eCommerce Platform- A Right Tool For a Right Kind of Job:
In my 6 years of working with the Ecommerce Platforms, I have been asked this same question on different occasions - "What is the best eCommerce platform in the market today?"
Well, I really found this question impossible to answer by then and same goes for even today. An eCommerce platform is never the best or the worst. It's just a right tool for a right kind of job or a wrong tool for a right kind of job.
Is Popularity a Factor in Deciding The Best Platform?
People would say, I would launch my site on Magento Enterprise as it is one of the top eCommerce platforms according to the surveys.
Well, I am a huge supporter of taking the actions backed on facts and data, and these surveys provide some solid data. However, I prefer to differ a bit when it comes to choosing an eCommerce platform.
Considering the usage statistics and popularity is not a right scale to decide the best platform for your kind of job. Each eCommerce platform today, has it's own pros and cons. They are designed to simply fit a special class of requirements. For example, though both Magento community and Magento Enterprise edition are eCommerce platforms, it's not wise to compare the one with other on popularity basis.
What Magento community edition provides suits a particular section of business requirements and same goes to the enterprise edition. Similarly, Shopify suits another class of business requirement.
So, it's not the popularity of the platform that decides who is best. It's your requirement and the ability of the platform to seamlessly fulfill it which decides the best choice for you.
Here in this article, I am going to analyze the latest trends about eCommerce platform trends till June 2017. We would also implicate through these data to find out which class of eCommerce requirements is trending most in the market today.
E-Commerce Itself Is A Trend
The internet has grown drastically over the past half-decade, and is now one of the maturest industry internet has ever produced. There are still innovations and inventions going on, but the kind of tempo eCommerce shows is hard enough to ignore.
The above pie charts present a detailed comparison of the eCommerce platform usage trends over the last year. It’s easy to draw some implications from these pie charts.
Though Magento faced a slight decline among the top million eCommerce sites, the overall internet stats say that there has been an increase in its usage either. With Magento, the other three platforms have also become more popular.
Even the Google Trends seems to agree with the above data. It tells a similar story on the popularity of the three platforms:
Shopify is being shown as the most promising platforms here, while WooCommerce is also not far behind. On the other hand, though Magento was far more popular than any of these platforms till 2015, after that a gradual decline can be easily noticed.
While we were looking at the stats from worldwide, we encountered an interesting stat from the European section. The home player PrestaShop is one of the most used eCommerce platforms in countries like France, Spain, Italy, and even in some Asian subcontinent.
Especially when you are an eCommerce entrepreneur with a vision in your mind, you don't want to compromise with your business requirements. That's where choosing a right eCommerce platform becomes so crucial to survive the rash of competition and changing face of the eCommerce industry.
The eCommerce platforms which I am going to mention in this article mainly include:
- WooCommerce
- Magento Community Edition
- Shopify
- Magento Enterprise Edition
There are some other important platforms too, but the kind of fall these platforms have received in the past 2 years is dramatic. We will also look at them.
Here is the comparison of the eCommerce platform trends that have changed over the last year. This data is based on the analysis of the top million sites on the internet by BuiltWith.
MAY 2016
MAY 2017
JUNE 2017
Analysis
The above pie charts present a detailed comparison of the eCommerce platform usage trends over the last year. It’s easy to draw some implications from these pie charts.
1. The Total Share
Until the May 2016, the four platform Magento community, WooCommerce, Magento Enterprise, and Shopify were being run on 43% of the top million eCommerce sites in 2016.
However, this percentage rose to 49% by May 2017. The 6% percent increase was contributed greatly by a decent increase in the usage of Shopify and WooCommerce.
WooCommerce rose from 21% in May 2016 to 24% in May 2017. While Shopify witnessed a very well increase 6% to 10% in 2017.
Surprisingly, the share of Magento community edition witnessed a drop to 1% while the Magento Enterprise edition was stagnant to 2 % of the share.
Implications
The growth of Shopify as an eCommerce platform clearly indicates that entrepreneurs have been more inclined to the cloud-based hosted solutions. Moreover, since Shopify is not designed to handle the giant setups, it seems that more startups have been made in the smaller and niche-based business segment.
According to a data showing 1% decline in the usage of Magento community, it can be said that self-hosted solutions are possibly too tricky for these small business owners. And for those who wish to use the self-hosted platforms, WooCommerce is their first choice. Despite, Magento community edition can fulfill every requirement, WooCommerce is still the more popular choice.
I have read these lines in one of the articles about giving too many choices to the eCommerce customers- "Less is more". The article said that " giving too many choices to the customers always trigger the "paradox of choice"". Perhaps Magento is falling into this paradox of choice where it has everything one needs but also has many things extra that small businesses do not require at all.
And in this situation, WooCommerce comes out as a simpler and easier solution with few yet necessary offerings. That's where small business setups attract to it instead of using a more complicated solution.
2. Shifting The Platforms
Though Magento faced a slight decline among the top million eCommerce sites, the overall internet stats say that there has been an increase in its usage either. With Magento, the other three platforms have also become more popular.
Business running on the proprietary and less popular eCommerce platforms have shrunk to a great extent. From 45% to 39% to be exact.
Implications
Not just the startups but the older businesses are also shifting their ways to the WooCommerce, Magento, and Shopify. Depending on the requirements, all the three platforms can serve from small to giant business requirements, and this is where they are attracting the site owners to change from their less popular platforms.
But it's not just the popularity that is causing this shift but the actual reason behind this popularity is the real cause:
- You can find a Magento extension, Shopify App, WooCommerce plugin more easily that any other eCommerce platform in the market.
- You can find a Magento certificated developers, and experts on Shopify and WooCommerce more easily than any other eCommerce platform.
- The support for these platforms is competitively way better. Who doesn't know the Magento forum, Shopify Forums, WooCommerce forum, Magento Enterprise and Shopify dedicated support etc?
- The overall cost of setup, management, and maintenance on these three platforms is way less than what you would spend on proprietary platforms like Volusion, and Yahoo Store.
Google Trends Say A Similar Story
Even the Google Trends seems to agree with the above data. It tells a similar story on the popularity of the three platforms:
Shopify is being shown as the most promising platforms here, while WooCommerce is also not far behind. On the other hand, though Magento was far more popular than any of these platforms till 2015, after that a gradual decline can be easily noticed.
With the advent of could based (Shopify) or more focused (WooCommerce) platforms, the stand alone, self-hosted, and enterprise level (Magento) solutions are getting lesser attentions.
However, it doesn't mean Magento is any less popular. It's just that eCommerce startups today are more on niche-based and small-scale rather than on an enterprise level. These small business requirements are being fulfilled by the light-weight platforms itself, so why would one wish to spend more time, money and, effort on a comparatively better but complicated and costly solution.
An Honorable Mention- Prestashop
While we were looking at the stats from worldwide, we encountered an interesting stat from the European section. The home player PrestaShop is one of the most used eCommerce platforms in countries like France, Spain, Italy, and even in some Asian subcontinent.
This is the usage stat from France:
PrestaShop is one of the fastest growing eCommerce platforms in the European and some Asian sub-continent part. In France itself, 27% of the eCommerce sites run on PrestaShop platform which is almost the same as WooCommerce share in the same market.
Moreover, some Asian countries like India are growing as the top source of custom PrestaShop modules, themes, and templates after France. It's hard to resist how PrestaShop is growing in the eCommerce platform market and perhaps a promising entrant to the Worldwide eCommerce platform market.
Author Bio:
Ethan Roy, a technical content writer by Profession. With years of experience on various eCommerce platforms (Magento, PrestaShop, OpenCart, Shopify), he has a lot to share with the readers. Currently working as Technical Content Writer at Knowband .
