What is Magento? And why should you use it?

What is Magento?

In its most basic form, Magento is an open source, ecommerce platform that you can build your website on. It’s estimated that around 1 in 4 online stores use Magento and with that many businesses relying on it. You know it must be good.

Magento has everything you could possibly need for your online business. Will work seamlessly across whatever platform your audience is browsing on. Desktop, mobile or tablet. The whole Magento community is also incredibly helpful. Which means you can easily learn new tips and tricks for making the most out of your site.

At Rak Design we have helped many ecommerce business owners build websites and we almost exclusively recommend using Magento, here’s why.

Why We Use Magento

One of the main reasons for us recommending Magento is that it is completely scalable to your needs. Regardless of whether you have an online store with a few items. Or you have a product range that spans into the tens of thousands, you can still use Magento to build your site on and it will work perfectly.

There is a large degree of flexibility too and you can completely tailor your customer experience to exactly how you need it to be. Quick and easy navigation? Simple, clear options? Strong call to actions? Magento can handle it all.

There is also an extensive range of plugins and themes available which means that customising your website is a lot more straightforward than other ecommerce platforms.

The idea behind Magento is that anyone can use the platform, you don’t have to be a web developer to keep up with the day to day maintenance. Of course there comes a point when having a developer to hand that can implement complicated changes or structure custom dashboards is very helpful, but overall, once built and set up, anyone should be able to work their way around the backend of the site.

In our experience, Magento has everything you could possibly need from an ecommerce platform, and is thoroughly recommended by our web development team.

Why Migrate to Magento 2.0?

It has been two years since the Magento 2.0 series got launched. Magento 1.x will eventually become obsolete and will no longer be supported. This ultimately means time is running out. Your website will be a security risk to your customers and have more and more difficulty supporting an antiquated platform and technical infrastructure. 

Still not convinced? Here are many reasons why you should start planning the move from Magento 1.x to Magento 2.x now:

Improved Performance: Magento 2 offers full page caching and much better performance capabilities. The new software will continue to mature and improve its performance capabilities as new releases come out.

Easier to Upgrade: The new architecture is much more easily upgradable so moving from 2.0 to 2.1 etc. is not nearly as difficult as moving from 1.7 to 1.8 as an example. Additionally, upgrading and exchanging extensions will be much better.

New Features: There are many new features constantly coming out such as colour swatches, an improved checkout experience, API admin panel capabilities and much more.

Better Admin Interface: The admin panel is much cleaner and easier to use. You can even adjust the view of your catalog by moving the rows in the order you want, and displaying the information you want, something you could not do before. The admin panel will be much easier for non-technical users to leverage moving forward.

More Mobile Friendly: With mobile use more popular than ever, mobile responsiveness is key to improving sales. The Magento team recognised this and made mobile responsiveness a priority in the core Magento 2 platform. It comes with new responsively designed themes, integrated video, and easier checkout.

Conclusion

If you want to significantly improve your store’s performance you should definitely start planning the migration to Magento 2.0. It’s clear this platform was designed to provide a better experience for customers and admin. The new version is able to grow as businesses grow. It’s fast with a streamlined checkout process to increase conversations and most importantly encourage repeat customers.

At Rak Design, we are experts in Magento and have a proven track history of safe, effective migrations to Magento 2.0.

If you have any questions or need any help with planning the next steps for your business, our team can help you build a website that works for you.

We welcome you to get in touch or call 01933 678 522.