Among all of New England’s Internet expertise, a local retailer has quietly created a $5 billion web-based business selling decidedly nontechnology products: office supplies.

Staples Inc. in Framingham has built an e-commerce business second only to Amazon.com Inc. among U.S. retail websites — a business that now represents about one-third of Staples’ total revenue. And it has done so by focusing less on the latest web innovations and more on how to make buying online as simple as possible for busy office managers.

Its strategy is working. The company, scheduled to release its 2007 financial numbers next month, generated $5.2 billion in third-quarter revenue — $1.7 billion of which came from its web-based and catalog-based sales. Its website processes 40,000 orders a day, with a typical transaction price of just under $200.