Magento is the world's leading ecommerce platform. In terms of ecommerce functionality it has no real comparable.

If you’re setting up an online store or want to take your current ecommerce website to the next level, then you should seriously consider Magento. We’ve been building ecommerce websites for over 15 years and actually built our own ecommerce platform. However, we switched over to using Magento simply because we could never compete with it’s level of functionality.

Magento is not really suited to the very small ecommerce shop or low budget startup. It is for businesses who are either already selling well online or for those who have ambitions to scale up their online retail.

Due to it’s complexity, Magento websites are not quick nor cheap to build. They do take 3-6 months typically and you need to use an agency with Magento expertise. However, once you have a Magento store the possibilities are literally endless. It can handle any volume of products and transactions allowing you to scale up your business in any direction.

The way I look at it is you might aswell have the best and most comprehensive ecommerce platform to start with. Even if you only use 20% of it’s functionality, it gives you the freedom and peace of mind to know that you can grow your ecommerce business without having to redo your entire website when you reach a certain size. I would rather have all the tools at my disposal even if I don’t use them all to begin with.

Just to give you a flavour of Magento’s capabilities here are some of it’s key features above and beyond the standard stuff you would expect of an ecommerce platform.

• You can manage multiple ecommerce websites from one single platform.
• Easy to setup different payment gateways
• Simple integration with all of the main courier companies
• Many search engine optimistion (SEO) features in-built
• Mobile and tablet responsive
• Multi-currency and multi-language
• Large community of developers
• Extensive marketplace for Magento plugins
• Integrates with CRM, ERP and POS systems
• Highly flexible and adaptive to bespoke web designs
• Comprehensive reporting on sales, search terms, abandoned carts, purchasing history, customer loyalty etc.
• Great handling of product variables
• It’s incredibly powerful and can easily handle 10,000s products and more!

Why other businesses might choose the Magento ecommerce platform for several reasons:

1. Flexibility and Customization: Magento offers a highly customisable and flexible platform that allows businesses to tailor their online stores to specific needs. It provides extensive customisation options for design, functionality, and integration with third-party services.
2. Scalability: Magento is capable of supporting small businesses to large enterprises. It can handle high volumes of traffic and transactions, making it suitable for businesses with ambitious growth plans.
3. Open Source: Magento is an open-source platform, which means the source code is freely available for developers to modify and customize according to their requirements. This allows for greater innovation and flexibility compared to closed, proprietary platforms.
4. Rich Features and Functionality: Magento comes with a wide range of built-in features and extensions that empower businesses to create robust and feature-rich online stores. It includes capabilities for catalog management, inventory management, order management, marketing tools, and more.
5. SEO-Friendly: Magento is designed with search engine optimisation (SEO) in mind, with features that help optimize online stores for better visibility in search engine results. This includes customisable URLs, meta tags, sitemaps, and more.
6. Community Support: Being an open-source platform, Magento has a large and active community of developers, designers, and merchants who contribute to its development and provide support through forums, documentation, and online resources.
7. Multi-Store Functionality: Magento allows businesses to manage multiple online stores from a single administration panel, making it easier to oversee and control various storefronts or brands.
8. Mobile-Friendly: With the increasing trend of mobile shopping, Magento offers responsive design themes and mobile optimization features to ensure a seamless shopping experience across different devices.
9. Security: Magento takes security seriously and regularly releases updates and patches to address vulnerabilities and protect online stores from security threats.
10. Integration Capabilities: Magento integrates well with various third-party services and tools, including payment gateways, shipping carriers, ERP systems, CRM software, and more, allowing businesses to streamline operations and enhance efficiency.

For very bespoke buying processes or web applications we would still consider our bespoke ecommerce solution as any off the shelf system has it’s limitations. But for a conventional ecommerce shop selling standard products then Magento is what we would recommend.