Whether they are traditionally online sellers or not, any business worth its salt that sells products has converted to online sales from high street stores, museum gift shops to ticket sellers are all using online shopping cart software to process payments via their websites. This shift in payments coincides with the alarmingly high rate which consumers are paying for things online in what appears like a chicken and egg theory, whatever came first, the fact is that the internet is the hottest marketplace in the World right now. To show just how big the market is for online sales, check out these 20 stats about online payments courtesy of the research done by NetBet German Casino:

1. 51% of Americans prefer to shop online.
2. 96% of the population has purchased something using the internet.
3. Men and women spend an average of 5 hours per week shopping online.
4. Shoppers have spent an average of $488 on commerce.
5. 30% of shoppers would buy something they have seen on social media
6. Millennials are the biggest users of online payments, making up the largest online shopping demographic at 51%.
7. Online sale make up around $420 billion dollars of sales each year.
8. 48% of consumers prefer to make payments online via credit card, 30% via debit card and the remaining 22% paying via PayPal.
9. 70% of online sales take place from a mobile phone.
10.  57% of shoppers say that they would abandon a page should the payment page take more than 4 seconds to load.
11.  71% of mobile transactions come from email marketing.
12.  31% of consumers are more likely to make an online transaction after a live chat service experience.
13.  A whopping 44% of shoppers will abandon their shopping cart if they think that the shipping costs are too high.
14.  For companies offering online payments, use of email marketing offers a staggering 4,300% ROI.
15.  44% of online shopping begins from a search engine.
16.  Online sales make up 11% of all sales in the United States and contributes to around 60% of the sales growth.
17.  Books, flowers and music are the top three things that people will pay for online.
18.  Commerce is expected to grow globally by 23% in the year 2017.
19.  30% will abandon your website if it is not optimized for mobile phones.
20.  83% of consumers will leave your website if the online payment system isn’t working, never to return.

These statistics from the U.S. government, Business Insider, Snap Retail and the Direct Marketing association really shine a light on just how big the industry of Ecommerce is and just how fast it is growing. If your company uses a website to make sales then you can see from the customer trend statistics that you will need to ensure that your site and your payment system is fully functional and user friendly in order to make as many sales as possible and to avoid the client going to a competitor. If you have a business which makes sales and you do not yet use the internet as another source of revenue, then these stats should be enough to tell you that the internet and online payments is the way forward for your company.