Germany's online retailers were hit hard by consumers' reduced willingness to spend money in 2023, but an end to the downward trend is expected this year, an industry body said on Thursday.

Gross sales of goods in e-commerce in Europe's largest economy fell by a double-digit amount for the first time in 2023, down 11.8% to 79.7 billion euros ($86.82 billion), the BEVH e-commerce association reported.

In addition, the recovery trend in digital services, such as concert ticket sales, weakened, growing 12.7% in 2023, compared with 39.9% the year before. This resulted in industry sales in e-commerce as a whole - for goods and services - of less than 100 billion euros for the first time since 2020, said BEVH.

However, online commerce is expected to bottom out over the course of 2024, said BEVH president Gero Furchheim.

"With a decline of 7.1%, the fourth quarter of 2023 was the first quarter with a single-digit decline since early summer 2022 and points to a stabilisation of sales in future," he said.

The effects of economic uncertainty have been priced into consumers' spending behaviour, and nominal sales growth of 2.0% is expected in the overall market for 2024 as a whole, the BEVH and the EHI Retail Institute said in a joint assessment. ($1 = 0.9180 euros) (Reporting by Klaus Lauer, Writing by Miranda Murray; Editing by Madeline Chambers)