While almost every economy in the world is in recession and businesses across the globe are worrying whether they can keep their head above water, it appears that the news is not all bad. According to IMRG and Capgemini, growth in e-retail is expected to be around 15% in 2009 despite the financial turmoil.

I almost didnt believe it, so I contacted my e-commerce clients and asked them how they were performing. Almost all of them said that their sales were performing poorer than expected, but all of them reported sales growth over this time last year (on average 6%).

So why are e-commerce sites able to buck the economic trend? The answer is that even though consumers were spending less, more and more shoppers were going on-line to do what shopping they were doing.

I did a quick survey of my friends and family to find out if they were indeed spending their hard earned dollars online when they were normally the “bricks and mortar” type spenders.

The results showed that even the older generations were showing a definate move toward shopping online and almost all of them agreed it was because they felt could no longer afford to pay the high street prices, and instead were shopping around “On-line” to find the best bargains.

In addition, many of them felt that now they were becoming “expert online shoppers”, they were unlikely to return to the high streets for their big purchases when the economy returned to normal levels.

This is definately good news for future e-commerce shop owners.