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Magento didn’t just come around to dominate the eCommerce platforms and make life easy for the online stores, it came in to pave the way for the eCommerce that we are seeing today in terms of technology. We have been with Magento right from the start, from seeing its first footprint to following it up until it became a leader in the eCommerce industry. When it started, it had a market share of 29.1% and there were around 270,000 who were using this eCommerce platform.
With this blog, we would like to discuss the impact Magento is currently leaving on the global eCommerce Industry, it’s a success, and would like to discuss some of its issues since the last year.
Magento’s impact on the eCommerce Industry
Before the advent of Magento, building an eCommerce site would take a lot on online shop retailers. Not only did it cost more but also it never had the tools to retain a customer to a particular website. The designs were completely basic and the worst part was that the foundation of the bridge connecting the website world to the marketing it digitally was weak too. In short, eCommerce was very difficult to be practiced by anyone and everyone. A close look at the image below is self-explanatory to tell you how the eCommerce industry was declining and the way it boomed into life from -6.05% in 2008 to 15.74% in 2009, with the 1.5 million Magento downloads in the US.
What Magento brought into the eCommerce industry are the world-class features that managed to revolutionize mobile responsiveness itself and delivered an outstanding experience to the users. To increase sales for store retailers, it featured highly useful tools, like cross-sells and upsells of products; while with the ease of availability of multiple payment methods at customer’s disposal, it really improved the shopping experience too.
As thus, it wasn’t a shock that within a year of Magento getting released it grew more popular than the eCommerce domain itself.
The drop
Magento faced a challenge in the eCommerce industry with the rise of one of its biggest competitors Shopify. A lot of users switched to Shopify because of its ease of use and functionality. Shopify’s drag and drop functionalities made it way popular among common people. Since it made website building very easy many people were able to flock to it, resulting in an increase in its market share. The following image clearly depicts the same.
Resurrection
After the hit back in 2017, it took a year to almost recover from the loss. But in 2018, Adobe announced its acquisition of Magento and it opened the door for whole new possibilities. The shares started recovering and picked up from 9% to 13%. Adobe has been constantly trying to improve the user experience and made sure to keep its original tech stack. They released regular updates and improved security drastically over and over the years.
The success 2021
Last year, Magento has been successfully able to revolutionize the eCommerce industry again. With its contribution in the 2 cutting edge technologies namely,
- Progressive Web App
- Artificial Intelligence
Store owners are flocking back to get their hands on Magento again.
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Progressive Web App (PWA)
These days, people prefer to open websites more on their smartphones rather than desktops and laptops. But the problem resulted that the websites were not responsive enough to satisfy users from having a delightful web experience. They had issues in terms of designs, speed, and replicating the web functionalities. The progressive web app was developed to solve issues in regard to that area. It completely changed the look and feel factor of the websites by delivering enhanced capabilities, reliability, and installability to reach anyone, anywhere, on any device. This acted as a bridge between the app and the website world. Users’ trust in a new brand increased because of PWA and thus sales boomed. Since the website was saved offline, now people didn’t miss out on it when their network had an issue. Magento offers a lot of open-source PWA solutions, and with little to no customizations, retailers are getting both the apps as well as a website at the cost of one. In 2021, Magento dominated the market with PWA functionality. Big brands such as Puma decided to opt for it too.
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Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI has been helping online retailers a lot in getting their products sold in the market. Magento’s AI capabilities have been revolutionizing the online retail space itself. It helps in tailoring recommendations to customers to boost the sales of online stores. Plus it saves a lot of time for the customers too, they get to see products that they need, and with little to no surfing on the web, they get access to these products. It makes them feel extra special about not seeing the same content, again and again, that is being shown to all other users. With the help of Magento BI, Magento successfully managed to satisfy clients with its cutting-edge AI solutions. Magneto knew customer satisfaction is always at the top for each and every business and thus managed to successfully grab 12% of the total eCommerce market share.
The Issues
While Magento revolutionized the entire eCommerce industry there are certain disadvantages that come along with it. We would like to enlist a few of them out here.
- Complexity: Since with Magento’s customization one can do everything, it is meant to be complicated. While its competitor Shopify provides drag and drop functionality and made website building seem so easy, it is not the case with Magento for the same, even though Shopify can’t support the level of customizations offered by Magento. You will need a professional Magento certified developer to carry out the website building for you.
- Cost: While Magento’s community edition is always free, if you are looking for a switch to one of its premium commerce or cloud editions, it has a cost factor that is involved along with it.
- Speed: Magento’s servers take a whole lot of space for hosting while reducing the speed of the website. Although now with the help of PWA those challenges are greatly reduced, you will have to build it to utmost perfection to achieve the same.
Like every other technology, Magento has it set of fair advantages and disadvantages. eCommerce wouldn’t be what it is today without the impact that Magento had on the eCommerce industry. Although it had its fair set of setbacks in the past, it is still coming out to be great and continues to baffle the eCommerce industry like never before.
