E-commerce Popularity Continues To Rise In Canada

In our last blog, we detailed the findings of a 2013 Statistics Canada study that unveiled just how vastly popular online shopping is in our country. As you likely have guessed, the concept of using the internet to shop has only grown in popularity since then. As Armina Lagaya of the Financial Post reveals, a 2014 StatsCan study found that e-commerce in Canada is steadily on the rise. And it’s bound to keep rising!

Canadian enterprises enjoyed $136 billion worth of online sales in 2013. According Lagaya, this is a 12 per cent increase from 2012. The StatsCan report, which was released in June of last year, did, however, point out a very interesting finding about Canadian businesses that utilize e-commerce solutions. Layaga notes that this trait suggests that “there’s still plenty of room for growth” within the Canadian marketplace.

Larger businesses made $87 billion worth of online sales in 2013. So let’s do the math. That’s $49 billion more than smaller businesses. As Lagaya points out, bigger corporations are reaping “the lion’s share of online sales, at 64 per cent”. That means that small to medium-sized business owners in Canada aren’t yet taking full advantage of this growing phenomenon. What seems to be the problem?

It’s expensive to build and maintain a website, says Corinne Pohlmann of the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses. However, at Canadian POS Corporation, we’ve found that the benefits of hosting a business website far outweigh the costs. After all, it’s 2015. In this day and age, a business without a website is virtually non-existent. It seems as if nearly everyone jumps online to browse before visiting actual stores these days.

Not to mention, most people use social media accounts to communicate with each other. So, not only is it important to offer an e-commerce solution on your website, it’s important to communicate to your customers that it is available. Social media sites work wonders in providing information to the general public. And, of course, it’s completely free to do! Pohlmann acknowledges that this is a good way for small businesses to go.

“When it comes to things like selling online, it becomes even more expensive,” Lagaya quotes Pohlmann as saying, “For a smaller company, that can be pretty daunting.” As a result, many small businesses turn to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to maintain a respectable web presence. More importantly, many of those businesses use their social media profiles to promote sales via their websites.

38 per cent of Canadian companies that utilize e-commerce integrated social media into their digital strategy in 2013. Lagaya notes that this marked a 5 per cent increase from 2012. “Medium and large-sized businesses were more likely than small enterprises to cite costs of implementing technology as being too high,” she writes, “However, that may be due to the complexity of larger businesses, Statistics Canada said.”

She goes on to note some other important findings from Stats Can. “Certain sectors were more likely to set up their own shop online: about 22 per cent of wholesale trade businesses and 18 per cent of retail trade enterprises sold their products and services online, Statistics Canada said. For those that did sell online, e-commerce accounted for 24 per cent of their total sales.” Isn’t it time you enjoyed sales through an effective e-commerce solution?

Call Canadian POS Corporation at 1-877-748-2884 today!