Magento ecommerce platform is one of the 3 leading eCommerce platforms in the world right now, and there’s a host of factors which have contributed to its success. It represents a truly powerful way to get your online business on the fast track to generating revenue and delivering an outstanding customer experience. Of course, Magento isn’t the only option on the market, so how can a business owner who wants to go digital make sure they choose the best eCommerce solution for their needs?
If you’re looking for a website that is incredibly secure, robust and scalable, easy to use on the client side and offers excellent options for running various marketing campaigns, flash sales and loyalty programs, look no further – Magento is the right choice for you. Let’s take a deep dive and see what Magento can do for your business, and what premium options it offers.
Magento is a very powerful and comprehensive open-source eCommerce platform built on extremely strong foundations, which allows it to be scaled anywhere from small dedicated shops to mass marketplaces counting hundreds of thousands of items. It’s used by some of the most recognizable brands around the world, such as Coca-Cola, Nike, Ford, Omega Watches and Asus, and it brings a wide range of integration options and templates to help you differentiate in the vast online marketplace.
Even the best things evolve, and Magento has done just that. Magento 2 is the next step in Magento’s growth and it brings several additional benefits while retaining all the qualities that made many a Magento agency favour this platform in the first place.
Magento 2 builds on its predecessor by delivering more speed and volume, as well as improved SEO friendliness across the board. You should be able to get 30-50% faster loading speeds with Magento 2 pages, and process close to 40% more orders each hour – this is especially important for high-volume shops.
Magento comes in 3 forms:
Open source gives you all the tools and features which a small business needs, and allows for future integrations and addons. Some of the core features include integrated checkout, payment and shipping modules, promotion options, mobile commerce, product search and browsing, SEO infrastructure and the ability to set up customer accounts.
The Adobe enterprise package is built on the same open source as the free edition, but comes with a host of additional features available to the user. Some of the most used and beneficial ones are bespoke catalogues, buyer controls and rights, live chat, business intelligence dashboard (with visualization and custom report builder), loyalty tools such as coupons, product suggestion and the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) page builder. It’s ideal for bigger enterprises with a large-scale presence.
Finally, the Cloud option enables you to reap the full benefits of being hosted on AWS – it provides merchants with a managed services infrastructure, top-notch security, great performance, easy integration with popular frameworks and continuously maintained scalable web storefronts.
Depending on your needs (security level, shop size, overall volume and number of visitors, and ultimately your budget), the Magento palette offers amazing value at every level. If you plan to engage an eCommerce agency to help you build your shop, make sure you communicate both your short-term and long-term vision to them so that you can make the best choice in terms of complexity and scope.
Regardless of what Magento option you go for, you’ll be able to reap the following benefits:
1. Advanced SEO Magento’s SEO features enable e-businesses to improve their product page ranking by optimizing URLs and keywords, adding image tags, using snippets and developing a sitemap. All of this feeds into your website’s organic ability to emerge at the top of the search results and give you a broader audience. 2. Flexible content managementThe Magento platform is built for excelling at eCommerce performance from the get-go, which is why its CMS is very adaptable and well-designed. It scales beautifully with the size of the store and works seamlessly regardless of the type of business it powers.
3. A huge palette of extensionsMagento leads the pack when it comes to the number of extensions and addons. These extensions enable you to improve the features of your Magento store as you grow. A great example of this would be adding chat support once your web shop starts picking up steam and you need to improve your sales and support performance. There are different categories to choose from, such as marketing, accounting, analytics, sales, shipping, payment and customer support, to name just a few.
4. Amazing securityIn addition to following the best global security standards when it comes to eCommerce, Magento is also fully compliant with Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS). This means Magento covers 14 mandatory data-related protections in its operations by default, which is incredibly important for larger companies dealing with customers on an international scale. This includes secure payment processing, credit card privacy policies and much more. If your audience is highly demanding when it comes to security, then Magento brings the perfect goods.
5. Plenty of hosting optionsMagento enables eCommerce shops to choose the right hosting company which best suits their needs, no questions asked. This gives each e-business and their go-to Magento agency all the freedom they desire when it comes to retaining ownership of files and building custom hosting arrangements to keep the business running as smoothly as possible. Of course, if you need help with finding the perfect Magento hosting in the UK, reach out and we’ll be more than eager to help.
6. Fast loading speedsAlthough it might not be the fastest-loading eCommerce platform in every range, Magento does a tremendous job of being equally quick to load on web shops offering 1 thousand and 100 thousand (and easily more) items alike. As search engines continue to factor in web page loading speeds as one of the ingredients which impact a website’s overall rating, Magento positions itself as the best pick for anyone whose e-business has a high volume of traffic. Moreover, Magento 2 brings this speed to the next level, which is another reason to opt for the next-gen in this case.
7. Multi-website supportRunning several online stores becomes easy with Magento. You can host and control dozens of websites from just one backend admin panel with ease, enabling you to have a much better overview of sub-brands and other structures which constitute your overall online business enterprise. Magento’s tremendous CMS platform is a fan favourite of virtually every eCommerce agency which works with complex clients who employ multi-tier shops.
8. Language and currency supportWith Magento, you get easy access and full support for dozens of international currencies, which is very important for companies who do business across the globe. Directly linking into this, the platform also offers dozens of languages by default, so you can set up your business in pretty much any region of the world without having to resort to paid language packs or external support.
9. Third party integration optionsAs your business evolves and the interactions on your website require more complex plugins, addons and integrations of your platform with other sources of data, having the ability to perform this without any problems becomes crucial. Since Magento enables every single store to be customized, this gives you flexibility to link into ERPs, CRMs, POS and accounting solutions and other data hubs to better control your business.
10. Huge volumesMagento’s core architecture allows you to handle numerous simultaneous requests with ease, which essentially makes Magento the weapon of choice for anyone who wants to build a large-scale business.
11. Top notch mobile performanceShopping trends are moving massively to the mobile space and this is a dual function of both demographics and general tech convenience. Everyone has a smartphone nowadays and you can’t afford to have people leaving your website because it hasn’t been optimized to run perfectly on mobile devices. Magento enables a seamless user experience with cross-platform and cross-browser compatibility, making it perfect for delivering your value to your customers in any form needed.
12. Super-intuitive marketing and loyalty programsThe impact of well-timed promotional efforts on your website can often make the difference between a decent and an outstanding business result. Magento makes it very easy to run various discounts, marketing campaigns and promotions, and loyalty program incentives to drive your sales and maximize your return on marketing investment.
Based on everything you just read, Magento seems like a clear winner, right? But before you charge blindly into building a Magento-based web shop, we feel obligated to share a piece of wisdom with you: Magento indeed works amazingly if – and only if – it’s been carefully set up from day one. If you happen to end up with a Magento website which was built using shortcuts, ad hoc actions and limited funds, chances are you’ll end up in a world of hurt if you suddenly feel the need to conduct any major changes. In most cases, you’ll simply need to invest into a completely new site, and that comes with a big price tag. To avoid this, make sure you take the time to find a dependable and reputable Magento agency from the start in order to make full use of Magento’s strengths and suffer none of its downsides.
Of course, if you have any questions or you’re interested in hearing how we can help you build a tremendous Magento or Magento 2 eCommerce website, don’t hesitate a minute to get in touch.
