The June 2011 eCommerce survey of the Alexa top 1 million sites found 25,592 online stores. Magento continues to reign as the most popular platform with 4,705 sites, an 15% increase since February.
Zen Cart sees the largest gains, doubling to 3,167 sites. This results in Zen Cart becoming the second most popular eCommerce software in the top 1 million sites. This increase is predominantly due to improvements in the signatures used to detect technologies. These also led to 800 more web sites running IBM WebSphere being identified. While these two pieces of software were the most heavily affected by adjustments to the survey, improvements were made across the board.
Of all software analysed, osCommerce saw the largest loss; falling from 3,033 sites in February to 2,554 responding in this edition.
Most Popular eCommerce Software – June 2011
From a Magento developer’s point of view, of the 4,705 Magento sites found, 274 included indications that they were running on the Magento Enterprise edition. This month, checks were added for Magento Go, Magento’s new hosted solution. This is aimed at small and emerging retailers and therefore we would not expect many to appear in the top 1 million. Indeed, only 8 stores were found using Magento Go. The most popular of these was fkc.com, ranked around 155K busiest site. However, this store is still under construction. On the other hand, chefstore.mx is open for business but only ranked around the 800K mark.
In addition to Magento Go, a number of other eCommerce software packages were added to this survey:
- ATG
- ProStores
- CS-Cart
- CubeCart
- ECShop
- Shopp
- Yahoo Stores
- LemonStand
- 3DCart
As a short aside, I also repeated the analysis of HTML 5 adoption in the top 1 million. 646 of the 25,592 online stores found were using HTML 5, making eCommerce slightly below the average of 2.67% for the rest of the top 1 million.
Full Results
The full results for all eCommerce software detected are provided in the table below. I’ve included the results from the previous two surveys so that growth and decline can be observed for each. I’d be interested to hear your viewpoints on any of these findings.
| eCommerce Platform | November 2010 Results | February 2011 Results | June 2011 Results | Change |
| Magento | 3414 | 4074 | 4705 | 3414,4074,4705 |
| Zen Cart | 1556 | 1533 | 3167 | 1556,1533,3167 |
| VirtueMart | 2683 | 2701 | 2683,2701 | |
| osCommerce | 3123 | 3033 | 2554 | 3123,3033,2554 |
| Yahoo Stores | 1315 | 1315 | ||
| PrestaShop | 852 | 1079 | 1302 | 852,1079,1302 |
| Volusion | 889 | 906 | 1099 | 889,906,1099 |
| IBM WebSphere Commerce | 223 | 1011 | 223,1011 | |
| Ubercart | 706 | 992 | 706,992 | |
| Interspire | 605 | 739 | 819 | 605,739,819 |
| Miva Merchant | 710 | 894 | 802 | 710,894,802 |
| WP e-Commerce | 779 | 754 | 779,754 | |
| ECSHOP | 667 | 667 | ||
| OpenCart | 335 | 492 | 660 | 335,492,660 |
| X-Cart | 733 | 740 | 659 | 733,740,659 |
| CS-Cart | 397 | 397 | ||
| OXID eSales | 310 | 314 | 305 | 310,314,305 |
| ProStores | 275 | 275 | ||
| Actinic | 290 | 229 | 237 | 290,229,237 |
| 3DCart | 209 | 209 | ||
| Shopify | 122 | 143 | 204 | 122,143,204 |
| Shopp | 171 | 171 | ||
| Demandware | 118 | 140 | 118,140 | |
| ATG | 91 | 91 | ||
| nopCommerce | 52 | 64 | 81 | 52,64,81 |
| ekmPowershop | 71 | 58 | 65 | 71,58,65 |
| GSI Commerce | 48 | 59 | 64 | 48,59,64 |
| CubeCart | 47 | 47 | ||
| Big Cartel | 28 | 41 | 44 | 28,41,44 |
| FoxyCart | 27 | 34 | 27,34 | |
| LemondStand | 12 | 12 | ||
| TomatoCart | 11 | 16 | 9 | 11,116,9 |
Another Pretty Graph!
You know you wanted one. The graph below shows the number of sites detected for each eCommerce platform over 3 editions of the survey. All points are plotted on the same axes so that the popularity for each platform can be more easily compared. From this we can see just how much the leaders, Magento, Zen Cart, VirtueMart and osCommerce, are dominating in terms of sheer number of stores.
Once again, the analysis will be re-conducted in around 3 months, so we’ll see if Magento can retain or perhaps even extend their lead. I’m sure eBay would certainly expect so.
Comments on this survey and suggestions for further enhancements or alternative investigations are very welcome. You can leave a comment, email me via the link below, or get in touch on twitter: @bobbyshaw.
Thanks Tom.
It’s great to see Zen Cart making such large gains this month – lots of quality work has been put into the latest 1.3.9x releases (thanks to the Zen Cart Core team) and while its out-of-the-box release is lacking in some areas, it is sure made up by the number of modules now available to meet any store owners needs.
I’m not surprised to see a drop in osCommerce, I’m just hoping those store owners are making the easy migration jump to Zen Cart.
I too am interested to see if Magento can retain or perhaps even extend their lead. They certainly play big out there (great funding) but also this can come at a large costs for developer and store owners.
Volusion is interesting as they have recently extended their reach to setup offices in the UK. I foresee a big push from there soon.
Looking forward to the next report.
Keep up the great work
Regards
Jamie
Zen Cart Specialists
Hi Tom,
I just stumbled upon your site and survey. This is a very interesting survey. Is the survey done by you based on the Alexa figures? Or how does it work?
And another question: What do I need to do to add our eCommerce platform to your survey.
Below is some information on ePages. Please let me know if you’re interested in more information.
Thanks
Oliver
ePages (www.epages.com) supplies one of the world´s leading e-commerce cloud service platforms. International hosting providers and yellow-pages providers as well as telecommunication and logistics companies such as Deutsche Telekom, British Telecom, Orange Business Services, Telegate, La Poste, Strato, Host Europe, LCN, Amen and Arsys offer preconfigured online shops and business websites for rental based on the ePages platform. They thus enable their customers to quickly and cost-effectively create professional online shops and business websites. In cooperation with over 60 technology partners, ePages integrates to the most important online portals, search engines, marketing platforms, payment systems and ERP systems. Over 50,000 businesses worldwide use ePages to run their online shops and business websites. ePages headquarters is in Hamburg; additional offices are in London, Barcelona and Jena, Germany.
@Jamie, thanks for the comment. Coming from a Magento background, I’ll certainly be taking more of an interest in Zen Cart, but I think osCommerce’s time is up. There are so many great eCommerce solutions. I didn’t realise that about Volusion, that’s interesting to know. I look forward to seeing what they have planned for business here in the UK.
@Oliver, Yes, I conduct the survey. I take the top 1 million Alexa sites and visit the homepage of each one. I then analyse the HTML through the use of signatures that I’ve written that match for different types of eCommerce software. At the same time, I also look at what country they’re located in and whether they’re using HTML 5. Now that you’ve pointed me in the direction of ePages, I can look at writing signatures for them for the next survey. To make me life easier, if you could email a list of sites that are using ePages, that’d be awesome. There’s a link to my email in the footer.
“The most popular of these was fkc.com, ranked around 155K busiest site. However, this store is still under construction.”
I think that just shows how flawed the Alexa algo’s must be!
@James. Or that there’s residual popularity on fkc.com for what was there before the under construction page.
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