The first six months of 2024 saw a record number of Belgians shopping online as the popularity of e-commerce "continues to clearly increase", according to Belgian e-business federation Becom.
A report by Becom found that online stores in Belgium saw a 5% increase in turnover and transactions in the first half of 2024, compared to last year.
Becom noted that "almost every Belgian is now an online consumer", as 89% of Belgians bought something online in the first half of 2024. This is an increase of 3% compared to the first six months of 2023.
The number of Belgian online shoppers is now 8.2 million, and together they made 87 million online transactions in the first half of the year. This is an increase of around 5% compared to the same period last year. There was also a 5% increase in terms of sales volumes, to a total of €8.3 billion.
A quarter of all sales are now online
Becom noted that 25% of all sales are now made online, with the e-commerce market divided into 35% purchases of services and 65% purchases of products.
Although people in Belgium tend to purchase more products than services online, Becom highlighted that services account for 54% of total spending, indicating that "services are purchased less often, but have a higher transaction value", while consumers more often buy products online, but at a lower price.
As of the first half of 2024, there are now 63,867 online shops in Belgium. The number of online stores has remained stable, but their size is changing.
"We see that the smallest webshops – the micro segment – are decreasing in number and are growing to a slightly higher segment. The small webshops are also evolving and growing to the medium level. That is a positive evolution, because the small and medium webshops account for 61% of the total number of transactions," said Greet Dekocker, Managing Director of Becom.
Package holidays and flights
Credit: Jonas Hamers / ImageGlobe
In the first half of 2024, online spending was driven most by package holidays (accounting for €1.98 billion of total online sales), followed by plane tickets (€1.16 billion) and clothing (€782 billion).
Specifically for products, clothing was the most purchased product followed by food (€538 million) and shoes and accessories (€334.5 million).
The categories that saw the biggest growth in sales in the first half of 2024 were toys (22%), followed by national transport (almost 20%). Tickets for events and attractions, gambling and gaming, package holidays and home & garden all recorded growth of more than 10%.
Dekocker noted that while most sectors are growing their online sales, the food sector is "not doing well".
"Despite the fact that food is the second largest category in terms of turnover, only 3% is purchased online. So there is a lot of room for improvement," she said.
"The food sector is working very consciously on facilitating cooled, safe home distribution. As soon as this can be achieved, consumers will also order more food online and the online market share will increase even more. We are looking forward to the future in this area with confidence," she added.
