What Are the Top Industries Among Magento CE Users?

Choosing the right eCommerce platform to power their business is one of the hardest decisions a merchant has to make. There are so many options, and so many factors to take into consideration, all of which are of immense importance, since the platform is literally the backbone of any online store.

Any help with that tough choice is welcome, so why don’t you seek it in the experience of your peers? And while the list of notable users of Magento Enterprise Edition is widely available from the official website, the Community Edition is a different story. The total number and variety of Magento CE stores exceed those of the Enterprise Edition by great margin. In fact, there are entire industries that choose Magento Community Edition for one reason or another!

We’ve conducted a research using Alexa data, and identified 9 industries that hold the notable shares of world’s entire Magento CE stores pool. And while the exact reason to go with Magento CE is still unique for each given merchant, there are obviously some common strengths of the platform that make it specially usable for (and, consequently, popular with) these industries.

So, who choose Magento CE and why? Let’s find out.

 The leader is pretty obvious – respectable 24% of Magento Community Edition stores sell Clothing and Accessories. It doesn’t come as much of surprise if one recalls how popular Magento Enterprise Edition is with the fashion industry. Popular to the extent where it became reasonable to introduce a dedicated section for fashion stores to Magento Enterprise official site.

But are there any objective reasons for that, besides merchants’ blindly following the flock? We may have some plausible answers.

First, in 99% of cases, clothing stores have huge catalogs. A t-shirt available in 4 colors and in 4 sizes actually comprises 16 separate articles. 5 colors and 5 sizes give us 25 different items, etc. Not only Magento CE can handle any number of SKUs, it also comes at no extra cost – whereas some Magento’s rivals (specifically SaaS platforms) require subscribing to the most expensive plans to handle such extensive catalogs.

Another reason is representation convenience – with the Magento’s native Configurable products, an end-user can select the appropriate product options without any hassle.

With 12% share, the 2nd biggest industry among Magento CE stores is Furnishing. Again, that can be attributed to the ease of products setup and management. The Grouped native product type allows ordering the sets composed of several individual pieces, as well as any of these pieces separately – which quite aligns with how people typically order furniture.

The other distinguishable industries take up 4 to 6% each, and again, that can be reasonably explained.

Jewelry and Gifts (6% share) and Cosmetics (4%) – what do these two have in common? These kind of sites just have to be nice-looking! (At least, more so than webstores of any other kind) Women, who care about their appearance, are the core audience of jewelry and cosmetics outlets. And, they are equally demanding towards the appearance of a webstore. Magento’s deep design customization capabilities and the vast selection of ready-made design packages make it really easy for a merchant to achieve the pro-level site look.

Sport Products outlets (6% share) can make really great use of Magento’s flexibility. Sporting goods are diverse and include anything from nutrition products to (again) clothing. Being able to effectively list and categorize such varied articles within the same website is a good reason to rely on Magento CE.

Food and Beverages take a 5% share, and this time, the likely reasoning is very different. The nature of the products here implies covering the local market – you wouldn’t order a pizza delivery from a different state after all, would you? Being able to actually host your website on that little buzzy box in the corner, without paying for a dedicated server, works perfectly well for small food delivery businesses.

Medicines (5%), Electronics (4%) and Children’s Products (4%) – why would we bulk hose three industries? Because of their high reliance on SEO and on-site search. Think of it that way: your 2-years old kid won’t be ordering diapers online himself – YOU will be doing it. And, you are likely to just type it in the search bar and pick one of the top results. Surprisingly, the same shopping pattern applies to highly specialized goods like electronics, medicines or, say, car parts – you aren’t picking a headlight that you like better, you are picking the one that fits in your car! With its excellent SEO capabilities and multi-attribute search, Magento CE makes up for a great choice here.

Of course, if your business is none of the listed types, it doesn’t mean Magento is not good for you, and the remaining 30% serve a solid proof to that. But if you are on the list, your decision might just have become way easier.