The top data trends in 2019 include a breakdown of marketplace sales, record Cyber 5 sales, what omnichannel features top retailers are offering and more.

Over the course of the year, Digital Commerce 360 published more than 800 charts, many of which were exclusively available for Premium Members or within our reports. What follows are the Top 10 charts as determined by page views and topical importance as determined by Digital Commerce 360 in 2019.

Global online marketplaces

Ranked by gross merchandise value (GMV), the top five global online marketplaces were Taobao, Tmall, Amazon, JD.com and eBay. Together, these five marketplaces generated more than $1.646 trillion in gross merchandise value.

Amazon is the largest U.S. online  marketplace at $275 billion in U.S. GMV, followed by eBay at $96 billion.

More than half of all marketplaces were launched in the last seven years, with 39 of the top 100 launching between 2010 and 2015. Read more.

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Ecommerce penetration

Across all 14 merchandise categories Digital Commerce 360 tracks (such as apparel and mass merchants) for its Top 1000 Report, web sales as a percentage of total sales, or ecommerce penetration, grew in 2018. Collectively, all retailers ranked in the Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000 had an average ecommerce penetration of 58.4%. Read more.

Free shipping

According to a survey released by Digital Commerce 360 and Bizrate Insights in March 2019, consumers are more likely to abandon a purchase if the retailer doesn’t offer free shipping.

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Digital Commerce 360 tracks the different types of free shipping e-retailers offer throughout the year, including unconditional free shipping with a threshold purchase and free shipping for loyalty members. Jewelry retailers offer the most unconditional free shipping with 37% of those in the Top 1000 offering this perk with a purchase, whereas health and beauty retailers are most likely to offer free shipping with a threshold purchase. Read more.

Amazon Prime Day

This year’s 48-hour Amazon Prime Day hit record sales of $7.16 billion, up 71% from the $4.19 billion sold during the 36-hour sales event last year. Across the board, Prime Day has continued to grow in gross merchandise sales since 2015. Read more.

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Top omnichannel features

Retail chains are expanding their omnichannel features and services, including making an in-store appointment online, offering store returns and buy online pick up in store (BOPIS). For the Top 1000, the most popular omnichannel feature offered is having a store locator on a retailer’s website, with 84% of Top 1000 retail chains offering this feature. Read more.

Search marketing spend

Median monthly spend on search marketing ads for the Top 1000 retailers was $99,632, up 10% from $90,694, according to a Digital Commerce 360 analysis of Kantar Media data. Flowers and gifts e-retailers spent the most at $506,174, and toys and hobbies retailers had the smallest median monthly paid search spend at $10,785. Read more.

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Global online spending

Global ecommerce spending will likely hit $3.46 trillion by the end of 2019, up 17.9% from $2.93 in 2018, according to Digital Commerce 360 projections. Total retail sales are expected to reach $21.00 trillion, which places ecommerce penetration—the percentage of online sales to total retail sales—at 16.4%. Read more.

Top omnichannel retailers

An analysis of the 215 retail chains ranked in the 2019 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000 shows that the top nine omnichannel retailers—as ranked by the number of features they offer—grossed $17 billion more in online sales last year than the 21 chains who don’t offer any of the nine omnichannel features tracked by Digital Commerce 360.

When accounting for growth rate, the top nine omnichannel retailers grew 3.8 percentage points more than the bottom 10 retailers with median growth rates of 14.3% and 10.5% respectively. Read more.

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Latin American ecommerce

In total, the Latin American online market brought in $30.67 billion in total online sales last year, up from $26.94 billion in 2017. The three major components of this include the Latin America 300 retailers (the Top 300 retailers as ranked by Digital Commerce 360), the 43 Mexican retailers in the Top 1000, and MercadoLibre, the Latin American marketplace giant. (Digital Commerce 360 merchant rankings include only retailers that sell merchandise on their own behalf; MercadoLibre does not own any of the goods sold on its sites.) Read more.

Cyber 5 records

Online sales for the five-day period running from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday—known as the Cyber 5—hit a record $28.49 billion this year, according to Adobe Analytics. Cyber Monday sales toppled all other holiday sales this year at $9.42 billion, beating out even Amazon’s two-day Prime Day event, which generated a Digital Commerce 360 estimated $7.16 billion. Read more.

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