Whether you are a small, home-grown business or a large enterprise looking to sell online, choosing the right eCommerce platform will set the stage for success. And unless you have a technology team with deep experience in the platform you choose, you’ll need an agency that will partner with you to achieve your business goals.

Magento is the world’s leading e-commerce platform, with more than 200,000 online stores using this robust platform. With the most recent release, Magento 2 offers the features and functionality that support businesses from small storefronts to major retailers like Nike, Land Rover, and Birchbox.

Magento presents two problems for businesses looking to set up shop on the platform. First, because the Community Edition is freely available it’s easy for almost any developer to claim expertise with it regardless if they are experts or not. The second problem is the exact reason it is an attractive platform – lots of features and functionality. That might not seem like a problem, but the options and implementation paths may seem overwhelming and if not implemented properly it can become a liability.

That’s where an experienced Magento eCommerce agency can make all the difference. Choosing the right partner to build your storefront is important to ensuring that your shop operates properly and securely today and as you grow.

So why choose Magento as your eCommerce platform? And how do you find the right Magento agency to partner with?

The Benefits of Magento 2

Magento 2 expands and improves upon the original Magento platform.

Open Source Platform

One of Magento’s many strengths is the fact that it’s an open source platform built on well-established technologies. With a multitude of developers able to work on enhancements for the platform and the flexibility to add your own custom features, the needs of online retailers can be easily met by Magento.

If, however, you don’t have a development team at your disposal, leveraging the open source nature of the platform may prove to be a challenge. Because the code is open and the programming language it’s built on – PHP – is common, there are developers that may feel they can jump in and begin creating and customizing the platform with little previous experience.

Magento 2 is a complex system, however. An eCommerce agency partner that specialized in Magento development will understand how to implement the core platform, install and configure extensions, or develop functionality to customize your eCommerce solution to fit your needs.

Responsive Design

Magento treats mobile as an integral part of its eCommerce platform. That’s a good thing. Having a site that is responsive to the kind of device accessing it is an important component of modern online shopping. U.S. retail sales via mobile topped $207 billion in 2018.

Responsive design is important for another reason, however. With the change to Google’s search algorithm in 2015, sites that are mobile-friendly rank higher on mobile search than those that are not. With more than half of searches, today performed on a mobile device, not offering a responsive site is giving a lot of ground to your competition.

While simply being mobile friendly may be enough for the Google search algorithm, it isn’t enough for consumers. Six in ten internet users start shopping on one device and finished on another, while 65% said that it’s important for a site to display well on the device they are using. So, it’s critical that your user experience is clean and consistent across every device. This is where an agency with experience in digital strategy and Magento is invaluable.

Performance Enhancements

With the new release, Magento has tuned the application to reduce the load on serves and increase responsiveness.

Built on PHP 7 – which offers better performance and superior loading over previous versions – Magento 2 serves up pages to consumers faster than ever. That’s important since users will abandon a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load – and the longer it takes, the more likely consumers will leave. Mobile provides a little relief, but 31% of users still expect mobile load times to only be a bit slower on their phones than on their computers.

The new platform has also separated the application database to improve performance. Product, checkout, and order information are now in their own databases, meaning that a heavy load on one database will not result in problems with the others.

Improved Checkout Experience

Cart abandonment still remains an enormous problem for online retailers. Seventy-five percent of online shopping ends in an abandoned cart, which equates to lost sales for online stores.

The largest issue that leads to cart abandonment is unexpected shipping costs. Magento 2 supports dynamic shipping calculators that can help keep shoppers informed on these costs, thereby reducing sticker shock at checkout.

Two other significant issues are when consumers are forced to create an account to check out, and when the checkout process is long and confusing. In the newest release, Magento has streamlined the checkout process down to two screens from the previous six.

To really reduce the chance of cart abandonment, online retailers should work closely with a Magento certified partner that can help them identify potential hang-ups in the purchase process. With deep experience in both development and user experience, a Magento eCommerce agency can make recommendations that work smoothly with the platform and provide the best experience for customers.

Modern eCommerce sites have much to consider when choosing a platform to host their products on. Choosing the right platform can elevate your store and your customer’s online shopping experience. With Magento’s new features, the platform is a feature-rich, responsive, and scalable solution. Partnering with a certified Magento agency lets you get the most out of this powerful platform.