Searching for a shopping cart which will perfectly suit your business is a process that can be compared with a gold rush. Some people are lucky to find their Klondike, other keep migrating from one “goldmine” to another in pursuit of happiness. Other stick to what they have because they afraid to lose what they already have. We would like to help you in this searches and point your attention at two goldmine eCommerce solutions: Volusion platform and Magento cart.
Volusion is a paid shopping cart that powers more than 40 000 online stores since 1999. So, you can be sure that this “mine” can bring you solid profit for years. How does it happen? Imagine that gold seekers who came to cold and frozen Alaska in the end of 19th century would get a warm coat, full set of instruments and a land full with gold. All they would have to do is to get their money. Volusion is basically a cart that does all this stuff for you. It is a hosted solution which provides you with hosting, security, support and hundreds of features out of the box. Moreover the platform is well-known for ease of use and intuitive interface.
On the other hand Magento shopping cart made a real boom in eCommerce since it was released in 2008. By now it powers more than 125 000 web stores and recognized as a world-leading open source solution. It is available in both free and paid editions. Why is it so popular? Think about the same land of ice and winds called Alaska and imagine that you receive a vast land full of gold mines. You also get professional equipment and dogsled with dozen of huskie. All you need to do is to hire people who would help you to develop your mines or do everything on your own if you are not new to gold digging. Magento shopping cart does the same. It gives you practically unlimited opportunities with hundreds of default functions. Unlimited customization possibilities are also at your disposal. So, you can create a store in the way you like. However, Magento is more complicated solution than Volusion. It will require extensive programming skills. So most likely you will have to hire a developer to make Magento work on 100%.
While continuing our Volusion vs Magento comparison it is worth to mention the best eCommerce features of each platform and their weak points. Lets see a head to head result of Volusion vs Magento.
Volusion Advantages
- Marketing. Dozens of features including upsells and cross sells, rating and reviews, coupon codes and discounts, etc. However, the strongest point about marketing tools is definitely an opportunity to sell your products via eBay, FaceBook and mobile devices. It seriously increases target audience of your store.
- Reports. Powerful system of business reports will help you to find out profit margins, most popular products, stock level, etc.
- SEO. Strong set of tools will help you get top ranking in Google, Yahoo and other search engines. Main pros are meta keywords and descriptions per product and category and SEO friendly URLs.
Volusion Disadvantages
- Servers. While considering Volusion eCommerce solution keep in mind that in the last few month company’s servers went down a few times. As a result hundreds of merchants lost their money.
- Support. Even though Volusion used to have very responsive support recent feedback about technical support is extremely negative. We hope the company will take into consideration all the feedback from their users and make some work to make their support as useful and friendly as it was before.
Magento Pros
- Multi-Store. Definitely a top end feature that let’s shopkeepers manage several stores from one admin panel. It will help you aim your target customers. Moreover in addition to multi-language support Magento can definitely become an optimal solution for taking your business abroad.
- Payment/Shipment. Magento cart supports virtually any type of shipping and payment gateways including such giants like PayPal, Google Checkout, 2Checkout, UPS, FedEx, DHL and a lot of other. CMS. WYSIWYG editor will help you easily manage your content, add numerous pages and menus, delete or modify pages individually or in mass.
Magento Cons
- Complicated. Magento is difficult to operate even for programmers. It has a complicated PHP architecture, so professional customization will require professional skills.
- Buggy. Unfortunately Magento has a number of technical errors that may come around during upgrade process or mass import. However, almost all errors can be fixed if you follow tips from official forum or documentation.
As you see in Volusion vs Magento, each of solutions can become your own goldmine. Just keep in mind that Magento will require technical skills to use it and will better suit large company. At the same time Volusion will help you start a store in one day and sell from the spot. Nevertheless, you will lose some customization and design options.
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