For experienced ecommerce marketers, 2008 and 2009 came as a bit of a shock. These “old-timers” learned the business when ecommerce overall was growing at nearly 30% a year. And, if you had some skills, you were producing sales growth in the 50-60% range.

When the US Department of Commerce reported online retail growth as 4% in 2008 and as flat in 2009, these old timers must have felt ecommerce drank the same potion as Alice did before entering Wonderland…everything got smaller!

The rest of the US retail economy, though, downed a bucket of Alice’s shrinking potion in 2008 and 2009. As the chart below shows, ecommerce continued it’s fairly steady growth as a percentage of all US retail sales.

Ecommerce Growth Rate

IBIS world projects that US retail ecommerce will grow from about $132 billion in 2009 to almost $300 billion by 2019. In other words, ecommerce will grow by more in total dollars in this decade than it did in the last.

And these numbers still disguise the true impact of ecommerce on retail. Online search and websites are now also driving shopping into other channels.

Ecommerce was in its infancy in the last decade. It’s only just now beginning to grow up. Look for traditional bricks and mortar retailers to pay more attention to and invest in ecommerce this decade. To stay ahead, existing ecommerce sites need to tighten up web design, navigation, search, landing pages and trigger emails.

Ecommerce is about to drink Alice’s “growth” potion and emerge from Wonderland; make sure your business grows with it!