A Peek into Magento for the Uninitiated

Magento has remained the No.1 ecommerce platform ever since its inception in March 2008. Robust, flexible and Open Source, it is built on the Zend framework and delivers just what the customer wanted. The leader though it is, it’s not difficult to learn for all you need is sound knowledge of HTML and CSS and you will learn the rest with the Magento environment itself. 

 

The Building Blocks of Magento 

 

Now, to build an ecommerce website with Magento, you need to be familiar with the MVC pattern. The MVC (Model-View-Controller) design pattern is used to separate an application’s concerns with the model representing an object, the view representing the visualisation of data and the controller acting as both, essentially controlling the data flow.

But there are many other components apart from the models and the views in Magento. When you look at the code of Magento, you will find many modules without views. On the other hand, you will find additional modules such as ‘sql’, ‘helper’ etc. What you need to understand here is that Magento has its own set of modules each having their own M’s and V’s and C’s. These modules create the separate portions inside a typical Magento page replete with the headers, links, footers, mini-carts, and so on. 

 

The Magento code structure is extremely well-designed in the sense that there exists a clear distinction between the ‘core’ code and community ‘third-party’ code. What does that mean for you? This means that you can install third party extension and modules without any fear of it impacting your site’s essential look and feel.

Now, with this Magento is able to achieve some great features such as product comparison, CMS system for static pages, layered navigation, multistore feature and much more. It is able to achieve all this with its superior API integration that other ecommerce platforms still have a lot to learn from. As to how Magento does this, wait till the next article!

How Magento Enterprise Helps You Build Your Brand

Though there are many platforms that offer basic ecommerce solutions, Magento is among the few platforms that offer enterprise class ecommerce solutions. It combines a creative shopping cart with rich features that offer your brand’s customers a great user experience. This ability to build a brand for their customers centred on is actually at the core of Magento’s strategy.

What your website offers in terms of user experience is what defines your company’s brand for the visitors. They identify their experiences of your website with your company itself. This way, a great website helps create a set of adjectives for your company in the mind of the consumer. This process, of occupying the customer’s mindspace, is critical to building your company’s brand in the long run.

So how exactly does Magento help you build your brand on your online store-fronts? Basically, what does your ecommerce website need to build a better brand for your company? Here are they:

• Marketing your product and packaging it
  
  
• Selling channels, be it stores or website or catalog
  
  
• Building better customer experience through a wide range of extensions that cater to all customer needs.
  
  

With Magento enterprise edition, you get features that satisfy your needs in all the 3 areas like:

1. Magento does a fine job balancing the text, imagery and space on your screen by giving all of them equal preference. It also represents the functional elements in a way other ecommerce platforms have not been able to do.

2. Magento structures content and separates product categories in a unique way giving users the look and feel of a trusted brand that is sure of itself.

3. Finally, you get a whole lot of extensions that help you widen the functionality of your website and improve its usability and security.

Have you got the Magento enterprise advantage? Get in touch with developers who have the competence to build your company’s next-gen ecommerce website.