What is Magento?

Magento is an open-source PHP-based e-commerce platform, that has proven to be a very popular choice for enterprise e-commerce brands. Magento was acquired by Adobe in mid-2018,  taking on the resources of the parent company build on the strengths of the platform, making it even bigger. Most businesses can benefit from Magento with merchants who use Magento growing three times as fast, on average. As of 2020, it was estimated that Magento accounted for about 12 percent of all e-commerce sites, powering about 1.2 percent of the Internet.

As medium and large brands continue to experience the pressure to sell, the selection of an e-commerce platform is crucial. First, it is important to distinguish between Magento Open-Source and Magento Commerce. Magento Open-Source is a free version that was formerly known as Magento Community. This free version of Magento can be downloaded, self-hosted, and customized. Magento Open-Source users are supported by a growing community, providing access to a significant amount of extensions and themes.

Magento Platform has 3 different tiers which can be tailored to your specific needs and budget. Magento Open Source, formerly known as Magento Community, is free to use for merchants though it requires the solution to be hosted somewhere through either a dedicated, shared or managed hosting ecosystem. The premium versions of Magento are Magento Commerce “on-premise” or Magento Commerce Cloud, both require a yearly licensing fee. The cost depends on the  Gross Merchandise Value sold yearly through the platform (total sales volume). Magento Commerce offers additional functionality, including advanced marketing features, targeted promotions, 24/7 support from the technical team at Magento, and customer rewards programs. Magento Commerce Cloud is hosted on AWS and infrastructure is managed by Magento, whereas Magento Commerce on-prem requires self-hosting through a shared, dedicated or cloud based managed hosting service.

The Potential Downsides to Magento

There are ongoing costs associated with Magento, connected primarily with updates, development, integration, and the costs of running an on-premise website or the added costs of Magento Commerce Cloud licenses. If running an on-prem solution such as Magento Open Source or Magento Commerce,  platform patches, security updates and platform version upgrades must be manually installed, but with ORBA on your side – it is no longer an issue.

Some see the Magento technology as “needy,” meaning it requires technical expertise to install, customize and implement as well as it requires development time for platform maintenance. Magento is not a once-and-done platform and when compared to some of the other SaaS platforms available it could be considered more complex to some business users. However, this slight additional complexity is met with the benefit of added functionality and features as well as extensive open source-code and open APIs which can be customized to any business requirement (as crazy as it may be!)  This is why having a trustworthy partner can be of great benefit. At ORBA, we’ve already worked 175.000 hours on Magento 2 development alone. We have also worked with Magento since 2010, have a certified team and have implemented over 95 stores in this technology.

ORBA is technology agnostic – we work with other platforms apart from Magento, we will be happy to recommend the best solution for your business.

What are the Benefits of Magento?

Now that we have the potential problems with Magento out of the way, let’s look at the many benefits of Magento, including:

• Content management that is extremely versatile—Particularly for those who are “code-deficient,” or simply don’t want to be forced to manipulate basic functions. Magento allows shop owners to quickly build and customize their product sales, with a user-friendly content management interface.
• A configuration that is mobile-friendly—able to be seamlessly viewed on smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices—fully accommodates the trend on the part of consumers that has continuously moved toward mobile use.
• SEO efficiency—Magento was built with SEO efficiency in mind. This is important for ensuring your products have the best chance of appearing on Google, Bing, and other research engines.
• Able to support as more than half a million products on one site—Not only that, Magento can accept as many as 80,000 orders each and every hour.
• Third–party integration—You can easily connect Magento’s e-commerce experience with QuickBooks, Google Shopping, Mail Chimp, Paypal, and eBay. Google Analytics and other third-party integrations can also be added to Magento to aid in the analysis of data.
• Security permissions can be easily customized—Magento allows you the options to customize multiple levels of security permissions, and a secondary password prompt includes an extra defense against unwanted breaches.
• Shoppers receive a filtered search experience—Magento uses a number of parameters to filter products via product reviews, unique search terms, product tag filters, and the ability to configure search with auto-suggested terms.
• Magento can save you time—Since you can use and share tools with other Magento users, you may well save yourself the hassle of building from the ground up.
• Magento may well be one of the most flexible, scalable, robust open-source e–commerce platforms currently available.
• Magento grows with your business—Once you set up your store through Magento, there are no worries about how the expansion will affect your online store. Inventory management and product management makes organization a breeze, while you can set up navigation and filters to help boost conversion rates.
• Faster loading—Magento 2 loads extremely fast; since Google statistics indicate that as many as half of all users abandon sites that take more than three seconds to load.
• Highly advanced reporting—Magento offers some seriously high-end reporting features that provide as many as twenty different reports, full of the major insights you want and need.

How can ORBA help you with your Magento 1 Migration?

Magento 1 recently stopped being supported, in favor of Magento 2. This means the security and feature upgrades, the cross-site scripting protection, the DDOS attacks protection, the core platform issues support, PCI compliance certification, and much, much more, are no longer supported. ORBA can easily help you migrate to Magento 2 in record time. ORBAStore is the new Magento 2 accelerator built exclusively by ORBA which includes powerful integrations and will ensure you have a high-quality, high performing shop, without the price tag. If you make a business decision to stay with Magento 1 – we have been working with it since 2010 and will be able to keep your store running.

How Can Your Online Business Be Helped by Magento?

So long as you ensure the following is in place, your online business will thrive with Magento:

• Make sure you have chosen fast web hosting;
• Make sure you are running the latest version of Magento;
• Make sure you have a Content Delivery Network;
• Make sure the Magento cache is enabled;
• Make sure your indexes are updated, and
• Make sure that images are optimized.

Since Magento is indisputably one of the world’s most preferred e-commerce platforms, contact ORBA about implementing your shop on the Magento ecosystem.