Online sellers in the Netherlands generated €4.4 billion from their exploits in Q1 2015 as the country’s e-commerce industry recovered from a brief but noticeable setback.
Last year saw revenue from e-commerce dip to €3.02 billion between April – June despite a recording of €3.8 billion in the previous quarter. The total declined slightly between July – September 2014, to €3.01 billion, before rising to €4.1 billion in Q4.
A further rise at the start of the year has left e-commerce to account for 20% of retail spend in the Netherlands, driven by sales of services as well as goods.
Levelling up
The review arrives courtesy of German market research group Gfk, commissioned by Dutch e-commerce association Thuiswinkel.org, which shows spending on toys rising 40% year on year to €37.6 million up to Q1 2015.
Tickets are another rapid riser, seeing their contribution rise 33% compared to last year.
But perhaps one of the biggest stories to emerge came away from the product field and within the sales of services. This is a fast-growing sector in the Netherlands, as proven by a 28% rise in sales over the last year.
Goods by comparison only witnessed a 16% rise, but still accounted for 80% of all purchases.
‘Online in-store’ remains grounded
An infographic from Thuiswinkel also outlines the weighting in terms of spend per device. For the benefit of our non-Dutch readers, the table shows laptops chiming in with 47% of sales, followed by desktop on 38%.
Mobile is a relatively small but growing consideration for retailers, as smartphones and tablets combined managed to drive 13% of sales – the former quite surprisingly only chipping in with 2%.
Online in-store, however, has plenty of work to do before it can make a real impression on the Dutch e-commerce space. The method only drove 1% of sales despite many analysts expecting big things from mobile purchasing within physical stores.