Magento: An Open Source Miracle? by:Angela Smythe
A feature-rich and professional open-source platform
, Magento is an Ecommerce solution which aims to provide online businesses and merchants with flexible and intuitive tools to control the appearance, content and functionality of their stores. Already popular with the web development community - the free Community edition has been downloaded over a million times to date - is Magento really the Ecommerce saviour that it's been touted as?!
The Good
Magento's interface is intuitive and easy to use but accommodates more complexity than many other Ecommerce solutions, offering users more scope when developing online stores. It is certainly feature rich; over 100 features are available covering everything from Marketing to Mobile Commerce and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Some of Magento's most popular tools include:
Checkouts and Payments
-Single page Checkout
-UPS/XML. FedEx, USPS and DHL integrated real-time shipping rates
-Flexible configuration for payment options - authorise and charge or authorise and create invoice
-Integrated with PayPal, Amazon Payments, Authorize.net and Google Checkout (Level 2)
-Offline payment methods such as saved Credit Card functions, cheque and money order acceptance
-Secure Socket Layer (SSL) support for orders
-Checkout options including Guest Checkout and Account Checkout
-Taxation and shipping estimates provided in Shopping Cart
-"Saved" shopping options
Site Management
-Single administration panel to control multiple sites and stores
-Multiple administration permissions available for system roles and users
-Web Services Advanced Programming Interface (API) for third-party integration
-Fully customisable design templates
-Content Management System (CMS) for information pages
-Google site optimisation for A/B and Multivariate Testing
Catalogue Management
-Inventory management for backordered items and min/max quantities
-Admin panel batch updates
-Google Base integration
-Virtual, downloadable and digital products
-Customer personalisation - embroidery, monogramming, colour choices etc
-Attribute Sets to create multiple products of different item types
-Automatic image re-size and watermarking through Media Manager
-Approve, Edit and Delete Product Tags and Product Reviews
-RSS Feed availability
-Definable Attributes for Customer Sorting
And did we mention that the Community edition (suitable for the majority of online UK businesses) is completely free to download and use?!
The Bad
The downside of such a feature-rich platform is its complexity. Magento is available as a default installation, but to really maximise the available features and transform their stores, businesses and merchants need to modify and individually tailor the platform. This requires a high level of coding skills, even for something as simple as adding new functionality, changing page layouts or creating customised results pages.
New users of the platform have also commented on the difficulties they have faced when making database level changes to products, since the schema for the database is not as well documented as some of its other functions. Previous versions of the platform have provided lengthy and complicated processes for simple adjustments such as changing product attributes and multiplying product types.
The verdict...
Magento is a multi-featured Ecommerce and shopping cart solution (which is free!) and has been well received in the web development community. It is a complex platform, which is perhaps not suitable for novice developers, but it provides online retailers with the chance to transform their stores into intuitive, responsive and eye-catching businesses.
About the author
Posted by: - Angela SmytheContact her: - angela@quotebean.co.ukTo read more articles on Ecommerce Website Designers by Angela Smythe visit this link: - http://www.quotebean.co.uk/Buying-services/Ecommerce-Web-Designers/http://www.articlecity.com/articles/computers_and_internet/article_5310.shtml
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