US Commerce Department publishes Q3 ecommerce results

That means an increase of 15.5% compared with USD 92.64 billion in the Q3 of 2016. However, the actual resultsshow Ia slowdown from a Q2 2017, during which ecommerce sales increased 16.3% year over year, the largest quarterly gain in five years. Still, the growth is in line or slightly ahead of the typical quarterly e-retail growth of the past few years.

For comparison purposes, total retail sales, not including sales in restaurants, reached USD 1.269 trillion during the three months ended Sept. 30, up 4.0% over USD 1.220 trillion during the same period in 2016. By this definition of retail sales, ecommerce comprised 8.4% of the total. However, that underplays the impact of ecommerce since those retail figures include the sale of items not normally bought online, like gasoline and cars.

Factoring out the sale of gas and automobiles, retail sales reached USD 861.53 billion during the quarter, a 3.7% jump from USD 830.60 billion. Using those figures, the online portion of total retail spending in Q3 was 12.4%, up from 11.2% in the Q3 of 2016.

Adjusted for seasonal variations, holiday and trading-day differences, the Commerce Department estimates Q3 web sales reached USD 115.35 billion, up 15.5% from USD 99.88 billion in 2016. On an adjusted basis, ecommerce accounted for 13.1% of total Q3 retail sales excluding foodservice, automobiles and fuel, compared with 11.9% in Q3 2016.

Walmart Stores reported a 50% year-over-year jump in ecommerce sales for Q3. The merchant says its tripling of the number of products available for sale on its site in 2016 was largely responsible for the growth.

Target reported a 24.6% jump in online sales in its most recent quarter. Amazon reported North American net sales of USD 25.45 billion in the period ended Sept. 30, up 34.9% from USD 18.87 billion in 2016. Amazon does not publicly report total sales on its marketplace, including items sold by other merchants, but according to Internet Retailer US consumers purchased USD 44.49 billion on Amazon’s sites, up 28.8% from USD 34.55 billion.

That would mean Amazon was responsible for 41.6% of all US online retail purchases during the Q3 2017, and accounted for 69.2% of the USD 14.36 billion growth in ecommerce.