Magento has long since been an ecommerce development platform of choice, thanks to its highly comprehensive range of capabilities that make an endless list of customisations possible. Numerous top software companies in Sri Lanka have offered ecommerce platform development exclusively via Magento for many years, as its CMS (Content Management System) can be tailored to suit any use case for organisations of any size or industry. Additionally, its high scalability quotient makes it a top choice, thereby enabling companies to expand capabilities depending on growth and seasonality.
In this article, we discuss what Magento is, what it can offer, and how any business can adopt a Magento-based ecommerce platform for selling their products and services. Read on to know more!
Need Magento web developers for your project? As a leading software development company in Sri Lanka, EFutures can offer Magento developers who are skilled, adaptable and possess long-standing experience. Contact us today to assess your software development needs, and learn how we can help.
What is Magento?
Magento (now Adobe Commerce) is a CMS platform that is exclusively built for ecommerce use cases. Based on the PHP programming language, Magento also relies on CSS, HTML, XML and JavaScript, to enable businesses and their development teams for building highly customised ecommerce web presences.
Some of the key capabilities of Magento include:
- AI-powered, personalised buyer journeys and recommendations, thanks to integrations with Adobe’s various proprietary data analytics functionalities/applications,
- AI-powered merchandising, to enable store and warehouse teams keep stocks replenished at all times,
- Highly composable development architecture, allowing businesses to smoothly integrate, swap and scale with third-party applications,
- HIPAA-compliant platform development, which opens up access to all institutions within the healthcare industry, from clinics to hospitals.
While Magento is extremely feature-rich, its many capabilities can be best leveraged only with professional coding expertise. In other words, your software development team may need to hire Magento developers in order to capitalise on the full range of capabilities offered by Magento. However, if your software development team already has a PHP developer, they should be able to undertake a Magento website development project.
How to build a suitable ecommerce platform for your business, with Magento websites
Always assess your business needs first
Before beginning any Magento website development, it is important to assess the individual needs of your business. You, as a business leader/manager, as well as other members in your team may already be aware of what is lacking, and what needs to be fixed. However, conducting an all-hands discussion is still advisable, as it can help unveil many more problems that may not have been top of mind.
Additionally, it is also wise to involve your software development team during this initial assessment stage; if your business has been working with a software development team (be it in-house or via an outsourcing partner) for a significant period of time, this is all the more straightforward, as long-term trust and the presence of NDAs can ensure business information remains confidential.
However, if your software development team is a recent extension of your business via a software outsourcing provider, business assessments can first be carried out internally, and a brief can be shared after, complete with relevant details, to serve as a primary point of reference across both parties.
Certain key questions that can be posed to assess the ecommerce needs of your business can include:
- Are there any UI/UX issues that are present in your existing ecommerce platform? If building a brand new ecommerce platform –
- Is a taxonomy available to sort and list products/services across relevant categories?
- Does an existing ecommerce platform need to be migrated over to Magento?
- Is only an online shopping cart required, or will more ecommerce capabilities have to be integrated, such as inventory management systems, payment gateways, and shipping management systems?
- What is the overall customer sentiment regarding the products/services your business offers? If an existing ecommerce platform is already in place, does any feedback exist, which can be used to identify trends pertaining to interface and product improvements?
- How will feedback from customers, such as NPS (Net Promoter Score), CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Rating) and CDI (Customer Distress Index) be collected?
Insights borne out of these questions can then be collated into a brief, that shall then serve as a primary point of reference for both business and software development teams.
Build an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
For any website or application development project, it is always practical to start with a minimalistic preliminary version. An MVP focuses on just that, by enabling both business and software development teams to determine which features are absolutely essential – while other functionalities or ‘bells and whistles’ are reserved for later versions, and only if a significant number of users request them.
This is no different for Magento-based ecommerce platform development. While brand new ecommerce platforms can start with a typical MVP, existing platforms can focus on specific areas, or the most essential components of all website sections.
Measure, improve, repeat
Once MVP versions are implemented and run for a sufficient length of time, user feedback may be generated via reviews or micro-surveys placed across your Magento website. Integrated reporting and Business Intelligence (BI) tools are another source of data, thereby helping teams identify trends and determine next courses of action.
From this point onwards, teams need to have a DevOps workflow in place to identify areas of improvement, release new features, and measure performance as a repeated, consistent process. This way, your Magento ecommerce website stays functional, operational and impressionable in the eyes of your customers.
To wrap up…
Magento has been a highly popular and relied upon CMS especially for ecommerce platform development, by software developers the world over. Now owned by Adobe under the name of Adobe Commerce, Magento’s extensive range of capabilities continue to be offered in the same calibre, to enable businesses of all sizes for crafting highly bespoke ecommerce presences.
In spite of having a steep learning curve and requiring basic programming knowledge in PHP, CSS, HTML, XML and JavaScript, Magento continues to be preferred by businesses, thanks to its limitless options for customisation/personalisation. Also requiring Magento developers (or any developer that is well-versed in PHP, in the least), businesses can avail web presences that are unique as they are scalable.
As with any other website development project, Magento ecommerce development also requires prior assessments, so all teams are thoroughly aware of the gaps that exist, as well as how they can be filled. Following through with an MVP and a DevOps process that helps maintain a functional yet scalable Magento-based ecommerce platform are the next steps, in order to keep your web presence optimal at all times.
