From small businesses to commercial giants, taking your business online is highly advantageous due to its round-the-clock availability, efficient customer service options, and wide-scale global reach. More importantly, many people prefer shopping online these days, with the increase of eCommerce sites changing the nature of shopping altogether. Moreover, the consumer decision-making process suggests people search for information (nowadays, online) before making their final purchase decision, so why not give customers the opportunity to research and purchase from a single location?
Once you have conceptualised an online store for your commercial business, it’s time to choose a platform. Today, there are many open source, e-commerce platforms available to choose from, however most web developers will tell you there’s no beating Magento due to its feature-rich in-built functionalities and user-friendliness. In addition, Magento development features include user dashboards, a CMS option, inventory management, product bundling as well as exceptional shipping and supplier management.
The fact that it is open source simply refers to the way Magento development allows you to modify the source code, add features and adjust the functionality by installing ad-ons or plug-ins. This is vital for eCommerce platforms because the scale and nature of eCommerce businesses varies greatly depending on product offerings, the scale of operations as well as customer service requirements. For example, a small online fashion boutique varies considerably from that of an online grocery store, with vastly different outputs.
Magento is user friendly because it has a number of features that give customers an enjoyable buying experience online. Magento development capabilities allow for effective layouts with simple navigation, zoom-in functions, multiple product images, as well as product reviews. By incorporating such features into your eCommerce site, customers are likely to both make a purchase and return to your website for further purchases, significantly increasing your overall conversion rate.
Magento is also incredibly fast compared to that of their competing eCommerce counterparts. This is a critical point of difference due to the fact that over 45% of today’s web users expect sites to load in less than 2 seconds. If a website doesn’t load in this time, most people simply close the web page and move on to competing brands. Magento development not only allows for a number of ad-ons and inclusions, it does so without impeding the loading time, giving businesses a chance to grab, and subsequently hold the attention of online visitors.
And last, but certainly not least, Magento is built for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Making your websites as SEO friendly as possible is important in optimising you eCommerce sites in online search engines such as Google and Yahoo, which is a critical point in the buying process for a majority of consumers nowadays. The Magento development process for SEO is simple and easy, as it spares you the effort of creating SEO optimised URLS, site maps, meta tags and more, by having these features built right in.
Magento is a brilliant open source platform for eCommerce, with powerful in-built features that, with the right guidance from experienced developers, can become your business’s biggest asset.
