e-Commerce websites growing in popularity

This won’t come as much of a surprise to DreamHost users, but e-commerce sales are on the rise. (Hey, that’s why you have a website, isn’t it?). DreamHost recently polled their customers to ask about the e-commerce activities taking place on their sites, and the data was interesting to say the least.

Overall in 2011, 26% of DreamHost customers say they have e-commerce systems in place on their websites (up from 20% of customers in 2010). The number of websites accepting popular payment methods is also up. PayPal remains king, with nearly 78% of websites accepting PayPal (an increase from 72% last year). Credit card transactions are decidedly less popular, but also increasing from year to year. Today 37.9% of websites are processing credit cards online (compared to 24.7% in 2010). The percentage of websites with manual processing for credit cards increased from 8.7% in 2010 to 12.3% in 2011.

Some other interesting results from DreamHost’s survey:

What do you sell online?
Of those with e-commerce systems, 74.2% are selling physical goods like clothing, art, and cars. Digital goods (like music, ebooks, and video) are offered by 36.2% of websites. Services are being sold by 37.1% of websites.

Secure certificates
In 2010, 22% of DreamHost customers said they had a secure certificate on their website. Today, that percentage has increased to 25.1%. Of those, 61% got their secure certificates from DreamHost.

The 3 biggest complaints about e-commerce software
2010                                      2011
1. Ability to use plug-ins       1. Technical support
2. Technical support              2. Ability to use plug-ins
3. Documentation                  3. Documentation

While many e-commerce solutions will work on DreamHost accounts, DreamHost has partnered with CafeCommerce to offer an exclusive e-commerce software offering.

Reporting by Kim Terca, tech analyst and former DreamHost consultant.