Magento CMS was released in March 2008. It has now established itself as one of the most popular content management systems for online stores worldwide. It’s worth noting that the American company eBay has owned the company that developed this CMS since 2011. Consequently, Magento CMS is used as a platform for their online stores by companies such as Olympus, 20th Century Fox, Time Out, and many others. Currently, over 250,000 websites worldwide run on this platform.
Technical Features
Magento CMS is open source. It is written in PHP (specifically, it utilizes the Zend Framework) and uses MySQL as its database. Magento CMS features a responsive web design, meaning online stores built on this platform are easily viewed on any device, including laptops. This significantly saves online store owners both time and money. If you’re unsure of your capabilities, you can contact a Magento development company and get a ready-made store in a matter of days.
Why Choose Magento CMS
There are many reasons why Magento CMS is considered the ideal platform for online stores.
Convenient Features
Its main strength is its abundance of built-in features: currency, languages, discounts and coupons, reports, and much more. In addition to its built-in functionality, Magento CMS offers numerous modules (or extensions) and various templates. It’s also worth remembering that it’s a scalable and extensible platform.
Magento CMS was designed to be flexible and multifaceted. It’s hard to imagine a more suitable CMS for an online store. Its only competitors are WordPress, with the WooCommerce plugin, and PrestaShop. However, WordPress is primarily a blogging platform, and PrestaShop can be difficult to configure. However, their built-in capabilities are incomparable to those of Magento CMS. Therefore, choosing this platform for creating an online store seems the most logical and appropriate, especially for those planning to work with a Western audience, as Magento CMS supports multicurrency.
Magento CMS enables the creation of multiple online stores simultaneously, allowing for their management from a single, centralized admin panel, which is undoubtedly very convenient. This feature is a significant advantage that persuades many online store owners to choose this platform. Magento development services are also highly sought after.
Access Control for Different Users
Magento CMS features a user-friendly management system that allows you to assign permissions to different users in the admin panel: managers, accountants, programmers, and others. This way, if you work with a team, it’s convenient. You can easily assign roles, and each employee will have only the access they need to do their job. Many features are also available to users in an online store built on the Magento CMS platform. For example, they can write product reviews and rate them.
Promotion Opportunities
For search engine optimization, each product page can be optimized. Furthermore, Magento CMS enables you to create an XML sitemap that contains links to all accessible pages of your online store. This sitemap is crucial for search engine crawlers to index your website accurately. It’s worth noting that Magento CMS provides access to HTML and PHP code, offering a wide range of customization options.
This platform will also be a boon for those who like to closely monitor their products and customers, as it allows you to generate various reports: product activity (movement, inventory), what attracts visitors to your pages, which page is the last one they visit before leaving, and much more. The report data will provide information for further progress and correction of errors. This is convenient for developing a marketing strategy.
Disadvantages of Magento CMS
Like any platform, Magento CMS has its weaknesses. Among the most obvious is the lack of support for many languages (however, it is possible to change the CMS language using a module). This also applies to various documentation – most of it is in English, so knowledge of English is highly recommended, if not essential, when working with Magento CMS. Modules in other languages are also not as numerous as those in English (though their number is constantly growing). Generally, the number of Magento 2 extensions continues to increase.
When working with Magento CMS, the average user may encounter some difficulties (for example, if they want to create a truly unique design or add specific payment systems). In this case, you will need to hire third-party specialists (designers and programmers), so be prepared for this. Since this engine is resource-intensive, Magento CMS is not suitable for tiny online stores with just a few products.
Who Should Use Magento?
Despite this CMS’s obvious advantages, it’s not suitable for everyone. It’s clear that it’s primarily useful for online store owners. Despite its flexibility, it’s not practical for, say, a small website run by an individual professional promoting a few services.
Additionally, when using Magento, you should be prepared for the associated costs. You’ll definitely need high-quality hosting and a reliable provider. Avoid cutting corners on this aspect, as the outcome will be disappointing. Given these features, it’s safe to say that this CMS is more suitable for medium- to large-sized stores willing to invest resources in their online presence.
Conclusion
Magento CMS is a solid, high-quality platform that’s perfect for creating an online store. While it can be somewhat complex for inexperienced users (unlike a website builder), its capabilities are far more comprehensive than those of other similar platforms. Magento CMS makes it easy to manage prices—you can temporarily reduce the cost of your products, offer discounts to regular customers, run promotions… In other words, you’ll have everything you need to boost your store’s popularity and increase sales. If certain features aren’t included in the basic package, additional modules are available—there are currently over four thousand different extensions.
