Last year, 54 percent of new online stores in the Netherlands were created with Shopify. In France, that share came to 49 percent and in Spain, it was 41 percent. At the same time, the share of Prestashop among new stores has dropped in these countries.
These data come from research by ShopRank, an ecommerce intelligence platform which tracks more than 15 million stores across 400 platforms. For this report, the company analyzed 324,000 new European online stores.
Most new online stores on Shopify
The report shows that last year, 148,044 new online stores were launched on Shopify in seven major European markets (the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, France, Poland, Germany and the United Kingdom). In that same period, WooCommerce got 99,140 new online stores. And on PrestaShop, 9,747 new shops were launched.
WooCommerce decreases in some markets
While PrestaShop had a large market share in Southern Europe, this seems to have decreased among new businesses. Last year, in France only 5.4 percent of new online stores were PrestaShop. In Spain, that share came to 6.4 percent and in Italy it was 3.9 percent. However, that does not necessarily mean that the company has lost its market share in these countries. There are still a lot of stores already running on this ecommerce software.
WooCommerce’s share among new store has increased in several markets
WooCommerce has dropped 8.9 percentage points in new stores in the Netherlands last year, and decreased 5.3 percentage points in Italy. In Spain, the decrease was smaller, with 1.3 percentage points. At the same time, there was an increase in the amount of new online stores on this software in Germany, of 4.5 percentage points. In Poland it increased 4.2 percentage points and in the United Kingdom, the increase was 2.2 percentage points.
‘PrestaShop built for local businesses’
ShopRank has also analyzed the domain names of the new online stores. On Shopify, a majority of 48.1 percent of new stores chose a domain on .com. And most local domains, like .de or .fr, are on PrestaShop (61.3 percent).
‘New brands opt for Shopify and existing brands expanding to an online channel choose PrestaShop’
According to the researchers, this indicates that PrestaShop is a platform built for businesses that operate on a local level. It also shows that new DTC brands who want to operate cross-border, choose Shopify with a .com domain. At the same time, physical stores that are launching an online channel choose WooCommerce and PrestaShop.
