Introduction
Great businesses are not only built on user experience alone, but robust infrastructure and framework also plays a significant role in the success. When any business plan to go online, especially an online store, they most daunting task for them is to find the right CMS to host their products. When we say CMS, we are referring to platforms that are designed to host and deliver products on clicks of users.
A big worry for online store merchants is not to sale products only, but to have them hosted on a right platform also. We see that many online store owners post different questions related to which CMS should be suitable for their store. A few big names like WordPress, BigCommerce, Shopify, Magento and Volusion becomes the limelight of many suggestions. Now the question is; which one is the best platform to host your products on, and what is the difference between the ones we just mentioned? The answer is pretty simple – all the CMS we referred above are best, however, the use and specialization may vary. Every CMS has been built for specification, and it will not be justified if we rank any, based on a general, or specific criteria, that don’t fall in the category.
So, what’s the most ideal choice for ecommerce store owners? MAGENTO, WHY?
According to Alexa study, only 34 percent and more than 2,40,000 online stores are powered by Magento. It falls in the category where a developer with intermediate knowledge of operating the platform can handle it like a piece of cake. Now, you questioning about the credibility of Magento platform, and want to dig into the features and scalability it offers, right? Like many others, you must be thinking “Why you should I choose Magento for your eCommerce store?”
Read on below as we are going to tell you about the great features that come with Magento platform and how can you make your ecommerce store more powerful with this CMS.
Magento Amazing Features for All type of Online Store owners
Storing a catalog is not an easy job to do, right? But Magento has all the required features to cater inventory of any size. If we talk about the list of features Magento offer, we would dive into the ocean of extensive offerings it has made public. No doubt Magento is a bit pricey, but as they say ‘Not everything comes for free’, it perfectly suits on Magento. Among the top features, Magento provides an easy way of Search Engine optimization which helps you through the rankings of your store, and all the coupon codes are managed in very easy and convenient way. All the things are included from marketing point of view to the customer segmentation in this platform. The list is endless but we have listed some of them that are:
- All marketing, promotion and conversion tools
- Site, order and catalog management
- Catalog and product browsing
- Store credits and private sales
- Gift registries
- Checkouts
- Payment and shipping
- Mobile commerce and persistent shopping
- Private sales
- Customer services and accounts
- International support
- Analytics and Reporting
- CMS and RMA
- Backup and Rollback
- Full page caching
- And much much more……
The list has everything your business demands, right? Well, that’s the magic of Magento, it is one stop shop solution for all the ecommerce merchants. We are sure you have already decided to host your ecommerce store on Magento. Though Magento will give you countless reasons to choose the platform, we have compiled list of some top reasons why choosing Magento for your ecommerce store is a MUST for your business now.
8 Reasons Why You Should Choose Magento for Your Ecommerce Store
As discussed earlier, all the platforms have their pros and cons, but for ecommerce, we would give Magento an over any other platform. Below you will find ten reasons why Magento platform is the only right choice for ecommerce stores.
1. Ease of Use with Magento
Simplicity works in general, and could add value if tech platforms are built for layman also. Thanks to developers who built Magento, it is quite reasonable to be used by the developers with intermediate knowledge of frontend. Developers who used Magento find the interface easy to user because every functionality is available in the dashboard. You can easily navigate to different tabs to find all the details related to customers’ information, product catalog, and many others.
2. It gives you full control
Magento offers developers and merchants full control over front and backend of their eStores, which means that you can fully customize your ecommerce store. This is really useful for store owners who want to replicate a customized version of their store, so to add more value in the user experience. By default, Magento like many other platform comes with certain limitations. With full control feature, you are all free to apply as many changes you like and beautify your store with extensions, plugins and development.
3. Magento is free and open source platform
Yes, it is free! As Magento is written on PHP, it makes the platform open source and to the reach of everyone. It is the choice of many developers and merchants worldwide, as the code is very simple, and it won’t take much time for someone to understand and customize the platform. With lots of contribution from the community, Magento has great functionalities that make it the right choice of all the ecommerce merchants. Despite of the free version, Magento also offers different pricing based on the size of your store. Checkout the available from the Magento site. We are going to tell you about each of them.
- Community edition (CE): Magento community edition is free of cost and still the developers have full control on all the information and other things. And the merchants or store owners can also control and design the logic and design of their store’s. So if you want to use a platform for free or if your e-business have a shoestring budget then do use the community edition of Magento platform.
- Enterprise edition (EE): Magento EE costs for about $18,000 per year (enterprise business solution) for large size businesses. However, Magento Enterprise edition requires some advance technical knowledge, so you’d need to request for a quote to get the actual pricing based on the size of your business. Yes! It is much costly indeed… But Magento’s possibilities are endless. So in many cases, it is worth paying some extra bucks.
4. Magento designed Themes, Templates and Designs
Magento.inc don't sell templates directly, but if your website demands ready-made templates, then you can have it on Magento Connect Store. It has all the modern pre-built templates that can be used by ecommerce site owners. Note that most of the templates available in the library are free, however, premium templates and themes can also be found at a price. With premium versions, you will get variety of advance features that are not limited to the free version. For more options, you can also visit ThemeForest where you can find bulk of Magento themes with prices ranging from $60 up to $100 or may be higher. We would advise you to see each theme/template in detail to understand what features are in the offerings. This would help you in lining your ecommerce store goals and get the right design ready for your website.
5. Magento community is engaging
Magento community is extremely helpful as they always keep faith on customer support, and always help others to overcome the issues they experience. The community involves all the users, store owners, merchants, Magento platform developers and all the service providers. During the setup of your store these are the source for your support. You will always find a community member ready to fix the issues and take you through the process.
To get updates with the latest happening in Magento, you can have a look at Magento forums where you will find all the current and how-to articles. On the forum, you will also find news about the latest events Magento is hosting. You may look at the recent Meet Magento meet up hosted by Magento.
You may also read a very interesting article by Sherrie Rohde, a fellow Magento community member and Magento Community Manager at Magento Inc. The masterpiece “How to Get Involved in the Magento Community” will give you access to the learning how you can involve and get the most from the Magento community.
6. Magento automates and control Marketing and SEO
On other platforms, you might need to call external tools to add value in your marketing objectives. However, with Magento platform, you get everything hosted in the platform. It is amazing that from email marketing, promotional widgets and coupons, you will get everything inside the platform.
As we know that Search Engine Optimization is an essential pillar of the digital world, and for an ecommerce store it holds the same value. By default, Magento enables all the required SEO elements that can give a lift to your website. In case you need to use advance features for your SEO activities, you can easily disable the default SEO check, and replace it with a new one. In addition, Magento comes with pre-installed Google Sitemap, which will act as an advantage for you by providing the search engines the required knowledge of the products your store offers to your customers.
7. Security is not an option in Magento, it is a MUST
Security is something that can’t be compromised, right? Well the good news is that Magento is always concerned with security and privacy of its users. By default, your Magento ecommerce store will have all the necessary security checks installed. However, to add an additional layer of security, you can install SSL certificate and to go through a two-step verification process to secure the backend of your website.
Hundreds of big websites were compromised due to DDoS attack. Additionally, all the Magento stores have to be PCI compliant in order to run the operations smoothly. A PCI compliant Magento ecommerce store guarantees that no information will be shared to any third-party entity without their consent. To learn more, you may refer to Magento Security Center where you will find all the relevant information.
8. Magento Extensions and Functionalities
Magento offers variety of pre-installed features that are quite amazing. However, if you are in need of customized extensions and tools, then good news is that you can still have it. How? There is a huge collection of extensions available in the market that can increase the functionalities of your store and can make it more robust. The best of the extensions include Magento’s “shopping cart” or “one-page cart” and many others.
Conclusion
Magento is undoubtedly an ideal solution to rely for your ecommerce business. From standard to advance customization features, you get everything with Magento platform. So if your next business goal is to start an ecommerce website, then go no further and download Magento today and explore the nonpareil features offered by Magento for ecommerce businesses.
We managed to cover all the significant reasons why Magento should be your choice for ecommerce stores. Let us know if we have skipped any feature or reason that you use, and is highly recommendable to the other community members.
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