August 8, 2003
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Forrester Research says online sales will grow at a year-over-year pace of 19%, to $225.9B in 2008.
By Staff
Online retail sales are projected to grow at a steady year-over-year rate of 19%, to $229.9B in 2008 from $95.7B this year.
Market researcher Forrester Research said Tuesday that online sales will account for 10% of total U.S. retail sales in five years. Expected to drive the increase are new product categories and efforts by online retailers to optimize online shopping experiences.
Nearly 5M new U.S. households will shop online in each of the next five years, totaling 63M by 2008, Forrester predicted.
Over the next five years, consumers will tap into product categories that historically have seen insignificant online growth, such as food and beverage, sporting goods, and home goods. All are expected to outpace more traditional online categories like books and travel.
Sales in the food and beverage category are expected to show the most dramatic increase, rising to $17.4B from $3.7B this year, Forrester said. Sporting goods, which have found a niche in the used goods market, are predicted to grow to $6B from $1.7B, with nearly a third of sales coming from used products. Conversely, books, which generated 14% of U.S. E-commerce sales in 2000, will fall to 3% of total sales over the next five years.
As online consumers' shopping preferences evolve, online retailers are investing more heavily in site design and usability testing, the research firm said. Today, 84% of the top 92 E-commerce sites offer zoom options for viewing products online, and retailers such as Sears and Office Depot are offering Spanish-language sites.
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