Electronic commerce A marked increase in turnover

Companies with 10 or more people in France generate 17% of their turnover thanks to dematerialised sales, i.e. via a website or by electronic data exchange (EDI). This share has increased by 5 percentage points in eight years.

Sales on the web still amount to only half of EDI sales, however.

While 21% of companies make paperless sales, there are many more companies making paperless purchases (55%).

Six out of ten companies selling via the web are also on social media.

The development of mobile sales partly explains the increase in sales on the web: 17% of companies had a mobile site or application in 2016 compared with 11% two years earlier. The main barrier to the development of sales on the web as listed by companies is the implementation cost deemed too high compared to profits.

Very small companies, i.e., those employing fewer than 10 people, rarely receive orders via a website: only 6% of them sold on-line in 2016.