Secure Magento Certified eCommerce Experts – Pay For Results

But on the other, it is much more difficult to choose the one that will be 100% suitable for your particular store.

In this article, we will talk about the benefits of creating an online store on the Magento CMS – one of the most popular CMS platforms for ecommerce. With the help of this engine, one can create huge online stores with different additional functionality. CMS Magento is made in PHP and MySQL and has an open source code, which means that it can be modified any time you need and be adapted to its own needs.

Magento is a very flexible platform. It is quite simple to work with, especially when it comes to setting up products, payment methods or delivery, configurations of a sitemap, the general setting of the store’s workflow, working with siteground etc.

Magento Website Creation: Why Business Owners Choose Magento

Owners of the online stores can completely control the appearance of their resources, content, and functionality of the site using an intuitive management interface.

There are many reasons why Magento CMS is considered to be an ideal platform for online stores. The main advantage is the abundance of built-in functions: we are talking about currency, languages, discounts and coupons, reports, etc. In addition to the built-in functionality, Magento CMS has a lot of modules (or extensions) and various templates. Also, do not forget that this is a scalable and extensible platform.

Magento CMS makes it possible to create several online stores at once, and then manage them with the help of a common center, one administrative panel, which is certainly very convenient. This feature is one of the pros, which inclines many online store owners to choose this particular platform. CMS Magento is a powerful system with which you can create an online store with an incredible assortment of goods. The creators of the engine cooperate with many companies and private developers who produce extensions and additions, which greatly increases the possibilities of this platform.

Moreover, Magento will help you to make your online store one of the leaders in search engines, thanks to the SEO-friendly status of this platform. Automated settings independently create an XML sitemap required for search engines. Of course, this all has a positive effect on website traffic and increases the number of sales.

Business owners are attracted by the abundance of built-in functions and settings, including:

• various product display schemes;
• holding promotions, creating coupon codes;
• sales statistics system;
• reporting for any period on various parameters (client basket, reviews, search, etc.);
• reviews and evaluation of goods by buyers;
• creating newsletters;
• multi-currency;
• delimitation of administrative access rights;
• management of several online stores from a single center, etc.

For the complete and successful work of your online store, this engine requires a high-quality server. As a rule, providers offer to install some CMS, so pay attention to it as it’s really convenient if Magento is on this list.

Magento Development Workflow: All the Ins and Outs You Need to Consider

In fact, if you are ready to create your own online business but you are not sure in your knowledge of website development, you might need professional help of freelancers or some development companies. Such people will be able to help you with setting a theme and the CMS on the localhost, save your website from being hacked, create backups and many other useful acts for maintenance of your online store without using builders which can cost really much money.

Мagento website Сreation: The Main Preparation Steps

Before hiring people you need to compose all the requirements for your future project. First of all, it is important for you to know and understand all the customer needs. During the preparation stage, you should understand how much work you have in your Magento certified project and you determine whether you need to hire a development company, or if a freelancer (one developer) is enough for you. After collecting all the necessary information it will be easier for you to decide what to do next.

Your developer needs to know the important features of your industry, customers, and products. When you prepare this information we recommend identifying the most obvious facts first and then collecting more detailed information accordingly.

We recommend applying a “User Story” approach here. “User Story” is a short description that consists of several simple sentences describing what a user/client needs to do during their visit to your online store. In other words, “User Story” shows how a customer chooses the product, his/her migration through the website, how does the customer prefer finishing the deal. After this, you will be able to recognize all the customer’s way of getting to your website to making a purchase.

Along with the customers’ needs, it is important to understand that you have your own requirements such as types of reports, integration with other systems, process optimization, suitable workflow, different extensions  and modules, the absence of malware, etc.

Magento Design

If you want to refine the design of your online store, you need to:

• Prepare a brand-book (logos, fonts, corporate colors) and any information about the existing design elements you don’t want to change; it is a useful stage, as this point plays on your brand awareness.
• Search for links to websites offering designs of which you would like to model; here is the important point not to copy the design of some famous brand, as it may play not a good game with you and your service which you propose.
• Prepare comments about what you definitely don’t want to have in your online store as the design elements. Do not overload your website with a huge amount of unnecessary elements and buttons, as more your resource will be convenient for the customer in navigation – the better it will influence your income and promotion.

Choosing the Best Magento Developer

When the project starts, it is important to understand that now you and your developer must operate as a team, and the success of the project depends on both of you. The developer will have access to your Magento admin account including some sensitive confidential information. That is why you need to pay much attention to the search of the professionals.

• Read reviews from different internet sources about the developer you are considering hiring.
• Ask them to provide their portfolio and analyze examples of concrete Magento stores of their existing clients (these can be some certain URLs, sites or themes of Magento online stores).
• Ask for recommendations. Today, many companies, as well as freelancers, are ready to give real contacts for you to communicate with and ask for the feedback.
• During the first communication, you can notice how quickly the answers come. If there are delays or no answer at all, it is a bad indicator. A reliable company never ignores potential customers.
• If you prefer hiring freelancers, you may organize a test work for them to make sure that developers are really professionals.

The developer has more experience in Magento than you do, that is why some good recommendations regarding your project optimization, making your online store more efficient, saving money and so on, have to be provided during project discussions. This will indicate their professional approach.

Find out how long the company has existed. Young companies can be good partners as well, but in this case, you need to check all of the above points more carefully.

Specifications and Cost

Your next point is the technical specification of your Magento project. The developer has to give you this document for confirmation. It is necessary to understand all the points in it. If something is written in technical language and it is not clear to you, ask for clarification. This document is your “safety airbag”, you will check all the work using it and will be able to ask for your money back if something is wrong.

Either in the technical specification or in a separate document, it is essential to agree to the terms of the project and identify those people who are responsible for communication on both sides. According to the technical specification, the price of the project will be calculated. Of course, you have an opportunity to make several calculations with various companies to compare, but it is not a good approach to choose the developer only based on price.

GoMage has been developing Magento online stores since 2010 and has great experience in this sphere. We recommend paying attention to the following points:

• Magento is a great e-commerce platform and about 90% of the functionality is already embedded.
• If functionality is not available in the default version it is highly probable that extensions for that functionality have already been developed and can be found here
• Only 2-3% of the required functionality can be done as customization. This point is the most expensive.

How to Find a Good Magento Developer: Pro Tips

At this stage, an online store owner should be ready to accept the finished work for approval.
If a design is a part of the project, it will be developed. The design is the most difficult part of an evaluation. Be ready to have several design drafts, to give comments about graphics objects and so on. You should know that you may choose a ready-made template for Magento store in different kinds of marketplaces for example.

There is a great variety of categories and themes for the future online business, so you can choose any you need. Along with it, you may separately hire frontend developers, web designers to order a special design for your online store. Here you must know that the unique website design may cost more expensive than a ready-made template or theme or a general complex of services which contains many different digital acts.

There are many different ready-made templates and themes so you can choose one for your future project.

Some technical work can start during the design development and then both functionality and design are developed simultaneously, but it is a rare practice. After approval of graphic design elements, website coding, page composition, and technical work are started. It is not your responsibility to understand all the ins and outs of the project organization. If you hire professional designers and web developers you may be a generator of some ideas while your team will create different modules with specific targets.

A professional developer always communicates with clients and keeps them informed about the work progress. It is really useful to give feedback and ask if something is unclear. Different mistakes always happen, and it is important to inform the developer immediately when one is identified.

From our experience, we know that during the project realization stage it might be very challenging and expensive to change anything. A lot of time has been spent and a lot of work has been done by both sides, so they are “in the same boat”. If something goes wrong, the best way is to discuss and work together to find a workable solution with your Magento certified developer.

Magento Website Creation: It is Time to Make Your Decision

All in all, before choosing the best Magento developer it is necessary to make sure that people you hire are really professionals in web developing, design, and so on. Before starting to work on creating an online store, prepare a list with all the needs, requirements, and offers you would like to see on your resource. Your task as an ecommerce business owner is to try and make your online store the best and the most user-friendly place to shop through and you will see how quickly your customers make purchases and return to your resource again and again.