Magento

If you have done any online shopping, you've probably used a website that was built with Magento. This self-hosted e-commerce platform is the preferred choice of many online merchants. The company that develops Magento is now owned by eBay. The software is available in an open-source edition and a commerce edition which requires more development skill. Magento is a shopping cart that has an impressive number of features. It lends itself to use by the experienced merchant, but beginners can also use the software if they are willing to put in the time required to learn the ropes. This is serious software for serious businesses. Burger King and other large companies use it to process transactions which exceed a total of $50 billion each year. The software itself is free, but there are additional expenses to consider. Among these are web hosting, SSL certificates, and payment processing. Magento essentially provides the framework a business needs to create an efficient online shopping cart. It should be noted that this platform also requires coding. Those who have no experience in coding will have to hire someone to do the work. The administration of the platform is simple enough once it is up and running. Getting it there, however, is not so easy. The company does provide an installation guide, but it will be of little help to those without development experience. Adding products is accomplished via a simple interface that prompts the user at each step. Tax and shipping costs can be specified, photos can be uploaded, and it is even possible to make adjustments to SEO for better search rankings. The merchant can also create popular flash sales and offer discounts to frequent customers. Thankfully, updating products can be done with a built-in WYSIWYG editor which is much simpler to manage than creating source code. Other features include the ability to create coupons, wish lists, and email marketing lists. Customers can be grouped according to a specific category. This allows merchants to tailor their marketing campaigns effectively. The biggest problems with the software include non-existent customer support. Users are pretty much left to hire a coder or figure it out on their own. Magento also demands a pretty steep learning curve.