When you think about e-commerce platforms, Magento is most likely one of the first that springs to mind. Its footprints can be found across the web, and it powers the most merchants in Internet Retailer’s top 1000, more than double of any other provider.

Until recently owned and operated by eBay Enterprise and now spun off as an independent entity, Magento is one of the world’s leading e-commerce platforms, the number one choice for both small start-up businesses and well-established commercial juggernauts. And yet, many e-commerce stores that use Magento are simply not taking full advantage of everything it has to offer.

Its open source technology offer merchants huge flexibility, not just in terms of the look and the content of their store front, but also in how their shopping cart functions. The wide range of tools available, and the customisation opportunities it provides, can all be implemented in your store to transform the way you do business and improve your bottom line—if you understand its full potential.

Once you can see the big picture and know how Magento can help you, implementation isn’t difficult – as long as you choose the right customisation options 

Understanding Magento to help your e-commerce business gro

There are a number of reasons why Magento has such widespread adoption and popularity, but the biggest and most important one is that it works. It works for hundreds and thousands of e-commerce businesses, of all shapes and sizes, because it helps them sell their products effectively and expand when needed.

Take advantage of the benefits of Magento, and you will be able to effectively support the growth of your e-commerce business:

1)     Make use of its simplicity

First and foremost, Magento is easy to get to grips with. That means any business can get started straight away. The visually based content management system is extremely intuitive, especially when compared with other e-commerce platforms; use it to easily edit product information whenever required.

2)     Take control when you need to, and when you’re confident

If you want the utmost flexibility on your site, you can have it. Magento lets you customise and change almost anything you want, giving you the tools you need to effectively target the needs of your audience. Of course, you should take this in stages as you grow accustomed to the platform; customise little areas first with established plug-ins before you change too much.          

3)     Put the shopping experience first

Developed specifically as an e-commerce platform, Magento has a number of built-in tools to help you sell to your audience. Discounts and promotions can be easily added to the checkout process, with up-sell and cross-sell opportunities all embedded to help you maximise your sales.

4)     Utilise its performance

Whenever it’s compared with other platforms, Magento outperforms in terms of page load speed and query processing time. Given that 40% of users will abandon a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load, and that Google has recently been experimenting with “slow” labels for certain websites, this speed is vital if you want your e-commerce business to grow and outperform competitors.

5)     List multiple products, with multiple storefronts

Performance extends to products too, as Magento lets you list hundreds of thousands of products. It’s a really spacious platform, and is ideal if you have a wide product range that you need to customise. That’s why we used it for 247Blinds which required specific category listings to be successful.

Magento even lets you have multiple storefronts with a single back end for administration tasks and inventory management; use this feature if you want to grow your business in different directions, testing what works, and what doesn’t.

6)     Boost your rankings and click-through rates

Make as much use as possible of the easy-to-access SEO features like Google-friendly URL structures, metadata tabs and automatically generated sitemaps, in order to help your site rank highly in search engines.

You should also ensure your store is designed with a Magento mobile responsive template and HTML5 capabilities (usually deployed as standard now), in order to get excellent click-through rates from mobile devices and embrace the ever-growing m-commerce market.

7)     Keep security as a top priority

Magento places great emphasis on the stability of its platform, and the world’s largest brands wouldn’t use it if this wasn’t the case. Downtime is kept to an absolute minimum, and PCI data security is standard; if you want extra security, there are a number of easy-to-install plugins with which you can customise required permissions.

8)     Create a unique user experience for your customers

The open source architecture of Magento means that you can create a unique user experience tailored to the needs of your customers. Many solutions are available within minutes, pre-packaged, tested, and proven to be successful.

With thousands of extensions and third-party integrations to choose from, and a large community of support, help is available to provide your target audience with exactly what they need.

The importance of customisation

With multiple ways of transforming your e-commerce store—many of which are installed at your fingertips within minutes—attracting, converting and retaining customers is easy and efficient 

Whether it’s a unique front end product layout, or a back end workflow tailored to the needs of your business, there are so many extensions readily available that you don’t need to build from the ground up. You can simply download, install, and implement, saving you the time needed to drive your business forward.

You could easily customise your payment options for customers—opening up a wider source of revenue—thanks to over 50 payment gateway integrations, or streamline your administration procedures with back-office integration into software like Sage Pay, Brightpearl and Microsoft Dynamics.

When using Magento extensions, it’s important to make sure they are from quality vendors. This is key to ensuring a smooth, problem-free integration. We use ones from aheadWorks, Amasty and WebShopApps, because we know the code of these plug-ins is top quality, and we can rely on them to scale well with a high amount of traffic.

The beauty of Magento is that, if you have the development knowledge, you can also write your own plug-ins, which gives you even more control and creativity. For example, we wanted a more efficient search tool for our Magento sites, so we created our own Elasticsearch plug-in to improve results.

The key to customisation should always be an easier, more efficient customer experience, whether that’s front or back end. It’s this that will help your e-commerce store grow. Customise Magento to push your perfect buyer down the purchasing funnel in the way you want.

Here are just a few ideas, to help you get started.

• Make sure your site is user-friendly to the first-time visitor with Improved Navigation, which uses ‘Ajax layered navigation’ and ‘shop by brands’ to help customers find the products they want more easily.
• Refine your ideal user experience with a split-testing tool like Optimizely, creating A/B versions of pages to improve your conversion rate. You can even target specific audience types, tracking interactions and related revenue.
• Install a simple extension like Colour Swatches to change the colours of displayed product images and improve the likelihood of a purchase. Or use Auto Related Products to automatically suggest associated category products and improve your average order value. 
• When your buyer is ready to purchase, make use of checkout plug-ins like One Page Checkout to streamline what could be a 5- or 6-step process into a single page, reducing the possibility of basket abandonment.
• Shipping can often be a problematic step in the purchasing funnel, but if you use an extension like MatrixRate you can automatically calculate shipping costs based on size, weight and destination, charging the customer appropriately. You could even use a tool like Free Shipping Incentive to provide custom messaging about free delivery over a set basket amount.
• Finally, after the customer has bought from you, use an extension like Bronto to send targeted emails and cross-channel marketing campaigns based on past purchases and store behaviour, or install the Refer A Friend plugin to extend their lifetime value.

With so many extensions and customisation options available, there’s no limit on what Magento can do for your e-commerce store. Find out what works for your business, and your revenue will grow.

iWeb is an e-commerce website design agency based in the United Kingdom.

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