The Best E-Commerce Platforms: The 2023 CRM Industry Leader Awards
THE MARKET
Research firm MarketsandMarkets valued the worldwide e-commerce platform market at $7.1 billion today and expects it to reach $13.5 billion by 2028, growing at a compound annual rate of 13.8 percent.
These platforms enable online merchants to create, populate, promote, and maintain their online stores, manage transactions with online consumers, and then deliver post-sales customer support when necessary. They incorporate marketing, sales, content management, fulfillment, billing, subscriptions, search engine optimization, an integrated shopping core, inventory management, and analytics.
The latest technology innovations center on augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence-powered personalization, mobile commerce, omnichannel integration, voice commerce, data security, cross-border trade, and growing use by smaller businesses, according to MarketsandMarkets.
THE TOP FIVE
Adobe Commerce, a rebrand of Magento, which Adobe acquired in 2018, handles roughly $100 billion in gross merchandise volume per year. It allows users to create unique shopping experiences with out-of-the-box features, unlimited customizations, a flexible headless architecture, and seamless third-party integrations. The full-featured solution comes with quoting, custom catalogs, reporting dashboards, chat, advanced marketing tools, a product recommendations engine, a page builder, customer segmentation, loyalty tools, content staging, visual merchandising, and more. And now Adobe is looking to bolster the product with generative AI capabilities through its new Sensei Gen AI and Firefly engines.
Oracle-NetSuite’s SuiteCommerce platform offers a complete solution for web store, order management, inventory management, and accounting. It powers thousands of online businesses and provides a host of capabilities, including site search, SEO optimization, and features to engage shoppers, increase conversions, and improve average order values. “NetSuite’s integration with [enterprise resource planning] and CRM and its high usability make it an attractive choice for SMBs and larger businesses alike,” says Rebecca Wettemann, founder and CEO of Valoir.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud processes $21 billion in gross merchandise value each year and supports more than half a billion individual shopper site visits each month. Salesforce is bolstering Commerce Cloud with Einstein GPT technology, combining AI with real-time data from the Salesforce Data Cloud to automate and tailor recommendations. Other recent Commerce Cloud innovations will help merchants build personalized experiences on any commerce platform and design custom-tailored promotional offers with personalized auto-generated messaging over WhatsApp, SMS, and email. “Salesforce has continued to invest in building out Commerce Cloud and make it faster and easier to deploy for customers,” Wettemann says. “The ability to embed Salesforce Commerce Cloud capabilities at any customer interaction point reduces friction in the commerce process.”
Originally named Hybris and acquired by SAP in 2013, SAP Commerce now reportedly manages more than 3,600 live stores. SAP continues to develop, integrate, and position the platform in the SAP landscape. Analysts and customers like its simplified buying experience, context-driven capabilities, AI engagement, and the ability to connect supply with demand. This year SAP grew the platform’s capabilities through integrations with Contentful’s Composable Content Platform and Coveo’s AI Search and Recommendations platform.
Shopify continues to be one of the largest and most versatile e-commerce platforms. The Canadian company powers millions of online businesses in more than 175 countries, holds a nearly 20 percent share of the total market, and in 2022 handled a gross merchandise value of $197 billion, so it’s no surprise that CRM vendors have been lining up to partner and integrate with it. In just the past year alone, it fielded integrations with Klaviyo, Nextech AR, Cloudinary, Andromo, Balance, Aftership, Brightcove, Mitto, and Bloomreach. But even without its extensive partner ecosystem, Shopify is the most robust platform on the market. Its summer ’23 release featured more than 100 updates, including an AI assistant for generating content, its own business credit card, a product sourcing collective, and a connector for online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.