The roads are deserted now. The streets bustling with life and trade have become a ghost town. People are suffering in ways beyond what we could foresee, shut indoors, devoid of any communication, physical touch, or warmth of daily life. It seems that men will be masked precariously till perpetuity. The world seems to have come to a halt. Such is the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic. It has disrupted lives and the economy worldwide in an unfathomable way. But since life finds a way to sprout even in the darkest and coldest environment, even after the apocalypse, humankind has moved on and not adapted to life post- Covid. The digital scape has become the principal mode of living, with every entity making a presence on the digital platform. The importance of the web is more pressing than ever before. This has changed the dynamics of commerce and E-commerce Website Development In Dubai. In this article, we will analyze the upcoming developments in the paradigm of E-commerce in the post-Covid market. 

In consequence of the pandemic induced acceleration in digital transformation, E-commerce Web Designers in Dubai have experienced swarming demand from goods store owners to transform their trade and take it to build their presence on the digital domain. This trend is evident in E-commerce’s global retail trade share, 14% in 2019 and 17% in 2020. Other affiliated domains have also undergone much development in E-commerce like cashless payment methods, browsing mediums, cyber security, and more. In addition, there has been around a 300% rise in products related to hygiene and wellness. The same amplification can be observed in selling shelf-stable goods, digital streaming services, luxury goods, home enhancement appliances, food and beverages, nutrient supplements, etc. and everything that is instrumental in living indoors for a prolonged period. 

Let us look at some E-commerce development entities that have observed a significant length of germination in the pandemic period because of the change in the business spectrum.

(1) Magento 

Magento is an E-commerce website platform. It is an open-source hosting platform and written in PHP. Later the software was acquired by Adobe in 2018. In 2020, Magento witnessed a rise in sales to almost USD 220 billion. As a result, its market share has also increased from 9% to 13% and captures the market second to Shopify. 

Development of Magento 

As per the 2021 statistics, at least 200,000 developers are creating stores and plugins on Magento. The reason why Magento Developers flood the market and more amateur developers are grasping it is that it offers over 11 languages. Big brands like Samsung, Ford, Landrover, Liverpool, Nestle Nespresso, and many others have relied on Magento for their online presence. On the other hand, Amazon makes its sales through Magento only. Presently Magento hosts 170,000 websites which are 1.4% of all the websites present on the web, and 250,000 merchants across the globe. Furthermore, the E-commerce industry owes 10% of its revenue to Magento since it handles over USD 100 billion in gross merchandise each year. Ironically people have looked up “Magento” more than the term ‘E-commerce’ itself.

Features of Magento: 

Magento has several features that keep it ahead in the game like, 

• In-depth features and expansive backend interface
• Exceptional customizing and expanding capacities 
• Standard SEO tools inducted
• Handy and effective store-front
• Responsive and lively themes
• Smartphone friendly checkout and easy layout

(2) Shopify 

Shopify is a Canadian multinational E-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. It is a subscription-based platform to create a website and use its shopping cart solution to sell, ship, and manage its products.

Development of Shopify 

In 2020, Shopify made sales to 44 million customers. 94% of organic traffic, visitors tend to stay in Shopify stores for more than three minutes. According to Shopify Experts, such time is calculated to promise a visitor’s conversion into a customer. The same reason leads to Shopify having a conversion rate of 1.6% in 2020, and the mighty figure of USD 2.86 billion for 2020 speaks for itself. It records over 1 million users and a market share of 18%; the E-commerce giant touched its billionth order way back in 2018 only, with over 7000 gargantuan companies running their website on Shopify. Thanks to smartphones and cheaper internet, Shopify can compel around 79% of its traffic through mobile with its smooth and user-friendly, well-laid interface. 

Features of Shopify 

There are many features of Shopify that fare very well: 

• Ready-made integrations 
• Strong performance analytics
• Effective content marketing
• High level of flexibility
• Multiple themes to enhance store 
• Built-in CMS
• One can choose from more than 100 gateways 

(3) WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an open-source E-commerce plugin for WordPress. It works well for small to large-sized merchants operating on WordPress. Post its launch in 2011, WooCommerce became popular quickly, majorly for two reasons. One for its simplicity in installation and customization and the other for the market position of the base product as freeware. 

Development of WooCommerce

By 2020, WooCommerce made sales worth 20 million in 2020 and a market share of 27% in 2021. During the pandemic, WooCommerce reported sales worth 20 million in 2020 and became one of the top leading websites with a 9% market distribution. It has recorded 123 million all-time downloads; it runs 93% of WordPress websites. When taken into consideration, this is a whopping number, with WordPress having more than 455 million websites. In addition, one can find across 2500 plugins in the WooCommerce directory and CodeCanyon. Back in 2018, WooCommerce run stores made billions of dollars.  

Features of WooCommerce 

The reason why WooCommerce can capture the market significantly is that it offers:

• Thousands of designs and templates
• It is free and open-source, where any merchant can sell their services combined with flawless shipping and payment gateways. 
• WooCommerce wizard helps one build a complete and adequate E-commerce store, even if they lack knowledge of the technicalities and languages.

(4) PrestaShop

PrestaShop is another open-source E-commerce platform, written in PHP language and supported by MySQL database management system. It envisions providing the best shopping cart experience for both merchants and customers. It is centralized on the idea that third-party modules could quickly build upon their foundations, making it an extremely customizable E-commerce software.   

Development of PrestaShop

PrestaShop powers the backend of 0.33 million websites and, therefore, records 3% of the market share in the E-commerce industry. It has more than 4500 websites in Alexa’s top 1 million websites, covering 16% of retail and 6% of retail stores. In addition, it runs influential brands like Apple and Starbucks, among many more. 

Features of PrestaShop

Even though PrestaShop is an open-source, cloud-hosted E-commerce software and is free, it charges extra for add-ons to enhance the site’s functions. Furthermore, it has, 

• Over 250 features 
• Perfect for carrying retail and wholesale business
• SEO friendly features 
• Mobile responsive templates
• Abundant modules
• Compatible will all primary payment services
• Translated in many languages and localized for many countries 
• Fully responsive design (at both front and back-office)

(5) OpenCart

OpenCart is decreed as the easiest and powerful, Open Source, PHP based online store management system that is able to manage multiple online stores from a sole back-end. All that one has to do is fill the forms in the administrative area and save them, and their OpenCart store is ready to receive orders. Because of the popularity, there are abundant resource sources and comprehensively written extensions available that enable customization as per the needs of the business. 

Development of OpenCart

OpenCart dominates 6% of the market share and more than 30814 companies are using this software to run their digital presence. OpenCart in UAE is popular for its free and low-cost template sites. Being free does not hold back the elemental functionalities and therefore companies like SEO Inc, QA Limited and Confidential Records Inc. rely on OpenCart for their website management. 

Features of OpenCart

OpenCart has many features which make it simple to learn and interface friendly like,

• Unlimited categories
• Supports multi-currency
•  Multilingual
• Product reviews and ratings 
• Has more than 8 shipping methods
• Tools for backup and restore
• PCI compliant
• Extendable templates with designs 

Hereafter trends in E-commerce Industry:-

Certainly, post-Covid, the dependency of business over the digital interface will not be the same as before the pandemic. It has taught an all-new consumer behavior with the influx of home-delivered services. Therefore, consumers and by large populace will not compromise on their comfort anymore, throttling the market more competitive and consumer-oriented. Furthermore, with the uncertainty of the pandemic and life after that, business owners would also conveniently choose to commence business online and curtail the expenditure and complications of a physical establishment. 

Hence, it can be concluded that with these observations, the future of the E-commerce industry is bright in the post-Covid market, and if your business has not yet entered the digital fabric, then where are you?  

James Montano