The Ecommerce industry has been around for decades, and Shopify has been a pioneer in this field. The platform has existed for over 16 years since its three Canadian founders created the platform in 2006. In those days, its primary competitor was Magento, with platforms like BigCommerce and WooCommerce gaining prominence later.
Is Shopify Outdated?
With its presence in 175 countries, the company continues to dominate the eCommerce market. However, the competition has begun to catch up. According to research by Websitetooltester.com, Shopify is the fastest-growing eCommerce platform. Still, WooCommerce has a higher share of websites that are in the top 1 Million bracket.
Moreover, last year Shopify went through a massive share price drop. It lost almost 80% of its share value in 2022.
So is the competition ready to finally beat the eCommerce behemoth? Or is Shopify continuously adapting to changing times?
Shopify stock crash reason and recovery
The recent stock price decline was simply caused by over-expansion during the pandemic. Shopify correctly estimated that the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns across the world would lead to an upsurge in online shopping. It, therefore, invested its resources in acquiring new clients across international markets. The goal was to add new stores to the platform that would turn into long-term customers.However, once the pandemic and lockdowns ended, a lot of online shopping activities shifted back offline. Many new Shopify accounts created during the lockdown were now shut down. This caused a loss of earnings and growth that has driven down the stock price.
Shopify is now adjusting its spending on marketing and other heads to adjust for the loss of accounts and is well on the road to recovery.The platform still has a versatile list of features that make it tough to beat in the market. Let us look at some features below:
Scalability
Shopify has grown from a small eCommerce platform for smaller businesses to one that can handle enterprise-level projects. Today, Shopify includes clients like Budweiser and Red Bull who are using their services in an increasingly global market thanks to features such as international shipping rates or language localization options with text translations. It has now left the previous market leader, Magento in the dust.
Customization/Flexibility
Another issue with Shopify used to be the lack of customization. In the early days, developers often found it challenging to customize their sites in web design and features. They offered a very standard product and needed to be enhanced with multiple apps to add user-desired features.
With time, this has changed. You still have the app store, but the core Shopify platform has a lot more flexibility when it comes to features like product pricing, discounts, collections, and so forth.
Ease of use
Ease of use is one factor that has always been Shopify’s advantage. It was an easy-to-understand eCommerce platform with a modern website design that you didn’t need a developer to set up. It is still easy to set up for non-developers and has the fastest setup time of all the eCommerce platforms.
Shopify is an eCommerce platform that has always been user-friendly and easy to use. A modern website design makes it simple for anyone, no matter their experience level in technology or marketing strategies–you don’t need any developers! The fastest setup time of all the platforms means you can get started right away with your online store without waiting days on end while others build their website from scratch.
Site Speeds
Many studies and reviews, such as E-commerce CEO, rate Shopify as the fastest-loading platform. After spending one and a half decades in the E-commerce sector, they have optimized their platform to deliver rapid site loading speeds.
Shopify – Still at the top
After looking at the above factors, it becomes clear why Shopify is still the fastest-growing eCommerce platform in the US. The company has used its time to perfect what was already a very comprehensive eCommerce package.
It will continue to be relevant in the eCommerce platform market. We at Opelsolutions are Shopify Partners and help clients develop and maintain eCommerce sites. Take a look at our services here.