While experts expected dull shopping season for retailers this Christmas the ecommerce market in Australia experiences strong and growing activity. eCorner, a leading ecommerce solutions provider, that hosts over 170 Web stores in its Australian SME cluster, reported 90% increase in traffic volume for November year on year. eCorner, which has been providing and supporting local businesses with ePages eCommerce software since 2003, also supports large retailers like Dick Smith Electronics and Weight Watchers Australia and New Zealand.

According to eCorner Managing Director, John Debrincat, online sales by their customers increased 70% within the last 12 months with significant growth rates in the past few months. Visitors to eCorner-hosted stores are about to exceed last year’s figures by over 20% and outbid November by about 25%. Similar trends are also observed with other key players like online payment providers. eWay, which is the major payment gateway in Australia for online retailers, reports 69% increase in transaction volumes in November in comparison with the same period last year. The company says the number of its customers rose 47% above November 2007 with 16% increase in merchants number within the period of October-November. eWay CEO, Matt Bullock, notes that while many new merchants were online-only businesses, a significant proportion were retailers who wanted to complement their established brick and mortar premises with a Web-based presence.

One more key player on the online payments market PayPal Australia also observed increased activity this Christmas, particularly amongst SME retailers. Chris Hitchen, CEO at GetPrice, a comparison shopping site, notes that traffic to the site has almost tripled in the past 12 months from 700,000 visits in November 2007 to 1.96 million visits last month. Many customers click through to an internet store to make their purchase while others simply do their research online and then go to an offline store to complete the transaction.