45+ Online Business Statistics & Trends [2025]

Businesses conducted online have increased by nearly 40% within a decade. As of 2025, 29.9% of all businesses are now conducted online, compared to 21.5% in 2015. In the US alone, online sales revenue is expected to exceed $1.88 trillion by 2029.

Advancing technology, increasing internet penetration, and reducing costs of internet services, among other factors, have enabled businesses to expand their business online and made it easier for users to make purchases online.

In this article, we will discuss over 45 online business statistics and trends driving growth in 2025.

So, let’s dive in!

Online shopping statistics

Retail eCommerce sales are estimated to exceed $4.3 trillion in 2025 and are expected to reach $5.88 trillion by 2029. In the US, revenue in the eCommerce market is expected to grow steadily, by 36.1% from the estimated $1.3 trillion in 2025 to the projected $1.9 trillion in 2029.

Online sales will account for 95% of all purchases by 2040. 96% of Americans bought something online at least once in their lifetime, and 79% are regular online shoppers. By 2029, online shoppers will reach 3.6 billion globally.

56% of consumers prefer purchasing online over shopping at a physical store, and 93% of online buyers read reviews before making purchases. In 2025, 42% of consumers say they trust reviews as much as recommendations from family and friends, compared to 79% in 2020.

We wrote a detailed article about online shopping statistics. If you want the full picture, you can check it out.

Online subscription services statistics

In 2024, a Juniper Research report estimated that the online subscription economy will be worth $996 billion by 2028, a 68% increase from $593 billion in 2024. The SaaS market alone was valued at over $250.8 billion and is expected to reach $793.10 billion before 2030.

In 2021, UBS reported that eCommerce subscriptions will have the highest annual growth rate of 25% by 2025, followed by cloud computing at 13% and 16% for other digital subscriptions.

Subscription service statistics and costs

On average, consumers estimated that they spend an average of $86 on subscription services every month. However, when asked to break down their monthly payments, the subscribers were actually paying $219 for their monthly subscriptions, a 250% higher than their original estimates.

74% of online subscribers say it’s easy to forget about recurring monthly subscription service charges, and 42% had forgotten about recurring monthly subscriptions they were still paying for but no longer using.

56% of streaming service subscribers do not share subscription services with others. 18% of streaming subscribers who share the service split costs, and 26% of those using a shared streaming service do not pay for it.

Revenue share in the subscription economy

A significant portion (40%) of the subscription revenue comes from digital subscriptions, followed by streaming services (19%), subscription ecommerce at 10%, and SaaS at 8%. 

The US consumes over half (53%) of all digital subscriptions. Europe comes next, consuming 21%, followed by Mainland China with a share of 14%, and the Rest of the World taking only 12% of the digital subscriptions.

Online subscription KPIs

The most critical metrics for subscription businesses are retention and churn rates. Retention measures how long subscribers are retained, and churn rates show the rate at which a company loses subscribers due to cancellations or other reasons. 

The average annual churn rate for SaaS companies is 5.2%. Improving retention by just 5% can increase the long-term company valuation by 25% to 95%.

Reasons for subscriptions and churn

A recent subscription commerce readiness report shows that 59% of retail subscribers will sign up for subscription services for enjoyment and convenience rather than to save money. 

A 2023 Statista survey of 2,049 respondents revealed that the leading reasons subscribers would discontinue a subscription include:

• Free shipping discontinued (42.4%)
• Inability to skip or pause subscriptions (32.1%)
• Renewing subscriptions without their approval (31.9%)
• Bad experience with the customer service (30%)
• Misinformation about recurring charges (29.7%)

Social media subscription statistics

As of March 2025, YouTube Music and Premium subscribers have surpassed 125 million subscribers globally. 

As of early 2024, Meta verified subscribers were estimated to be 12 million. Snapchat Plus (Snapchat+) subscribers surpassed 12 million in Q4 2024.

By 2024, Reddit had gained more than 530,000 premium subscribers, while X (Twitter) amassed over 640,000 subscribers. 

Online business marketing statistics

The growth of online businesses depends on the effectiveness of their digital marketing strategies. Here are the online marketing statistics by type for online businesses:

Social media marketing statistics

With over 5.07 billion monthly active users, spending an average of 2 hours and 13 minutes daily, business social media statistics reveal that social media has become one of the best places to source clients for a virtual business.

Social media presence for online businesses is crucial for exposing their brand, products, or services. 90% of YouTube users have discovered new products and brands through YouTube. 54% of Facebook users follow and research brands and products.

Online businesses active on Instagram stories will find more leads. Nearly 60% of people who saw a brand or product on Instagram stories became interested, and 50% visited a website to find more information.

Remote businesses can leverage videos to reach and engage over half of Instagram users, who spend 60% of their time watching videos. 

B2B online businesses can leverage LinkedIn to realize their marketing goals, reaching over 61 million senior-level influencers and 40 million decision-makers on the platform. 

Pay-per-click advertising statistics

Paid advertising is another powerful customer acquisition tool for online businesses. PPC has proven to return $2 for every $1 spent and lift brand awareness by 80%. Additionally, 65% of consumers who browse, research, and buy products online click on ads.

61% of B2B marketers consider PPC a top-paid channel that produces the best results. More so, 93% of respondents in another study listed PPC as an effective marketing channel.

Traffic from PPC converts 50% better than organic traffic, showing that online businesses can gain more conversions from paid advertising. Facebook ads are very effective for generating sales.

Check out our detailed PPC statistics article and explore the trends and data-driven insights that can help you optimize your pay-per-click advertising strategies.

Content marketing statistics

Content marketing is a top marketing strategy for online businesses, as it has proven to help many marketers achieve the following marketing goals:

• Build brand awareness (87%)
• Generate leads/demand (74%)
• Nurture leads (62%)
• Grow loyalty among existing clients (52%)

As more users gravitate towards short-form video content, online businesses can tap into this trend to maximize their growth. HubSpot Marketing reports for 2023 and 2024 showed that short-form video consumption keeps growing. 

96% of marketing professionals believe the most effective marketing video length is under 10 minutes.

Email marketing statistics

Email marketing is another effective marketing channel for online businesses and the #1 marketing channel that brings the most ROI. Email marketing has an average of 360% ROI, meaning online businesses can gain $36 in revenue for every dollar invested in email campaigns.

If they had to, 80% of marketers say they’d give up social media marketing than email marketing. Thus, marketing through email is critical for the growth of many virtual businesses.

Implementing exit-intent campaigns on websites convert 2-4% of visitors. Thus, online businesses can leverage exit-intent campaigns to convert visitors about to leave their site to become email subscribers.

Additionally, online business marketers can benefit significantly by testing their email marketing strategies. Email marketers who do QA, A/B, and spam testing get an average of 28% increase in ROI. 

Curious about more email marketing stats? Check out our recent email marketing statistics article to uncover the key insights and data about email marketing.

Search engine optimization statistics

On average, SEO has a return on investment of 275%, meaning that online businesses will potentially get back a return of $2.75 for every $1 invested in optimizing their web pages for a better position in search engine results page. 

Search engines account for 93% of all web traffic, and 68% of all online experiences start with search engines. 

97% of consumers search for a local business online, and 46% of all searches have local intent. So, consider optimizing for local intent if your online business serves a local market.

Ranking on the first page, especially on the top three results, can significantly increase traffic to a web-based online business website. Backlinko analyzed over five million search results and found that over 75% of all searchers only click on the first three Google search results.

Getting traffic and leads from search engines is the #1 challenge for 61% of digital marketers. 90.63% of websites fail to get organic traffic in their first year, with a high bounce rate of 37%.

Internet business trends

As technology advances and consumer expectations evolve, Internet businesses must adapt to the emerging trends that will define the future of doing business online. 

From personalized shopping experiences to Generative AI, let’s explore the top online business trends and see where the industry is headed.

Personalized experiences

89% of marketing decision-makers consider personalization as critical for their business success. 75% of company executives believe personalization is essential in digital experiences.

Over 71% of B2C and 86% of B2B customers expect personalization when interacting online with a brand. After a personalized shopping experience, 60% of online shoppers anticipate becoming repeat buyers.

As evident from these statistics, personalization is not a trend to ignore—especially for online businesses. Through personalization, 80% of brands saw increased customer spending, 65% gained higher conversion rates, and 62% improved customer retention.

Generative AI

In 2025, Generative AI will significantly impact online businesses. In July 2024, brands using Generative AI for at least one business function increased from 33% in 2023 to 71% in 2024.

42% of businesses use generative AI for marketing and sales, and 28% use GenAI for product or service development. 69% of business leaders use AI to speed up their operations and gain more efficiency.

Social commerce

Social media as an online business tool for eCommerce is rapidly becoming popular, with 63.8% of the world’s population using social media. The global user penetration for the social commerce segment rose sharply between 2019 (15.61%) and 2022 (30.5%). By 2029, it is expected to peak with 0.8% growth.

87% of consumers say that social media helps them make purchasing decisions. Over half of social media users research products and services on social media. Nearly 60% of businesses say social media marketing helps them make more sales than other forms of marketing.

Challenges facing online businesses

Like every other business, fully remote businesses face dozens of challenges doing business online. Here are three data-backed online business challenges:

Challenge #1: Generating leads and converting them to customers

Lead generation is the number one marketing challenge for nearly two-thirds (63%) of marketing professionals. Acquiring a new customer can cost up to five times more than retaining an existing one.

60% of B2B marketers rank generating high-quality leads as their biggest challenge, followed by converting leads to customers and creating meaningful lead-generation content. 

About 25% of businesses struggle to calculate their conversion rates; thus, it is more difficult to assess an online business campaign's performance. 

Challenge #2: Satisfying customer expectations

Retaining more customers, keeping them satisfied, and reducing churn is a lifelong challenge for many online businesses. Only 1 out of 26 dissatisfied customers will complain about a bad experience, meaning web-based brands have no chance to know or fix the problem. 

About 72 percent of customers want instant services, and 70 percent expect that whoever they interact with has a full context of their problems or situation.

While 82% of customers believe brands have room for improvement, 91% said they will never do business with a company again after a bad experience.

Another 49% will leave a brand they had been loyal to in the past 12 months because of a poor customer experience.

Challenge #3: Data-related challenges

Online businesses depend on accurate customer data to provide better customer experiences through personalization. However, maintaining accurate, real-time customer data is a challenge experienced by over 43% of the companies.

About 57 percent of senior marketing executives find data inconsistencies one of the main challenges in providing personalized customer experiences.

Unifying data, departmental silos, and outdated, inaccurate, or insufficient data are also the main obstacles to successful personalization.

Challenge #4: Providing personalized customer experiences

Over two-thirds (63%) of digital marketing executives struggle with providing tailored customer experiences. Additionally, over 60% of customers disagree that they receive personalized experiences, yet 85% of businesses believe they do.

FAQs

Conclusion

With nearly 30% of all businesses now conducted online, online shopping skyrocketing, and the seamlessness of social commerce, staying updated and embracing these new trends and insights can lead to more efficiency, growth, and better customer experiences.

From the key metrics to the industry’s benchmarks, the online business statistics we’ve covered can help you make data-driven business decisions, stay updated, and understand emerging trends, significantly improving your online business’s performance.

Sources

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