Ever since the advent of the internet some two decades ago, the way business is conducted has changed a great deal. Gone are the days when consumers had to walk into a physical store to be able to make a purchase of an item or product that they are in need of. The internet has changed all this. It has become the norm for many businesses to transact with their consumers online. As a matter of fact, many of the businesses online now do not have or need a physical shop where the consumers can walk into to make a purchase.

This online trading has been made even better by the extensive and massive advancement in mobile technology. In the past moble phones were only for communication purposes such as calling and texting. Recently they do far more than just send texts and make/receive calls. Today, they are like small computers, doing all a normal PC would do from the convenience of your palm. Consumers, with these pieces of technology can make purchases online of the products they are in need of on the go. This transactions have grown global and can now be done from almost every country in the world. Various institutions have built their businesses to support eCommerce platforms such as Magento.

However for all the online shopping to be possible, one has to develop a very complex site that has the ability to support eCommerce on a large scale. Creating one from scratch can be utterly tiring and wouldn’t be recommended in the current times. The good news is there are some eCommerce options to look at. One of them is Magento. This is an open source eCommerce platform that can bridge that gap aptly.

Magento is currently the world’s leading platforms used to develop online retail site. While it did not start as one, in the year 2008, it identified a gap in performance in the eCommerce platforms and decided to seize the opportunity and establish their own, a move that they cannot regret, given the success that they have enjoyed. Part of the success that they enjoy however is courtesy of the wide range of features that it packs.

Below are just some of the features that have made it the preferred eCommerce platform.

Customer segmentation

The Magento admin panel has an option where you can segment the eCommerce customers that visit the site by gender, age, previous shopping behavior and location. Using this information, you can create special promotions that will be visible to the segment that you choose, for the returning visitors or even the first time visitors.

Product catalogs that are flexible

For many of the online stores, the product pages are the main focus. Stores that have hundreds and thousands of products can be filtered fast, compared with one another in order to provide an exciting shopping experience. It also supports inventory management, downloadable products, customer personalization, lots of product attributes and provides for different price points for the different customer groups.

Persistent shopping

Magento allows the online shoppers log into the accounts that they create, switch between browsers and devices and still continue shopping. This provides a seamless experience with very few cars that have been abandoned.

Multiple shipping and payment options

When you are running an online store, you should note that the customers you will get will be both local and international. As such if you will be looking to maximize on your sales, providing various options to make payments and to ship products will be a wise move. Magento’s single page checkout as well as the guest check out makes purchasing easy and very fast. It also contains SSL security which ensures that the payment information of the customers is safe. The payments can also be made through the top and reputable platforms such as PayPal.

Return management

This system allows you full control of the process of return management. The items set to be returned can be specified and the return method also determined. This provides and ensures that there is order. It offers organization for the same making it reliable to work with.

Mobile commerce

As earlier stated, many of the consumers access the online shops through the mobile sites. And given that many PC sites are not compatible with the devices that have small screens, a mobile site friendly site is required. Magento enables the creation of a mobile site, having a search display, image scaling, drag and drop of products into the cart and a clean display of the products on sale.

Customer loyalty

The customers can create their wish lists, purchase some gift cards, register for some gifts, redeem their store credit as well as earn customer rewards. This ensures the return of clients to purchase items from the sites as it is added convenience.