand for online shopping opportunities in China. The number of online shoppers in China has been increasing exponentially from below ** million in 2006 to over *** million users a decade later, enabling this enormous spurt of China’s e-commerce sector. By 2022, digital buyer penetration rate in China has edged close to ** percent. China has been the world’s second-largest e-tailing market after the U.S. in recent years. As of 2023, the gross merchandise volume of online shopping in China had amounted to around ***** trillion yuan. By 2025, the volume of B2C e-commerce sales in China was expected to surpass *** trillion U.S. dollars. The largest B2C e-commerce retailer in China with regard to gross merchandise volume (GMV) had been Tmall. The B2C online retail platform operated by Alibaba Group had generated a transaction volume of about *** trillion yuan in 2020. The GMV of the leading C2C online retail platform taobao.com, also operated by Alibaba group, had reached almost *** trillion yuan that year.

In 2023, around 55 percent of all online purchases in Brazil were made in the Southeastern region, where states like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are located. The Northeast accounted for roughly 16 percent of all online orders that year. Most checkouts are made by Brazilian digital shoppers aged between 35 and 44.

In the first quarter of 2025, online shoppers spent an average of about **** U.S. dollars per visit across all verticals. Electronics is the category in which consumers spent the most money per visit on average, at **** U.S. dollars, followed by apparel at **** dollars. Nickels and dimes Over the past few years, the average order value for e-commerce purchases has increased globally, from around *** U.S. dollars in September 2022 to around *** U.S. dollars in the same month of 2024. The average order value also depends heavily on the online traffic source consumers use. In 2024, the value per order value was the highest when navigating directly, averaging around *** U.S. dollars. Direct navigation means searching for a website directly in the browser's address bar, bypassing the use of search engines. Orders placed from social media stores were the lowest in value, with an average of less than ** dollars. Mobile shopping on the rise Online shoppers have clear preferences when it comes to device type. When comparing gadgets, the average purchase amount has always been the highest for desktops, with an order value of over *** U.S. dollars. This indicates that bigger purchases are made via desktop computers. However, consumers are more likely to complete orders when shopping on mobile devices. Mobile devices were also clearly preferred when browsing retail websites, with around three-fourths of consumers using smartphones instead of desktops or tablets.

During the first quarter of 2025, *** percent of visits to e-commerce websites in the UK converted to purchases. In Switzerland, online shopper conversion rates stood at *** percent. Mobile takes over e-shopping Online shopping has long since established itself as an everyday activity of online life – this holds for both desktop and mobile. As of the fourth quarter of 2024, more than three-quarters of retail site visits worldwide came from smartphones and generated about two-thirds of online shopping orders. Based on mobile retail performance growth, it is only a matter of time before mobile overtakes desktop in revenue generation.

According to a global survey carried out during the second quarter of 2023, around ** percent of Gen X online shoppers wished e-commerce sites would enhance frictionless payment methods. Additionally, some ** percent of surveyed Millennials would like to have personalized products recommended when shopping online, an option which appealed to the same percentage of Gen Z online shoppers. E-commerce companies seem to have listened to their audience. In 2021, almost seven in ten professionals from e-commerce businesses stated personalization will be a key investment area in the future. Personalization drives conversion rates Investing in a personalized shopping experience pays off. A 2021 study analyzing conversion rates of U.S. e-commerce sites showed that a higher percentage of purchases were finalized after the shopping experience was tailored to the users. Although conversion rates improved across several e-commerce segments, marketplaces showed the biggest difference in pre-and post-personalization. Easier said than done For buyers to get a personalized shopping experience, retailers need to retrieve significant amounts of user data throughout the entire customer journey – from customized newsletter to web visits, from mobile app usage to payment preferences. Extensive tracking of online user data requires adequate IT capacity. Over ** percent of U.S. executives from e-commerce companies could not ensure a personalized shopping experience due to lacking IT bandwidth. The second biggest pain point was the missing cooperation with solution partners enabling the personalization.

This statistic shows the distribution of cross-border import e-commerce customers in China as of March 2018, by age group. During the survey period, almost half of all cross-border import e-commerce shoppers were between 29 and 39 years old.

Inflation was the leading issue plaguing the online shopping experience of global consumers in 2023. Nearly sixty percent of consumers surveyed worldwide in February that year reported rising prices for household goods was the issue having the greatest impact on them while shopping online. In addition, nearly a quarter reported being unable to purchase a product due to it being out of stock.

E-commerce in times of stagflation

As the global economy still reeled from the macroeconomic shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war dealt a further blow to worldwide trade. Along with record food inflation, an unprecedented wave of layoffs in tech companies brought the pandemic-induced e-commerce boom to a halt. While online retail sales growth reached a peak of 25.7 percent in 2020, this figure was forecast to slow to 9.7 percent in 2022.

Impact of inflation on consumer behavior

As of January 2023, the European Union hit a double-digit inflation rate and consumers have had to adjust their purchasing behavior accordingly. Discretionary sectors such as clothing and consumer electronics were the most affected, with almost 50 percent of global consumers reporting they have either stopped or reduced their purchases of clothing, shoes, and accessories in response to rising prices.

As of March 2025, e-commerce shoppers aged 25 to 34 made up around 44 percent of all mobile shoppers in the Netherlands. Consumers aged 18 to 24 followed with 28.6 percent.

The number of e-commerce users in Brazil has increased consistently in recent years. According to estimates, online shoppers in the South American country will exceed 130 million by 2023. According to Digital Market Insights, forecasts suggest this figure will grow to 147.5 million by 2027.

Austria is one of the most popular markets for cross-border e-commerce worldwide. In 2023, more than eight in ten Austrian digital buyers purchased online from abroad. Among the countries analyzed, Israel had the second-highest share of cross-border shoppers, at ** percent. On the other hand, Turkey showed the lowest cross-border e-commerce usage, at only ** percent. Cross-border online shopping is a growing trend in the global e-commerce market, with an estimated *** trillion U.S. dollars in value anticipated by 2030. International differences in revenue share Statista Market Insights reveals that while Japan, the United States, and China had relatively low shares of cross-border e-commerce retail revenue at around two to three percent, Belgium and Austria had significantly higher revenue generated cross-border at **% and **% respectively. This suggests that certain countries are more receptive to cross-border online shopping, presenting favorable opportunities for businesses to target these markets specifically. From which country do cross-border shopper buy? A survey conducted in ** countries globally highlights that China is the most popular market for online cross-border purchases, with **% of respondents indicating they shop from Chinese e-commerce sites. This indicates the strong appeal of the Chinese market for international buyers. Additionally, Germany and the U.S. ranked as the second and third most popular markets for cross-border online purchases.