Online Shoppers Pay Most per Order for Furniture

Not all products sell equally well in eCommerce. Products categories like fashion or consumer electronics were among the pioneering categories in online trade and are as well rooted in eCommerce today that online sales account for a huge share of revenues. According to the Statista Digital Market Outlook, the Consumer Electronics category reached an eCommerce share of 50% in total revenues globally in 2021. Other categories still have a bigger focus on brick-and-mortar. The Furniture category, for example, still generates more than 70% of revenues offline. But product categories can not only be compared according to online/offline revenue shares. Furniture might be at the lower end when talking about eCommerce shares in total revenues, but it leads in another aspect:

ecommerceDB has introduced an additional KPI, which makes the ecommerceDB.com online store profiles even more detailed: the Average Order Value1. The AOV is a new benchmark for detailed comparisons of categories, countries, and individual stores. When taking a look at the main ecommerceDB product categories from an AOV point of view, it turns out that Furniture & Appliances stands out from the other categories. It is the product category which has by far the highest Average Order Value. Online shoppers worldwide spend an average of US$189 per order when they make a purchase at a Furniture & Appliances online store. This is almost twice as much as people spend on the average Toys, Hobby & DIY order, which is the category with the second highest AOV. This might not come as a huge surprise, though, as single furniture and household appliances items are usually bigger and more expensive than the average fashion, food, or toys item. A look at individual stores from the AOV leading Furniture & Appliances category also reveals significant differences on a store level:

The average amount that people spend on an individual online purchase does not only depend on the kind of product they buy – it also depends on the website they visit. Out of the globally leading online stores in terms of total net sales with Furniture & Appliances as a main category, homedepot.com has the highest AOV in 2021, with US$243.7. wayfair.com and ikea.com are also above the category average in terms of AOV. All three stores have the United States as their main country. The two Chinese stores midea.cn and ehaier.com, which are also among the leading online Furniture & Appliances stores worldwide in terms of total net sales, register significantly lower average values per individual online purchase of US$117.8 and US$114.7, respectively.

1: The average order value (AOV) shows the average amount spent by customers for each order placed. VAT is included, returns and cancellations are excluded.