Invoice Place

The Australian Trade Commission (Austrade) has produced a guide for Australian exporters who wish to sell online in the United States. The current market is big (US$200 billion in e-commerce revenue expected in 2006), and expected to continue to grow dramatically-

Internet Retailer (www.internetretailer.com), a magazine for e-commerce professionals, notes that 7% of all retail sales already occur online in the US and experts predict 15% of all retail sales will take place online in the US by 2010…

There were some interesting facts about internet use in the US-

• More than 200 million internet users – 68% of the entire US population. This represents a fifth of the total number of internet users in the world (Nielsen Research, January 2006).
• A strong home shopping culture – before the Web gained popularity, US consumers were already comfortable placing orders by phone for products they had only seen in catalogues or on television.
• US$200 billion in e-commerce revenue expected in the US alone for 2006 – over the next five years, businessto-consumer e-commerce sales are predicted to grow from US$172 billion in 2005 to US$329 billion in 2010. (Source: Forrester Research, May 2006).

The report (in PDF) can be found here.