Most people look at “ecommerce statistics” and see a bunch of corporate numbers meant for guys in suits at Amazon or Alibaba.
But if you’re a creator, those numbers aren’t just data points. They are the blueprint for your exit strategy.
Now, the game has changed. More consumers are shopping online than at any point in human history, but they’re also getting bored. They’re tired of the nameless, faceless retail giants. They’re craving connection.
The question isn’t just “how many stores are there?” The real questions you should be asking are: How do I take a piece of this $4 trillion stream without losing my soul? and How do I convert a casual reader into a loyal customer who actually wants to buy from me?
We’ve crunched the numbers to show you exactly where the “creator commerce” opportunity is hiding.
The data: why “creator commerce” is the new standard
Before we dive into the full research of ecommerce stats, we’ve pulled out some of the more important data points and provided insights you can actually use.
| Metric | Data | Strategy Insights |
| Market Velocity | $4 Trillion+ Revenue | Your audience is already buying online. |
| Mobile Dominance | 74% Traffic / 63% Purchases | Your sales page must be optimized for mobile “thumb-scrolling.” |
| Platform Choice | 45% use Shopify or WooCommerce | Stick to industry leaders to ensure your checkout process is friction-free. |
| Conversion Peak | 4.6% (Food & Beverage) | High-engagement niches convert twice as well as the average (2.3%). |
| Speed Factor | 1s Load = 3x Conversions | Technical performance is no longer “optional”—it’s a direct revenue lever. |
| User Expectation | 93% Demand Better Experience | As a blogger, your “service” and “brand feel” are your biggest advantages. |
General ecommerce statistics
1. There are over 26 million ecommerce stores on the web
According to data collected by BuiltWith, there are over 26 million ecommerce stores on the web.
49.1%, or over 13 million, are in the United States alone.
4.7% are in the UK, 2.4% are in Australia, 2.7% are in Germany and another 2.7% are in Brazil.
Source: BuiltWith1
2. Global retail ecommerce sales are expected to generate more than $4 trillion in revenue by 2024
According to global ecommerce revenue data collected by Statista, revenue from ecommerce stores is expected to reach over $4 trillion USD by the end of 2023.
Revenue will be distributed among five regions accordingly:
- Asia – $2.055T
- North and South Americas – $1.1T
- Europe – $722B
- Australia & Oceania – $49B
- Africa – $40.2B
Source: Statista1
3. Ecommerce sales will make up 21.9% of all retail sales by 2025
According to forecasts published by Statista, ecommerce sales will make up 21.9% of all retail sales by 2025.
Officially, ecommerce sales made up 14.2% of all retail sales in 2021.
Source: Statista2
4. Retail ecommerce sales are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 11.34% globally
According to Statista, worldwide ecommerce sales will have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.34% between 2023 and 2027.
Brazil will have the highest CAGR at 14.63%.
This will be followed by Argentina at 14.61%, Turkey at 14.33%, India at 13.91% and Mexico at 13.67%.
Source: Statista3
5. Mobile devices account for 74% of traffic to ecommerce websites and 63% of online purchases
According to Statista, smartphones make up 74% of all traffic to retail websites.
Mobile shopping also accounts for 63% of all online shopping orders.
Source: Statista4
6. The average conversion rate for ecommerce stores in the United States is 2.3%
According to Statista, shoppers converted at a rate of 2.3% when visiting ecommerce websites.
Conversion rates for Great Britain grew to over 4%.
Source: Statista5
7. Conversion rates are 3x higher for ecommerce sites that load in 1 second
Portent analyzed 100 million pageviews from 20 B2B and B2C websites for 30 days.
They found that sites that had a page load time of one second had an average conversion rate of 3.05%.
Sites that took five seconds to load had an average conversion rate of 1.08%.
Source: Portent
8. The United States ecommerce market has an average return rate of 16.5%
The United States ecommerce industry saw an average return rate of 16.5% in 2022.
This accounted for $212B in lost revenue.
Source: Loop
9. The average online shopper spends around $3 per visit
According to data collected by Statista on online shopper spend during Quarter 4 of 2022, the average online shopper spends just shy of $3 per visit to ecommerce businesses.
The food and beverage category has the highest spend per visit with online shoppers spending over $4 per visit on average.
Source: Statista6
10. Online shoppers purchase less than three products per order on average
According to Statista, online shoppers purchase fewer than three products per order on average.
This data was collected throughout 2022.
Spikes were seen in April and December of that year with online shoppers purchasing 3.16 products per order in April and 3.12 products per order in December.
Source: Statista7
11. 36% of internet users search for products on online marketplaces
According to Statista, 36% of consumers use online marketplaces to search for products.
30% use search engines.
Source: Statista8
12. Alibaba Group is the world’s leading online retailer with over $780B in sales generated annually
Alibaba and Amazon are the top two online retailers in the world.
Alibaba Group is the largest online retailer, according to Statista.
As of 2022, the company generates over $780B in online retail sales annually from its subsidiaries, which include Alibaba.com, AliExpress.com and Trendyol.com.
However, Amazon is set to surpass Alibaba in annual revenue by 2027.
As of 2022, Amazon generates $690B annually but is expected to reach $1.2T by 2027.
Source: Statista9
Ecommerce statistics by category
13. Alibaba is the largest retailer in the electronics, office, leisure and entertainment category
Alibaba isn’t just the largest retailer in the world. They’re also the largest retailer in the electronics, office, leisure and entertainment category.
Online sales for this category generated $318B in revenue in the United States alone in 2022.
Source: Statista10
14. Alibaba generates over $58B annually in the health and beauty category
According to Statista’s data, Alibaba also dominates the health and beauty category, generating over $58B in revenue annually from these types of products.
Source: Statista11
15. Amazon generates over $23.3B in revenue annually from the home and pet care category
Statista also collects data from the home and pet care category of ecommerce.
They found that Amazon dominates this category, generating more than $23.3B in sales revenue annually.
This will grow to $39B in annual revenue by 2027.
Alibaba generates over $16B annually from this category and will generate $24B by 2027.
Source: Statista12
16. The food and beverage category of ecommerce has a conversion rate of 4.6%
Statista tracks ecommerce conversion rate data by category.
They found the category with the highest conversion rate to be the food and beverage category with an online conversion rate of 4.6%.
The health and beauty category followed with a conversion rate of 3.3%.
Source: Statista13
Statistics for ecommerce platforms
17. 25% of all ecommerce stores use Shopify
According to data collected by BuiltWith, 25% of all stores across the internet use the all-in-one ecommerce platform Shopify.
This data was collected from 26,183,459 ecommerce sites, which means over 6.5 million (25%) ecommerce stores use Shopify alone.
Shopify is easy to use because they offer web hosting, themes, a built-in checkout experience for your store and plugins you can install with the click of a button.
Other than Shopify, 20% of all ecommerce stores use the WooCommerce WordPress plugin, 13% use Wix’s ecommerce solution, 11% use Squarespace’s and 6% use Ecwid.
25% use other ecommerce platforms.
Source: BuiltWith1
18. 19% of the top 10,000 ecommerce stores use Shopify
BuiltWith’s data also breaks down usage statistics for ecommerce platforms by the top 1 million, 100,000 and 10,000 stores (based on the amount of traffic each store receives).
While 23% of the top 1 million stores use WooCommerce and 19% of the top 100,000 use Shopify, 19% of the top 10,000 also use Shopify.
9% use Amplience, 8% use Magento, 7% use WooCommerce while 4% use Squarespace.
54% use other ecommerce platforms, most of which account for less than 1% of usage each.
This means 19% of the web’s most successful ecommerce stores use Shopify or Shopify Plus.
Companies represented in this data include Vogue, Sears Appliances, SpaceX, Vanity Fair, Inquirer, Simon and Schuster, and Glamour.
Amplience’s appearance here is interesting as they are not well represented in usage statistics for the entire internet or the top 1 million sites.
5% of the top 100,000 sites do use the platform, however.
Source: BuiltWith2
19. 28% of ecommerce stores in the United States use Shopify
Shopify is also used by 28% of stores in the United States, according to BuiltWith’s data.
18% use WooCommerce, 15% use Wix, 14% use Squarespace and 4% use Ecwid.
20% use other platforms.
Source: BuiltWith3
20. 23% of ecommerce stores in the United Kingdom use WooCommerce
WordPress’ most popular checkout solution WooCommerce is well represented in the UK.
23% of ecommerce stores in this region use it while 21% use Shopify.
16% use Wix, 12% use Squarespace and 10% use Ecwid.
18% use other platforms.
Source: BuiltWith4
21. Amazon is the most-visited retail website in the world with 3.5 billion monthly visits
Statista teamed up with Semrush to produce data on the web’s most visited retail websites.
They found that Amazon had an average of 3.5 billion ecommerce website visits between January and May of 2022.
eBay had 589.1 million visits, Walmart had 589.2 million, AliExpress had 486.5 million and Etsy had 467.4 million.
Amazon’s German website contributed another 340 million visits.
Source: Statista14
Related Reading: The Best Selling Items On Etsy.
22. Taobao is the web’s most popular online marketplace with a gross merchandise value of $711B
According to Statista’s data on ecommerce platforms, Taobao is the most popular online marketplace in the world with a gross merchandise value (GMV) of $711B.
Tmall followed with a GMV of $672B while Amazon trailed in third with a GMV of $390B.
Source: Statista15
Consumer-based ecommerce statistics
23. 93% of online shoppers expect a business’ online shopping experience to be better than in store
Coveo surveyed over 4,000 consumers on the “brand experience gap,” the gap that exists between the shopping experiences businesses put out there and the way consumers perceive them.
93% of online shoppers expect the shopping experience on ecommerce websites and mobile apps to be better than the experience they get when they shop in a business’ physical store.
It should be noted that this survey was conducted post-COVID in 2021, well over a year after consumers around the world began relying on online services and online stores more than ever.
Source: Coveo
24. 68% of consumers say relevant shopping experiences are rarely offered on ecommerce websites and mobile ecommerce apps
According to Coveo’s survey, 68% of consumers report lack of personalized or relevant shopping experiences when shopping online.
Even worse, 48% report experiencing lackluster customer services online, 32% were frustrated with the navigation of mobile websites, 29% had trouble with an ecommerce business’ search experience and 27% experienced post-transaction problems.
Source: Coveo
25. 51% of consumers would share their personal data with brands they trust
Coveo’s survey revealed that 51% of consumers would be willing to share their personal data with brands they trust.
This is in spite of another statistic Coveo collected, which revealed the concern 59% of consumers feel in regards to the way retail brands use their data.
Source: Coveo
26. 40% of consumers shop anonymously by using guest checkout
When Coveo surveyed 4,000 consumers, they asked about their checkout habits, particularly whether or not they bother with creating or logging into accounts when checking out.
40% report shopping anonymously by using guest checkout when given the chance to.
This stat proves that although you won’t be able to target these consumers with email marketing strategies, you may want to consider adding guest checkout to your checkout experience.
It may just boost your conversions.
Source: Coveo
27. 69% of young adults discover products via social media
Coveo asked 4,000 consumers about the methods they use to discover new online products.
36% of millennials and 33% of Gen Z consumers report using social media to discover products. This further highlights the importance of influencer marketing.
Source: Coveo
Product-based ecommerce statistics
28. Books are the most popular product to sell online
According to data collected by us, books are the most popular product to sell online.
We analyzed data from three of the web’s most popular online marketplaces: eBay, Amazon and Etsy.
Books account for over 94.5 million listings across all three platforms and 269,000 monthly searches on Amazon and Etsy.
They have a sell-through rate of 1,856% on eBay.
Other popular products to sell include bluetooth speakers, wireless chargers, wifi extenders and nail polish.
Source: Blogging Wizard1
Related Reading: The Best Selling Products On eBay.
29. Cat litter is the best product to sell on Amazon
According to data we collected from analyzing Amazon products, cat litter is the best product to sell on Amazon.
This is because it has a high amount of interest but a low amount of competition.
“Cat litter” is searched for over 200,000 times on Amazon every month, yet there are only over 500 listings for this product.
The average price for cat litter is around $36 on the platform, and each listing receives over $226,000 in annual revenue on average.
Other great products to sell include wifi extenders, wireless chargers, posture correctors and tablets.
Source: Blogging Wizard2
Ecommerce security statistics
30. DDoS attacks during the week of Black Friday may last for up to 13 hours
Imperva is a digital security application and service.
Their report on the state of ecommerce security revealed that online retailers may potentially experience as many as 13 hours of downtime if they’re hit with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
A case study from an Imperva client revealed that the security company was able to protect the retailer (their client) from 9 million bot requests distributed in a 15-minute period during the week of Black Friday of 2021.
The retailer was targeted by a total of 162 million bot attacks throughout the last two weeks of November of that year alone.
Source: Imperva
31. 61.8% of attacks on retail websites are automated
According to Imperva’s data, automated threats make up the vast majority (61.8%, to be exact) of threats targeting retail websites.
This is in comparison to the 28.4% of general websites that are targeted by this type of attack.
23.4% of threats targeting retail websites are DDoS attacks while 14.8% of threats are among those recognized by OWASP as the “top 10 web application security risks.”
These include injections, broken access control, cryptographic failures, identification and authorization failures, security misconfiguration, security logging and monitoring failures, and more.
Source: Imperva
32. 43.9% of ecommerce security attacks target North and South America
Imperva’s data also revealed that, when it comes to retail websites, 43.9% of all attacks target North and South America.
This is compared to the 58.2% of attacks that target general websites.
33.7% of attacks target retail websites in Europe (compared to the 20.5% of attacks that target general websites).
12.1% of attacks target retail websites based in Asia, 10% in Oceania and 0.3% in Africa.
Interestingly, Africa’s numbers are larger in the general category where 2.3% of general websites are targeted by security attacks.
Source: Imperva
Ecommerce statistics sources
Why these stats matter for the modern creator
Looking at $4 trillion in global revenue can feel overwhelming, but for a blogger, these numbers represent a specific opportunity: Ownership.
- Stop “renting” your revenue: While 42% of bloggers earn via affiliates, the top earners are moving toward ecommerce. Why? Because you keep 100% of the data and a much higher percentage of the profit.
- The engagement edge: The data shows that 68% of consumers feel online shopping lacks personalization. This is where you win. A blogger with a loyal following can offer a “personalized” experience that Amazon or Alibaba simply cannot match.
- Low barrier to entry: With 20% of the web using WooCommerce, you likely already have the infrastructure to start selling. You don’t need a warehouse; you need a digital product that solves your readers’ problems.
How bloggers can start beating big retailers right now
The statistics show a massive opportunity for independent creators. While 93% of shoppers expect a better online experience than in-store, 68% say they rarely get a personalized experience from traditional ecommerce sites.
As a blogger, you have what sites like Amazon don’t have: A Relationship.
Trust wins over transactions any day. You’ve already built the trust through your content. When you recommend a product, the 2.3% average conversion rate often triples. Especially for a product you created.
Two more things to consider:
- The “niche” advantage: While AliExpress & Amazon dominate broad categories like electronics, they can’t compete with your hyper-focused expertise in a specific sub-niche.
- Frictionless sales: With 40% of users preferring guest checkout, bloggers can use simple tools like Sellfy to offer a fast experience that matches the speed of the giants without the corporate overhead.
Digital vs. physical products: what makes sense for creators?
For a blogger or creator, choosing between digital and physical goods is the most important decision if you’re deep in the growth stage of your blog. Based on the latest data, here is how they stack up for independent creators:
| Feature | Digital Products (eBooks, Courses) | Physical Products (Merch, Goods) |
| Inventory Risk | Zero (Infinite supply) | High (Requires storage/upfront cost) |
| Profit Margins | Very High (90%+) | Moderate (30–50% after COGS) |
| Delivery | Instant & Automated | Physical shipping (Logistics required) |
| Customer Support | Low (Access issues/Technical) | High (Shipping delays/Returns) |
| Market Stats | Growing 15% YOY for creators | 16.5% return rate (US average) |
| Best For… | Expertise-based blogs | Lifestyle/Brand-based blogs |
Final thoughts
The data doesn’t lie: the gap between “hobbyist” and “professional” is widening. While the masses are still fighting over $0.50 RPMs and crossing their fingers for an algorithm miracle, the real players are moving toward ownership.
Look, you can keep “renting” your audience to big-box retailers for a 3% commission, or you can step into the $4 trillion stream yourself. The current landscape shows that people are craving the one thing that big-box retailers can’t scale: Your specific perspective.
When you pivot to creator commerce, you aren’t just selling a product; you’re selling a shortcut. You’re taking that 2.3% average conversion rate and smashing it because your audience already knows, likes, and trusts you.
But here’s the kicker: your profit is only as good as the systems behind it. Don’t build a business on a “leaky” foundation.
Ready to stop being an “influencer” and start being a merchant? The first step is picking the right engine for the job. Check out our deep dive into the best platforms to sell digital products to find the setup that actually scales with your ambition.
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