Looking for an online ecommerce solution can be a painstaking task with hundreds of major and minor considerations to make especially if you are considering a move from one platform to another.

Considerations can include:
– How easy is it to move over products and other details
– Design and development tasks
– Do you outsource the work
– What features do you require in terms of stock management
– Most importantly will it work

If you are a web novice a website can seem daunting and very expensive if you don’t do your research.

First off what is your website for? Are you selling products? Providing information? Or just using it as a marketing tool?

I am going to be tackling the first question ‘Are you selling products?’ In this case you will most likely be looking for an ecommerce solution that provides a base for you to sell and your end users to buy from you. There are so many platforms and solutions available out there that working out what meets your needs now and in the future can be difficult.

Do you need a bespoke system or will open source do the trick?

This is not a decision to be made lightly by any means. Obviously a bespoke system will majority of the time cost you a hell of lot more money whereas an open source platform will be free for the system but you will need expert developers to help you build the site. In most cases and open source platform will absolutely do the trick and if you do your research you can find a number of systems will packed to the brim with features you may or may not use but is good to know it exists.

One such open source platform is Magento Ecommerce, which is now a widely available and used system within the web world. Magento Ecommerce is available in 3 different options:
– Magento Community (Open Source)
– Magento Professional (Paid)
– Magento Enterprise (Paid)

This open source system has a list of features the size of the Hulks arm (both arms) like:
– Marketing promotions and tools
– Search engine optimisation options
– Site management
– Analytics and reporting tools
– Catalogue management
– Mobile commerce
– One page checkout
– Multiple shipping addresses
– Customer accounts

There is so much control available over the platform that design is treated as a separate aspect and can be customised using CSS allowing for full control. There are a whole host of plug-ins available for SEO purposes to make it search engine friendly and tame the beast that is Google, Yahoo and Bing. For store owners the reporting tools are great allowing for great optimisation of return on investment and growth. Try out the Magento demo on their site for yourself and see if it suitable for you, your business and your end users and read the reviews and list of features they have available. I’m sure you will be surprised at the positive influence this platform could have on your business.

Author Bio: Mithul is writing on behalf of Fluid Creativity, specialists in Magento Ecommerce.

Category: Internet
Keywords: magento ecommerce