Core Magento Benefits & Features for Online Retail Store Explained!

Magento is one of the most popular open-source eCommerce platforms that is used to develop bespoke, world-class, and powerful eCommerce solutions with an extensive support network. Magento allows users to update eCommerce websites automatically. It is simple, quick, and versatile to use. It was first released on March 31, 2008, after being developed by Varien’s CEO and Co-founder Roy Rubin. 10 years later, Magento was finally got acquired by Adobe Inc.

Let us have a look at some of the core benefits of Magento in detail. Whilst the benefits are way too many, I have tried to explain the main ones in this article to understand for the people who have an idea to build a fully bespoke e-Store.

Top Advantages & Features of Developing an e-Store using Magento

Open-source and self-hosted

Self-hosted eCommerce platforms are those which you download and run the software yourself. Usually, these are open source platforms implying that you would have access to the source code. A few examples of them include Magento, WooCommerce, OsCommerce, etc. When you count on a self-hosted and open source platform like Magento 2 the responsibility is all yours.

On the other hand, when you go for a hosted eCommerce platform, the owner company not only provides you with the software but the hosting as well. However, you won’t have access to the source code running the software; and hence, it is popularly known as SaaS (software-as-a-Service). A few examples of SaaS-based eCommerce platforms are Shopify, BigCommerce, PrestaShop, etc.

There are various opinions about the above two different types of open-source eCommerce platforms. However, knowing the advantages and limitations of both at the same time could be the key to make an informed decision.

Benefits of Magento as an Open-source and Self-hosted Platform

• Complete control and ownership over your store.
• Bespoke online store development as per your business needs.
• Ability to optimize the user experience of your store and win over your customers.
• Magento would allow the integration of cutting-edge technologies like AI & ML to implement innovative features into your online retail store or marketplace.

A Few Out-of-the-box Features

Magento 2 comes packed with various exciting features which would enable you to start running your business straight away. Don’t believe it? Well, even its open-source version has everything you need to start a webshop. Some magnificent features the Magento eCommerce Store instantly can offer are:

• Catalog management features
• SEO functionality
• Marketing/promotions suite
• Order management (invoicing, etc.)
• Site management (CMS functionality, etc.)

This list is still incomplete.

Default Theme Access like LUMA

Yes, the LUMA theme comes with Magento 2 by default. This theme offers optimal UI with which you can launch your webshop and begin to generate sales without even optimizing it.

On other platforms, you have to get the various features integrated into your store via extensions and add-ons. These platforms do not come with default packaging like Magento. It also makes the custom eCommerce store development faster.

Enhanced testing capabilities

Magento has a powerful testing enablement suite that can considerably reduce your pre-release defects. This ensures adding value to your online retailing purpose while providing a glitch-free customer experience.

Moreover, Magento also offers a developer-oriented testing framework based on PHPUnit called the Functional Testing Framework (FTF). The QA engineers would love to use this framework with a stable performance.

Noteworthy benefits of FTF

• It offers pre-packaged all the standard test scenarios that shape most of the critical functional processes of your e-store.
• While you run these tests, either altogether or one by one, you would find that all of the failures are logged properly and complemented with screenshots.
• This cross-platform framework works across all the available operating systems, your Magento developers need not worry about it.

There are so many other good features in FTF that make Magento partially automate the eCommerce application testing cycle.

SEO-friendly Features

With so many businesses competing for the same keywords, it is a daunting task to get your e-store noticed. That is the reason why search engine optimization is a critical part of successful online businesses. Inbound leads found via organic search generally have lower acquisition costs and higher conversion rates at the same time.

With Magento, you can rest assured of your online visibility, thanks to its extensive suite of SEO customization features. You can control the links that are passed on to the search engines via index management. There are plenty of other features in Magento which your SEO analysts can leverage for optimizing your webshop for search engines.

Here, you must know that it’s not the standard functionality of Magento that makes it stand out; rather it’s the amazing ecosystem of SEO extensions offered by different vendors that enable you to take SEO of your Magento site to new heights.

You can consult with our Magento certified solution specialists regarding which SEO extension would best align with your website optimization needs.

Allows integration of popular payment gateways

Magento 2 will let you integrate many popular payment gateways like PayPal, Braintree, Cybersource, WorldPay, etc. Thus, you can ensure that your e-store has a better checkout user experience.

Benefits of multiple payment options

• Increase your audience reach as multi-payment features integrated into the online store will enable you to deal with multiple currencies and it will appeal to a global audience.
• Increase customer retention rate as it avoids the instances where customers abandon shopping carts when they do not find their preferred payment options.
• Make your e-store look legitimate and adds an essence of reliability among the visitors.

Magento Benefits Summarized

• Magento is a widely customizable and user-friendly solution for people with no technical knowledge.
• Magento is a perfectly scalable system and feature-intense eCommerce platform.
• When comparing Magento with SaaS, you can get ownership of the software and right to hosting.
• Magento facilitates several extensions in the marketplace.
• Magento has the ability to run multiple stores for several countries and to target markets and brands with dissimilar pricing, content and payment system from a particular Magento installation.
• Magento Community Edition is free for small and medium businesses.
• Magento is SEO-friendly as a match-up with other platforms.
• Magento can integrate easily with Emailing platforms, which helps you to get in touch with your customers easily.

Have an Idea? Get Instant Access to Magento Experts

If you are looking for a fully customized, secure, innovative, and scalable eCommerce solution, hire the best Magento developers from IndiaNIC.

IndiaNIC is a family of 500+ software experts and has successfully delivered eCommerce projects since its establishment in 1997. Our engagement models are flexible to suit your business needs and the team offers end-to-end support, even beyond the point of delivery and market release.

Regarding experience, we have been helping startups, SMEs, and even Fortune 500 companies to build amazing eCommerce stores with multilingual websites and mobile commerce solutions requirements. Know about the bits and pieces of our project execution here.

Contact us to share your idea in order to get started!