Top Five Reasons for Selecting Magento as an eCommerce Platform

Magento, which is used by more than 30% of today's e-commerce websites, is an open-source system initially developed by Varien Inc., a now eBay-owned US company.

Is your e-commerce platform starting to hold you back -- not scaling to your online shop's growth, perhaps, or not providing sufficient integration with your other e-presence components? Or perhaps you're considering switching away from it for other reasons, like vendor lockdown or difficulties finding developers who can customize it? Magento may be a solution for you.

Magento, which is used by more than 30% of today's e-commerce websites, is an open-source system initially developed by Varien Inc., a now eBay-owned US company. It has gained a lot of popularity through a combination of openness, ease of customization and easy deployment, which made it an attractive choice for business owners, developers and system administrators. Why did the choose it?

1. It's open source.

Magento CMS development isn't tied to Varien anymore: it's developed by a wide community throughout the world. This means it will continue to be developed even if Varien goes under, and Varien won't charge you every year for an insignificant set of updates. It also means it's very well-adapted for international deployment: there may be one Magento developer in Melbourne, one in Los Angeles, one in Madrid and one in Hong Kong -- a truly international community -- which makes Magento well-suited users anywhere around the world, by design!

2. It's extensible.

If you need some additional features, or just want some small customizations so that your business processes are more efficient, you can always extend or modify Magento's functionality to match your needs. Magento CMS development is aided by the excellent documentation that the Magento team offers.

3. It's popular.

This wouldn't be a reason to use it by itself, but in combination with #2, it's a hit: if your business is in Melbourne, you can find a Magento developer in Melbourne in no time. Want to move to Britain? You can find a Magento developer in Britain in no time, too.

4. It's easy to deploy and maintain.

You may have found a Magento developer in Melbourne, but you will also need to find someone to manage your Magento installation. This is an important part that's often overlooked. Most e-commerce CMS systems require complicated system administration procedures, but Magento has a really simple, just-works kind of an installation system that can help you reduce costs significantly.

5. Easily themeable.

Magento's code follows something known as the Model-View-Controller paradigm, meaning that how it looks is developed and configured separately from everything else. This simplifies theming significantly, and there are many Magento developers in Melbourne whose design skills you can tap, too.

Wide community presence.

There's a conference, called Imagine eCommerce, held since 2011, which gathers important names from throughout the Magento users spectrum. Experts and stakeholders gather there to discuss everything, from business opportunities to Magento CMS development, and you can forge important development and business relations there.

If you made up your mind, do remember, though, that Magento is only as good as the people behind it. You shouldn't trust your e-commerce site to anyone; if you think you found the perfect Magento developer in Melbourne, whether a consultant or a company, you should still make sure they are professional, experienced and honest. Magento is a complex platform -- only natural, given the complexity of its functions – and Magento CMS development should only be entrusted to experienced developers.