The ecommerce industry is growing exponentially across the globe. It’s estimated that 12 to 24 million ecommerce websites exist today[1]. You’ve heard of giants like Amazon and eBay, but you may not be as familiar with one of the most important companies responsible for this massive ecommerce boom: Shopify.
Shopify revolutionized ecommerce by providing simple online selling solutions for anybody, from Fortune 500 companies to individual merchants. Whether you’re selling software packages or necklaces, Shopify has tools to help merchants grow, and it’s growing fast.
Starting an ecommerce business on Shopify is relatively easy, but it is also good to be informed. Here, we break down the statistics and trends that define Shopify and ecommerce more broadly to give you an idea of what it takes to grow your business on Shopify.
Ecommerce has been around since the dawn of the internet. But over the past half-decade, it has grown at a truly exponential pace, nearly tripling between 2014 and 2020. [2]
There’s no end in sight to the growth. The internet makes everything more convenient, including shopping. NASDAQ estimates nearly all purchases will be made online within the next 20 years. [3]
As more of the world gains access to the internet, more people are using it to buy goods. This year, a little less than one-third of the global population will make a purchase online. [4]
That’s good for the second-largest ecommerce market share in the world. Asia generated $831.7 billion in ecommerce sales, giving it the world’s market share, driven significantly by the world’s largest market, China. Shockingly, China is still the fastest-growing market on Shopify as well. [4]
The internet has connected the global marketplace so much, you may have purchased a product from overseas without even realizing it. In fact, more than half of all online shoppers have made a purchase from an overseas retailer. [2]
Shopify is a truly international platform and has grown into an enormous marketplace. An estimated 500,000 stores are “active.” That is, they are actively taking and fulfilling orders. [5][6]
All of those online stores enjoy a daily market of more than two million active users to sell to. Note that this is active users each day, and it’s only an average. The number may spike or decline on a given day. [7]
With such a large and active buyer community, since its founding in 2006, Shopify has processed more than one billion orders. With all those orders, the platform has helped merchants earn more than $55 billion in revenue. [8]
This number is from 2019, and is sure to grow in 2020 and beyond as Shopify becomes an even more integral part of the ecommerce industry. [8]
Despite those enormous dollar amounts, Shopify is still only the third-largest ecommerce platform in the United States, with a 20% market share. Amazon and eBay are both larger. [9]
Things are only looking up for Shopify still. In 2018, it grew three times faster than the global ecommerce market, and there’s no indication that it’s slowing down. [10]
A major component that makes Shopify so appealing to merchants is its app marketplace. Whether you need help with email marketing, handling customer service, order fulfillment, or practically anything else, Shopify probably has a third-party app to help. [11]
Those apps are so useful that the vast majority of Shopify merchants actually use them. The most-used apps are Privy, SEO Image Optimizer, and Free Shipping Bar. [8][12]
Shopify apps can do so many things that most merchants utilize many of them. [8]
Shopify’s POS service helps merchants unify in-store and online sales, accept payments, track inventory, build customer relationships, and more. It’s useful for merchants with brick-and-mortar stores who want to start selling to an online audience. Today, more than 100,000 merchants — about 10% of the platform — use this service. [13]
Shopify themes make building an online store easy. But not all themes are created equal. Some research suggests that theme selection can have a significant impact on conversion rates. According to this research, Porto is not one of the top-converting themes. [14][15]
Compare those numbers to global ecommerce averages:
Email: 2.5%
Search: 2.6%
Direct: 2.1%
Social: 1.1% [16][17]
Not only are conversion rates better than the ecommerce average on Shopify, but Shopify merchants also tend to enjoy more loyal customers. More than 62 million buyers have purchased from the same store twice, representing 14% of all customers on the platform. [18]
Shopify Plus is the enterprise version of Shopify, available to sellers with revenues of $1 million to $500 million. It offers a number of improvements over the basic version in exchange for a higher fee. [19]
Shopify Plus merchants are already major players in the ecommerce industry. Yet, by joining Shopify Plus, they have already seen 126% year-over-year growth between 2019 and 2020. [20]
In 2019, 218 million people bought something from a Shopify store. That’s more than half of the US population! [21]
Not only were there a lot of buyers, but Shopify shoppers tend to be loyal. The typical Shopify customer bought almost four times from the same store. [18]
Ecommerce is trending toward mobile, and Shopify is no exception. 79 percent of all Shopify traffic comes from mobile, and 69% of all orders are made via mobile devices. [22]
Shopify has a number of social media integrations available to store, but Facebook is by far the most successful. If you’re using social media to drive traffic to your store, Facebook is the first integration you should set up. [23]
While it drives just 30% of the traffic, Facebook converts at a significantly higher rate than other social networks at 1.85%. That makes Facebook far more successful than other social networks at turning visitors into buyers. [23]
Facebook isn’t all about selling, however. Facebook Messenger is a useful tool for handling customer support issues, answering questions about products, and building relationships with customers. That’s why more than 30,000 stores have integrated with Messenger. [8]
The Facebook sales channel includes access to Instagram, but so far less than 30,000 stores have used Instagram as a sales funnel. Considering how successful Facebook is, Instagram may not be an essential funnel. [8]
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the biggest ecommerce days of the year. That’s no exception for Shopify, which generated nearly $3 billion in sales on the long weekend alone in 2019. That number is double the sales the platform generated in 2018. During the sales period, Shopify hit a peak sales per minute of $1.5 million. [8]
Shopify converted 25.5 million people during the busiest shopping weekend of the year. That represents slightly more than 10% of their annual shopper numbers. [8]
Perhaps unsurprisingly, mobile was just as popular during Black Friday and Cyber Monday as it was throughout the rest of the year, driving 69% of sales. Despite most consumers being at home on Friday or at work on Monday, most sales came from mobile. [8]
Shopify has been a significant driver for the ecommerce industry, and it continues to usher in a new normal where almost everyone shops online. If you’ve ever considered selling something online, Shopify makes it easy and affordable to do so with user-friendly tools and a huge array of apps and integrations. Plus, the platform’s audience and market share grow every year. These statistics should help you set up the best store possible.
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