There is a lot more that goes into developing a successful eCommerce business than you think. Having an eCommerce website is constant work, and if you don’t choose the right platform, you can do more work than you need.
Choosing the right eCommerce store development platform can be perplexing, especially with the different options available. There are somewhere between 12 million and 24 million eCommerce sites worldwide fighting for users’ attention. And if you fail to build the right website for your business, there is no way you will be able to sustain yourself in the fiercely competitive market.
Factors To Consider When Selecting An Ecommerce Platform
Integrations
The kind of integrations and plugins an eCommerce store development platform offers is an important consideration factor. Most of the platforms will offer tons of tools useful for you to run the business. Your business requirements will decide what integrations and plugins are useful for you. When exploring various platforms, consider the tools that you’ll need or already use. Following are the key plugins that you must look for:
- Email marketing tools to efficiently communicate with customers.
- Accounting plugins to make sales, revenues, taxes, and profits seamless.
- Apps to help with product shipping
- Tools to help in rewarding your customers for buying your products.
Security
29% of the traffic that you receive on your website is harmful to your business. And the security of eCommerce websites is rapidly becoming a matter of concern with growing cyber-attacks. People are not ready to share their information on sketchy websites.
Therefore, adhering to property security features has become non-negotiable. Although most modern software comes with advanced security standards, ensure that the platform you choose supports HTTPS/SSL. Additionally, the eStore development platform should comply with Payment Card Industry (PCI) guidelines and offer data backups.
SEO Compliance
Since millions of eCommerce websites are out there, you have to work your fingers to the bone to stay visible. And, search engine optimization is an important process that ensures brand awareness and visibility. On the first page, the first five results get 67.60% of the overall clicks. An effective SEO strategy will ensure that your customers can locate you when they are searching for products that you sell.
Scalability
As a business owner, you work towards the growth of the business in the future. Therefore, the eCommerce store development platform you choose must have the scalability to accommodate your business’s growth. Moreover, there is no point in paying for storage space and features that are not useful for your business right now.
However, you want the option to upgrade the feature to cater to the rising demands when your business starts to grow. So scalability is a factor that an efficient online store development platform must provide without charging high fees.
Customer Service
Factors like server downtime, software outages, etc., are not in your control, but they prevent your customers from accessing your site. Even for a second, the inaccessibility can cost eCommerce business owners highly, and it impacts not only your revenue but also how customers perceive your brand.
Therefore, you need someone to call up in such critical situations and get the ball running again in no time. So the kind of customer service an online store development platform offers is a factor that you should thoroughly access.
Pricing and Payments
Whether you are a small business or an established offline business starting its online journey, you must know how much you will pay. Generally, eCommerce store development platforms charge monthly fees. Additionally, the cost tends to vary based on the features you have selected. You must also factor in the processing feels when deciding the budget.
Make a list of all the features your business needs and ensure not to compromise on them for a lower price. Don’t forget to evaluate the quotes provided by various e-commerce providers and choose the one that caters to your needs most efficiently.
Why Magento Store Development will be a Good Choice For Your Retail Business?
When you choose Magento store development, your business enjoys a wide range of benefits that include:
-
A Powerful Platform
Magento is a powerful eCommerce platform that features an intuitive user interface and a rich set of tools. It allows you to create professional-looking websites with ease, making it a good choice for beginners and professionals. With its powerful administration panel and built-in search engine, Magento store development is the best choice when it comes to setting up an eCommerce store that can accommodate all your business needs.
-
Cost-Effective
Magento has a basic open-source edition. This means you don’t have to pay license fees or subscribe to any service plans for using it. You can even modify the core files if required, making Magento store development a cost-effective and flexible option compared to other platforms that come with expensive licensing terms and charge hefty monthly subscription rates.
-
Magento is Versatile
Magento offers a flexible eCommerce platform that can be easily customized to suit your business needs. The modular architecture of Magento allows you to add any functionality, from integrating social media channels and user reviews on the website to adding blogs and forums for interacting with customers in real-time. Its easy-to-use interface makes it an ideal choice for online store development that can accommodate all the features you need for your business.
-
Flexible
Magento is a completely flexible and customizable platform. It provides you with a great opportunity to create any layout for your website, allowing you to choose the best design that fits your brand personality. This flexibility makes it easy for businesses of all sizes to create a unique eCommerce storefront on the platform.
-
Customizable
Magento is a CMS and can be customized as per the need of your business. It is suitable for businesses of any size. Moreover, the templates can be customized as per the need and requirement.
-
Scalable
Magento store development offers scalability, allowing it to be used by any size of business. The scalability makes it easier for the merchants to add features as per their needs. You should opt for the Magento enterprise edition to go big in the eCommerce industry with ease.
-
SEO-Friendly
Magento provides the advantage of search engine optimization, speed and flexibility to your store. The built-in SEO capabilities will help you build a website that users can easily find through searches on major search engines like Google or Bing. With higher rankings, more visitors are likely to visit your site, which leads to an increase in sales
-
Vast Community
Magento doesn’t require any licensing fees; this means you can access the source code and modify it to suit your needs. It has a huge community of developers, consultants and companies that are working with it. There is an enormous amount of resources available to help you out if any problems arise during your store development process or afterwards when using the platform.
-
Speed
Magento is lightning fast. It’s built on top of the powerful Zend framework. It uses PHP as its programming language, which means that system resources and performance can be optimized very well, unlike some other eCommerce platforms where you have to install third-party plugins or extensions to improve their speed.
-
Security
Magento is designed to run on a secure server. It’s very hard for hackers and other malicious people to break into your store and steal sensitive data stored in the database, such as credit card information or users personal details. Additionally, it comes with powerful tools built-in that can be used by developers who know how to use them to make sure that Magento is as secure as possible.
-
Mobile-Friendly
Magento is mobile friendly out of the box. Some other eCommerce platforms need to be optimized for mobile devices. This takes time, which means you have to hire a developer or company with the experience to do it properly without having any issues afterwards. However, if your website runs on Magento, it’s already optimized for mobile devices, and you don’t have to do anything.
-
Content Management
Magento is a very organized platform. It has an effective content management system that helps you add or edit the text and images on your website right from one place, making it easy for all users, including the beginners and experts of Magento. So if you have some unique product descriptions, don’t worry about adding them to a separate page. Magento has a feature that allows you to add content in different languages and make it available for the audience from various regions.
-
Powerful Inventory Management
Magento has efficient inventory management features. You can keep track of the items you have in stock to make it easy to plan for future orders. If your business deals with different products and services, the platform makes it convenient to manage them all at once.
-
Multiple-Site Management
Magento offers an easy to use multi-site management system. This is a great choice for setting up and running multiple stores with the same platform. It does not require a separate code base or customizations, allowing retailers to manage all their sites from one place.
-
Advanced Reporting
Magento provides you with a powerful reporting tool that allows you to track your website’s performance. It is built on an open-source platform, allowing developers to create custom reports for enhanced functionality and value. You can get frequent updates from the developer community regarding new features within the application which are easy to implement.
-
Advanced Integration
Magento has several features that offer advanced integration with different software and applications. It does not need any coding to integrate the third-party apps as well as it is compatible with most of the ERP, CRM or other commercial tools.
-
Advanced Search Filtration
The platform’s search function is one of its best features, and it can be used to find items using multiple filters, making it perfect for retail businesses with many products in their catalogue. The platform also comes with a powerful search algorithm that can be fine-tuned to suit the type of products in your catalogue.
Understanding Magento Edition
The open-source edition was called Magento Community Editions and was released back on June 24th, 2008. As the name suggests, this open-source platform is accessible for free. It means that you can get the software code, edit and host on your server. Additionally, depending on your requirements, you can expand the feature by including new plugin modules. Magento Open Source will be a great solution if you own start-ups or small businesses.
Magento Commerce
This was launched on April 15th 2009, as an Enterprise Edition. Within this edition, you can choose two versions that include Magento Commerce (On-Premises) and Magento Commerce Cloud (Hosted)
Magento Commerce (On-Premises)
Previously known as Magento Enterprise Edition, it is a robust on-premises variant that pimples that you must manage the hosting at your end. You can host the site on your server’s cloud through a reliable software-as-a-service provider or with a hosting server. You will have to employ a committed team to manage the configuration, technical support, troubleshooting and maintenance. So, Magento Commerce is suitable for conglomerates that already have in-house teams of developers.
Magento Commerce Cloud (Hosted)
Previously called Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition, it is the latest product launched with Magento 2. The SaaS solution is hosted on the customer AWS-base cloud hosting infrastructure of the platform. In the cloud edition, you get all potentials of Magento Commerce without the efforts you have to put into self-hosting. There is no need to fuss about networks, servers or cybersecurity.
Conclusion
Magento is a popular eCommerce platform that has been used by many online retailers to power their websites. It can be easy to get lost in the sea of options available for website building, but the popularity means it offers solutions for everyone.
Do you want to build a powerful ecommerce store with a Magento store within 2weeks? You can rely on our eCommerce store development services, and we will help you develop a personalized Magento store that caters to your needs.
