Editorial office of AIN.UA invited the experts of the e-commerce segment in UAnet to share their impressions of the outgoing year — and, possibly — to make a forecast concerning e-commerce development in 2012. Top-managers of “Yandex.Market”, OWOX and Google were answering our questions.

Aleksey Avdey, Head of “Yandex.Market” service

We don’t have the data of the whole market, but, for example, a monthly audience of Yandex.Market in Ukraine increased by 140% over the year (over the period of October 2010 – October 2011, according to the data of Gemius,). The number of Ukrainian shops connected to Market increased from 232 to 475. According to information of the service “Keyword statistics at Yandex” the Ukrainians started searching the Net with the keyword “Internet-shop” 20% more; it means that the interest in online purchases was increasing more intensively than the UAnet.

According to our observations, this year the segment of clothing and footwear has considerably grown up, as well as the segment of toys and household goods. A lot of novice buyers start their acquaintance with online shopping buying goods of these categories.
A steady growth of electronic means of payment can be noticed, but a real breakthrough is still far away. Buyers should be much more motivated to pay in such a manner.

We’re expecting that in 2012 there will be more large internet-shops operating in the segments of clothing and footwear, toys and household goods. Moreover, such large shops can be transformed into large-scale platforms for placing goods of other shops as, for example, Аmazon.com.

Vladislav Flaks, Director of OWOX

Let’s start with the e-commerce market growth rates in Ukraine. According to my observations, it has grown by 100% in UA hryvnias. Key factors: the growth curve of the number of Internet buyers is of the same shape as the growth curve of Internet users three years ago.  In the course of time the market growth will slow down the same way as the growth of Internet penetration has just slowed down now.

If we consider the growth of segments, we can say that in relative terms the sales of clothing have increased (even it is better to say – have just appeared on the horizon) and sales of services have increased a little bit. It has happened due to some Western companies which came to a decision to invest into this segment and to enter this market.
There were no unmet expectations in 2011. Over the last year, to my mind, the popularity of “non-cash” means of payment didn’t change. My expectations: in 2012 I am expecting the growth of online sales from offline networks.

Dmitriy Sholomko, Director of Google in Ukraine

The e-commerce market has considerably grown up — we can see it in the growth of budgets of our clients who operate in the sphere of e-commerce and, due to it, Ukraine was one of the most rapidly developing countries in the world for Google in 2011. Alas, we don’t have exact figures – it’s much better when such estimations are made by specialized research companies.

Traditional retail has grown up most of all, thanks to a considerable expansion of goods which are sold through Internet: if even a year ago the only well-marketed goods in the Internet were gadgets and electronics, nowadays clothing items are well marketed too.   
I haven’t had excessive expectations this year, but next year I’d like to see further development of surveys concerning the Ukrainian Internet-market: this is a very important direction which should be developed much better.

The users still have few chances for high-quality use of “non-cash” payments. Unfortunately not much has changed, but in this case we need legislative solutions.

In 2012 we’re expecting to see further growth of the market as there are no reasons for its slowing down.