Shopify Statistics – Data about the Most Popular eCommerce Platform

Updated · May 20, 2023

“You’ve got the will. We’ve got the way.”

That's Shopify’s motto. Simple and motivating.

If you want to do business, but lack the tools – Shopify is your new best friend. No, not Spotify, SHOPify.

Yep, today’s topic is Shopify statistics.

Now, let’s demystify Shopify right from the get-go.

Shopify is a platform with all the necessary features for a successful business. It handles both the ecommerce and point of sale sides of the process. It lets you start from scratch without being an expert.

Shopify is a hosted solution, which means less work for you – you needn’t worry about buying web hosting or installing software. If you’d like to avoid dealing with these things, Shopify deserves a place on our website.

Moreover, it offers a lot of apps and customizable themes so you have a lot of space for freedom and creativity.

Most importantly, Shopify has a long list of clients affirming its reliability: GitHub, General Electric, CrossFit, Foo Fighters, Tesla Motors, Amnesty International, and Encyclopaedia Britannica are only some of them.

Some impressive names on this list, right? Let’s take a look at a few Shopify statistics and find out why that is. We’ll start “easy” on you – the journey through Shopify stats begins now.

Rich Shopify Statistics 2022 (Editor's Choice):

How many Shopify stores are there, actually?

There are more than 800,000 stores powered by Shopify.

So it might not be surprising that:

  • Last year, Shopify made over $1.5 billion in sales during Black Friday. This meant 10,978 orders per minute and peak sales volume per minute of $870,000.
  • 87% of merchants use the Shopify App Store, and they have 6 apps installed on average. Expectedly, the App Store has generated over $100 million in revenue.
  • Shopify Inc. raised $131 million in its IPO (initial public offering). Less than 3 years later, it had a market cap of $10 billion and was similar in size to Twitter Inc.
  • Shopify has paid over $850,000 to more than 300 ethical hackers for help in resolving security issues.
  • There is a 126% average year-over-year growth for Shopify Plus merchants.
  • Shopify is simple to use, affordable and customer-friendly. They back the latter claim with their 24/7 customer support via email, live chat, and phone.

Want more? Here are the rest of the Shopify facts and stats:

How Big Is Shopify?

  • It is the third top ecommerce platform with a market share of 20%.

What is the number of Shopify users?

  • Currently, 427,676 websites use Shopify, while 5,300+ businesses use Shopify Plus.

How many merchants in total are on Shopify?

It’s nothing short of incredible how many people use Shopify.

  • Well over 1 billion orders have been processed on Shopify so far, with total sales for merchants of more than $55 billion.

More Shopify income stats:

  • Total revenue for 2018 was $1.073 billion, while the revenue for 2019 is expected to be between $1.48 billion and $1.50 billion.

Shopify IPO

  • Shopify Inc. raised $131 million in its IPO (initial public offering). Less than 3 years later, it had a market cap of $10 billion and was similar in size to Twitter Inc.
  • Now the stock has grown by 600% since its IPO.
  • Shopify’s estimated share price at the time of writing is $279.00.
  • From 2013 to 2016, revenue from merchant services increased from 20% to 50%.
  • Last year Shopify’s paying customers grew 55% from the previous year.
  • There is a 126% average year-over-year growth for Shopify Plus merchants.
  • According to Shopify’s financial report, its total revenue in the first quarter of 2019 was $320.5 million, a 50% increase from the first quarter of 2018.

Shopify Demographics

The leading countries in terms of Shopify users are:

  1. China
  2. United States
  3. France
  4. Australia
  5. Russia
  6. Canada
  7. Germany
  8. United Kingdom
  9. Japan
  10. South Korea

Shopify attracts and is used by all kinds of people – from students to merchants, from mom and pop stores to seven-figure businesses. Some examples of the latter are Nestle and Pepsi. Sounds delicious.

Other top brands using Shopify are Budweiser, The Economist, WaterAid, Gymshark, Sunday Somewhere, Penguin Books, Tesla Motors, Red Bull, Foo Fighters. So basically anything from beer and energy drinks through books and newspapers all the way to cars, music, and fashion.

Some Shopify Traffic Stats

  • According to Shopify’s statistics, 66% of sales during Black Friday Cyber Monday 2018 took place through mobile.
  • In 2014, mobile accounted for 50.3% of all traffic. Fast forward to the first quarter of 2019, and 79% of traffic and 69% of orders on Shopify stores were coming through mobile devices.
  • Some of the conversion rates from various traffic sources were the following: email 4.38%; direct 4.35%; search 3.60%, and social 2%.

Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus is the enterprise version of Shopify. It offers various improvements over the “basic version,” such as higher level of customization, the ability to add more staff accounts, and lower transaction fees.

These are basically Shopify’s high-rolling clients. Here are some insights about them:

  • There are currently 5300+ businesses on Shopify Plus.
  • Merchants generate from $1M to $500M+ in sales.
  • There are 10,149 peak orders per minute.
  • There is a 126% average year-over-year growth for Shopify Plus merchants.

Shopify Apps

Shopify apps hold a big part of the platform’s power. Any article about Shopify would be incomplete without mentioning some facts about their app store.

The most used applications are:

  1. Privy – over 6100 reviews
  2. SEO Image Optimizer by Booster Apps – over 3200 reviews
  3. Free Shipping Bar by Hextom – about 3000 reviews
  4. Sales Pop – 2600+ reviews
  5. Loyalty Reward Points by Sweet Tooth – around 2500 reviews

The vast app store with numerous apps and tools, as well as many customizable templates and themes definitely enhance Shopify.

What’s more, some companies use Augmented Reality to enhance the customer experience further. For example, Lacoste offered the possibility of trying on clothes virtually. Over 30,000 users engaged with the app.

Moreover, here are some apps that help boost sales:

  1. Boost Sales
  2. Growave
  3. Rewards and Referrals by Swell
  4. Mailbot
  5. Printful

Shopify Themes

  • There are over 100 Shopify themes.
  • Porto was downloaded by more than 40,000 ecommerce sites.
  • Ella has over 270 reviews and more than 6,000 sales.
  • It is possible to get $1000-$4000 in revenue from themes.
  • The Partner Economy, revenues earned by partners through themes, apps, and services, was $430m for 2016.

Shopify POS

More than 70,000 retailers used Shopify POS in 2017.

Shopify and Security

Security is important for any platform with Shopify’s ambitions and influence.

  • Shopify has paid hackers more than $850,000 for helping secure its $55 billion-plus customer transactions and data.
  • 3 years ago, Shopify suffered a DDoS attack.
  • Security experts have found Spotify to be vulnerable to RFD attacks.
  • They battle fake users and scammers daily.

Social Selling on Shopify

Shopify stores make good use of social media traffic – mostly from Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

  • Facebook is unsurprisingly number 1 as a source of social traffic and sales. Almost ⅓ of all social media visits to Shopify stores come from Facebook.
  • Facebook has the highest conversion rate among all social media ecommerce traffic – at 1.85%. A mindblowing 85% of orders come from Facebook traffic.
  • 29,000+ stores have been actively selling through Instagram since the launch of the sales channel.
  • 30,000+ merchants have installed Facebook Messenger for their shops.

Shopify Affiliates

Affiliates can be a delightfully profitable way of generating revenue with little effort. Naturally, Shopify has done its part to provide that option to store owners.

  • In 2018, Shopify paid more than $100 million to partners – up from $79 million in 2017.
  • Affiliates earn an average of $58 for each user who signs up for a paid plan and $2000 for each Shopify Plus referral.

Now, Shopify store owners wouldn’t be able to enjoy the income its affiliates provide – if it weren’t for the awesome affiliate apps available for the platform.

The top 3 best affiliate Shopify apps that have helped make the platform what it is today are:

  • ShoutOut
  • LeadDyno
  • Refersion

Shopify Conversion Rates

Not all Shopify templates are made equal. Some just work better to convert traffic into sales. And the best converting Shopify templates for 2020 are:

  1. eCom Turbo
  2. Booster Theme
  3. Konversion Theme
  4. Shoptimized Theme

Of course, just because it has worked for those businesses, it doesn’t mean it’s the one for you. Still, that list might give you some ideas if you’re trying to optimize your conversion rates.

Here are some more stats along the same lines:

Email marketing, quite expectedly, is ahead of the curve. It allows you to add a personal touch to the communication with your audience – which results in more trust and better conversion rates.

Another part of the formula is the amount of traffic your Shopify store is getting. An average conversion rate of 3.04% from search is still better than most – and it only makes sense for you to take advantage of that.

One way to increase the traffic you’re getting from search engines is through Shopify’s SEO apps.

Along these lines – here are some of the best 2019 Shopify SEO Tools and Apps you can use in your business:

  1. Plug in SEO – used by 86,000 store owners
  2. SEO Managers – costs $20/month with a 7-day free trial
  3. SEO Doctor – $10/month with a 5-day free trial

Big Shopify Sales

Last year, $1.5 billion got spent during Black Friday.

This meant 10,978 orders per minute and peak sales volume per minute of $870,000.

Sales on Black Friday are always much higher than on Boxing Day. This is only logical – we don’t have infinite supplies of cash. However, there’s still a peak in sales on Boxing Day compared to other times of the year.

What Industries Use Shopify?

There are more than 800,000 stores powered by Shopify. It is a leading ecommerce platform with POS and warehouse management as well.

Here is the distribution by industry:

Industry Number of Companies
Retail 12534
Apparel & Fashion 6772
Wholesale 3999
Restaurants 2853
Consumer Goods 2521
Health, Wellness, and Fitness 2285
Food & Beverages 1873
Computer Software 1180
Furniture 1161
Design 1100

Can’t get enough? Have some more Shopify statistics:

  • According to Shopify’s 2018 Third-Quarter Financial Report, Subscription Solutions Revenue increased by 46% to $120.5 million.
  • Merchant Solutions Revenue grew 68% to $149.5 million.
  • According to Shopify stats 2019, Shopify’s Monthly Recurring Revenue for Q1 of 2019 was $44.20 million, which marks a 36% year-over-year increase. In terms of yearly revenue, Shopify’s grew from $101.10 million in 2017 to $146.60 million in 2018 – a 45% increase.

Key Benefits of Using Shopify

Alright, so we’ve raised a bit of fuss about Shopify. Everyone and their dog now know Shopify is a big deal – the numbers say so. Still, just because a lot of people have found value in using the platform, it doesn’t mean it’s right for you.

Well, I’ll leave you to decide for yourself. Here are some of Shopify’s key features:

  • Quick and easy to use – the platform takes care of web hosting and coding issues, saving you time and expenses that would otherwise be related to the development
  • Reliable – has 24/7 customer support via email, live chat, or phone
  • Customizable ready designs
  • A big app store with apps for everything; even though Shopify doesn’t qualify among the best blogging platforms, it allows for decent blogging efforts through its SEO and marketing tools
  • Affordable

Primary Alternatives to Shopify

Although they’re not the focus of this article, there are several solid ecommerce platforms that are worth mentioning.

  • Squarespace
  • LemonStand
  • 3dCart
  • BigCartel
  • Volusion
  • WooCommerce
  • BigCommerce
  • Magento
  • Wix
  • Weebly

Shopify Customer Service

Shopify offers a 24/7 customer support service you can reach in a number of ways. They’re not all equal, though.

You might enjoy a different response time, depending on your choice. They are as follows:

  • live chat – 30 seconds
  • phone call – 2 minutes
  • Twitter – 7 minutes
  • email – 10 hours

Shopify has achieved a 90% satisfaction rate among its customers.

eCommerce Websites Using Shopify

Here we’ll see the best performers on the platform.

Top Shopify stores 2022:

  1. Budweiser – $11+ billion in annual revenue; 500 employees; $7+ billion in sales
  2. Tesla, Inc. – $11+ billion in annual revenue; 45,000 employees; so far in 2019 nearly 16,000 vehicles sold in the US
  3. Red Bull – $7+ billion in revenue; 11,886 employees; 6.28 billion euros worldwide sales for 2017
  4. Gymshark – $128 million in revenue; 215 employees; $100m sales 2018
  5. Rebecca Minkoff – $91+ million in reported revenue; 146 employees; $100m sales

Top-grossing Shopify stores in 2021 were:

  1. Gymshark
  2. Kylie Cosmetics
  3. Fashion Nova
  4. Luxy Hair
  5. BestSelf Co.
  6. All Bird
  7. Bulletproof
  8. Ugmonk
  9. Tattly
  10. Happiness Abscissa

Those were the key Shopify facts for 2022.

I hope you liked these Shopify statistics and found them useful.

Sources

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Nick Galov
Nick Galov

Unaware that life beyond the internet exists, Nick is poking servers and control panels, playing with WordPress add-ons, and helping people get the hosting that suits them.