French E-Commerce panorama: strategies adopted

In 2023, e-commerce saw a remarkable expansion, reaching 159.9 billion euros. What’s more, the average shopping basket continues to grow (+5.4%). However, this increased growth has generated new challenges, in addition to inflation and rising energy costs, a major shift in consumption and purchasing habits.

Nevertheless, the major challenge of e-commerce remains the sector’s ever-growing competition. Faced with increasingly demanding consumers, who expect fast delivery, total transparency and easy returns, you need to be agile and able to renew your strategies to stay competitive.

To boost your competitive efforts, you’ll also need to call on the most appropriate technological tools and partners, but, above all, those capable of accompanying you throughout your activity and growth. That’s why we’ve surveyed 300 e-tailers to build this e-commerce panorama for 2023, and give you the practices you need to adopt to refine your strategy and strengthen your competitive position.

Who are the respondents to this e-commerce panorama?

The range of business sectors represented by the e-tailers in this study is broad, the most dominant being home, decoration and DIY. Their products cover a wide range of everyday needs, with a high turnover rate, offering a diversified perspective to combat the competition. In this way, this e-commerce panorama responds to a wide range of e-commerce activities, in which you can find yourself.

And it’s not just B2C that is in the spotlight. In fact, more than one in two merchants conduct both B2C and B2B business. Although less frequent, B2B sales account for a third of all transactions. Various forms of B2B exist, from simple exchanges between two professionals to transactions involving several parties. Here’s a complete e-commerce overview.

Our respondents, who also market to other professionals, generally sell their stock for resale to individuals on a per-unit basis. Their B2B targets are varied, ranging from supermarkets to craftsmen, associations and marketplaces in France. Did you know that you can sell your stock to marketplaces?

E-commerce practice 2023: sales channels

To get us started on the e-commerce panorama of 2023, let’s start by examining the initial link in an e-commerce business: sales and their channels.

Our survey reveals that 54.4% of e-tailers sell exclusively online. On average, they use 2 to 3 sales channels: this is known as omnichannel selling. This offers a number of advantages, such as increased visibility, higher sales volumes and diversification of strategic risk.

In this omnichannel context, the most common online sales channel is the CMS, used by 80% of e-tailers, followed by marketplaces and private sales. To be able to diversify your sales channels effectively, it is therefore essential to have technology that provides integrations and APIs, helping to develop your business on new distribution channels, with a controlled budget.
However, selling on several channels introduces a new complexity: order collection. According to our data, 10% of merchants selling on 5 to 10 channels use up to four synchronization solutions.

This is where a OMS (Order Management System) becomes beneficial. It enables you to collect all your orders in real time from all your sales channels. What’s more, it directly connects your warehouses to your sales channels, ensuring real-time order transmission and stock synchronization across all channels. This eliminates wasted time and increases productivity, making OMS an essential tool for all e-tailers in 2023.

Logistics strategy: manage your shipments or delegate them?

Let’s continue this e-commerce panorama by looking at the different logistics strategies implemented by e-tailers for each stage of their supply chain. Managing logistics in e-commerce is a major challenge, and one that can be approached in a number of different ways. While 70% of e-tailers prefer to internalize their logistics, they are the ones who take care of warehouse management, order preparation and dispatch – time-consuming and tedious tasks without the right tools.

Others opt for total outsourcing of their e-commerce logistics to external service providers such as 3PL logisticians or Fulfillment platforms like Amazon FBA and Octopia.

The majority of retailers prefer to have a single point of storage. Nevertheless, a third of e-tailers adopt a multi-warehouse approach. This strategy consists in diversifying their warehousing strategy: either by owning several internal warehouses, or by combining several internal and external warehouses (logisticians, fulfillment platforms).

To guarantee the efficiency of these multiple storage models, the use of unified inventory management software is essential. Capable of consolidating inventory from all warehouses and transmitting information to all sales channels, this tool promotes efficient organization. But such technology also enables orders to be automatically directed to the most appropriate warehouse, thanks to a routing system whose parameters you enter yourself.

It’s against this backdrop that the omni-logistics trend is developing. This makes it possible to efficiently manage logistics flows, whatever their origin and destination, while pooling warehouse stocks to make them available for sale across all sales channels.

In terms of size, our data shows that the average warehouse surface area is 1900 m². Nevertheless, most e-tailers have warehouses of less than 1000 m², a particularly common choice among those with several warehouses.

Order picking is a crucial stage in logistics. It is a priority for 70% of companies. Nevertheless, training order-picking teams, especially during Peak Seasons, represents a major challenge. That’s why we need ergonomic processes and tools to help them get up to speed quickly.

Finally, speed of shipment is a crucial factor in customer satisfaction. Indeed, 82% of French consumers choose a company on the basis of its delivery times. This is an aspect in which half of e-tailers can still improve, with only 50% able to dispatch orders the same day. Fast, efficient order preparation is therefore essential to meet customer expectations in terms of order processing and dispatch times.

In short, efficient and flexible logistics management is a key issue for e-tailers who aspire to optimize their competitiveness in the e-commerce market. For more information, check out our marketplaces guide and discover the crucial role ofOMS e-commerce.

Logistics strategy: the final link, order delivery

Order distribution, the final link in the logistics chain, plays a decisive role in customer satisfaction. On average, e-tailers use three carriers to deliver their products.

Calling on several carriers means having access to a simplified and efficient connection with them. This process can be facilitated by a TMS (Transport Management System) such as that offered by Shippingbo. This tool makes it easy to connect all transport solutions.

In this way, access to several carriers enables us to diversify the delivery options on offer and adapt to the varied expectations of our customers. The e-tailers in our study offer a variety of delivery options, including point-of-sale delivery, express delivery, delivery by appointment, and click and collect.

The process of allocating orders to these carriers can be carried out manually or automatically, the latter being favored by 67% of retailers for its efficiency and accuracy.

However, if the multiplicity of carriers is a determining factor in customer satisfaction, since it comes with a more varied choice of deliveries, delivery time is just as decisive. Indeed, 82% of French consumers say they select a company based on this criterion.

However, delivery doesn’t end until the customer is completely satisfied, and then comes after-sales service. E-tailers’ after-sales services receive an average of 85 delivery-related requests every month.

While 47% of e-tailers receive between 1 and 20 requests per month, this figure rises to over 100 for others. An effective logistics strategy can help reduce this number and optimize the customer experience.

Ultimately, logistics strategy must be designed around the customer, from warehouse management to order distribution. By adopting this customer-centric approach, e-tailers can guarantee customer satisfaction, improve their brand image and thus strengthen their position in the e-commerce market.

Logistics strategy: the importance of customer communication

When it comes to order distribution, communication is a fundamental aspect of logistics strategy. On average, retailers keep their customers informed about three separate stages in the order process.

However, it is worth noting that 9% of e-tailers do not provide any tracking information to their customers, which contrasts with the expectations of nearly 80% of e-consumers who wish to track the delivery process of their order, according to the Fédération du e-commerce et de la vente à distance (FEVAD).

Today’s consumers want to be kept informed in real time of the progress of their orders. A lack of communication can generate anxiety and tarnish their shopping experience.

From Many tools are used by e-tailers to notify customers of the progress of their orders, with email being the most widespread. However, SMS has a significantly higher open rate than email: on average, the open rate of an email is 20%, whereas it reaches 98% for an SMS.

Why choose SMS? One of the main reasons is that, on average, we consult our cell phone around 150 times a day, and it’s always with us. And there are many other reasons why SMS communication is an effective way of sharing follow-up information with a customer.