World Wide Worx has released its latest report on online retail in South Africa in 2010. The press release provides some interesting data. This post covers the following:

• a snapshot of online retail sales in 2005 and 2010
• a comparison between physical retail and online retail in 2010
• chart on the growth rate between physical and online retail between 2009 and 2010

{Ed Note: This post experiments with a way to display charts and data. It may not work in every web browser, and for this reason I have included a PDF version of the document below.}

[download id=”9″]

Online retail grows just under 300%  between 2005 and 2010

The press release got me thinking what does the longer term trend look like. In an article , the value of online spending was R 514 million in 2005, and the estimate is presented by the same research company. The chart below shows formidable growth over three years – using nominal values – of just under 300%. It is estimated that online retail sales in 2010 were R 2,028 billion.
Online sales grew by almost 300% between 2004 and 2010.

… Online however remains a small percentage of retail spending in 2010

 
Online still accounts for less that 0,5% of all retail sales in South Africa. This is representative of a growing industry, with internet access still a major issue slowing down the growth of online sales. Importantly, as World Wide Worx point out, it is not just access to the Internet, but rather that more experienced Internet users are leading the growth trends.

Online sales have grown more rapidly than physical retail sales

 
Online sales are less than 1% of total retail sales (2010).
The chart shows that online retail sales have grown by 30%, while physical retail sales have grown much more modestly at 7% between 2009 and 2010.