Question
Have you ever used Google Trends to spot trends in interest for various ecommerce platforms? I use it all the time for all sorts of data. Here's a quick report I ran comparing Shopify, Bigcommerce, Magento and WooCommerce interest since January 2010 and August 2016:
Here's how Google defines Interest Over Time: Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. Likewise a score of 0 means the term was less than 1% as popular as the peak.
From the above graph I can draw the following conclusions:
- Interest in Shopify is growing.
- Interest in Magento is declining.
- Interest in WooCommerce and BigCommerce seems about the same.
Ranking the interest in all 4 platforms would be: Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce and then BigCommerce. I thought you might find this interesting.
Answer
Thank you so very much for sharing this with me. While I have used Google Trends before, I'm embarrassed to say I have not used it to compare ecommerce platforms. My "go to" tool is usually builtWith's Ecommerce Usage Statistics:
I like to pick Top Million Sites [1] and then look at the market share of each platform [2]. Additionally, I like to keep my eye on the Top 10 ecommerce platforms [3].
However, I think I'm going to use your Google Trends chart in combination with this builtWith chart. Together I think they tell a compelling story around ecommerce platform usage, interest and trends. Thank you for sharing!