magento ecommerce

Magento is an Open Source ecommerce web application launched on March 31, 2008. Though, it has been developing since January 2007.

Magento is a free eCommerce solution which is famous among webmasters and online store owners. Plenty of online shop owners have chosen Magento to be the basement for their online stores. Some companies which already had online stores have switched to Magento having discovered its advantages. The case is that Mageto is a feature-rich, professionally developed open-source eCommerce solution offering merchants complete flexibility and control over the look, content, and functionality of their online stores. Magento's admin panel has been numerously mentioned to be one of the most convenient ones.

Magento has been already downloaded more than 450,000 times. Seems it's a good proof that people trust this shopping cart while building easy-manageable, SEO friendly and therefore successful online stores.

The latest version of Magento has been recently released and now it's available for download. Version 1.1.6 includes updates to the admin, a new design Skin and more. For instance the latest Magento has an update to the category management tool which allows store owners to more efficiently manage a large number of categories. Note Magento will regularly receive new updates because it has been created by inspired web developers who are true professionals when it comes to the eCommerse solutions.

Magento is a features-rich e-commerce application. The list of Magento features is really long and impressive. To name just a few of them:

Site Management:
- Magento allows to control multiple websites and online stores from one admin panel;
- The best for international online business because it's a multi lingual solution which supports multiple currencies;
- Fully customizable outlook. You can use different templates designing Magento stores and websites;

Marketing:
- Flexible pricing (free shipping, getting something for free having purchased a certain product, percent discount, and etc.);
- New products promotional tool;
- Customers can browse recently viewed products as well as recently compared products;
- RSS feeds for new products;
- Polls and newsletters.

Search Engine Optimization
- 100% SEO-Friendly structure;
- Auto generated Site Map which can be displayed on the site;
- Search Engine Friendly URL's which can be edited by store managers;
- Meta-information for products and categories;

Checkout
- One-page Checkout;
- Checkout without creating an account;
- Shopping Carts save customer's order for some time.

Shipping
- Shipping to multiple addresses in one order;
- Flat rate shipping per order and per product;
- Free shipping can be enabled;
- Table rates for weight and destination, for number of items and destination and etc.

Payment

- integrated with multiple payment systems such as PayPal, Authorize.net, Google Checkout, WorldPay, PaySimple and many others;
- Magento stores accept checks and money orders;
- Bank prepayment is also available.

If you want to download a full Magento Features list you should visit the official site of Magento.

As we've already mentioned a lot of new online stores have chosen Magento from the other shopping carts. At the same time some already existing online shops have switched to Magento having felt its benefits. Here is just one example of Magento store.

Note Magento official blog is always attentive to those online stores which have been built with its help. So you can revisit the official blog of Magento in order to be aware of those online shops that use Magento ecommerce application.

Magento shops vary in designs and the products they offer for sale. The only thing that unites them is Magento Shopping cart inside.

Most Magento stores take advantage of Magento features such as shipping to multiple addresses, various payment options, MyWishlist option, Product comparison option and many others. So you can visit these online stores by yourself and see how Magento online stores can look like.

So Magento is an Open Source eCommerce Platform developed by Varien. Varien is a web and software development company. Let's find out what this company is about. Varien is an eCommerce platform provider. The company was founded in 2001 and it's located in Los Angeles, CA. "Magento is the flexible, feature-rich and secure eCommerce solution business owners need to propel their online business," said Roy Rubin. "It gives the control of a proprietary system without the 6-digit price tag."

Note Roy Rubin is a Varien CEO. While Magento is being discussed among web developers and online store owners it seems to be interesting to know Roy Rubin's thoughts on Magento. Seems Magento creator knows every little thing about this e-commerce solution. Here are some links to Roy Rubin's interviews on Magento.

Interview: Roy Rubin About Magento Open Source eCommerce
Magento Shopping Cart And 20,000 Friends

Varien Team is a team of true professionals who have great experience when it comes to eCommerce solutions. Being unsatisfied with existing shopping carts Varien Team has developed its own one and this is the way Magento appeared. Seems Varien did a great job having created so flexible and free open source eCommerce application.

Varien is famous for being an industry leading eCommerce provider. If you are interested to find out more on Varien we suggest you to visit its official website (Varien.com).

Varien has used Zend Framework while developing its open source eCommerce application. So Magento is a perfect example of the Zend Framework in action. While explaining the reasons to use Zend Framework while creating Magento Varien Team has mentioned that

- Zend Framework is developed by a strong and fast growing company;

- Zend Framework is an open source and secure solution which has a large community so its code base is quite popular;

- Having accepted the code base of Zend Framework Magento developers saved time for PHP development.

Varien and Zend had one more chance to cooperate. The case is that Varien has been redesigning Zend's website (http://www.zend.com). Having visited this website you can see Varien Team's work. As it's mentioned at the official website of Varien "Zend's new site was thought-up and redesigned from the ground up following a site audit."

Magento is a splendid open source shopping cart. It means Magento deserves the best designs. Probably that's the reason why Magento is cooperating with Template Monster. This cooperation is to provide Magento community with professionally designed Magento Themes.

November 11, 2008 is the day when the first Magento Themes became available at TemplateMonster.com. Please note Template Monster adds 2-3 new Magento Themes per week. So you have a great choice of impressive Magento Themes to choose from.

To be short Template Monster is a famous web templates provider. This company creates astonishing web page designs for different web sites, online stores, web blogs and portals. Web templates from TemplateMonster.com have great functionality and usability. Seems Magento Themes offered by this company will be in great demand as well.

Note that Magento Themes from Template Monster meet all of the official requirements because the themes' production process has been approved by Magento developers at Varien.