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Digital marketing helps e-commerce businesses attract potential customers, explain what they sell, support purchase decisions, and learn from customer behavior. It can create opportunities for sales, but it cannot guarantee them: whether interest becomes an order also depends on factors such as the offer, store experience, delivery, and competition.
Why digital marketing matters to an online store
An online store needs more than a product listing: potential customers must discover the store, understand its offer, and decide whether to buy. Digital marketing connects a business with people through online channels and gives it ways to communicate before and after a visit. Google describes acquisition as building awareness and acquiring user interest, one part of a broader purchase funnel (Google Analytics Help: The value of digital analytics).
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E-commerce is a substantial part of business activity in the European Union, though the figures are about business sales, not the effect of marketing. Eurostat’s 2026 edition reports that 24% of EU businesses conducted e-sales in 2025, referring to the previous calendar year, and that e-sales accounted for 19% of EU business turnover in 2024. It also reports that 21% of EU businesses used websites or apps for web sales in 2025 (Eurostat, Digitalisation in Europe – 2026 edition).
How digital marketing supports the customer journey
Discovery: helping relevant people find the offer
Marketing can put a store or product in front of people who may be interested. The useful goal is not simply more visits, but reaching an audience with a plausible reason to consider the offer. Which channels can do that depends on the business, its customers, and the product; the available evidence does not establish a universally best channel.
Evaluation: giving people information to decide
Once someone encounters a product, clear and relevant digital content can help them understand its features, terms, and fit. This supports evaluation; it does not substitute for a competitive offer or a usable store. A visitor may still leave if the product, price, delivery terms, or buying experience does not meet their needs.
Conversion and continued engagement
Marketing can help guide interested visitors toward a purchase and give a business ways to remain in touch with customers. The role is to support the decision and relationship, not to make every visitor buy or to assume every past customer will return.
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What EU advertising figures do—and do not—show
Eurostat reports that 32.6% of EU enterprises used paid internet advertising in 2024. Among EU enterprises that paid for internet advertising, 76.8% used information from webpage content views or search keywords, a method Eurostat describes as contextual advertising (Eurostat, “A third of EU enterprises advertise online,” 14 August 2025).
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsThese figures show adoption of paid online advertising in the EU, not whether advertising is profitable, how much it increases sales, or whether it is appropriate for a particular store. The statistics also have different denominators: the 32.6% figure covers EU enterprises, while 76.8% applies only to enterprises that paid for internet advertising.
How an e-commerce business can measure marketing
Measurement helps a business see where people enter the customer journey, how they interact with the store, and whether they complete a transaction. Google’s analytics guidance describes these stages as acquisition, behavior, and conversion, and says analytics can help businesses understand which online behavior led to purchases and make informed decisions about reaching customers (Google Analytics Help: The value of digital analytics).
- Acquisition: Identify how people arrive and whether the audience appears relevant.
- Behavior: Examine how visitors interact with the store and where they stop progressing.
- Conversion: Track whether visitors become customers and transact.
- Improvement: Use the observations to refine the store or marketing approach, then monitor what changes.
For e-commerce reporting in Google Analytics, ecommerce events must be set up; Google notes that this requires developer involvement. Its documentation says ecommerce measurement can help businesses understand customer preferences and assess how well marketing works (Google Analytics Help: Ecommerce in Google Analytics).
Interpret results carefully. A campaign may receive clicks or coincide with purchases without being the sole reason those purchases occurred. The cited guidance explains measurement concepts, while the EU statistics describe business activity and advertising use; neither supplies a controlled estimate of digital marketing’s causal effect on sales.
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Choosing channels without assuming one is best
There is no evidence-based universal channel ranking in the available sources. A store can assess options using the same practical questions rather than choosing a channel because it is fashionable:
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- Audience fit: Is the intended audience likely to encounter and use this channel?
- Intent: Does it reach people exploring options, actively seeking a product, or already familiar with the business?
- Cost: What resources does the channel require, and can the business sustain them?
- Measurability: Can the store connect activity to meaningful visitor behavior or transactions?
- Learning time: How long will it take to gather enough useful observations to adjust the approach?
- Repeat engagement: Can the channel support an ongoing relationship where that suits the product and customer?
Use the answers to select channels that fit the business and its goals, then evaluate actual behavior rather than presuming that activity or reach equals sales. Results will vary by audience, offer, and execution.
What counts as e-commerce is changing
E-commerce is not limited to a conventional checkout on a retailer’s website. The OECD’s 2025 guidance updates how e-commerce is measured and addresses digital intermediaries, subscriptions, AI-assisted transactions, and emerging ordering channels (OECD, The 2025 OECD definition of e-commerce and guidelines for interpretation). That broader definition helps explain why online selling and its measurement can take different forms; it does not show that a particular marketing channel drives growth.
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