Quarterly e-commerce share in total U.S. retail sales 2010-2021

In the third quarter of 2021, the share of e-commerce in total U.S. retail sales stood at 13 percent, down from 13.8 percent in the same quarter in the previous year. Still, from April to June 2021, retail e-commerce sales in the United States surpassed 220 billion U.S. dollars, the highest quarterly revenue in history.

How e-commerce measures up in total U.S. retail

In 2019, the reported total value of retail trade e-commerce sales in the United States amounted to 578 billion U.S. dollars – impressive, but the figure pales compared to the total annual retail trade value of 5.4 trillion U.S. dollars. E-commerce still accounts for a mere ten percent of total retail sales in the United States.

Rising e-commerce segments

Online shopping is utilized among all age groups, though digital purchases are most common among Millennial internet users, with a penetration rate of 86.2 percent as of May 2020. Mobile commerce is also growing in popularity, as consumers increasingly rely on their smartphones and mobile apps for shopping activities. At the end of 2019, nearly six of every ten survey respondents in the U.S. had used a mobile retail app to look for more information about a product or a service.