Much has been said about the digital transition of companies and how this, leveraged by the pandemic, has taken hold of the Portuguese economic fabric, but has all this been reflected in more sales?
That's what we're going to find out from ANACOM (Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações) and its recent study "E-commerce in Portugal and the European Union in 2021 - residential and business segment".
According to this document, in the last year, 521,000,000 Portuguese said they had shopped online, a figure that represents an increase of seven percentage points (p.p.) compared to 2020 and is the biggest annual increase since the information has been collected. In contrast, 271,000,000 respondents said they had never shopped online, while around 101,000,000 had made online sales.
From a broader perspective, Portugal ranked 24th out of the 27 European Union (EU) countries in terms of the percentage of people who shopped online and 21st in terms of the number of online sales.
Clothing/footwear and home meal delivery dominate online sales
According to ANACOM, the Clothing/Footwear categories with 69% and home-delivered meals with 46% were the physical products most ordered over the Internet and the ones that grew the most compared to the previous year (+9 and +8 p.p.). respectively), followed by Cosmetics, Beauty and Wellness products (31%) and computers, tablets, mobile phones, complementary computer equipment or accessories (30%), in the latter case down the most on the previous year (-7 p.p.).
As for "purely" digital products, the report highlights films, series and sports programmes for download or online subscription as the most purchased products on the Internet (35% of individuals who made online purchases). In the European ranking of the 27 EU countries, Portugal ended up in 9th place when it came to buying this type of digital product.
With regard to services purchased over the Internet, the most notable were accommodation services (28%, +7 p.p. compared to the previous year), transport (22%) and subscribing to or renewing Internet, telephone or mobile phone connection services (19%), with Portugal ranking 5th, 8th and 6th in the EU27 for the purchase of these services, respectively.
The profile of companies in digital sales
Among Portuguese companies with 10 or more employees, and compared to the previous year, around 16% received orders via electronic networks (-3 p.p. compared to the EU27 average and +4 p.p. compared to the previous year). These orders accounted for 17% of turnover (-3 p.p. on the previous year).
Among the categories with available information, the Accommodation and Food Service, Commerce and Information and Communication Activities categories had the highest penetration of orders through electronic networks, reaching 34%, 23% and 20%, respectively.
Although Portugal was below the European average in most of the categories analysed, the Transport category stands out, where Portugal was above the EU27 average (17% in Portugal and 13% in the EU27 average).
The report also shows that 42% of large Portuguese companies received online orders (+4 p.p. compared to the EU27 average and -3 p.p. compared to the previous year), a percentage that drops to 26% for medium-sized companies, 14% for small companies and 7% for micro-enterprises.
Although, for most companies, their website/app remains the main vehicle for receiving orders, it is worth highlighting the 6% that said they receive them through e-commerce portals or digital platforms (via apps), used by various companies, such as Booking, hotels.com, eBay, Amazon, Amazon Business, etc.
Online shopping without barriers
Over the last few years, companies have been trying to prepare themselves as best they can for the expected boom in e-commerce. This has happened and has been happening with the help of REDUNIQ, which, by offering online payment solutions adjusted not only to consumer habits, but also to the specific needs of each business, allowing them to increase their sales volume.
This is the case with REDUNIQ E-Commerce and the REDUNIQ@Payments.
While the first of these means allows an e-commerce site to receive e-commerce payments with Visa and Mastercard debit and credit cards from customers all over the world, with no membership costs or monthly fees, the second is aimed at those who want to sell online without a website through social networks or marketplaces, allowing this type of business to receive online payments by e-mail, SMS, WhatsApp, Visa and Mastercard, Multibanco reference or MB WAY.
As a result of these and other innovations in e-commerce that have allowed companies to operate in a way that is more in line with consumer expectations, ANACOM's report reveals that 93% of those surveyed did not mention any difficulties in placing orders over the Internet.
The most frequently mentioned problems with online shopping turned out to be the delivery time of orders and the delivery of damaged or wrong goods or services, both of which, however, had marginal rates of 3%.
Let's finish with a piece of data on companies' online sales to other countries. Although 71% of companies did not express any difficulties associated with selling to customers in other EU countries (24 p.p. more than in the 2019 survey), the main problem mentioned by the rest was the high costs of delivering and returning products (20%).
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