According to Carpathia the 5 largest online shops of Switzerland (stand 2018) are:
- Digitec.ch (sFr. 690 Mio sales in 2017)
- Zalando.ch (sFr. 685 Mio sales in 2017)
- Amazon.de (sFr. 575 Mio sales in 2017)
- Nespresso.com (sFr. 350 Mio sales in 2017))
- Brack.ch (sFr. 283 Mio sales in 2017)
It’s surprising to see that Nespresso belongs to the top 5 online shops. It seems that Swiss don’t only love chocolates but coffee as well. From the top 5 shops there are two foreign companies: Zalando (from Germany) and Amazon (from the USA). On the 6th place is Aliexpress (from China). Half of the top 6 online shops in Switzerland are foreign. That is still astonishing but less surprising since Switzerland is an interesting market for foreign companies. According to a study published by CBRE, Switzerland has – together with Liechtenstein – the largest purchasing power in Europe. While an average person from Zurich needs to work 4.7 days to buy a new Iphone X, an average person from Munich needs 10.1 days and an average person from Beijing needs to work 39.3 days.
Despite having the highest purchasing power, the Swiss prefer to pay with invoice. 78% of Swiss pay with invoice and 16% with credit card. This is probably due to a merely cash management reason since Swiss prefer to pay when they get their salary on the account. Swiss don’t like to have debts, therefore the credit card is used only in rare cases.
At Gala10.com we select every year the best online gift shops worldwide. We have selected over 5,000 online shops in 50 countries identifying over 1,300 shop services.
Our dedicated team has selected in Switzerland 169 online shops in 18 categories. For more information about our selection process please click here.
We have grouped the shop services in six different categories: Client segment, Product, Order, Delivery, Payment method and After-sales services. You can find a detailled explanation of all sub-categories of shop services we have identified here.
Let’s deep dive into the results of our analysis.
1. Client segment
In the client segment we have identified which online shops have a dedicated department for corporate clients. In Switzerland 18% of the analyzed shops offer such a department.
2. Product
Under product we have categorized all services that a customer can add when ordering a product. The most common services are 1. Gift card (36%), 2. Add a free greeting card (14%), 3. Add a gift wrap (13%) and 4. Add a greeting card (chargeable) (7%). Only 4% of the analyzed shops offers the possibility to label a personal message on the product and 1% offers the option to upload a logo or picture to the product. Mostly all flower shops offer customization of products, meaning that customers can add additional products to the order.
3. Order
36% of all Swiss shops accept orders from abroad. For such an international country this figure seems to be small. Maybe Swiss shops are loosing the opportunity to capture international customers.
4. Delivery
Free delivery is by far the most common service with 35% of Swiss online shops offering it. 13% of shops offer free delivery for orders above sFr. 100 and 8% offer free delivery for orders above sFr. 80%.
while 20% offer Post priority (one day delivery time with exception from weekends) and 16% Post express delivery (same day or by next morning) for an extra cost. Only 3% of Swiss online shops offer delivery on a specific day. This service is ideal for celebrations such as birthdays or anniversaries.
5. Payment methods
As we noted before, paying with invoice is the most preferred payment method by Swiss customers. However only 62% of the analyzed Swiss shops offer this payment method. In contrary almost 100% of shops offer payment with credit card followed by 63% Paypal. Only 11% of Swiss shops offer the possibility to pay in instalments.
6. After sales services
61% of all online shops offer money back guarantee, which is a pretty high ratio and stands for the high quality service Swiss shops strive to offer. In contrary, only 8% of Swiss shops offer a free return service. Only shop with a high volume of orders and returning customers can offer this service and stay profitable.
The perfect gift
When we think about which are the most important services a customer might need when sending a gift to a loved one or a client then we come up with following services: Add a greeting card (for free or chargeable), add a gift wrap, can be labeled with a personal message, select a delivery day or same day delivery. The perfect gift would be a one that is wrapped in a beautiful gift paper (for the wow-effect), with a personalized greeting card that arrives on the celebration occasion day (like birthday or mothers day) and has on top a gift with a personalized message. It comes out that sending a giftbasket will cover most of your expectations.
