In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. On 6 August 1991, the first site of our history - info.cern.ch - became online.
In 1993 CERN made the World Wide Web available through an open license, in order to promote its dissemination and to allow the network to establish itself as a new tool for work, research and communication: this really happened incredibly fast and – using a term of digital language code – in a viral way.
The World Wide Web has changed the world like very few other inventions in the history of the humankind. Today the net is surfed by millions of people everyday, all over the world, the numbers are increasing and the users use various surfing tools and make the network an engine of development and change. Even if there are not only positive things about it, and the same Sir Tim Berners-Lee is of the same opinion too, thanks to the network we can now make feasible ideas and projects that otherwise would not become real: among these also e-commerce.
Certainly the landscape is not uniform and it is constantly changing: the data that you will find on this page, as well as in all the documents you can find on the net, have already been changed, right now, by people and the market.
Opening the link you will find a list of four points that will allow you to deepen the topic. Do not get fooled by the apparent simplicity of the page: navigation is very interesting.
The framework of e-commerce is constantly evolving. The data representing international and European e-commerce framework is constantly updated by people and the market. The percentage of the world’s population with access to the Internet has grown from 1% in 1995, to almost 50% in 2017. Broadband Internet usage is not equally present in many countries and due to infrastructure reasons, developing online markets rely strongly on mobile connections. Over 36 percent of the world’s population is projected to use a smartphone by 2018, up from about 10% in 2011. As of February 2017, mobile devices accounted for 49.74 percent of web page views worldwide.
Increasing number of people using tablets and mobile devices instead of desktop computers to browse the internet was fixed in 2016. On average, the combined number of mobile and tablet users finally surpassed the number of desktop users globally and the upwards trend is still continuing. As of the fourth quarter of 2016, desktop PCs still accounted for the majority of global e-commerce orders but, smartphones are the number one way that consumers visit retail websites. This continues to drive many evolutions and trends in e-commerce – usability, user experience, the customer experience and design of customer-facing tools (responsive websites, apps,…) and really all areas of business, even leading to digital transformations.
Social networking is one of the most popular online activities and Facebook is the most popular online network based on active usage. As of the fourth quarter of 2015, there were a total of roughly 1.59 billion monthly active Facebook users, accounting for almost half of Internet users worldwide. In 2019, it is estimated that there will be around 2.77 billion social media users around the globe, up from 2.46 billion in 2017. (Statista) Connecting with family and friends, expressing opinions, entertainment and online shopping are amongst the most popular reasons for Internet usage. The most active online users were Millennials aged between 18 and 32 years with an average of 7.43 hours online every day.
Detailed information about the European framework as well as the specifics of the project partner countries are available in the ME-commercer Report
