What is Magento and What Are Its Benefits?

Magento is an open source ecommerce system that is currently owned by eBay. It first came into existence in 2008 under a different name (Bento), and it has since utilized the expertise that is available on the Open Source circuit to become an eCommerce platform that will allow you to build your own brand easily and with a great amount of flexibility in the design and look.

If you’re an online merchant, you can see many benefits if you use Magento. Magento was built and designed with people like you in mind. It is extremely user-friendly, has a clean back-end organization, and has seemingly unlimited resources available a click away.

Here are a few more of the many benefits of Magento:

• Ease of Use. Magento was built with the intention of being easy for its customers to use. That means that you have the flexibility and control of its look at your fingertips. You determine what your site should look like, how the content should be designed, and how your marketplace should function.

• The Good Stuff. If you have a great company with amazing products, you want people to know about it, right? Magento offers you marketing tools that can be very powerful for your business. You’ll benefit from search engine optimization and catalog management tools that will let you build your business as it’s meant to be. You can tailor to your existing customers and attract new ones at the simple click of a few buttons.

• Free. Yes, we said free! Because this platform is an Open Source product, experts from all over the globe help to contribute to the awesome innovations in which they take part. One such innovation is Magento, and because it’s an Open Source innovation, you, the merchant, can experience tons of great features for no cost at all. If the basic platform (also known as the Magento Community Edition) isn’t enough for you, the Magento Enterprise Edition is available for the cost of an annual subscription.

• Good Company. Wondering who else uses Magento? If you start using this service, you’ll be in good company! There are many customers that utilize the services of Magento, and some of them are household names. FIJI Water, Oneida, and OfficeMax are just a few of the companies that you’ll be keeping company with if you utilize Magento.

• Assistance. From a wide range of places that you can get help to an informative blog, the folks at Magento have put the tools in place to help you succeed. The Magento blog is regularly updated with interesting topics that can be informative, educational, or just plain entertaining. The “Help” section of Magento’s website also offers you a Knowledge Base where you can teach yourself the tools of the trade, a Wiki where people share their own dos and don’ts with others who can benefit from their knowledge, and a forum where you can interact with other business owners and the folks at Magento to get solutions to whatever problems or questions that you’re encountering.

• The Name. Owned and backed by the eBay brand, you can rest assured that there is a team of people that are working to constantly make sure that their name (and yours) achieve optimal results. eBay obviously knows ecommerce, so when you’re working with the Magento team, you’re working with a name that really understands the online merchant industry.

• Support. Many of the products offered by Magento also offer support twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Magento Go is one of these products. You can build your small (or big) business to new, grand levels, and when you get stuck, just let the people in the Tech Support department know, and you’ll be on your way again in no time!

Many of Optimum Systems Online’s ecommerce clients rave about Magento, and we are all too happy to create a new/refreshed website on this wonderful Open Source platform. Are you an experienced Magento user? Or maybe you’re just wondering about more questions that we haven’t yet answered. In either case, we welcome you to utilize the ‘Comments’ section below to let us know what you’re thinking, and tell us if we can help you!