E-commerce — what it is, what the Swiss market looks like and where to start an online store

What is e-commerce, in one sentence? It's electronic commerce: the sale and purchase of goods or services where the order is placed over the internet or another computer network. An online store is the best-known form of e-commerce, but it isn't the only one — marketplaces, shopping apps and the automatic exchange of orders between business systems all count too.

This article opens our e-commerce section. It starts with the definition, shows what e-commerce looks like in Switzerland, and then points to the guides: how to start an online store, what it costs, which platform to build it on, and how to run it.

What is e-commerce — the definition

The most precise definition of electronic commerce comes from the statistical bodies that use it to measure who buys and sells online across Europe. Eurostat's glossary entry for "E-commerce" puts it this way:

> "E-commerce can be defined generally as the sale or purchase of goods or services, whether between businesses, households, individuals or private organisations, through electronic transactions conducted via the internet or other computer-mediated (online communication) networks. The term covers the ordering of goods and services which are sent over computer networks, but the payment and the ultimate delivery of the goods or service may be conducted either on- or off-line. Orders via manually typed e-mails, however, are excluded."

Three practical conclusions follow from that definition:

• The order is what decides whether a transaction is e-commerce. If a customer placed it through a website, an app or a marketplace, it's e-commerce — even if they pay on pickup and collect the goods in a physical shop.
• An order sent as a manually typed e-mail is not e-commerce. Selling through an inbox isn't an online store, even if the listing itself lives online.
• E-commerce isn't only sales to consumers. The definition covers transactions between businesses, with public institutions, and with private individuals.

B2C, B2B and B2G

Eurostat distinguishes sales through websites to consumers — B2C (business-to-consumer) — from sales to other businesses — B2B (business-to-business). In its statistics, sales to businesses are counted together with sales to public administration as a single category: B2B+B2G. Separately, there's EDI-type selling, where orders are placed and processed automatically between computer systems, with no storefront involved.

For a seller, the difference is practical. A B2C store means a cart, payment up front and delivery to a pickup point. B2B selling usually means customer-specific price lists, purchases on invoice with payment terms, and company accounts with multiple users — which is why the section has a dedicated article on B2B e-commerce platforms.

E-commerce in Switzerland, in numbers

Switzerland sits outside Eurostat's main enterprise e-commerce surveys, but one of the indicators does carry a Swiss value, collected via the Swiss statistical office (BFS). For every figure below we give the source and the reference year; all were read on 30 September 2026.

Who buys. According to Eurostat's isoc_ec_ib20 for geo=CH, 85.5% of individuals aged 16–74 in Switzerland bought something online in the last 12 months in 2025 — up from 83.42% in 2023, and among internet users the figure is 86.26%. That's comfortably ahead of the EU27 average for the same year, 73.56%.

What they spend. Handelsverband.swiss, working with NIQ/GfK and Swiss Post, put the Swiss online retail market at CHF 15.8 billion in 2025, up from CHF 14.9 billion in 2024 — growth of 6%. Domestic purchases grew 6% and foreign purchases 8% (after +18% in 2024); Digitec Galaxus was named the market's "big winner" for the year. This figure covers goods, including cross-border purchases, and isn't directly comparable to the percentages above.

What we don't know. No comparable official statistic exists for the share of Swiss enterprises that sell online. BFS doesn't publish the equivalent of Eurostat's enterprise e-commerce indicators in a form we could reach, and Eurostat itself has no Swiss coverage for that indicator — so, rather than estimate it, we're leaving it out. The same goes for a Swiss "% of buyers who hit a problem while shopping" figure: none is published.

Where to start an online store

Before you pick a platform, answer four questions. Each has its own article in this section.

How do I start an online store? The step-by-step guide starts with the product, the margin and a cheap demand test, then walks through the legal setup, payments, delivery and a plan for the first 90 days. One number worth knowing before you've sold anything: a foreign mail-order business selling into Switzerland only has to register for Swiss VAT once it reaches CHF 100,000 a year in turnover from small consignments shipped to Switzerland (MWSTG Art. 7(3)(b); ESTV).

What does it cost? The article on online store costs separates the start-up cost from the monthly one and lines up platform subscriptions against payment-gateway fees from published price lists.

Can I start for free? The article on free online stores shows what's genuinely free — trials, free plans, open source — and what always costs money.

Which platform? The guide to e-commerce platforms explains the difference between SaaS, open source and headless, the criteria for choosing one, how payment methods change the bill, and the terms for leaving a platform — then leads into platform comparisons, migration, B2B and headless.

Map of the e-commerce section

The section has six guides. Each one gathers the articles from a single area.

• [E-commerce platforms](posts:68df8b49379479525146bb94) — choosing a model and a platform, costs, comparison, free starts, B2B, headless and store migration.
• [E-commerce operations](posts:68df8f08379479525146e515) — fulfillment and omnichannel, e-commerce KPIs, supplier-feed and ERP integration, sales automation, PCI DSS and data protection, and customer service.
• [Payments and logistics](posts:68df929a3794795251473f4c) — checkout, payment-gateway fees and buyer preferences, choosing a carrier, returns and complaints, selling between Switzerland and the EU, and marketplace integration.
• [SEO for e-commerce](posts:68df907b37947952514703e5) — ranking an online store, Core Web Vitals, product descriptions, Google Merchant Center and an SEO audit.
• [UX/UI for e-commerce](posts:68df912b3794795251470dd6) — cart abandonment and checkout, the product page, on-site search, store design and accessibility.
• [E-commerce marketing](posts:6915f806bb2f8f91f17607c9) — Google Shopping and Performance Max, Meta Ads, TikTok Shop availability in Switzerland, price comparison sites, affiliate and influencer marketing, SMS marketing, performance marketing (ROAS and MER), selling online, and Swiss e-commerce statistics and trends.

If you're not sure which guide to start with, pick it by the problem you're coming with:

Tools and report

These free tools help with the decisions around a store:

• [Quiz: which e-commerce platform](pages:69bfe4fe0d5d51379c34268c) — seven questions and a platform recommendation;
• [Online store cost calculator](pages:69b1d28de5961b9519f27fbc) — a start-up budget estimate;
• [E-commerce TCO calculator](pages:69bfe4fd0d5d51379c34263c) — annual running cost on different platforms;
• [Online store costs in Poland — 2026 edition](pages:6a881b92d619d2695247642d) — 108 publicly available price observations from 70 vendors on the Polish market, collected March–May 2026; useful for method, not as a Swiss price benchmark;
• [UX checklist](pages:69b904affd308268547d6371) and [migration checklist](pages:69b904aefd308268547d6339) — pre-launch and pre-migration checklists.

Compare any prices the tools show against the vendors' current price lists — those are what's binding.