Why choose Magento as an ecommerce platform?

If you follow our blog regularly you probably remember that my last post was dedicated to Sitecore CMS. This time I decided to represent for your review one more powerful at the same time arguable CMS – Magento. Magento as well as Sitecore CMS is meant to build big things but this time in the world of ecommerce: helps to create online stores.

As the field of ecommerce is tending to grow and develop continuously IT solutions try to meet the needs and offer the best solutions to make it extremely innovative, make the managing process easier for holders and of course attract as many customers as it is possible. There are many CMSs for this purpose like PrestaShop, OpenCart, osCommerce, phpShop, Spree, nopCommerce and others. The choice of CMS depends on what kind of eCommerce/business you intend to go on. You need to take into account such aspects as the size of your firm, whether you haveB2B, B2C or you’re retail, what management system you use or you will use ecommerce platform for that, connection of you websites with other sales channels, your programming skills: PHP, .NET, etc.

So as you may see there are many CMS available today, the choice depends on what type of business you have and type of software you use. Nevertheless, beyond the rich variety Magento is considered to be one of the front runners.

Almost all claims that Magento is rather complicated system as it is built on Zend framework; however has a lot positive aspects. Generally it is characterized as big, complicated and powerful CMS/platform that provide excellent and multiply options to grow you website.

Magento is also very serious CMS and there is no doubt that it is not for everybody. It is tool for professional rather than for amateur.

-It rather complicated to use and work on it for its coding style, so be prepared to spend/charge from your development team twice more hours than usual. Also if you’re not experienced in coding or working with this CMS we would offer to hire skillful developer/development team with proven past experience to help you with that. Based on our experience working with Magento you should be prepared that the development process could take much more time as you will need to learn all the curves that CMS has.

• Magento is extremely powerful offering a wide range of customization options. It is easy-editable gives an opportunity to improve the code regularly by making updates and fixing bugs. And what is important here is that code itself doesn’t require any changes!

• One more aspect is the rich variety of features that makes Magento so flexible. Let’s now review the key features of Magento:

• International support – multiple languages and currencies, list of allowed countries for registration, purchasing and shipping, localization;
• Site Management – control of multiple web sites, multiple languages.
• Catalog Browsing – easy navigation, advanced product filtering system, product comparison.
• Catalog Management – inventory management, batch import and export of products, different tax rates per location, additional product attributes.
• Analytics and Reporting – integration with Google Analytics and offers different reports.
• Payment – different payment methods: credit cards, PayPal, Authorize.net, Google Checkout, ePay, etc.
• Marketing Promotions and Tools – – coupons, discounts and different promotion options.
• Encryption Key – security storage of the sensitive data in the script’s database.

It is also scalable and it grows with your business. That’s the point why it is mostly recommended for mid to large size vendors.

Additionally it should be said that Magento team offers 24/7 live support. Of course it is not super fast but at least it works and you never know when you will need immediate help. Moreover it has video tutorials, good knowledge base, webimars, user guides and support forum. As Magento has three versions the opportunities of each version differs: Community Edition (downloadable version, you will need to find hosting and security for your store), Magento Go (cloud based of hosted Magento CE, preferably for small retailers) and Enterprise one, the last is complete ecommerce solution, fully supported and it is not cheap. Here it should be noted about technical support: Community version has an access only to the forums that are not so active mainly because Magento is relatively new and don’t have yet many followers. So there is no guarantee that you get an advice you need.

And at last as Magento is open source CMS it is free and you don’t spend your money to download it. But you will need to invest if you want to have store live.

At the same time (there is always the other sideJ) there are gaps (that make this platform a bit vulnerable and look unfinished) that need to be improved too. We have a made a short list of them:

• Slow – Many reports that the software is clunky and suffers from slow load times.
• Expensive – Even it is open source and free it will end up costing you after you add up hosting, security, and developer fees.
• No Customer Support – Magento CE users have no access to technical assistance with the exception of a forum.
• Requires Coding Experience – it requires users to have technical skills and experience in order create and launch stores. It is not for amateurs or hobbyists.

Some more aspects to consider:

• Confusing and hard to learn.
• Difficult to implement templates.
• Not much themes to choose.
• Software updates don’t work always properly.

To use Magento or not?

In my opinion Magento is proved to take one of the leading positions and has potential to save it. It has many positive aspects and if your business is well developed and you have large list of items to put online, you need to consider Magento and invest money in it. But of course be prepared for serious work with all the curves if you don’t have much knowledge in programming or take care to choose the development team wisely. And certainly don’t forget about tech support, Magento CE don’t have it.

In case you still considering whether adopt Magento for your business or not, feel free to share your personal experience with us leaving your comments below or contact me directly if you need assistance with your ecommerce shop to discuss the details.

Thank you for your attention!