A Complete Guide On Magento eCommerce Development!

Magento eCommerce development.

It’s quite a wide concept encompassing multiple aspects of how you can develop an eCommerce store using Magento.

And in this blog post, I’ll try to talk about the major things you need to know before starting your Magento eCommerce development journey.

So let’s cut to the chase and talk about the things you’re reading this blog for.

What is Magento?

Magento (now known as Adobe Commerce) is an open-source eCommerce platform built on PHP. It allows merchants to create and manage their eCommerce stores.

Magento offers a significant range of tools and features that help businesses of any size get up and running on the platform with ease and start selling in no time.

A popular report on Magento found that the stores using the Magento platform grow 3x faster than others.

Popular brands like VMware, Ford, Coca-Cola, Landrover, and more use Magento for their eCommerce website.

Steps to Create An eCommerce Store with Magento?

Let’s see how you can create an eCommerce store on Magento step by step.

1. Figure Out The Magento Stack Requirements

Before you get started with Magento eCommerce development, it’s crucial to understand the requirements of this platform.

There are several requirements for Magento to work properly. You need to comply with these requirements to launch an eCommerce store that operates well.

And since there are 2 major series of Magento, Magento 1 and Magento 2, I’m sharing the system requirements for both of them.

Here’s a list of the requirements:

Operating System

Magento 1: Linux x86-64
Magento 2: Linux-based OS like RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, etc. are supported.

Note: Magento will not work on Windows and Apple OS.

Web Server

Magento 1: Apache 1.3.x, 2.0.x, 2.2.x, 2.4.x, Nginx 1.7.x or above
Magento 2: Apache 2.0, Nginx 1.18

Go through this documentation to view the complete list of supported web servers.

Memory

Magento 1: At least 512MB or more RAM.
Magento 2: At least 2GB or more RAM.

Installing Magento and its extensions would require at least 2GB or more of RAM.

Database

Magento 1: MySQL 4.1.2 or above.
Magento 2: MySQL 5.6, 5.7 and 8.0 (for Magento 2.4.x)

PHP

Magento 1: PHP 7.2 or above and 8.0 or above (for Magento 2.4.x)
Magento 2: PHP 5.4 or above.

Security

For both Magento 1, and Magento 2:

• A valid Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate
• Transport Layer Security (TLS) is for Paypal integration and repo.magento.com.

Note: Self-signed SSL certificates are not supported.

Mail Server

For both Magento 1, and Magento 2:

• Mail Transfer Agent (MTA)
• Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server

Those were all the requirements for creating an eCommerce store with Magento. You can keep these requirements in mind as per the Magento version you’re choosing and then proceed further to build your store.

2. Pick Your Web Hosting & Domain Name

The second step in your Magento eCommerce development is to choose a domain name and web hosting.

To make your website live, you’ll need a web hosting service and a domain name.

There are several hosting providers in the market but you need to pick one that suits your needs and supports your Magento stack requirements.

Also, your hosting provider should be fast and secure enough to dodge potential security breaches and offer a fast experience to your customers.

Here’s a list of some of the best Magento hosting providers:

• Host Duplex
• HostGator
• Siteground
• GoDaddy
• Cloudways
• A2Hosting

While choosing the hosting provider, make sure you don’t go for a cheap one. Though expensive doesn’t always mean better, cheap hosting often compromises your security. The above providers can be a great pick but if you don’t want to go with them, try to pick a trusted service.

I’d also suggest you register your domain name with the same hosting provider.

3. Download and Install Magento

The next step in your Magento eCommerce development is installing Magento. For this, you can create an account on Adobe’s website and start installing Magento.

After that, you can install Magento on your computer. You can choose between Magento 1, Magento 2, Open Source, or Adobe Commerce.

A small trivia is, there are over 250,000 Magento users worldwide but only 11,000 use Magento 2.

But I’d suggest you to install the latest version of Magento to stay updated with the latest features and better support.

Now installing Magento is a completely different process and would require a separate blog post. But Magento shares an installation flow and you can follow it for help.

If this doesn’t help, you can check out the complete installation documentation by Adobe on the same topic.

4. Configure Store Settings

After installing Magento, the next step in your Magento eCommerce development journey is, tweaking a few basic settings of the platform.

For this you can open your Magento dashboard and navigate to Stores > Configuration > General and configure the basic settings like Country, State, Timezone, Store Name, Phone Number, Address, etc.

Update all these basic settings to get started with your Magento eCommerce store.

5. Select A Theme for Your Store

This is a crucial step in your Magento eCommerce development.

After configuring your basic settings, you’ll need to configure the look and feel of your Magento store.

For this, you need to use a Magento theme. And there are two different for it:

a. Stick With The Default Theme

Magento comes with 2 default themes called Luma and Blank. If you don’t want to install or invest in a new theme, you can start with any of these two themes. You can customize these themes to match your branding.

b. Get A New Theme From The Marketplace

If you’re not satisfied with the designs of the default Magento themes, you can get a new theme from the Magento marketplace. You can also download themes for your Magento eCommerce development from platforms like Envato or Themeforest.

6. Install Extensions As Per Your Needs

After designing your Magento store, you can start installing the Magento integrations to extend your store’s functionality. For this, I’d recommend first identifying your requirements and needs and then picking some critical extensions for your store that you genuinely need.

Once you finalize your requirements, install the extensions at your store.

For example, you’d require installing payment integrations to collect payments at your online store.

7. Create or Import Products

After adding the extensions to your store, you can move to create or import products in your Magento eCommerce development.

I’d suggest you import products because that would be easier and time-saving.

Here are the steps to import products in Magento:

• Navigate to System > Import from the sidebar of your Magento dashboard.
• Select the Entity type to Products in the Import Settings section and you’ll see a link saying “Download Sample File”.
• Download the sample file and structure your actual product CSV file like the sample file for a successful import.
• Then scroll down to come to the Import Behavior section and select an option from “Add/Update”, “Replace”, and “Delete” from the Import Behavior dropdown.
• Configure the following settings as well and move down to the File to Import section.
• Select the CSV file collecting data of all your products.
• Click on the Check Data button to check if the data is valid and can be imported. If everything’s good, an Import button will appear.
• Click on the Import button to import the products successfully.

If you need more information on importing products to Magento, check out this documentation.

8. Setup Payments and Shipping Options

After importing your products, you can start setting up payments and checkout methods. Let’s see how you can do it:

a. Choose Shipping Methods

In your Magento dashboard, navigate to Stores > Configuration > Sales and you’ll see Shipping Methods there.

You’ll get 3 types of shipping there:

• Flat rate
• Table rate
• Free Shipping

Each of these methods will contain some settings within it. Configure these settings as per your needs to set up the shipping at your Magento eCommerce store.

Go through this documentation on Magento Shipping methods to learn more.

b. Choose Payment Methods

Setting up payment methods would allow your customers to pay in a go.

Navigate to Stores > Configuration > Sales and you’ll see Payment Methods there.

You’ll see some of these payment methods there:

• Zero Subtotal Checkout
• Cheque/ Money Order
• Bank Transfer Payment
• Cash on Delivery

Along with these basic payment gateways, you can add other popular payment gateways as well in your Magento store.

For example, you can add Braintree, PayPal, Authorize.net, and more to your eCommerce store. You just need to download their extension to integrate these gateways into your store.

Go through this documentation to learn more about Magento payments.

9. Preview and Publish Your Store

The last step in your

Once you’re done with the above steps, you can step into the virtual marketplace with your website.

But before that, ensure that every piece is in the right place in your puzzle. For that, you can test your website for different aspects like its speed, responsiveness, checkout process, reporting, and more.

If everything works fine, you can push your website on live and start generating revenue with it.

Why Magento for eCommerce?

You know how to build an eCommerce store with Magento.

But in this competitive market of eCommerce platforms, why should you go with Magento?

The answer is pretty simple. Because of the features it entails.

Magento has dozens of features that can be helpful for an eCommerce store. Let’s talk about some of them to better understand why Magento is an apt choice to build an eCommerce website.

1. Open Source Platform

Magento offers an open-source version that encompasses all the features you need to get started with your online store. And since it’s open source, you don’t need to pay for it as well.

However, you’ll be required to spend on hosting, domain, etc. but you can get your online store up and running in no time. Also, because of the open-source nature, it is easy to deploy.

2. Marketplace for Themes and Extensions

Magento has a huge marketplace that offers you a variety of themes and extensions. You can use these assets to build, design, and extend the functionalities of your eCommerce store.

There are over 3200+ extensions available on Magento’s marketplace and still counting.

CedCommerce offers an amazing range of Magento integrations. Check it out.

3. Vast Community to Seek Help

Magento has a huge community where you can go whenever you’re stuck anywhere. Currently, there are more than 467,000 members in the Magento forum ready to help you out with your issues.

4. Easy Store Management

Magento offers great features like Catalog, Order, Inventory, and Product management. These features help you better organize your store data in the backend so you can easily process and manage them.

5. Tracking and Reporting

Keeping up with your analytics is critical to understanding where you’re going and what to do next. Magento offers comprehensive reporting features that help you monitor your marketing, sales, and customer data so you can always get meaningful insights and stay ahead.

6. Robust Security

Magento offers features like Password management, Cross-site Scripting(XSS) attack prevention, etc. to fortify your eCommerce store’s security. This way, you can secure your eCommerce website from potential hacking attacks and also make it more trustworthy for your customers.

7. Mobile Commerce Support

Mobile Commerce sales is on the rise since 2016 and it has reached their highest $3.56 Trillion of sales in the US only.

Magento is a great platform to build a mobile-friendly eCommerce store. You get responsive themes that help you build websites that look amazing on mobile phones, tablets, and other screens with different dimensions.

8. Smooth Checkouts and Shipping

Magento offers flat rates, table rates, and free shipping methods while providing FedEx, DHL, UPS, and USPS as shipping carriers. It also integrates with dozens of payment gateways so you can checkout with your preferred one.

Magento Pricing

There are dozens of debates on the pricing of a full-fledged Magento store.

And nobody gives a perfect answer to that. That’s because nobody has a perfect answer to it.

And I’m also sailing in the same boat. But I can give you a perfect estimate which can help you get started with Magento.

Let’s take an example of a small local business having a team of 10-15 people with SEO, Marketer, Designer, and Developer in it. They want to switch to Magento Open Source so here’s the cost breakdown they’ll need to pay:

Expense	Price
License Fee	$0
Hosting Fee	$50-500/year
Domain Name	$10-150/year
SSL Certificate	$15-60/year
Theme	$25-400(one time)
Extensions	$0-500/extension
Payment Gateway Fee	2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
Total	$125-1650/year

That could be the initial cost to get started with your eCommerce store built with Magento Open Source. But remember, this is just the initial cost. It can help you launch your eCommerce store, but to thrive, you will need to spend more on it.

You’ll be requiring eCommerce development, marketing, SEO, and designing for your website, if you don’t have an in-house team for that.

And that could add up to $10000 of expenses for your store. But if you need expert services for marketing, SEO, and especially Magento development, you can connect with us and we can offer you top-of-the-line services at half the price.

Is Magento Right for Your Business?

I’d say yes but not in all cases.

If you’re just starting out and want to get your store up and running on the internet, Magento Open Source is a great choice.

But if you’re scaling your business, but want to stay on Magento, Magento Open source would not be enough for you.

In this case, you’ll have to switch to Adobe Commerce, which is a cloud-based solution. It’s an all-round solution to build a complete eCommerce store that has everything you need when you’re growing.

But there’s one more scenario.

If you’re growing or already an established brand getting lots of traffic and sales and want to switch from Magento, I’d suggest you go with either Shopify or BigCommerce.

Why MakeWebBetter for Magento eCommerce Development?

By following the steps I shared above, you can create your Magento eCommerce store on your own. But that’s not an ideal decision every time.

Sometimes, you don’t have enough experience with the platform, lack a team of developers, or your schedule is really busy.

In such scenarios, outsourcing your project to experts is the best solution. And when it comes to Magento, MakeWebBetter has enough expertise in its portfolio.

We’re working on Magento for several years and can offer you services like:

• Magento eCommerce store Development
• Magento HubSpot Integrations
• Magento Custom Integrations
• Magento Migration Services, and more.

So if you’re looking for any services for Magento, give us a try and you’ll see that we are worth it.

Over to You…

That’s all from me on Magento eCommerce development.

On the finishing note, I’d say, Magento is a popular platform, especially for small businesses. You can get started with your eCommerce store on Magento for as low as $100.

But this powerful CMS isn’t only limited to small businesses. It also packs robust features for scaling businesses.

So if you’re looking to go online with your business or want to expand your already well-running offline store, Magento could be a perfect fit for you.