Developing an E-Commerce Website with Magento

Using the Magento platform to build e-commerce websites is becoming common practice. More than 500,000 downloads speaks to its popularity and to the growing community supporting it. Magento is arguably the most customizable of all e-commerce platforms, with a multitude of plug-ins available to meet virtually any business requirement. In today’s blog we’ll cover some key features and a few considerations developers should keep in mind when deciding if Magento is the right platform for building an e-commerce website.

What is Magento?

Magento is an open source CMS (Content Management System) that helps businesses expand their operations into the online marketplace.

What makes Magento a popular platform for e-commerce developers?

Magento is powerful, flexible, scalable and easy to customize. Additionally, it produces complete website functionality, from content to design to operation. With a comprehensive set of features and a wide variety of available plugins for the e-commerce market, Magento helps businesses of all sizes manage their online operations. Examples of some well-known corporations that have used Magento to build their e-commerce websites include Coca-Cola, Ford, Fox Connect, Warby Parker, and Nike. Because it’s open-source software, Magento users can customize their websites with non-proprietary extensions. Furthermore, Magento offers powerful marketing, search engine optimization and catalog-management tools.

Questions to consider before building an e-commerce website

Website development takes a lot of time and effort no matter the platform. Before starting an e-commerce website project, be sure you’re clear about your requirements and ask yourself a few important questions.

What do you want customers to do when they visit your website?

This may seem like an obvious question, but a surprising number of business owners don’t answer this important question. To answer it, you should talk to the designer and your customers about your website objectives. If the main goal of your e-commerce site is selling the products online, you might concentrate on stressing the design of the product, how it attracts customers and encourages them to click on that “purchase” button. If your main objective is encouraging customers to subscribe to your blog or to increase website traffic, the design will need to accommodate this.

Who is your audience?

This is an important question not only for e-business but offline businesses as well. Determining targeted customer groups will help you build the most effective strategy. Knowing the desires and interests of your target customers help you design a better e-commerce website.

Are you willing to maintain and update your website?

Will you able to actively manage your website and regularly provide visitors with fresh content? Some think that once the site is up and running, it’s done. There’s no need to waste time on building content because the products will sell themselves. This is a big mistake. A good e-commerce website is not static or passive. Having fresh content will both encourage customers to visit your website and improve your search engine rankings. Google loves updated websites! It will rank your site higher in a customer’s search results versys a stagnant website that is not consistently updated and refreshed with new content.

So is Magento the way to go?

Every e-commerce platform has its own characteristics that can make it more (or less) suited for the needs of a specific e-commerce project; Magento is no different. Listed here are some important considerations in deciding if Magento is the right platform for your e-commerce project.

Two different versions

Magento offers two different editions: Community and Enterprise. Each version has a dedicated feature set to best suit different applications, and each is unique in terms of support, scalability, performance, management tools and available features. Therefore, it’s important to research each and compare them to determine which best suits your e-commerce needs. If you find the features and benefits of Magento compelling, make sure the developer you hire to build your e-commerce website is knowledgeable about the platform and can help direct you choosing the version of Magento best suited to your specific needs.

Highly customizable themes

Building an elegant and attractive website is critical in attracting online buyers. With the support of Magento, you can find thousands of easy-to-use themes and designs for a fully customized site and unique customer experience.

Payment methods

Online payment is the must-have function for an e-commerce business. With Magento, you can easily accommodate popular payment methods such as PayPal, Amazon Payment, SagePay, etc., and there are extensions available that can reduce the payment process to a single click. Customer convenience is a huge driver of repeat business, and encourages new customers to make purchases.

Magento Custom Extensions Development

For an e-commerce site to attract and keep customers, optimizing the user experience (UX) is critical. The Magento store provides competitive advantages over other e-commerce platforms with supported extensions like One Step Checkout, SEO extensions, Multi-Store View Pricing, Wholesale Fast Order, Defer JavaScript, and more. By working with an experienced web developer you can easily customize all aspects of your e-commerce site.

Conclusion

Using the right development platform is critical in ensuring a successful e-commerce website, and for more and more businesses, Magento is the platform of choice. Better ROI, higher sales, increased traffic and greater customer retention are just some of the benefits of getting it right. Having the right development partner is the other critical part of a successful endeavor, and if you would like more information about a project you might be considering, Adamo Software is always at your service.