2007 Stats Canada Report Reveals Canadian e-Commerce Trends

April 28th, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner

Stats Canada

Finding e-commerce trend reports for Canada isn’t easy and since Sitebrand happens to be based in Canada, I feel it’s my moral obligation to share some current trends I just discovered courtesy of Statistics Canada. You can read the full report, but allow me to pull some of the more interesting stuff into an at-a-glance post for immediate consumption along with some actionable ideas to wrap it up:

Total Canadian Internet sales for 2007 grew 26% over 2006 hitting almost $63 billion
Of the almost $63B in sales, about $58B are private sector and $5B are public sector
Four verticals are responsible for the majority of online sales: wholesale trade (17%), transportation and warehousing (16%), manufacturing (15%), retail trade (10%).

While impressive, here’s the reality. Internet sales in Canada still only represent about 2% of total sales revenue. Considering this was reported to be at the 1% mark five years ago, we’re seeing a slow but steady climb. No need to fasten your seatbelt here.

To put this in perspective, let’s compare % of total sales revenue in Canada to the US. According to a Q4 2007 e-commerce report from the US Census Bureau, Internet sales in the US accounted for 3.4% of total sales revenue in 2007. One year earlier, it was at 2.9% which means it went up a full half a percent in just one year…compared to Canada where it’s taken five years to go up one percent.

Rather than saying it over again, I’ll refer to a previous post I did on this topic of e-commerce in Canada. In a nutshell, I think the online experience for Canadians still has a way to go because expectations are not being fulfilled:

Choices are still quite limited
Information on web sites isn’t personalized/relevant
Shipping is still a headache
And so on…

To win in the race (lol - it’s hardly a “race”) for online market share from Canadian shoppers, the smart e-commerce marketer will address each of these very approachable issues from a Canadian perspective. Here are some little things that go a long way:

Offer CDN pricing.
For US sites, it’s smart to personalize the Canadian shoppers visit by showing the CDN flag and saying “we ship to Canada”.
For CDN sites, don’t hide the fact you are Canadian - leverage it to the max and alleviate the “Do you ship to Canada?” question at the same time.
Offer shipping options - land, air, foot etc.
While 85% of the Canadian population speaks English, Canada is a bilingual country so offering English and French is a nice touch…offer every language that makes sense for your global market.
Canadian spelling of the English language follows the British rules. Some commonly used words that are different include:
- - Comes in many flavors - in Canada it would be ”flavours”…
  - Payable by check - in Canada it would be “cheque” …
  - Visit our online resource center - in Canada it would be “centre” …

So there you have it, e-commerce trends are always evolving. What are you going to do to influence them? Hopefully this post offers some inspiration to the keeners.

Posted in Carolyn Gardner, Conversion, Customer Experience, Optimization, Personalization, eCommerce |

4 Responses

Linda Bustos Says:

May 1st, 2008 at 1:08 pm

Amen, I am looking forward to online shopping in Canada to improve! I do find Yahoo’s Canadian shopping engine quite helpful though, although nowhere near the offering of US comparison engines.

I believe it’s likely that Canadians who are frustrated with finding items through search engines only to discover they cannot purchase the items may turn to “pages from Canada” in search engines. It’s important that every retailer that values the Canadian market check to ensure they are showing up in “pages from Canada” search for their own store names.

Many canadian shops actually host their sites with US companies and are not showing up in their native land’s search. It’s worth making the hosting switch. If you have a canada.store.com subdomain, make sure that’s hosted in Canada also. The store.com domain can be hosted in US.

Carolyn Gardner Says:

May 1st, 2008 at 2:26 pm

Thanks for sharing that valuable advice Linda. Sometimes the simplest of things are forgotten in the hustle and bustle of a marketers day.

sergei Says:

May 11th, 2008 at 11:36 am

until canadian based retailers are able to obtain merchant accounts and not to have to put huge deposits in their newly opened bank accounts (need two accounts if you you want to offer Visa and MC, since no bank offers both). that, and both banks would want your business plan. that, and that we’d pay higher transaction fees than paypal. a few other obstacles, but for a smaller retailer in canada, it’s basically almost impossible to offer the standard of ecommerce offered by americans, so the customers would go through the better converting american site. i wish regulators pulled their heads out of their asses and offered governmentally sponsored initiatives to be able to easily process payments in canada.

chris Says:

July 21st, 2008 at 4:08 pm

actually, sergei, you don’t need to go through your bank or an american company. the industry has recently opened up and there are now several independent payment processing companies. versapay is one of them, and it offers phenomenal rates.