E-commerce continues to grow in Belgium

Wednesday 21 june 2023

“Micro shops and small online shops are booming”
According to figures from the BeCommerce association, Belgians spent 13.8 billion euros in 2022 buying goods and services on their computers or smartphones.
The Becommerce association has published its 7th e-commerce barometer and indicates that the share of e-commerce in retail trade has grown by 18% in 2022 compared to 2021. It estimates these sales at 13.8 billion euro for 165 million transactions, i.e. an average of approximately €80 per transaction.

This barometer aims to be a complete cartography of the Belgian e-commerce landscape. The least we can say is that Belgian e-commerce is doing well.

On the other hand, if the number of Belgian websites remained relatively stable in 2022 (57,221) compared to 2021 (56,642), it is the medium-sized online shops and the large online shops (3% of the total, i.e. 1,769 websites belgian websites) which generate most of the online turnover in Belgium. They account for 78% of the volume of transactions, or 10.7 billion euros. Last year, it was still 84% of the transaction volume, or 9.8 billion euros.

“We are also seeing interesting growth in the micro-e-shops and small-e-shops segment, which recorded a volume growth of 63% compared to the previous year,” says Greet Dekocker. Indeed, in this segment, which represents 97% of the total number of Belgian websites, it is above all the small shops that are growing in number with an increase of more than 20% compared to 2021. But SMEs are meeting with growing success with a 26% increase.

The share of the volume of transactions from abroad stable

Foreign online consumers increasingly appreciate Belgian online shops. At 20%, the share of transaction volume from abroad remained stable (compared to 21% in 2021).

This is excellent news, according to Greet Dekocker: “We know that the Belgian consumer always likes to cross national borders and buys all over Europe. But we also observe a reverse movement, namely an increase in the volume generated by foreign consumers within Belgian online shops. We can also see it in the steady decline of our trade deficit over the past five years. »

Among foreign buyers in Belgian online shops, it is the Dutch (36.5%) who win the gold medal, followed by the French (26.5%), who buy the most from Belgian websites. . As for UK consumers, transactions from the UK more than doubled.

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