The world of ecommerce has opened up the notion of starting up a business for countless individuals who may have seen the traditional business model as a little daunting. Finding business premises, kitting out the space with shop fittings and the like are a big ask, particularly for the inexperienced. Now, however, all you need is a product, a computer and some ecommerce software. So, with that in mind, here we explore the basics elements regarding how to set up shop using Magento.
What is Magento?
Magento is open source software that can be run on a computer and provides an ecommerce platform from which users can sell products and services. Or, in other words, it allows you to build an online shop. The user feeds assets into the software, for example, photographs, graphics and text. Magento then enables the information to be arranged in a way that results in a website that showcases the products and lets customers purchase them online. All that remains is for the goods to be shipped off to the customer.
Your Homepage in Magento
The homepage that you build in Magento acts as a digital shop front and window. The name of the company is, generally speaking, top centre of the homepage, below there will be category buttons or menus, images that relate the products or service and a number of other links to pages that contain information about the business – “Contact Us” for example.
Categories and Subcategories
In terms of the products you are selling, Magento lets you organise them into categories and then subcategories. So, if you are selling clothes, you may organise them into categories such as jeans, shirts and pullovers. Then for each of these categories, you may have a number of subcategories, different colours for instance – this makes it easier for customers to find what they are looking for.
How are Items Paid For?
The financial transaction features of Magento are one of the main things that sets it aside from more traditional website building platforms. In Magento, there is an “add to cart” feature and this links customers payment options, debit cards, credit cards etc, to your business account. So, when customers purchase an item the money is transferred to you safely and directly. Furthermore, you can send customers a message once their items have been dispatched.
Additional Features
Magento is an extremely flexible platform that offers many additional features to enhance and develop your business. You could, for example, start a blog for the business to help enrich the user experience of visiting your website and of course, you are able to integrate social media buttons and feeds so that customers can like and follow you on whatever channels they choose.
One of the most appealing aspects of Magento is that can be as simple or as complex as it needs to be in order to meet your requirements and so no matter how experienced you are setting up an ecommerce business is, almost certainly, within your capabilities.
