Even though Switzerland is a relatively small country, the ecommerce market is quite established. With a large majority of the population using the internet, it is no surprise that more than 67 percent of consumers are also shopping online in 2025. By 2029, that share is expected to exceed 78 percent.
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Statistics
- Population: 8.74 million people
- Internet users (of population): 96.2%
- Online sales: 15.9 billion euros (2024)
- Online stores worth mentioning: Ricardo.ch, Digitec, Galaxus
Swiss online shoppers
In 2024, a large majority of the Swiss population (96.2 percent) was an internet user. According to Statista, it is estimated that by 2025, at least 67.5 percent of consumers in the country is an online shopper. The statistics office also expects that by 2029, that share will be 78.1 percent. That would come down to 6.9 million users in that year.
CROSS-BORDER – While there are a lot of local online stores with a large presence in the Swiss ecommerce market, shoppers are increasingly turning to online retailers from other countries. For example, according to research in 2024, for 4.6 percent of Swiss consumers, Chinese platform Temu is the number one online shopping destination. It is expected that the market share of cross-border sellers in Switzerland will continue increasing.
RECOMMERCE – Just like in other European countries, the online selling of second-hand goods is very popular in Switzerland. It is also often called recommerce. According to research by DPD Switzerland in 2023, 82 percent of Swiss consumers said that they use consumer to consumer platforms to buy or sell second-hand items. These are platforms like Vinted or eBay.
In 2023, 57% of Swiss online shoppers used platforms like Vinted to sell second-hand items
And even 57 percent of Swiss regular online shoppers said that they sell their used items on these platforms. That is a lot higher than the European average of 46 percent.
Looking for ecommerce software to start selling in Europe? Webador and Shopify are platforms that are well optimized for cross-border ecommerce.
Online retail market in Switzerland
In 2024, Swiss consumers spent 15.9 billion euros (or 14.9 billion Swiss francs) online. This was the highest online spending recorded in the country so far. It was an increase of 3.5 percent compared to a year earlier. However, as inflation was 1.1 percent, the real volume growth came down to 2.4 percent.
Ecommerce has a 12% share of the total retail market in Switzerland
When looking at the total retail market (online and offline), the research in 2024 indicates that ecommerce in Switzerland has a 12 percent share of the total market. Consumers spent more on online non-food products (a 19 percent share) than on food products (3 percent share).
And when looking at the total online spending of Swiss consumers, more than half of it went to consumer electronics in 2024. This was the biggest online product category. Toys came in second place, with a 35 percent share. In third place was fashion & sports, with a 30 percent share.
Do you want to sell cross-border in Europe? It ain’t easy but with the right ecommerce software, online marketing channels and European fulfillment companies market leadership is surely possible.
Biggest online stores in Switzerland
In the ranking of the top 10 biggest online retailers in Switzerland from 2024, Zalando was at the top with a revenue of 1.81 billion euros in the country. Compared to a year earlier (2023), this was a slight increase as it reached a revenue of 1.76 billion euros in that year.
Local online department store Galaxus followed in second place, with a revenue of 1.76 billion euros in 2024. A year earlier, the revenue was only 1.43 billion euros. With the company’s growth rate, it is expected to rank as the top seller in the list by the end of 2025.
Online marketplace Ricardo is another well-known local store, which started out as an auction site. Now, users can place bids or buy products immediately. Digitec is a Swiss online store that sells computers and other IT products, as well as consumer electronics. Its founders also own Galaxus.
Ecommerce events
A number of ecommerce events take place in Switzerland each year. Check out our ecommerce events calendar for all the major online retail events in Europe.
Latest news about Switzerland
Read all our articles about ecommerce in Switzerland.
