Leading e-commerce marketplaces in Italy 2019, by number of visits

Research on the most popular online marketplaces in Italy revealed that in July 2019 Amazon was, unsurprisingly, the most visited website in this category. The American e-commerce giant boasted 64 million visits in that month in Italy, followed by eBay.it with 26 million visits. Third in the ranking came aliexpress.com: the Chinese online marketplace registered 3.5 million visits in Italy in July 2019.

E-commerce in Italy

In recent years, e-commerce has been growing in popularity in Italy. The turnover of the e-commerce sector grew steadily and nearly fivefold since 2009, reaching 48.5 billion euros in 2019. The most popular categories for online shopping appeared to be leisure and tourism. Other popular categories included clothing and apparel, as well as cosmetics and personal care.

Growing, but still lagging behind

Although e-commerce is undeniably expanding in Italy, this sector is yet far behind other European countries, where e-commerce appears to be more widespread. In the United Kingdom, for instance, the share of individuals aged between 16 and 75 years old who shop online reached 87 percent in 2019, compared to 38 percent in Italy. Unsurprisingly, online expenditure in Italy is also lower. In 2019, annual online spending per capita amounted to 668 euros, compared to 921 euros in the UK.