According to data published by the Comisión Nacional del Mercado y la Competencia on the evolution of the online sector in the first period of the pandemic, e-commerce in Spain grew by only 11.6% compared to the previous year, reaching 12,243 million euros. This is a setback, which means that we are back to where we were two quarters ago.
It should be noted that the data provided refer to the first month of containment, so we will have to wait for the second quarter data to be able to observe the real impact of containment on the different sectors.
E-commerce turnover in March 2020
As we can anticipate, during the month of March 2020 tourism was the main sector affected by the pandemic and confinement, however, during the first quarter travel agencies and tour operators still retained the top spot as the sector with the highest revenues (12.5%), followed by air transport and fashion.
Betting and gambling
Although the tourism sector managed to maintain its leading position for some time, changes were soon noticed and other activities that were managing to increase their number of transactions considerably started to appear in the ranking table.
A good example of this is gambling and betting, which managed to overtake land passenger transport as the leader in the transaction volume ranking. These accounted for 6.4% of total transactions, while clothing accounted for 6.3%, followed by land transport with only 5.5%, and department stores with 5.1%.
It is worth mentioning that this sector was ranked 10th in this ranking.
Also noteworthy is the increase in the volume of TV channel transactions, which increased their subscribers by 5%, placing them at number 4.
E-commerce: geographical segmentation
In terms of geographic segmentation, 49.2% of revenues in the first quarter corresponded to e-commerce purchases in Spain, while 50.8% of revenues corresponded to e-commerce purchases from Spain on websites in other countries. This difference creates a deficit of 3,959 million euros.
Also noteworthy was the turnover of transactions originating in Spain to other countries, which amounted to 6,215 million euros, 18.3% more than the previous year. EU countries account for 95.5% of these purchases.
The most demanded activities were air transport with 8.9%, fashion with 8.1% and gambling and betting with 5.4%.
A positive step was the increase in Spanish e-commerce sales to other countries, which was 3.6% higher than the previous year (2,256 million euros). Of these purchases, 66.6% came from EU countries.
The pandemic and confinement is changing everything around us: people’s needs, tastes and preferences are not the same as they were a year ago, and if we do not adapt to them, our business will not survive. At Algoratma, we can help you make your website an unforgettable experience for your customers. Don’t get left behind, contact us.