Every so often, we are asked as to what the best eCommerce platform is. And every time, the answer is the same – Magento. e-commerce is one of those phenomena that is getting even bigger every year, and so is e-commerce development. With easy access to the Internet and short-attention spans of this generation that draws them to online shopping, e-commerce has expanded very quickly.
| Trivia: Did you know that out of all the people who use the Internet, 80% of them have made an online purchase? Out of these, 50% has shopped online more than once. |
With the varied number of e-commerce stores hitting the online market, goliaths like Amazon and eBay are not the only options for the consumers. Consumers don’t mind using other platforms as long as the platform offers them a good deal. They like researching and browsing and satisfying themselves before they buy.
Today online shopping is seen as an alternative to brick and mortar shops primarily because 71% of online shoppers believe that they will get a better deal online.
But, to be able to draw the attention of the consumers away from tried and tested e-commerce outlets, you have to make it seem worth their while. While your delivery may be free or your products may be excellent, nothing can replace the first impression, and the experience a consumer has while shopping on your site. To make sure that your e-commerce store is of good quality, there is a need to use a robust e-commerce platform like Magento.
Magento is the world’s largest e-commerce platform.
The platform has been through numerous changes – from its first Community edition that was released in 2008 to purchase by eBay in 2011 to having to cancel the Pro Edition in 2012 – but one thing has remained constant irrespective of any ups and downs, and that is, Magento has continued to grow. {2018 update: They now have Magento 2, and it's brilliant!}
Magento is the fastest growing platform in the IR Top 500; and also the top mid-market platform. The community support that Magento can boast of is far above any peer platforms. Among the one million, one hundred thousand and top ten thousand eCommerce websites, Magento boasts the top position.
After e-commerce became commonplace it was only a matter of time before m-commerce had to come into its own. After all, although people may prefer online shopping, they are not spending as much time on their computers as they used to. Most of the time is spent on the phone. The smartphone has made sure that the phone is not just a device to receive calls and send the occasional text. Development has become so advanced that mobiles can today be used for anything that a computer could do, and much more.
Magento provides many merits. There are a great number of themes from which you can use according to your customization needs. There are two trustworthy sources which can determine which e-commerce platform is growing well – The Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide and Tom Robertshaw’s e-commerce survey. Both of these sources have put Magento as one of the fastest growing platforms. Magento pays attention to both convenience and aesthetics. There is a common dashboard for all your controls.
Magento has also taken care of your user experience, which is based on research of best practices. If you are looking to serve a global market, it is important that your site shows the option to change it to the currency of the user. Magento product design tool provides an easy one-click system for you to do this. Social platforms are also very important, with the growth of social media. Magento provides seamless integration with your preferred mode of social networking too.
Magento’s future looks bright. The platform has continued to grow despite any changes. In fact, if in spite of such ownership changes, Magento has grown and done so well, it would be almost scary to imagine the kind of growth Magento would achieve without these problems. That we love Magento isn’t something new – there is a good reason for it. Magento dominates a large portion of the market, keeping over 30% of the e-commerce pie. The closest competitors of Magento are IBM WebSphere, which has less than 20% of the pie; and Woo Commerce, which has less than 8 per cent.