Why You Have to Do Business Online - Part 1
Lucky for us who work with the Internet.
The Internet is becoming a more and more lucrative medium to support your brick-and-mortar business and/or to build your new startup entirely doing business online.
According to the data from Internet World Stats - Updated on March 2009, the number of people using the Internet has reaches 1,596 million (yes - that’s nearly 1.6 billion users worldwide!). In the US alone, the Internet user number has exceeded 220 million mark, with online retail sales growing exponentially from $172 billion in 2005 to $329 billion in 2010, as indicated by Forrester Research.
Here’s to compare: according to Euromonitor, World’s retail sales exceeded $8.69 trillion in 2005, where $2.58 trillion is from North America.
Combining the data above: The retail sales has grown 36.5 per cent from 2001, While in the US, the 2005-2010 growth of online retail sales is fantastic: a predicted 91 per cent increase - Online retail sales has grown almost 3 times faster than the growth of retail sales as a whole.
Too much stats? I have a point or two to take soon, I promise… Just bear with me for a while:)
What the stats are indicating
I learn a few things from the stats above:
- That $300 billion is on online retail sales alone. What about the revenue generated by sites selling consultancy services (i.e. website development) and information products (i.e. membership sites)?
- $300 billion from 220 million US Internet users - that’s $1,300 online retail spending per person anually.
- The 220 million Internet users in the US is only account about 14 per cent of world’s population of Internet user.
- The online retail sales is only a small fraction of the total number of retail sales.
Even considering the 80/20 rules, assuming 80% world’s online retail sales are originating from the US, while 20% of the Internet users are from the US, we can draw one conclusion: You ain’t seen nothing yet in making money online.