New Internet Retailer data released this week on the top e-commerce technology providers shows that Magento is steadily adding new clients and capturing impressive market share. In the Internet Retailer 2017 Leading Vendors to the Top 1000, which ranks the top players in each of 30 technology categories by the number of e-retailers in the Top 500 and Second 500 that they serve, Magento takes home gold in several categories.
It ranks No. 1 in terms of the number of Top 1000 retail clients for the following categories: e-commerce platform (202 clients: 54 Top 500 retailers and 148 Second 500), content management (189 Top 1000: 50 Top 500, 139 Second 500), mobile commerce (189 Top 1000: 52 Top 500 and 137 Second 500) and order management (192 Top 1000: 54 Top 500 and 138 Second 500). Its e-commerce platform retail clients include bigger players such as Best Buy Co. Inc (No. 12) and smaller merchants including NorthShore Care Supply (No. 514) and Vertana Group (No. 522). Magento says its global clients process more than $50 billion in online sales annually.
Magento has been busy as of late. This summer it bought e-commerce analytics platform RJ Metrics and has since renamed it Magento Analytics. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. In late 2015, it launched Magento 2.0, a major update to its e-commerce platform. And in April Magento debuted a cloud-based e-commerce platform option for the first time. Retailer clients now paying for Magento’s Enterprise software and the 230,000 merchants who use the free Community edition must pay for, and transition to, Magento’s latest 2.0 software in order to obtain the cloud service.
Magento spun off from eBay Inc. in November, and acquiring RJMetrics is the first of many steps planned to beef up its services for retailers, says David Geisinger, head of product marketing. Magento has added 300 new paying clients that use the more robust Magento Enterprise edition since becoming an independent company, he adds.
Magento acquired RJMetrics in response to its customers asking for more granular analytics than they were getting with Google Analytics, Geisinger says. RJMetrics, founded in 2008, had about 300 clients at the time of the acquisition. And its first client was on Magento’s e-commerce platform. “It’s a natural fit,” Geisinger says.
Advanced capabilities in the new Magento Analytics include marketing tools that can help retailers continuously tune and optimize campaigns and allocate marketing spend; merchandising and shopping insights that let a retailer dig into the performance of an individual item; page, placement, promotion and channel performance; and multibrand and cross-border analytics. Magento Analytics displays data in an easy-to-read visual dashboard designed for a business user rather than a technical user, Geisinger adds.
“Google Analytics was too high-level for many of our clients,” Geisinger says. “Magento Analytics brings together data from a variety of sources and it doesn’t require you to be a developer to use it.”
Magento moved quickly to leverage its new analytics tool. In August, it launched a cloud-based Holiday Dashboard tool—which will be optimized for users of Magento’s e-commerce platform but also can be used by retailers on other platforms. The dashboard is designed to allow e-retailers to get to know their customers better by identifying the sources of their most valuable holiday customers—online advertising, social media, email, direct mail—and the best times to email their customers. Prior to being acquired, RJ Metrics offered a similar dashboard product for more than two years.
Having better real-time customer data allows merchants to make data-driven decisions about marketing, inventory and other aspects of their business, says Anita Andrews, head of customer success and professional services at Magento Analytics. And that can help them avoid the two traps that online retailers typically fall into during the holiday rush: engaging in reactive holiday campaigns to boost sales—which often means discounting merchandise—and waiting until after the holiday season before launching campaigns to retain new customers.
Working fast to retain customers during the holidays is important, Andrews says, because, according to Magento’s research, 39% of holiday shoppers who make a second purchase do so during the same holiday season. Wait until January to reach out and you might lose them, she says.
Read more about Magento and other top e-commerce technology and service providers in the 2017 Leading Vendors to the Top 1000. Available in PDF and database formats, the publication provides information on market share of top vendors (PDF only), number and type of Top 1000 e-retail clients served (both formats), product and pricing data (both formats), vendor profiles (database only), corporate information and top executive contacts.
Subscribers to the Vendors to the Top 1000 database on Top500Guide.com can access profiles and rankings of all 1,807 technology suppliers in 30 categories. The PDF version of the Leading Vendors report profiles the top 10 companies in each category and includes in-depth analysis of key trends shaping e-commerce technology shifts.
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