Next, I will introduce some alternative tools for building your own website for novices or small sellers.
Shopify.
Shopify is the most popular self-built website system in the world. It was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Canada. It is a shopping cart system in the SaaS field. Users can use various themes or templates to build their own online stores on it by paying a fixed fee. Shopify entered a period of rapid development after 2010 and was listed in the United States on May 21, 2015.
Although Shopify’s key markets are in Europe and the United States, Shopify has also made some investments in the Middle East market. For example, in July 2016, Payfort, a local payment gateway in the Middle East, signed a cooperation agreement with Shopify, allowing Shopify’s Middle Eastern sellers to use Payfort’s payment service.
But overall, Shopify still has many problems in localization in the Middle East. For example, product prices are displayed in US dollars, and logistics prioritizes FedEx and DHL. If local logistics is selected, the process will be very cumbersome.
These problems have led to the emergence of many companies around Shopify, such as Creative971, a Shopify agency headquartered in the UAE, which provides website building services for e-commerce sellers. On local job search websites in the Middle East, you can also see many freelancers specializing in Shopify website optimization.
Magento.
Magento is Shopify’s biggest competitor. After the news that it was about to be acquired by Adobe for US$1.68 billion in May 2018, Shopify’s stock price immediately plummeted.
Magento was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Los Angeles, USA. In 2011, it received strategic investment from eBay and became a part of eBay; in 2015, eBay reorganized and Magento became independent again.
Unlike Shopify, Magento is an open source Web project. Shopify uses a wizard mode when registering, and users can easily complete the design of the store, but Magento is more complicated and requires experienced developers to operate.
Compared to Shopify, Magento pays more attention to the Middle East market. Since 2015, Magento has held relevant industry conferences in the Middle East every year to attract Magento-related technology providers and developers to participate. Many well-known e-commerce companies in the Middle East are Magento customers, such as Ounass, a luxury website under the Middle East fashion giant Al Tayer.
ShopGo.
ShopGo is a local e-commerce service system in the Middle East. It was founded in Syria in 2012. After the civil war broke out in Syria, ShopCo moved its headquarters to Amman, the capital of Jordan. In 2015, after receiving investment from investment companies Wamda and 500 Startups, ShopGo set up an office in the United Arab Emirates.
ShopGo is similar to Shopify, providing customers with the technology, logistics, payment and other services needed to open stores in the Middle East and North Africa. Customers can build their own online stores without technical and programming backgrounds.
Ecomz.
Ecomz is also a local startup in the Middle East. It was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon, with branches in North America. Its users can design their own websites for free, or pay for multiple themes, multi-language and currency support, search engine optimization and marketing tools.
Arabic platforms Zid and Salla.
Zid and Salla are both startups in Saudi Arabia. Unlike Shopgo and Ecomz, the backend language of these two startups is Arabic.