Online Retail Up 22% in Q1 2015 – Power Retail

Payment gateway eWAY has released figures for online retail spend across Australia in the first quarter, showing a 22% rise over Q1 2014.

If eWAY’s latest data is anything to go by, online retail spending in Australia is surging again. Data released by the Australian payments provider, which claims 25 percent market share of local online payments, reported a total spend of $4.37 billion from January to March 2015, up 22% over the $3.6 billion spent online in the first quarter of 2014.

It represents a strong start for online retailers in 2015, with the first quarter of this year only 6.9% down on the October-December quarter boosted by Christmas shopping.

Melburnians remain the most active online shoppers in the country, with CBD addresses accounting for 2.59% of all local parcel deliveries, well ahead of the Sydney CBD on 1.85%.

Tuesday night shopping is peak time – online shoppers are most active between 6pm and 9pm on any given night, and Tuesday is the most popular day of the week for online shopping.

eWAY CEO Matt Bullock is bullockish about prospects for online spending this year. “eWAY expects to reach record transaction volumes in 2015, as a result of Aussie businesses realising the potential of omnichannel retailing in Australia,” he says.

He says the radical swing in the value of the Australian dollar in global trade has spawned a rapid rise in international online exporting, with a 30% uplift in purchases delivered to postcodes outside Australia.