NOVEMBER 06, 2012 · BY KERRY WATSON via practical ecommerce
A new follow-up survey published today by Tom Robertshaw shows that over the past 9 months, open source eCommerce programs OpenCart and PrestaShop gained the largest percentage of actual live shops in the world's top 1 million websites. Magento was third among gainers since Robertshaw's previous survey was done in February of this year.
OpenCart sites in the top one million grew to 155% and PrestaShop sites grew to 120% since the survey was last done in February 2012. In the same time period, Magento sites in the world's top one million grew to 119%. Magento still has the largest number of web sites in the top one million, with 8,087 total installations.
Biggest losers
The biggest losers since the previous survey are osCommerce, Volusion, and Yahoo! Stores. osCommerce is an older-generation open source eCommerce program, while Volusion and Yahoo! Stores are "cloud solutions" that are paid on a monthly basis like rent, with fees that generally increase with sales volume.
Comparison to October 2011 survey
In comparison to one year earlier when the next most-recent survey was done in October of 2011, OpenCart and PrestaShop are still the biggest gainers, at 231% and 173% respectively over the prior years. Magento remains in third place in the biggest gainers over the previous 12 months, with 145% growth.
The biggest loser over the past year was UberCart, a plug-in for the Drupal Content Management System, with only about 66% of the sites remaining in the world's top one million compared to one year ago.
About the survey and methodology
Tom Robertshaw, head of UK Magento development company Meanbee, published this update to the survey he has done twice a year for the past several years. Robertshaw's survey automatically reviews the top 1 million websites as ranked by Alexa.com for distinct "signatures" in the site's code to confirm that the site runs on that platform. The survey robot checks for forty different eCommerce platforms. The survey robot does not count all live stores on the web that are using that platform; it only counts those in the top 1 million websites as determined by Alexa.com.
The survey is especially useful over time, revealing and confirming trends as programs move through their life cycle. Programs have been added and the methodology tweaked and improved, but results remain consistent.
See the full survey with results for all of the top forty eCommerce platforms athttp://tomrobertshaw.net/2012/11/october-2012-ecommerce-survey/.