Ecommerce Trending
Thought this Google Trends chart was interesting. Pulled the chart to support a 2014 plan to create a new suite of publisher tools and an expansion of how merchants can profitably use crowdfunding and crowdsourcing to drive profits up and costs down.
When I see a chart like green line representing crowdfunding it is a starting gun confirming a trend. Magento being large and in charge doesn't surprise me. Magento is such a powerful open source ecom solution that they are all but rollling up the space.
This chart does look differnet for USA only (Magento isn't as strong here as in Europe). Shopify and Volusion's trends are interesting too. I've used Magento Go, Shopify and Volusion and prefer Shopify for UI simplicity, Magento for ecommerce power and haven't gotten deep enough in Volusion to have an opinion.
ANY GO option where you use their templates, business rules and platform favors the platform provider now and forever, so be aware if you are planning to do $1M or more in online sales "GO" options won't work well.
If you are NOT planing to scale your website into more than a million in sales a GO option may be just the perfect low cost ecommerce option. Here is my Magento Go Store to sell my stuff to help fund our Story of Cancer Foundation:
http://storyofcancer.gostorego.com/
