Amazon wasn’t the only one that finished the year strong.
The U.S. Commerce Department released new statistics today showing that e-commerce sales hit an all-time high in 2014, totaling $305 billion, up 15.4 percent compared to a year earlier. This is the fifth year in a row that online retail sales growth has been close to or above 15 percent, according to InternetRetailer.com.
Amazon easily exceeded those annual growth rates, reporting that sales were up 20 percent in 2014 to hit $89 billion worldwide. During the fourth quarter, U.S. e-commerce sales hit $96 billion, accounting for roughly a third, or 31.4 percent, of the year’s revenues. Despite reporting massive annual growth rates, last year e-commerce only accounted for 6.5 percent of sales in the retail sector.
