Review of Magento, an Open Source E-commerce Platform

  The company Verian rolled out Magento about a year back which is an open source e-commerce shopping cart platform. Magento comes in two different packages: the Community Edition and Enterprise Edition. The software engine uses PHP5  and the Zend Framework. The application also includes support for digital product and a theme based structure.

The powerful administrative feature of Magento provides powerful marketing, search engine optimization and catalog-management tools so that merchants can create sites based upon their business need. Magento provides very sophisticated APIs. You can connect Magento to a number of external accounting systems, email list management tools, ERP systems and more. The core features of the software are mentioned below :

1. Search Engine Optimization:

• It is 100 % search engine friendly.
• Provides meta information for product and categories
• Generate site map automatically
• Offers Google site map

      2.   Site Management:

• You can control many websites and stores from one administrative panel
• Provides multi language support
•  Google website optimizer is integrated with the software
• Also, includes powerful content management system
• Ability to support Multi Language and Multi currency 
• You can use customized template to create unique website

3.     Order Management:

• The tool can create one or multiple invoices, shipments and credit memos per order
• Also, it can view, edit and create order from administrative panel
• Additionally, it provides discount, select address and fix customer price
• You can notify order through email
• Provides the ability for new order through RSS feed
• Can create Call center order
• Can look into shopping cart, last ordered items, and compared products list

4.       Web services API to make it easy to integrate third-party tools.
5.        Integration with the United States Postal Service, FedEx, and UPS for real   time rate quotes
6.       Elaborate analytics and reporting options.
7.        Can generate site map by itself
8.       You can create many campaigns and buddy coupons with useful coupon rules.
9.        Ability for digital and downloadable products.
10.      Can integrate 50 payment gateways.
11.      Can rewrite URL