B2B E-Commerce Revenues Tripling in 2001 - business-to-business electronic commerce forecasts - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

Information Superhighways Newsletter, June, 2001

Web site executives who took part in ActivMedia Research's annual scan of on-line revenues think 2002 will be the year B2B e-commerce revenues surpasses on-line retailers selling direct to consumers.

Based upon the data collected in the study, B2B revenues on-line will triple in 2001 to reach $263 billion. Today, more than half of B2B Web sites (55 percent) attempt to generate sales indirectly from their sites, as a result of marketing but not active sales at the site. One-third actually generates sales directly at the site, and the remainder (13 percent) makes no attempt to sell at their primary site.

How B2B Web markets intend to use their Web sites may be shifting. Firms that have been on-line the longest are most likely to attempt to generate sales indirectly, as are firms that are younger. However, significantly more two-year-old B2B sites are going the indirect-sales route. Very few of these firms are selling direct. In contrast, twice as many one-year-old and three-plus year-old firms are selling direct.

This suggests that firms that established a Web presence several years ago did so primarily for indirect sales purposes, although many of them have now added direct-sales capabilities. Firms that entered two years ago have not yet brought their Web sites to the point of conducting direct sales business. The newest sites are establishing themselves, like other B2B sites, to generate sales indirectly, although many of them (32 percent) are also selling direct as well. Web managers of business-to-business sites allot half their total site-design and operational budgets to site development on an ongoing basis. Average site-development costs of B2B sites triple between the first and second years of operation, then subside in later years.

Revenue Generation by Years On-Line
                  1 yr or less  2 yrs  3  yrs
Sales Direct at        31        14      37
      Site
Sales Indirectly       48        78      54
  - Marketing
    No Sales           21         8       8
     Sought