Choosing an Ecommerce platform to set up an online store always becomes the first challenge for any merchant. With more than 40 eCommerce platforms available in the market each offering some unique functionality and look and feel, business owners vacillate between options.
But according to several studies, more and more business owners are these days opting for the feature-rich Magento platform, for its vast set of unmatched functionalities and superior administrative control over the store. Magento is the most popular eCommerce platform today, comprising of nearly 20% of all the eCommerce stores in the Alexa Top 1 Million . With the increasing number of qualified developers and designers around the world dedicatedly working on this platform, as of now it has become the fastest developing eCommerce platform. Magento is tailor made to become the online substitute for brick and mortar stores.
Magento has divergent features for attaining growth out of which the following one makes Magento an undeniable choice for eCommerce:
Analytics and Reporting
Magento has an inbuilt reporting suit which showcase the performance of the online store in a nutshell. It enables monitoring consumer trends and thus provides the capability to define strategies and act accordingly. It also provides an out of the box integration with Google Analytics.
The reports focus on the points:
- Sales
- Tax
- Best Viewed Products
- Best Purchased Products
- Low Stock of Products
- Total Sales Invoiced
- Total Sales Refunded
- Best Customer Report and Number of Orders
Customer Accounts and Service
Magento offers feature rich Customer Account options. Customer Accounts provides the option of saving unlimited addresses in the Address Book. Customers get the ability to save items to a wish list and share with friends and family. Customers can view the Order status and track their Orders themselves.
Customer centric features :
- Re-order from account
- Order Tracking
- Wish list feature
- Account Dashboard
- Order History
- Order And Account Update Emails
- Contact Us form
Catalog Management
Magento has a dynamic and flexible Catalog Management system. It allows offline batch importing and exporting items. Multiple types of products can be defined e.g. Simple, Configurable( based on size, color etc.), Grouped Products etc. Magento’s Core API enables integrating back – office systems with the catalog of the online store through web services.
Key abilities of the Catalog Management system :
- Batch Import and Export of catalog
- Batch Updates to products in admin panel
- Tax Rates per location, customer group and Product type
- Attribute Sets for quick product creation of different item types
- Create Store-specific attributes on the fly
- Approve, Edit and Delete Product Tag
- RSS feed for Low Inventory Alerts
Order Management
Order Management system of Magento provides a complete set of features which includes the ability to view, edit, create and fulfill orders from Admin panel. Customers can re-order previous orders from their account and the admin is capable of viewing full order histories.
Order Management features offered:
- View, edit, create and fulfill orders from admin panel
- Email Notification of Orders
- RSS feed of new Orders
- Print Invoices
- Create one or more multiple invoices, shipments and credit memos per order
- Call Center (phone) order creation
Shipping
Magento allows configuring the store according to the owners Shipping practices.
It enables real time integration with Shipment service providers like UPS, FedEx etc. and displays real-time career rates along with support for rates respective to accounts or flat/table rates for general customers.
Shipping flexibilities offered:
- Shipping to multiple addresses in one order
- On-site order tracking from customer accounts
- Multiple shipments per order
- Ability to specify allowed destination countries per method
- Flat rate shipping per order
- Flat rate shipping per item
- Free Shipping
- Table rates for weight and destination
- Table rates for product sub-totals and destination
- Table rates for number of items and destination
Checkout
Efficient One-page checkout integrated with variety of payment gateways and options for various multiple payment methods in Magento ensures ease in placing an order.
In addition Magento allows Guest Checkout.
Checkout features offered :
- SSL security support for orders on both front-end and back-end
- Shipping to multiple addresses in one order
- Checkout without account/Guest Checkout
- Shopping Cart with tax and shipping estimates
- Checkout with account to use address book
- Option to create account at beginning of checkout
- Accept gift messages per order and per item
- Saved Shopping Carts with configurable expiration time
Payment
Magento allows out of the box integration with a series of major payment gateways.
It enables alternative payments as well such as PayPal, Amazon etc.
Payment functionalities offered :
- Configurable to authorize and charge, or authorize only and charge on creation of invoices
- Integrated with multiple PayPal gateways
- Integrated with Authorize.net
- Integrated with Google Checkout (Level 2)
- Saved Credit Card method for offline payments
- Accept Checks/Money Orders
- Accept Purchase Orders
- Additional Payment Extensions Available through Magento Connect
Search Engine Optimization
Magento has inbuilt SEO tools to lure customers to the store. Magento auto generates Search Engine Friendly URLs .Magento’s Rewrite tool enables specifying exact structures of product pages and the intuitive administration interface allows control over the Meta information.
SEO features offered:
- Google Site Map
- URL Rewrites give full control of URL’s
- Meta-information for products and categories
- Auto-generated Site Map for display on site
- Auto-Generated Popular Search Terms Page
International Support
Magento offers a global platform for an online business to flourish. It allows the store to be presented in multiple versions based on the language and currency of localization.
It offers the interface to be translated to over 60 languages with support for multiple tax rates and payment methods.
International Support key points:
- Multi-Lingual
- Support for Multiple Currencies
- Tax rate support
- Localization
Contact for Magento Design, Development, Customization Services
Contact for Windows 8 App for Magento
