E-commerce sales are flat in the first quarter 2025 from the fourth quarter 2024. The fourth quarter is revised down substantially to up 1.7 percent after the Census Bureau's annual benchmark revisions. E-commerce sales are up 6.1 percent from the year-ago quarter, the slowest annual gain since up 5.4 percent in the fourth quarer 2022.

E-commerce sales account for 16.2 percent of total retail sales in the first quarter, the same as in the prior two quarters. The share of retail sales going to e-commerce has plateaued but remains at its record high of 16.2.

Some of the softness in e-commerce sales in the first quarter is likely due to stronger e-commerce sales in the third and fourth quarters 2024 as consumers started to buy up hard goods in advance of potential increased tariffs that might raise prices and/or reduce supplies of imported items. This exhausted a lot of consumer demand in the first quarter.

E-commerce sales are sales of goods and services where an order is placed by the buyer or where price and terms of sale are negotiated over the Internet, an extranet, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) network, or other online system. Payment may or may not be made online. Retail e-commerce sales are estimated from the same sample used for the Monthly Retail Trade Survey (MRTS) to estimate preliminary and final U.S. retail sales. Advance U.S. retail sales are estimated from a subsample of the MRTS sample that is not of adequate size to measure changes in retail e-commerce sales.

E-commerce is a faster growing segment of the retail sector than retail sales overall. This report provides detail on e-commerce retail sales and data on its share of total retail sales. The growth rates and shares of e-commerce can be used as a benchmark to compare individual companies' growth in e-commerce. E-commerce increasingly is important for retailers' profitability and viability.