Magento is a software solution for creating pro­fes­sion­al web stores. The open source system was launched in 2008, with eBay taking it over three years later in 2011. In 2015, the cor­por­a­tion sold the ownership rights to the British company, Permira. The pro­duc­tion was carried out by the company of the same name, Magento Inc. (formerly known as Varien). As Magento’s core files are available free under the open software license (OSL), there are many free ex­ten­sions and templates developed by the Magento community, which can be used to extend your web store’s range of functions. You can also find many fee-based ex­ten­sions from de­velopers who are spe­cial­ised in Magento or check out Magento Connect, which is an extension mar­ket­place where you’ll find in­form­a­tion on CRM, ERP, payment pro­cessing, ac­count­ing, and shipping, among other things.  

Recent versions of Magento are largely based on the Zend framework and therefore require version 5.5.22 of the scripting language, PHP. MySQL (version 5.6 and up) is required for the database and Linux (x86-64) as the operating system. For web servers, you should use Apache (2.2 or 2.4) or nginx (1.8 and up).

Magento and its pop­ular­ity

Magento is a popular choice when it comes to e-commerce platforms, with over 200,000 online retailers making use of it, which equates to 1 in 4 busi­nesses. Its ease of use and wide range of functions con­trib­ute sig­ni­fic­antly to its pop­ular­ity. The fact that it can scale well means that stores with only a small range of products can use the platform. If this range happens to grow, Magento can be adapted, which saves you the hassle of having to change platforms. It can also be used by non-de­velopers and even if you get stuck, the Magento community is there to help.

Magento also holds worldwide events such as its annual e-commerce con­fer­ence called 'Imagine E-commerce' that has taken place since 2011. The aim among the 600 Magento merchants, partners, and de­velopers is to share ideas and have the op­por­tun­ity to network.

Another event is 'Magento Live' where par­ti­cipants can learn more about the platform as well as any e-commerce news. The biggest Magento Live events take place in Australia, the UK, and France.

Magento features: what makes the software different?

Magento is no ordinary web store content man­age­ment system; it was spe­cific­ally designed to be an e-commerce solution. This is reflected in the platform’s range of functions. In its fun­da­ment­al prop­er­ties, Magento is much like every other CMS, and it even has a typical modular structure with ex­tend­ib­il­ity. However, users will quickly notice that the software isn’t just for managing any old website content, but it focuses on web stores spe­cific­ally. The diverse range of features are geared towards marketing, product man­age­ment, customer man­age­ment, and online payment methods, while com­par­able systems must first be upgraded in order to be properly equipped for setting up these web stores. It’s for this reason that de­velopers see Magento as an out-of-the-box CMS for web stores.

Magento software’s most important features

Search engine op­tim­isa­tion

SEO is a central issue for all web stores, which is why Magento has many features that help users reach those coveted top spots on the search engine results pages. For example, the system can auto­mat­ic­ally generate search engine-friendly URLs and sitemaps (hier­arch­ic­ally struc­tured overview of all the web store’s pages) as well as stat­ist­ics about the most common search terms entered by customers to find your store. In addition, you can easily define meta in­form­a­tion for all pages featuring products, cat­egor­ies and content. With the support of Google Content API for Shopping, you can also allow your products to appear in the Google Shopping search results.

Marketing and customer service

Thanks to the software’s diverse range of resources, marketing a Magento CMS webstore couldn’t be simpler. You can use these to create and export gift cards and pro­mo­tion­al codes for various campaigns (i.e. news­let­ters, print media, etc.). Users also have the option to suggest related items and show recently viewed products. With Magento, it’s possible to create polls, and what’s more, users can also give customers the option to recommend products or send wish lists to friends. Fur­ther­more, im­ple­ment­ing a shopping cart that can be accessed across multiple devices increases the chance of trans­ac­tions being completed. 

Catalog and product man­age­ment

One of the greatest defining features of Magento software is the great variety of ways to design your catalog, including in­di­vidu­al products. For example, you can configure different product cat­egor­ies in­di­vidu­ally or add search filters (i.e. filter by price range). Magento’s features also include search functions such as auto­com­plete and day and comment functions. You can give further details in your catalog by adding multiple images and provide in­form­a­tion about bulk prices or how many items you have in stock. By using Facebook’s share buttons and a zoom function, you can make your product images more in­ter­act­ive.

Checkout and methods of payment

With Magento, you can choose to offer your customers a one page checkout – this is where the entire payment process is displayed on one page. This enables you to decide whether users need to first register as a new customer, or whether they can continue as a guest. In order to keep the data secure, Magento offers the support of SSL cer­ti­fic­ates for both front-end and back-end processes. Customers can save their shopping cart and obtain in­form­a­tion about shipping cost and tax. You can also offer different payment options, including bank transfers, direct debit, credit card payment, PayPal, and Amazon Payments. Further payment methods can be in­teg­rated at any time via ex­ten­sions. 

Glob­al­iz­a­tion

Using in­ter­na­tion­al cur­ren­cies and tax rates, as well as foreign language char­ac­ters and text that reads right to left, you can offer your products to a global audience. Product and category texts can be entered and displayed in different languages. If you wish to limit your range to specific countries, you can define your target regions by de­term­in­ing permitted billing addresses or setting policies about who can create user accounts (the latter option only works if you do not allow users to purchase products as guests).

Mobile commerce

Mobile devices have taken on a sup­port­ing role in e-commerce. It’s therefore more important than ever to support native apps for iOS and Android, which can take on updates (i.e. pro­mo­tions) in real time. Thanks to mobile HTML5, which auto­mat­ic­ally optimizes content for mobile devices, your Magento desktop site will adjust perfectly to the display and re­quire­ments of any portable device. This pro­gram­ming language also enables you to implement specific functions, including zoom, drag and drop into the shopping cart, and multi-touch.

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Magento CMS: com­plex­ity with high user comfort

The features listed here il­lus­trate why Magento software is so popular, although they also expose just how complex the open source program is. While ex­per­i­enced CMS users often express delight in Magento’s diversity, beginners might initially ex­per­i­ence dif­fi­culties; this is a common problem, as free software often places func­tion­al­ity as a top priority, while usability, though not un­im­port­ant, comes in second place. Magento is therefore an out-of-the-box CMS – as long as users already have knowledge of com­par­able systems, and take time to get to know the program. Only by investing time in un­der­stand­ing the program can users gradually learn how to use the many functions and sub­sequently how to maintain the Magento online shop from day to day. The com­plex­ity can also have an impact on the hardware re­quire­ments, which is why Magento is among the more expensive pieces of shopping basket software. However, the popular program also offers a great number of ad­vant­ages, es­pe­cially with regard to user comfort; a central ad­min­is­trat­or panel makes it possible to manage several web stores at once and dis­trib­ute in­di­vidu­al user roles and rights. Magento’s features also enable users to put their customers first at all times; for example, the platform provides users with detailed reports about their turnover, product reviews, most viewed or sold products, use of promotion codes, and much more. Ad­di­tion­ally, the open source software supports users in pro­cessing orders. The program gives users an easy way to check and edit incoming orders, create and print invoices, as well as set up automatic e-mail messages for orders.

Magento: templates and ex­ten­sions

Ex­pand­ab­il­ity is one of Magento’s greatest strengths. Since its release, thousands of ex­ten­sions have emerged, which has been made possible by the free program code and the modular structure. But in order to really un­der­stand the program, it’s important to first learn the dif­fer­ences between Magento templates (most of which can be found under ‘Magento themes’) and Magento ex­ten­sions. The latter con­sti­tutes the typical, func­tion­al platform spe­cific­a­tions, which can be used to add further payment options or an age veri­fic­a­tion function, for example. Magento templates, on the other hand, influence the layout of the web store, allowing users to be more free and ima­gin­at­ive in their site’s structure and design. In the Magento Mar­ket­place, you’ll find useful ex­ten­sions and themes for the most recent version of Magento. There are also many ex­ten­sions available for older versions of the CMS, which you can find on Magento Connect.

Community, Commerce or En­ter­prise Cloud Edition?

There are three versions of Magento available from the de­velopers’ website:

  • Community Edition
  • Commerce (On-Premises) Edition
  • En­ter­prise Cloud Edition

The Community Edition includes the source code, which also includes access and is available to download for free. The system’s ex­ten­sions and hosting are the user’s re­spons­ib­il­ity. For de­velopers and small busi­nesses, this can be an op­por­tun­ity to keep costs down in the day-to-day running of your web store, although it does also require a high level of effort on the user’s side. The Community Edition can also be upgraded to En­ter­prise or En­ter­prise Cloud Edition at any time. Subject to licensing fees, the Commerce (On-Premises) Edition (formerly known as En­ter­prise Edition) offers a more com­pre­hens­ive version of the Community Edition with technical ex­ten­sions. It offers a number of ad­vant­ages, namely its improved per­form­ance; this version includes cache storage and separate media storage in the form of a CDN as well as a hosted database. AES-256 en­cryp­tion of data, back up functions, and the Magento Secure Payment Bridge (separates platform core from the payment functions) ensure ad­di­tion­al security. The program also includes automatic updates and 24/7 support from the Magento team. This edition is an excellent solution for es­tab­lished web stores with a higher budget. The En­ter­prise Cloud Edition can be viewed as a typical platform-as-a-service solution. The ad­vant­ages of the normal Magento En­ter­prise Edition are enhanced by a perfectly tailored cloud hosting en­vir­on­ment. Ad­di­tion­al per­form­ance tools and unlimited scalab­il­ity pave the way to a suc­cess­ful future for your online shop. The scale of your store’s growth is com­pletely ir­rel­ev­ant, meaning you don’t encounter hardware problems (i.e. being forced to switch server) even if you ex­per­i­ence leaps in traffic.

Magento as a long-term e-commerce solution

With its ver­sat­il­ity, Magento is a CMS that proves an excellent choice for budding en­tre­pren­eurs and es­tab­lished web store operators alike. With an extremely active community and its excellent range of offers for both small and large busi­nesses, the open source project’s modular software ar­chi­tec­ture is fully explored. A great number of ex­ten­sions have been developed to improve the already im­press­ive range of functions. The software’s ver­sat­il­ity does come at a cost, however; when creating a Magento online store, both the com­plex­ity and the cost of the software is towards the higher end of the spectrum. If you have the budget and you can afford to spend a while getting to know the program, you can be sure to find success with Magento software. 

Magento is built spe­cific­ally for e-commerce, unlike other CMS such as WordPress, which is con­sidered an all-round CMS, but just doesn’t quite offer as much regarding e-commerce. The En­ter­prise Cloud Edition is even equipped for future de­vel­op­ments. Magento Commerce was released in April, 2016 with SEO as the main focus. It can generate SEO-friendly URLs, a Google site map, cus­tom­ised meta keywords, and de­scrip­tions, making it easier for your customers to find products online.

Here are the reasons why Magento is a great choice when it comes to e-commerce:

  • Customer oriented: Giving merchants the pos­sib­il­ity to brand their customers’ ex­per­i­ence since customer behaviour is con­stantly changing.
  • Advanced SEO: Allows online store owners to boost the ranking for their products by using features that enable you to optimise URLs/keywords as well as add a sitemap, rich snippets, image ALT tags, etc.
  • Ex­ten­sions: Magento has the world’s largest selection of ex­ten­sions, meaning you can add more features as your business grows and customise the platform to your liking.
  • Community: More than 150,000 de­velopers and in­nov­at­ors are working on the platform daily, and they also offer a Q&A website where you can ask for help if needed.
  • In­teg­ra­tion: Magento is partnered with hundreds of software providers, which results in many in­teg­ra­tion pos­sib­il­it­ies covering cat­egor­ies such as email, migration tools, payment, and social media marketing, etc.
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