When you’re building an eCommerce business, you need a website that can attract customers, create an engaging experience, drive sales, and, ultimately, help your company grow. With Magento Commerce (formerly known as Magento Enterprise), you have the potential to generate a seamless shopping experience no matter how quickly your company grows. Discover how Magento Commerce works and learn how this cloud-based platform can work for your eCommerce business.
How Do Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source Compare?
Whether you’re offering bespoke clothing, corporate T-shirts, or digital services, you need an eCommerce platform to run your business. If you’re considering Magento, there’s a good chance that you are also weighing the pros and cons of choosing a more comprehensive solution like Magento Commerce versus selecting a more DIY option like Magento Open Source.
For many small businesses and startup companies, Magento Open Source is a great choice. Not only is this software free and customizable for virtually any business, it is also frequently updated to improve usability and increase security. Since this version of Magento is available for free, however, it requires much more hands-on development and maintenance, and it lacks the long list of features of Magento Commerce.
For mid-size and large businesses and established companies, Magento Commerce is often a smart solution. This eCommerce platform has a higher price tag, but its cloud-based hosting, advanced marketing tools, expanded sales functionality, and enhanced security often make this advanced version worth the additional investment.
Create Irresistible eCommerce Experiences
No matter what you sell, more competitors line up every day for the chance to win over your customers. An online store that looks generic or offers an average or dated customer experience will put you at risk of losing customers to competitors who have sleek sites and offer next-level shopping experiences.
With Magento Commerce, you have the power to create a shopping experience that delights your customers, makes it easy for them to purchase, and encourages them to return for more. The cloud platform’s visual merchandising feature helps you drive sales by optimizing product category pages and simplifying sorting, and the Elasticsearch feature adds search assistance so customers can always find what they’re looking for.
If you’re already familiar with eCommerce, or if you’ve worked in any type of retail, you know that one-size-fits-all products don’t exist. Since customers have significantly different needs and desires based on their locations, genders, and past orders, you won’t want to promote the same products to every visitor. With Magento Commerce, you can easily segment and personalize shopping experiences based on these factors and more.
No matter how excited your customers are about your brand, few will want to wait longer than absolutely necessary to make a purchase. With this eCommerce platform’s Instant Purchase option, you can allow returning customers to make a purchase without delay, a feature that appeals particularly to mobile shoppers.
Rely on Advanced Platform Security
eCommerce security breaches and online store hacks are becoming daily news, but that doesn’t mean your website should take a lax approach to security. As an eCommerce site owner, you are responsible for protecting your customers’ personal information and payment details. Not only will improving your site’s security help your customers trust your business, doing so can also keep your costs low because you avoid expensive security issues.
With Magento Commerce, you can boost your site’s security without giving it a second thought, thanks to built-in features such as payment card industry (PCI) compliance and a read-only file system. Since the platform undergoes frequent updates, your site will also receive infrastructure improvements automatically.
Use Analytics and Data Reporting to Streamline Growth
While your eCommerce site might start small, your business may be ready for growth before you are. Fortunately, Magento Commerce makes it easy to take your company to the next level. Thanks to the platform’s integration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), you can easily sell almost anywhere in the world. Since growth often means increased traffic, Magento Commerce offers full page caching and image optimization to speed up load times.
As your company grows, you’ll appreciate the ease with which you can track eCommerce analytics and create online store data reports. Magento Commerce enables you to consolidate data in a single convenient location, saving you time and headaches. Since Magento Commerce is a cloud platform, you can access customer analytics, sales numbers, and other data any time you have an internet connection.
To better visualize your company’s progress and track your growth, use the platform’s user-friendly report-building tools and create reports with charts, graphs, and diagrams. For tips on driving more sales, increasing customer lifetime value, and attracting return customers, check Magento Enterprise’s best practice dashboards.
Partner with Magento Developers for More Functionality
Magento Commerce can help your eCommerce site look great and function seamlessly, but this doesn’t mean that you should stop with the basics. When you work with an experienced developer or a full-service Magento agency, you can take your online store to the next level.
This cloud platform offers a range of application programming interfaces (APIs), allowing your developer to integrate your store with third-party apps for even better customer relationship management, sales outreach, and content management. It also works with the Magento Marketplace, where you’ll find dozens of responsive themes and full-featured extensions that can give your online store even more functionality. With the advice and assistance of an experienced Magento development team, you can select and implement extra features that will make your online store shine.
Can’t find exactly what you want in the marketplace? An experienced developer can build custom components and modules that will take your Magento site to new heights.
Getting started with Magento Enterprise can be difficult, but you can easily stay ahead of the curve with IronPlane. Talk with us to find out how our Magento Commerce team can build, support, and host an eCommerce site that will take your business above and beyond the competition.
