Canadian E-Commerce Not Keeping Up With Consumer Demand

Dear Canadian business owners – when it comes to your ability to understand the business necessity that is e-commerce, you are failing miserably. At least, this is what Jessica Thiele of Virtual Logistics believes. She reports that while online shopping continues to grow in popularity in Canada, Canadian business owners continue to fail to take advantage of it. This, she says, puts e-commerce in Canada in a “sorry state”.

Based on the findings of a Virtual Logistics study of Canadian e-commerce last year, Thiele believes that Canadian businesses aren’t doing nearly enough to sell their products online. Canadians, she makes clear, love online shopping. She reveals that Canadian online retail sale trends are rapidly growing, however, Canadian retailers are slow to take to e-commerce. The statistics are actually quite telling.

In 2015, only 13% of Canadian businesses were selling online while Canadians spent upwards of $40 billion online. Evidently, there is a huge discrepancy between the truth about online shopping popularity in our country and the belief system shared by the majority of Canadian business owners. Why so many retailers are hesitant to adopt an e-commerce solution is anyone’s guess – especially when the trend shows that online shopping is only going to keep growing.

The average Canadian online spend per year is expected to increase by 54% by 2019. Thiele writes that this marks an increase in average individual online spend from $1,210 per year in 2014 to $1,860 per year by 2019. She also points out that businesses are also spending online. 47% of business bought online last year, which is a value of $136 billion in online sales. Nevertheless, the disparity between Canadians who buy online and Canadians who sell online is staggering.

76% (more than three quarters) of Canadian households have shopped online. Thiele reveals that 1.5 million of these households shopped online for the first time in 2014. However, the same study found that only 46% (less than half) of Canadian businesses even have a website! And, of those, 41% of them are small businesses. To not sell online is one thing. But to not even have a company website in 2016 is practically business suicide.

And, you don’t have to take our word for it! Thiele insists that if trends continue in this way, the digital Canadian economy will only continue to decline. Canadian business owners can resist e-commerce all they want. But, this will not stop Canadian shoppers from looking elsewhere to buy their goods. Thiele writes that the negligence of Canadian retailers to hone in on the online shopping phenomenon is causing consumers to make purchases from foreign retailers.

“Canadians are spending money online, but not with Canadian businesses,” she states, “Canadians are spending with multinationals like Amazon, Costco and Walmart and the remainder of our purchases are out of country. Unfortunately Canadian businesses are doing very little to combat this. They\’re not mobile-friendly, few have websites, and some don\’t even have a web presence at all.”

At Canadian POS Corporation, we strongly believe that this trend needs to end. It only makes sense for small businesses in Canada to find ways to keep Canadian consumers shopping with Canadian retailers. Providing an online shop as part of your company website has become a necessity. For more information on how to take advantage of Canadian POS Corporation’s e-commerce solution, call us at 1-877-748-2884 or email us at info@localhost.