Everything you Need to Know about Magento

• Online merchants are wondering whether to use Magento to build their store.
• Freelance developers are hunting for new promising jobs in Magento.
• Bloggers wanting to write about Magento – which is the current trend in eCommerce.

Congratulations and keep on reading as you have reached the right place to explore all about Magento with ease! With over 9-years of experience, iWebServices team have carefully researched and gathered the most useful knowledge to include in one article only.

What is Magento?

Magento is an open source PHP scripting language on Zend Framework. It was introduced by Varien in 2007, Magento has continuously developed into various products and versions. Currently, it has become one of the leading open-source platforms which offer almost all the features and tools required to build an e-commerce website.

Online merchants have a preference of Magento over WooCommerce, OpenCart, Shopify, etc. because:

• • It is free and fully extensible.
  • Sellers have an ownership and full access to hosting services.

• It’s features cover almost all of a online seller’s requirements: B2C, B2B, Global expansion, Omnichannel, or digital transportation

Learn about different versions of Magento :

Over the past ten years, Magento has launched dozens of versions, which are primarily divided into Magento 1 and Magento 2. Each release product has been frequently updated with several sub-release notes containing new enhancements or bug fixes.

Hence, always remember to check release notes frequently to get the latest version.

• Magento 1 Release Note variants: Magento 1.0.x to Magento 1.9.x
• Magento 2 Release Note variants: Magento 2.0.x to Magento 2.2.x

Each version includes two different editions: Community (CE) and Enterprise (EE), so-called Open Source and Commerce. While Magento CE is free to download with all basic features working very well for small-to-midsize business, Magento EE is paid, priced at about $22,000 per year for 2.2.x version. However, you should think twice about the value, that it offers and not just the price. Magento EE goes along with tons of advanced features and with 24/7 premium support.

Is Magento 1 worth installing anymore?

From our expert view, you should not use Magento 1 unless you are running your online stores in Magento 1. In other words, if you are about to start an entirely new website, start with Magento 2.

Magento has issued a statement that “Magento 1 has been and will continue to be supported for the foreseeable future.” However, its features can no longer keep up with the increasingly varied demands by online merchants and customers. Sooner or later, you will have to move from Magento 1 to Magento 2. Such an upgrade will definitely cost money, time, and effort. Thus, Magento 2 is the present and future of the platform in particular.

*Note: We will focus on Magento 2 only. Keep scrolling down with us and you yourself will agree for sure that Magento 2 is your choice.

What are the Magento 2 main features?

It surpasses other competitors like Shopify or WooCommerce partly because of its rich features ranging from Marketing, SEO, Site Management, Analysis, etc. which can meet almost all the demands of the online merchants.

What are some of the most useful Magento 2 channels for users?

If you type “What is Magento?” in the search box, you will see 59.800.000 results displayed in a quarter of a second. Which one should you select and read? It is a very hard question. Though every shared knowledge is useful not all of them are detailed or clear enough to make up your mind.

As Magento specialists, we would recommend the following channels to get reliable knowledge:

• Magento Website: The official channel of Magento where you could find information all about products, solutions, partners, community, resources, and so on.
• Extension Marketplace: The default features of Magento are out-of-the-box and very effective. However, you can even enhance their performance and delight your customers better with Magento extensions. You can buy high-quality modules from this channel.
• Magento Community: Join this global community of online merchants, developers, and Magento contributors.
• Magento Forum: If you are a developer who is about to start a Magento project or a merchant looking for the best solutions to improve his site, then you can search or create any topic to discuss your concern.

Magento 2 for Merchants

According to Magento Image 2015 Event at Las Vegas, They announced that approximately 240,000 websites are running a business based on Magento. In 2018, this figure supposedly increases to more than 250,000 websites (the statistic is published on Magento.com), which proves the continuous growth of one of the three biggest E-commerce platform in the world.

Why should you choose Magento?

Apart from Magento, you have a lot of other options to select an E-commerce platform for your business like, Woocommerce, Shopify, OpenCart or PrestaShop and so on. Hence, it will be quite difficult for you to decide which one should be chosen because each platform contains particular functions.

Following are some of the reasons why you should choose Magento:

• Flexibility: Depending upon the requirements and budget of every business, the flexibility of Magento can be utilized to get user-specific solutions.
• Developers Friendly: Magento platform is built by the developers for the developers. It has its learning curve but once a developer gets used to it, it is the best platform they could ever get to build a complete E-commerce store. They find it really easy to work with, Magento has all the e-commerce functionality already present and it becomes pretty simple to add pages on the website and link them to the sub or main navigation, thus saves a considerable amount of time.
• SEO Edge: ‘Magento SEO’ has solved multiple issues by facilitating better optimization solution for e-commerce sites. Page traffic, duplicate content, landing pages, indexing, etc are efficiently managed for a website developed on its platform.
• Order Management: It is one of the best advantages of Magento , Here admin can handle their order fulfillment side of the business with ease, as it integrates with extensions like ship station which helps in smoothening the order fulfillment for the owner, The admin can easily create, view, edit, raise invoices (one or multiple), print packing slips and other things for orders.
• Open Source: Magento is an OpenSource E-commerce platform which is based on Zend PHP Framework and that you can make edits as you wish as long as you are not breaking the given standards
• Marketing Tools: Magento eCommerce websites have various tools and technologies which can be used to promote your business. Marketing tools are like Private Sales, Flexible Coupons, Catalog Promotional Pricing, Multi-Tier Pricing, Bundled Products, Landing page Tools for Campaigns, etc are some of them, so there is no need purchase lot of 3rd party tools as most of them come inbuilt with Magento

Does Magento 2 Support SEO?

The answer is definitely Yes. Magento 2 not only supports SEO but also highlights some advanced improvements in comparison with Magento 1. SEO features in Magento 2 also defeat other platforms when getting higher SEO score.

Does Magento 2 Support Marketing?

Magento 2 effectively supports Marketing with a lot of necessary tools for marketers to complete a successful Marketing campaign. These functions include creating discounts for promotions, sending emails, and newsletters, and supporting Marketing tool integration for better analysis and management.

How much will it cost to build a Magento 2 website?

When it comes to costs to build a Magento-based website, many merchants often take a list of everything they need to prepare and estimate how much will be spent on these things. With more than 9-year experience in providing end-to-end services to help thousands of customers in building Magento websites, we have come up with a list of costs for you to think over before making your decision.

• Cost for Magento edition
• Cost for a domain
• Cost for a Magento hosting service
• Cost for web design
• Cost for development
• Cost for Magento extensions
• Cost for more customization
• Cost of maintaining websites

These costs still depend on the level and requirements of your website to be built.

Selecting the right Magento version: Magento 2 CE or EE?

Magento 2 is a Community Edition that is free and is mostly used for a small and new business that wants to build a store from the ground up. Magento 2 Enterprise Edition is annually charged and is the best fit for medium and large-size businesses with more flexibility and exclusive features which are not included in the Community Edition.

How to find Magento developers to help build your website?

Seeking developers to code for your website depends upon your current situation such as cost capability, and the complexion level of the website.

Magento web agencies: There are some useful suggestions for you to consider a web design agency to build your website:

• Are they Magento Solution Partners?
• Experience and Testimonials
• Portfolio
• Pricing
• Location
• Quality assurance and testing
• Support policy

Freelancer developers: You may search for many developers at www.freelancer.com – the largest freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace. To select a qualified developer, you have to take careful consideration of these factors:

• Do they have Magento Developer Certificates?
• Experience and customer reviews
• Portfolio
• Cost per hour
• Location

How to maintain Magento 2 website?

Optimizing your Magento 2 website may not be enough for running a smooth business because maintaining is a more difficult and challenging task. As we can observe, most Magento websites owners ask web agencies for Magento maintenance services because it requires timely audits, upgradations, security patches to ensure 99.9% business continuity

Are there any reliable sources to learn Magento from scratch for developers?

For both new developers and experienced ones, Magento devdocs are considered one of the best resources to learn everything about Magento. They provide a complete system of technical knowledge to instruct developers steps-by-steps and make them more skilled and efficient in their work. Magento U also offers complete training courses for every developer to learn Magento.

Developers can get some useful knowledge and solutions from the following websites:

• Magento Stack Exchange & Stack Overflow are #1 websites for Magento developers. Just ask anything, and the community will answer.
• Inchoo Blog shares the best practices for Magento dev.
• Github is the home of nearly 30 million developers to review code, discuss project, and build solutions together.

What are Magento Certificates for Developers?

According to Magento, a Magento Certified Developer can skillfully use all business processes present in Magento, such as the structure of catalog, indexes, promotions, price generation logic , architecture of checkout, payment/shipment methods, sales/order processing, etc. A Certified Magento Developer can construct design decisions on the code level, including how to parse data files, steps of import, data verification, logging (etc.)

In Magento 2, the developers can absolutely validate their real-world skills by earning a Magento Certification in the exam. Following are the three certificates for developers to gain:

• Magento 2 Certified Professional Developers
• Magento 2 Certified Associate Developers
• Magento 2 Certified Professional Frontend Developers

Each exam with different certificates will evaluate the specific skills of developers in Magento 2.

Magento 2 Installation

After going through all the features, Now you can decide that Magento 2 is the right choice to build your online stores. So, it’s time to get started with the process of installation.

What are the basic system requirements to install Magento 2?

System requirements are varied among different versions of Magento 2. Usually, the technology stack (operating system, memory requirement, composers, web servers, database, PHP, SSL, mail servers, etc.), supported web browsers, and recent security requirements (TLS – Transport Layer Security) are required by default.

How can you download Magento 2?

Magento provides three options to download Magento 2 software, which you can be select based on your purpose and your technical background.

• Easy Installation: This is the simplest level for online merchants. A compressed version of Magento software archive (.zip or .tar) is available to download and which you install by yourself or hire a helping hand from the Magento team or select a professional installation service. You can choose between either Magento 2 Open Source or Magento 2 Commerce.
• Integrator Installation: It is for the technical users who are familiar with the Composer. Integrator installation reduces the extension conflicts and compatibility issues.
• Contributor Installation: It is for developers who are having the good command of Composer and Github as they can customize or contribute to the Open Source codebase.

How to install Magento 2?

Please follow the complete roadmap below:

Part 1 – First set up your server environment: Make sure that all the system requirements mentioned above are met.

Part 2 – Get the desired version of Magento software: You can select among three options to install Magento 2 as above.

Part 3 – Use the Web Setup Wizard or Command line to install the software:

• Web Setup Wizard: Install the Magento software on the web-based wizard interface.
• Command Line: Use the command-line interface to perform both processes: Installation and configuration tasks.

Part 4 – Check post-installation:

• Verify the installation: Check the display at the storefront with and without giving any sample data, as well as Magento Admin.
• Configure Magento application: Set up the cron, make the required security settings, enable the apache server rewrites, and more.

You will find this article useful: 10 key Differences between eCommerce mCommerce

Which companies use Magento?

It is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms as a large number of retailers choose Magento. There are many brands across the globe which use Magento for their e-commerce websites. Following are some of the famous brands that use Magento:

Ford Motor

Ford is only using Magento for its accessories website but it is still one of the largest B2B eCommerce players in the United States and trusts Magento as a platform to provide scalability for its B2B initiatives.

Nike Inc.

Nike’s main website is highly customized but they do utilize Magento for their Australian eCommerce store which is most likely for its value and cost saving purposes.

Procter & Gamble Co.

Proctor & Gamble has 29 major brands and all of them has their unique websites. They utilize Magento for some of their brands B2B eCommerce part of their business.

3M Co.

3M is a major B2B company that has more than thousands of products. They have leveraged Magento to boost their B2B eCommerce sales after seeing that most of their business is done to other businesses and It can be more easily done online with a better eCommerce experience.

Cisco Systems Inc

Cisco Systems is one of the largest companies in the world selling a huge range of technology products and software. They have utilized Magento to facilitate more B2B eCommerce sales online so that their customers can buy their products more easily.

Conclusion

There are many e-commerce platforms present today in the market, and many of them are easy and simple to use in comparison to Magento, but none of them provide the flexibility, the scalability, feature-laden functions, and especially more than the necessities required to run a successful e-commerce store. Magento is, for lack of a better word, we can just say it the daddy of all e-commerce platforms!

Now that you are familiar with the concept of Magento, why not give it a try  and start coding your way towards an online store? Connect with us for a NO-OBLIGATION consultation: [email protected]

Mahabir

Mahabir is the founder and CEO of iWebServices. He specializes in guiding startups, enterprises, and Fortune 500 companies through their digital transformation journeys. Under his leadership, the company has developed over 1300 digital products, including mobile apps, SaaS platforms, and advanced AI and blockchain solutions. Mahabir's passion for technology, adaptability to emerging tech trends, and visionary leadership qualities have positioned him as an influential figure in the pursuit of digital product investment.