Presentation of Magento software
The
interface menu, located on the left, allows you to manage all aspects of your
eCommerce activity: sales management, product catalog, customers, orders,
delivery. The interface is well organized, although it takes more time to get
started with Magento than with competing business solutions. There is, as they
say, a real learning curve. As we said in the introduction, Magento stands out
from its competitors by the wealth of its features. All the features that an
e-merchant has the right to expect are available. It is impossible to list them
all. Let's mention a few, to get an idea:
- Coupon management, with the possibility of configuring promo codes that can be used offline (if you have stored them).
- Customer segmentation, based on geographic or demographic criteria.
- Display of recently viewed products on your product sheets.
- Still on the product sheets, you have the option of displaying similar or complementary products (cross-selling and up-selling).
- The shopping cart is saved when the customer leaves the site so that they can find it on their return and continue their shopping journey.
- Magento offers very advanced emailing features which, at the limit, exempt you from using a third-party tool such as MailChimp. Among other things, you can send personalized wish list emails, abandoned cart emails, re-engagement emails, etc.
- Magento offers a wide range of SEO tools to manage your SEO (creation of a Google Site Map, personalization of URLs, tags, and meta description.
- Fine management of access and permissions.
- Possibility to import or export your product catalog in CSV format.
- Integration with Google Analytics, to analyze more precisely the traffic and conversion statistics of your eCommerce. The reports offered by Magento are quite limited.
- Newsletters, surveys ...
- Multi-language and multi-currency management.
- Etc.
Note
also that you have the possibility of managing several sites from your Magento
interface. The creation of product sheets is relatively intuitive. As you can
see in the screenshot below, you can go a long way in the settings.
Magento
review test adds product Here is how the management interface of your product
catalog is organized. Magento allows you to intuitively manage catalogs
comprising thousands of products. The catalog management interface makes it
possible to control stocks, prices, quantities, and promotions in a very
advanced way.
The
creation of product sheets and the management of the catalog are essential
aspects of the management of an eCommerce site. Another aspect is the management
of payments, stocks, and delivery. All the functionalities relating to these
aspects of eCommerce management are offered by Magento. Regarding payment
management, know that you can offer your customers almost all
Magento
allows you to integrate one-click payment and payment without creating an
account. The software also makes it possible to manage delivery addresses other
than billing addresses. It is also possible to offer your customers payment
in several installments or deferred payments. Needless to say, Magento allows
you to manage VAT, shipping methods, deliveries, order tracking, invoicing.
Because security is an important issue in eCommerce, let's say a few words on
this topic. Magento, via its Security Center, offers support in the event of a
security problem on the site. It is charged quite expensive (several thousand
euros), but the service is very competent. Magento cures, but also and above
all helps prevent. The software natively integrates a security system aimed at
minimizing the risk of breaches. You also have the possibility to add an SSL
certificate, to integrate a double authentication system on the site. Magento
provides you with several support tools: a user guide and other very complete
documentation support, a blog, a contact form,
a telephone number open 24/7. / 7 as well as a very active forum
area. Magento also offers paid training to support you in the creation and
management of your store.
Offers & prices
Officially,
Magento is free. You can download the software from the official website
without having to pay any euro cents. But just because downloading the software
is free does not mean that creating an eCommerce site under Magento is free.
The creation of a Magento eCommerce site involves several costs:
- The cost of the theme. There are very few free Magento themes. You must count between 50 and 100 euros per theme (some themes cost several hundred euros).
- The cost of the domain name.
- The cost of hosting, which varies depending on the size of your store and the type of hosting chosen (shared, dedicated, VPS, etc.). A Magento site assumes mid / high-end hosting, which is expensive. Shared hosting is not recommended.
- The cost of extensions. You will necessarily have paid extensions to run your eCommerce site (including payment solutions, abandoned cart relaunch extensions, etc.). The price of some extensions is in the hundreds of euros.
- The cost of maintaining the site. On this subject, read our complete guide on how to anticipate the maintenance costs of an eCommerce site.
- To this may be added to the cost of service providers (freelance or agency) whom you call on for the creation and optimization of your Magento site (this is essential if you do not have technical skills). So creating a site in Magento is clearly not free. It is even more expensive than using a paid platform like Wix or Shopify. The functional richness and tailor-made products have to be paid for.
Featured List
Design
There are thousands of Magento themes (mostly paid) accessible on
different theme platforms like Themeforest or Template Monster. There is
everything, but overall the themes are very qualitative, highly customizable, and respectful of the latest technological standards (HTML 5, responsive design
...). Magento allows you to create an ultra-personalized eCommerce site from a
design point of view.
Page editor
The product sheet editor is relatively intuitive, even if it probably
takes several days or even weeks to become familiar with all the features and
configuration options offered by the software. More generally, if the Magento interface is rather ergonomic, the configuration and customization of the site
require advanced technical skills and a certain adaptation time.
Contact form
Magento allows natively to integrate contact forms on its site.
Widgets
The Magento MarketPlace includes more than 2,200 extensions to enhance
the functionality of Magento. Thanks to its many extensions, Magento is able to
meet all needs, including the most specific.
E-commerce
Magento is a benchmark software for eCommerce. It is probably the most complete solution on the market (the heaviest too) for creating a complex and ultra-personalized eCommerce site. The functional richness of Magento is almost limitless.
Blog
Blogging is not the primary vocation of Magento, which is an eCommerce
CMS. However, the software offers the possibility of integrating a blog space
into its store. If the blog features are incomparably less sophisticated than
what software like WordPress offers, they are more than sufficient for an
eCommerce site.
Custom domain name
The domain name, like the hosting, is not included in the Magento Open
Source offer.
Support
To help e-merchants in the process of creating their store, Magento
provides a user guide, tutorials, a blog, and a very active forum.