Ecommerce is growing at a very healthy rate, giving businesses another avenue to drive revenue, it has been claimed.

Jeremiah Johnston, president of the Internet Commerce Association (ICA), said that as internet usage has risen - particularly among older people - the amount of money spent online has continued to increase.

He claimed that the general population has more thoroughly moved online for a lot of key daily activities - shopping being a big one of them.

"So ecommerce numbers are just going to continue to grow," Mr Johnston stated.

"The other part about it is even if you're an existing company - an electronics retailer for example - it's still cheaper for you to do business online than it is to have a brick and mortar store."

He said that despite difficult trading conditions in 2011, the ecommerce sector held up very well, recording positive growth.

And the introduction of new generic top level domain names later in the year could give online business even greater impetus, he suggested.

"We're going to have a world of .nike's very soon so that's going to be an interesting thing for consumers to digest, just as everybody's getting comfortable with doing things online," Mr Johnston stated.

According to Google, ecommerce is worth more than £100 billion per year to the UK economy.

Posted by Jenny Arthur