Information

    Digital economy and society in the EU is a digital publication released by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

    For further information see:

    The dedicated section on digital economy and society on the Eurostat website.

    Articles on the digital economy and society in Statistics Explained.

    Information on data

    Date of data extraction/update: 01 June 2017 for text and all data visualisations.

    ICT usage data are organised in Eurostat's online database according to the year in which the survey was conducted.
    For households/people, most countries collected data in the 2nd quarter of the survey year. In general, data refer to the 1st quarter of the survey year. Data on e-commerce and internet security refer to the 12 months prior to the survey.
    For businesses, most data refer to the situation during the survey period. Data on ICT specialists, ICT functions and e-commerce refer to the year preceding the survey year.
    In the visualisations, data marked as 'not available' can be missing, unreliable or confidential. For more information, please see the source dataset available below each visualisation.

    Contact

    If you have questions on the data, please contact the Eurostat User Support.


    Identifiers of the digital publication:

    Catalogue number: KS-01-17-543-EN-Q
    ISBN 978-92-79-69326-7
    Doi: 10.2785/247196

    [Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission is responsible for the use that might be made of the following information.]
    Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2017

    © European Union, 2017
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2. E-commerce

2.1 Online shoppers & e-purchases

Clothes, books, laptops, furniture - nowadays practically everything can be ordered online and delivered to you within a few days.

In the EU, 66 % of internet users ordered good or services online and their top purchases were clothes and/or sports goods. E-shopping is popular among all age groups.

The majority of e-shoppers did not experience any problems when ordering or buying online.

2.2 Online businesses & e-sales

In the EU, one out of five businesses sells online. These e-sales make up 16 % of total turnover.

Businesses that sell online can do so via websites and apps and/or in an automated way via EDI-type messages. In the EU, 13 % of businesses used websites or apps to sell their goods or services to consumers (B2C) and 12 % to other businesses (B2B).

2.3 E-commerce turnover explained

Did you know that your online purchases only make up 2 % of business turnover in the EU?

No?

Then watch our short and entertaining video to get to know more about the turnover of EU businesses generated by e-sales.