The term “e-Commerce” refers to the use of an electronic medium for the sale of products and services. As examples of electronic payment systems, we find payment gateways or virtual POS for payment with the card, electronic wallet systems, and systems that connect directly with the user’s electronic banking.

While it is true that only 36% of Spaniards have made a purchase on the internet in the last year or that 44% of Spaniards have never bought online, the data augur a promising future.

A study conducted by the US consultancy Forrester emphasizes that over the next 4 years, Europe will consolidate as the continent with the largest volume of sales made over the internet.

In addition, the study adds that within these forecasts, Spain will occupy a special place at the head of the countries that will grow most within this sector.

Spanish e-commerce will grow 13.4% to bill 12.383 million dollars, according to the National Observatory of Telecommunications and Information Society (ONTSI).

As for the sectors that will see their sales increase through e-commerce, it is noteworthy that for the first time, the fashion sector is positioned as the main category in online shopping with 47%, followed by travel and technology. The book sector has also turned to the digital environment as 25% of book purchases will also be online. Other sectors such as food are currently starting to take off on the internet.

The websites most used for online shopping are Amazon (35%), eBay (29%) and Groupon (17%). Users prefer them for their many advantages, among which are: competitive prices, a variety of products and simplicity in the use of the pages.

According to the survey carried out by ONTSI, some data are revealing:

Purchase channel

Web site that mainly sells online: 52.6%

Shop that has physical establishment and internet sales: 48.7%

Preferred forms of payment by Internet users

Payment gateway (credit / debit card): 52.8%

Payment Service Provider (PayPal, Google Wallet, etc.): 28.4%

Cash on delivery / Domicile: 17.1%

Other: 1.8%

Evolution of the number of buyers per product

Transportation tickets: 59.4%

Booking package tour package: 51.6%

Clothing, accessories and sports articles: 49.6%

Tickets to shows: 49.1%

Electronics: image, sound, communications, hardware: 36.0%

Mobile or tablet applications: 31.0%

Smartphone’s and tablets, and their accessories: 23.9%

Movies, Music and Video Games: 21.0%

Perfumery and bazaar: 14.6%

Restaurants: 11.2%

Other: 9.5%

Read Also: E-Commerce what a passion

App type purchased for mobile devices

Messaging: 47.2%

Games: 30.9%

Overall Rating:

Utilities (bus, taxi,): 21.8%

Music: 17.8%

Navigation: 15.8%

Education: 13.9%

Travel: 8, 6%

Finance: 5.9%

Platforms through which an app was acquired by a mobile device

App Store: 50.8%

Google Play: 46.8%

Amazon App Store: 3.7%

Windows Store: 1.5%

Blackberry World: 0.3%

Others: 5.3%

The report highlights:

The number of Internet users has increased from 15.2 million in 2012 to 17.2 million in 2013. The average cost is € 848, 3.9% higher than the previous year.

More than four million people used a mobile device or tablet to make purchases, an increase of 13.8% over the previous year.

32% of internet surfer’s online using tablet or mobile phone have purchased some payment application being the preferred messaging and the mobile their main destination.

All the information in “Study on the electronic commerce organ attached to the corporate public entity.

The volume of economic transactions via internet grows exponentially, being able to affirm that it is already difficult to find a business project that does not have a website and in that web a catalog or at least an option to request some type of product or service.

E-commerce platforms for online stores

Each business and each strategy are different but we must keep in mind some considerations when carrying out an action plan:

Deep knowledge of the market in which we want to launch: online demand for products or services, the study of competitors, etc.

Loyalty: offer the customer an appropriate helpdesk.

Web Usability: Products must be presented clearly and the ordering process has to be simple and complete with descriptions or images to clarify the steps to follow.

Marketing: to sell you have to invest in advertising (Google Adwords campaigns), carry out SEO positioning operations…

Choosing the right e-commerce platform to create your online store with all the options that exist in the market is not easy.

First, we have to define what the needs of our store are in terms of:

• Do we need hosting or do we need software in the cloud?
• Does the software allow the SEO to work flexibly?
• Do I have a multitude of professional templates for the customization of the store?
• Are the templates responsive?
• Can you add marketing modules, loyalty, etc.?
• Catalog volume: are we going to have 500 products or 50,000?
• Do we want to do multi-store or not?
• I’m just going to sell myself or am I going to have affiliates?
• How many languages ??do we want to handle?
• Can you internationalize?
• How will we manage the stock (from the store, from an ERP …)?
• And a long etcetera.

Some highlights are:

It is native software developed thinking on the one hand in making the creation of stores a simple task but without losing the power or capacity of personalization. To achieve this they have created a content manager based on pieces, where you can create your page by selecting a structure and dragging and configuring the different components (images, carousels, images, products). And all this adapted to mobile phones and tablets.

It puts at your disposal a large number of templates ready to use and fully customizable

Oleo shop is a SAAS service in the cloud that includes hosting, constant updates, 24/7 monitoring, support, daily backups.They have bookstores that have about 1 million references and with very good response times.