Magento is an Open Source ecommerce web application launched on March 31, 2008. It was created by Varien, building on components of the Zend Framework. Magento is available under the Open Software License version 3.0. Since version 1.1.7 some parts are licensed under the Academic Free License version 3.0. Magento is a feature-rich eCommerce platform that provides online merchants with unprecedented flexibility and control over the look, content and functionality of their eCommerce store. Magento’s helps in excellent marketing, search engine optimization and catalog-management creating sites that are tailored to the client’s unique business needs. With the invention of Magento, building an ecommerce website takes very less effort along with time and price, it keeps control of development cost and provides lot of flexible features.
Magento is the open-source eCommerce platform that promises to revolutionize the industry. It’s modular architecture and unprecedented flexibility means your business is no longer constrained by your eCommerce platform. Magento is total control.
Advantages:
- Through a highly evolved template system of Magento, it is possible to brand a website for the various occasions, events etc.
- Layered Navigation: Usually with large inventories where each category has got hundreds of products, it really is cumbersome to have all the products in the scope of view, and Magento use several filtering tools to provide faster navigation to products
- Amazing support community.
- Marketing promotions and tools
- Multiple currency payment processing
- Analytics, reporting and dash board for quick view.
- Design flexibility: Magento allows you to have a complete control over design of your site and it manages it through the model view controller architected and this means,
- Product comparisons and product tagging features.
- Customer convenience- Magento includes multiple ship-to functionality right out of the box, helping avoid the frustration that can occur when a customer is shopping for multiple people at one time. Superior product search module when compared to competition.
- Multi-lingual support
- Search engine optimization: features like google site map, URL rewrites give full control of URL’s act.
- Extensive CMS: To manage contents.
Magento E-Commerce:
Magento offers complete flexibility and control over the look, content and functionality of an ecommerce store while development. It provides the functionality for reviews, tags, wish list, compare products and many more. It is integrated with AJAX rich environment technology for facilitating features like one click checkout. It is integrated with real time shipping rate from SPS, SPS XML, FedEx, USPS, and DHL. Customer can ship the order to multiple addresses and on site tracking system from customer account. Shipping rate can be easily set per order and per item. It provides the exclusive functionality rating with weight and destination.
Site Management-
- Control multiple websites and stores from one Administration Panel with ability to share as much or as little information as needed
- Administration Permission System Roles and Users
- Fully 100% customizable design using templates
- One-Click Upgrades
- Google Website Optimizer Integration for A/B and Multivariate Testing
- Content Management System for Informational Pages
- Multi-Lingual
- Support for localization
- Support for multiple currencies
- Web Services API for easy integration between Magento and any third-party application
- Customer Groups
- Mobile Commerce: iphone optimized theme
- Marketing Promotions and Tools:
- Flexible pricing rules with ability to restrict to stores, customer groups, time period, products, and categories
- Search engine friendly URL’s
- New Items promotional tool
- Send wish list to a friend by email or RSS
- Auto-generated site map
- Polls
- Shipping destination addresses with ability to specify per shipping method
- Newsletter management
- Recently viewed products
- Multi-tier pricing for quantity discounts
- Free shipping option
- Customer group-specific pricing and group-specific tier pricing
- URL rewrites
- Recently compared Items
- Send to a friend for all visitors, or registered users only
- RSS feeds for new products, new specials and new tags
- Google site map
- Site registration
- Billing addresses with ability to specify per payment method
International Support:
- Multi-Lingual
- Tax rate support
- Localization
- Support for Multiple Currencies
- Includes support for WEEE/DEEE in EU
Checkout:
- One-page checkout
- Shipping to multiple addresses in one orde
- Shopping cart with tax and shipping estimates
- Option to create account at beginning of checkout
- Saved shopping carts with configurable expiration time
- SSL security support for orders on both front-end and back-end
- Checkout without account/guest checkout flat rate shipping per order
- Checkout with account to use address book
- Accept gift messages per order and per item
Shipping:
- Integrated for real-time shipping rates from: UPS, UPS XML (account rates), FedEx (account rates), USPS and DHL
- Ability to specify allowed destination countries per method
- Table rates for weight and destination
- Flat rate shipping per order/item
- Shipping to multiple addresses in one order
- On-site order tracking from customer accounts
- Multiple shipments per order
- Free shipping
Payment:
- Configurable to authorize and charge, or authorize only and charge on creation of invoices
- Integrated with google checkout (Level 2)
- Accept checks/money orders
- Accept purchase orders
- Integrated with multiple paypal gateways:
- Integrated with authorize.net
- Saved credit card method for offline payments
- Order Management:
- Create one or multiple invoices, shipments and credit memos per order to allow for split fulfillment
- Create re-orders for customers from administration panel.
- Email notifications of orders
- View, edit, create and fulfill orders from admin panel.
- Print invoices and packing slips
- Call center (phone) order creation
- RSS feed of new orders
Customer Service:
- Contact us form
- Order history with status updates
- Forgot password email from front-end and administration panel
- Create and edit orders from the admin panel
- Feature-rich customer accounts
- Order tracking from account
- Order and account update emails
- Customizable order emails
Customer Accounts:
- COrder status and history
- Recently ordered items
- Default billing and shipping addresses
- Newsletter subscription management
- Account dashboard for overview of various information.
- Re-orders from account
- Address book with unlimited addresses
- Wish list with ability to add comments
- Product reviews/tags submitted
Catalog Management:
- Inventory management with backordered items, minimum and maximum quantities
- Simple, configurable (e.g. size, color, etc.) products
- Create store-specific attributes on the fly
- Advanced pricing rules and support for special prices (see marketing tools)
- RSS feed for low inventory alerts
- Approve, edit and delete product tags/reviews
- Batch import and export of catalog
- Batch updates to products in admin panel
- Attribute sets for quick product creation of different item types
- Media manager with automatic image resizing and watermarking
- Search results rewrites and redirects
Catalog Browsing:
- Layered/ faceted navigation for filtering of products
- Ability to assign designs on category and product level (unique design per product/category)
- Product comparisons
- Static block tool to create category landing pages
- Recently viewed pro ducts
- Popular search terms cloud
- Breadcrumbs
- Cross-sells, up-sells and related Items
- Filter by product tags
- Product listing in grid or list format
- Configurable search with auto-suggested terms
- Recently compared products
- Product reviews
Product Browsing:
- Multiple images with zoom
- Related products
- Multi-tier pricing up sell
- Grouped products view
- Send to a friend with email
- Product reviews
- Stock availability
- Product option selection
- Add to wish list
Analytics and Reporting:
- Multiple images with zoom
- Related products
- Multi-tier pricing up sell
- Grouped products view
- Send to a friend with email
- Product reviews
- Stock availability
- Product option selection
- Add to wish list
- Compare Products
- Google Base Integration
- Wishlists
- Google Website Optimizer Integration
Conclusion:
It offers complete flexibility and control over the look, content and functionality of an ecommerce store while development. It provides the functionality for reviews, tags, wish list, compare products and many more. It is integrated with AJAX rich environment technology for facilitating features like one click checkout. It is integrated with real time shipping rate from SPS, SPS XML, FedEx, USPS, and DHL. Customer can ship the order to multiple addresses and on site tracking system from customer account. Shipping rate can be easily set per order and per item. It provides the exclusive functionality rating with weight and destination.
From customer point of view:
it is 100% search engine friendly and provides full control of URL’s rewrite methodology. Magento is compatible with multi language support as well as supports multiple currencies. Administration module is having great functionality for rights or access and any rights can be defined at any user. It allows defining multiple administrators with specific access privileges. Landing page of admin panel is in form of a dashboard providing all vital information of orders, products, and graphical representation on daily, monthly and yearly basis. Admin can create multiple store and easily manage them from admin panel. It provides the strong interface and functionality for reporting.
