Irma D. Rutherford What do Warby Park, Harvey Nichols, Samsung, Olympus, and Nike all have in common? Magento is the platform that powers all of their websites. Magento is used by over a quarter of all ecommerce websites in the world.
There are many platforms on which to build websites. There has been an explosion in plug-and-play ecommerce platforms over the past couple of years. Shopify, Volusion, and BigCommerce are just a few of them. You can choose from any store that you want.
What makes Magento special in this sea of options? Why is Magento so popular among developers who build e-commerce websites?
Magento Is Open Source
Community Edition is the most popular, as it is open-source and has the most active and largest developer community of all ecommerce platforms.
Magento is available for free download and installation. Magento Connect Marketplace allows you to install and customize extensions. You can also modify the source code in any way that suits the website you’re building. Magento Connect is also the largest ecommerce app marketplace in the world.
The developer community regularly upgrades platforms, and security flaws are found and fixed. This makes it extremely secure from an ecommerce perspective. You can opt for the Enterprise Edition if you want even higher standards of security. It comes with a Secure Payment Bridge and PCI Data Security Standard.
You can easily and for free use the forums and large developer community to find troubleshooting.
Freedom to choose hosting service
Magento lets you choose the hosting provider you prefer, unlike other platforms made specifically for e-commerce, like Shopify and Volusion. It allows you to keep costs low and switch hosting services easily if your current one is not working.
Magento Go is the perfect solution for those who still require the convenience and benefits of a hosted Magento platform.
Magento does not penalize you for growing bigger.
Users of other ecommerce platforms complain about the cost of adding new features to their sites. Magento is open-source, so this issue doesn’t exist. You can add as many parts to your website as you like without spending any money.
A platform’s limitations on the number and types of products and product lines, as well as SKUs (stock-keeping units) that can be displayed and uploaded, are another problem. Your e-commerce provider will charge you more and more as your store grows. Magento is free in this area.
Magento will expand and grow with you at no extra cost.
It’s Easy to Integrate Third Party Applications
You may want to simplify your life by integrating ready-made plugins or apps that add new features to your website instead of having to code each feature yourself.
In other ecommerce platforms, the integration of third-party apps is completely under the control and responsibility of the service provider. You can only use the apps they let you integrate, and there are often hefty fees associated with the process.
Magento’s extensible interface allows you to connect with any app or plugin. Find the app you want and integrate it with your Magento website in no time.
Modular and Customizable
Different e-commerce companies come in all shapes and sizes. What may work for a fashion retailer might not be the best for a seller of hardware and power tools. The same goes for the size of an operation, customer service needs, etc. In the e-commerce world, there are different challenges.
Magento, as an open-source platform, is expected to have a high level of customization and modularity. Magento is a slick platform to work with if you have the right coding skills.
The technology is extremely flexible, allowing you to create beautiful front-end experiences for your customers by plugging or modifying layouts and templates. Rewriting code and modifying grids and events can make backend workflows rock-solid and tailored to your business.
Fast
Today, 47% of web users expect that a website will load within 2 seconds. If it takes longer, they will close the tab. Each customer who leaves your site without purchasing makes a dent in the overall conversion rate.
You would need a platform that loads quickly, allows you to cache pages, and still lets you have all the bells, whistles, and features you want on your ecommerce website.
Magento offers you all of these features and more. You can cache pages using Varnish. It will retrieve data in milliseconds from huge databases.
Built for SEO
We all know that it’s important to make your website as SEO-friendly as possible. We all know how tedious it is to optimize every aspect of each web page for SEO. It can be more difficult for large ecommerce sites with hundreds or even thousands of pages.
Magento will save you time and effort in creating SEO-optimized URLs, meta tags and descriptions, URL rewrites, and site maps. It also includes navigation, category and navigation structures, and site maps. All of these features are already built into the source code, which saves you time and effort while still making your site search-friendly.
Go Mobile from the Word Go
In January 2014, 66.8% of US consumers owned smartphones. Americans spend more time on their smartphones browsing the internet than they do on desktop computers.
It has never been more important to have a mobile-optimized site. Magento’s HTML5 capabilities make it easy to create mobile-friendly websites. Magento provides audiovisual and drag-and-drop capabilities, gesture-based controls, and image scaling for different screen sizes.
Multi-Site Management with a Common Backend System
Magento allows you to run multiple websites using the same backend system. This is different from almost all other ecommerce platforms, open source or not.
Each website can be designed and laid out differently with its store. Each site can have a different domain. Magento allows you to manage all sites simultaneously from a single admin panel. This is an excellent feature for ecommerce businesses that operate in several niche categories.
Go International with Magento
The number of foreign visitors to US online shops is increasing. They come from Europe, Asia, and Australia. They are more loyal and spend more per visit than domestic visitors.
Most websites do not accept international currency payments, which means that the number of global users is not growing as quickly as it could. Magento can help you solve this problem. It supports multiple currencies, tax rates, and languages. You can customize your site to local languages and use right-to-left text.
Magento is a powerful e-commerce platform that offers everything you need to run your site efficiently. It allows you to display products, conduct online transactions, provide customer service, and manage all backend processes. It’s not an e-commerce plug-and-play platform. You will need to have some coding skills in order to create the site.
As we have already mentioned, there is a wide range of platforms on which new ecommerce businesses can build their website. Others need some work, but others are ready to go. Plug and play comes with features you can take or leave. As your site gets bigger, it becomes more expensive. Open source and custom-made options, such as Magento, give you more control over the design, features, and future extensibility of your site. They also keep costs low in the long term.
It is important to understand your current and future needs and choose the best platform for your business.
