E-commerce accounts for 7% of retail sales in France

 BY ALLISON ENRIGHT Editor

Online sales in France increased 16% in 2015, and Amazon.com is the most popular online retailer.

The 35.5 million French consumers who shop online bought 71.3 billion euros ($79.8 billion at today’s exchange rate) worth of goods last year, up 16.1% from 61.4 billion ($68.7 billion) euros the prior year, according to figures from Fevad, an e-commerce trade group in France. Fevad includes online travel purchases in its calculations for retail e-commerce.

The average French online shopper completed 22.9 online transactions in 2015, and the average order value was 78 euros ($87). Further, a growing proportion of these sales are taking place on smartphones and tablets. Mobile transactions accounted for 9% of total e-commerce sales, up from 7.5% in 2014 and 4.3% in 2013, according to the group.

Also inching up is the percentage of purchases being made on online marketplaces. Fevad estimates French consumers made 9% of their online purchases on marketplaces last year, up from 8% in 2014 and 7% in 2013. It estimates 34% of French consumers made at least one purchase on a marketplace in the first six months of 2016.

Tellingly, three of the five most-visited e-commerce sites in France have a marketplace. Amazon.com Inc., Cdiscount.com (Cnova NV/Groupe Casino) andeBay Inc. all operate marketplaces. Amazon.fr is the most-visited e-commerce site, Cdiscount.com is second and eBay is fourth.

Amazon.fr gets the most unique visitors per month—18.1 million—and has the greatest reach with French consumers. Fevad estimates 37.9% of French web users visit Amazon.fr in a month. Amazon is No. 1 in the Internet Retailer Europe 500, which ranks the 500 largest e-retailers operating in Europe, based on their web sales.

Cdiscount, owned by Groupe Casino and No. 17 in the Europe 500, gets 11.2 million unique visitors a month and reaches 23.4% of French internet users. Rounding out the top five are retail chain Fnac, No. 106 in the Europe 500, eBay and Voyage SNCF, the ticketing company for France’s railroads.