49%.
That’s the percentage of online retailers that listed ecommerce platforms as a top three investment priority in the coming year, according to an August Internet Retailer survey of 183 retailers, the No. 1 response.
Retailers are investing in platforms because ecommerce sites are arguably the most important technology for online retailers. They are the foundation of an e-retail business. For shoppers, the ecommerce site is the face of a retailer and for merchants, ecommerce platforms need to be easy to work with, modify and customize. And they need to function—without fail.
Consumers are buying products and services just about everywhere today and merchants want help from ecommerce platform vendors to capture those sales. In fact, 90% of retailers planning to switch ecommerce platforms plan to use an outside vendor for their new sites.
However, launching or re-platforming an e-commerce site can be costly. In fact, in the Internet Retailer survey, of the 21% surveyed who plan to move e-commerce platforms, 37% plan to spend more than $100,000 on the project and 10% plan to spend $500,000-$1 million. Merchants shelling out such ample funds want a site that is flexible and easy to change when needed. The good news for e-retailers is that there are a lot of vendors clamoring for the dollars those retailers intend to spend on platforms. Ecommerce platform providers are launching a slew of new services and tools to appeal to online retailers that want help managing this critical piece of their businesses. Meanwhile, new philosophies and approaches to building and maintaining ecommerce sites, such as microservices, hint at a whole new chapter in ecommerce platforms that may bring about unprecedented agility and flexibility.
For the latest news you need to stay on top of the changing ecommerce platform market, check out Internet Retailer’s just-released 2019 Guide to Ecommerce Platforms. This year’s guide is chock-full of data, including: data on pricing, client sales, key new features from platform vendors and a ranking of the top ecommerce platforms by the number of Top 1000 online retail clients they have. This year’s report also includes data from two exclusive Internet Retailer surveys of both merchants and consumers about ecommerce platform experiences and more.
Here is what you get in this 66-page PDF report:
- Data from an exclusive survey of 183 e-retailers about their platform plans and experiences
- Ranking of the top ecommerce platforms by number of Top 1000 online retail clients
- Key new features of top platform vendors added in 2018
- 8 charts revealing trends and data on ecommerce platforms from merchants and consumers
- Data on ecommerce platform vendor pricing, offerings and client sales
- Summaries of each of the top ecommerce platform vendors
- A clear explanation of a microservices approach to building an e-commerce platform and much, much more.
The 2019 Guide to E-commerce Platforms is available to Digital Commerce 360 Gold and Platinum members as part of their paid memberships. Single-copy sales are available for $299. Get the report now.
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