Online retail sales by the large e-commerce city of Quanzhou in East China's Fujian province totaled 16.58 billion yuan ($2.5 billion), a year-on-year increase of 133.5 percent, during the Double Eleven shopping festival on Nov 1-11.

The city's transaction volume ranked first in the province, accounting for 37.9 percent of the province's total online retail sales.

During the period, the total express delivery volume was 15.2 million items on a single day, a year-on-year increase of 41.2 percent.

Workers sort out express deliveries from across the country at a distribution center in Jinjiang, a county-level city in Quanzhou. [Photo/qzwb.com]

Compared with previous years, the biggest change of this year's shopping festival was to start sales in advance and to extend the sales period, which meant e-commerce companies needed to prepare earlier than in previous years.

Quanzhou's companies actively participated in the pre-sales, involving 717 online stores, 613 brands and 11,226 products. The pre-sale volume of physical goods totaled 1.29 million items, with pre-sales totaling 818.9 million yuan.

For Quanzhou's online retail sector, the most popular consumer products are still Quanzhou's traditional quality products such as clothing, shoes, hats, textiles, daily necessities and furniture.

Also, livestreaing e-commerce is undoubtedly the most eye-catching feature, and it's also the new mode of e-commerce with the most rapid development.

Quanzhou's enterprises actively adapted to new trends and changes, which amplified the effect of livestreaming during this year's shopping festival.

Statistics showed that a total of 1,937 Quanzhou online stores organized 30,369 livestreaming telecasts, attracting over 56 million views.