How to Get Started With Magento: Everything You Need to Know

Magento is one of the best eCommerce platforms available to merchants out there. The platform and its usage is growing day by day and the reliability and functionalities offered by the platform makes it the best platform for eCommerce ventures. Magento 2 is the perfect solution for retailers, business owners and entrepreneurs who want to take a step ahead and take their business online. Doesn’t matter if you are looking to migrate your current Magento store or developing a new Magento store from scratch, Magento eCommerce is for everyone. 

But a lot of things come before starting a Magento eCommerce store. These things include everything from choosing the right Magento edition for your business. You can choose from the 2 Magento editions available to us. These include:

• The Magento Commerce Cloud (earlier known as Enterprise Edition). 

• The Magento Open Source (earlier known as Community Edition).

Magento’s content management system is specially designed for eCommerce. Many small, medium and large-scale businesses have profited by using this platform as it is a highly flexible and very feature-rich platform. Magento eCommerce is built on open-source technology that enables the users with a flexible cart system, to have control over the look, content and functionalities of the online store. 

Being a widely used, successful platform, Magento is highly customizable. You can customize the platform based on the needs of your business. Though, the platform is very feature-rich in itself. But, there are a lot of extensions that can be added to the Magento store to enhance what the store has to offer. We would recommend you to perform a thorough research before getting started with the Magento store, as to understand if you need the help of a Magento developer or not. 

Getting Started With Magento 

With the advancement of tech in today’s era, it has been crucial for businesses to not just have an offline store, but a powerful online presence as well. eCommerce has become a bigger part of revenue for many businesses. Thus, an online presence can help you expand your business, grow your revenue and spread brand awareness. Let’s say you want to get started with an Magento eCommerce store and don’t know where to start from. This is how you get started with Magento:

Research and Sign-up

There are certainly a lot of things that you must know before setting up. Though, most information may be for developers. So, you need not worry if it goes over your head. But, when you think you have understood at least a few of those things, you’re good to go. When you think you are ready to sign up, you can start your Magento Commerce and get your free trial.

Admin Page Management

When you receive a confirmation email, it will include important URL links that will help you in connecting to the store admin page. These links will also take you to the store dashboard and quick start wizard (programs) that you will need to understand in order to get the gist of the platform. Therefore, you can consider it to be your control centre.

Preferred Hosting

Hosting is not included for those who are using Magento Open Source. Thus, you need to find a hosting provider for your eCommerce store. Magento 2 hosting solution offers updates to improve your website’s performance and the security that it offers. So you need to choose a hosting provider that aligns with your unique business’s needs and to reduce server downtime.

Store Theme

A theme for your eCommerce store does not only create a first impression on visitors and your customers. But it is equally important for your website to offer user-friendliness. Magento offers a lot of clean, easily to use and compatible themes. The theme you select must be: easy to us, navigational, it should be simple, must have a functional search panel. You want your theme to be persuasive, but it should be easy to use and device-friendly. After choosing the theme click on “save and apply” to finish the theme upload. 

Customization

When you have selected and applied the chosen theme, now is the time to customize.  In the submenu of “design” menu option you have to click on “select & customize design.” Now a small window pops up that explains how Magento themes work. By clicking continue, you can move ahead to the theme editor and now you can customize your store. This time you can take help from a developer as well.

Added Functionalities Through Extensions

Now, you can choose to add certain extensions to your Magento store. These extensions help in improving the performance of your Magento store by adding extra functionalities to the store that a store merchant may need based on the requirement of the business. There are a lot of extensions developed by different Magento development companies and the prices of these extensions are usually determined by how much an extension can help in improving your overall revenue. 

Database Updation

Now that the store theme, extensions are all set up. You need to set up the database. This database will be on the admin page and you can set up: 

• Store name

• Email address

• Shipping and Payment Methods

• Email marketing services

• Products and categories

• Extra settings  for installed extension

Add Products and Details

Now when all is done, you are ready to add more about the products from the “products” menu. When you click on that you now have to select “Create new products.” If you’re asked about “attributes set” you need to keep it for complex products. If you leave this on default settings, you can change it afterwards. These complex product types include virtual products, bundled products, grouped products and more such products. 

Keywords

In the “Meta Information” from the menu, you can select the title and the description that will be visible on the search engines. Here you can also add keywords for SEO purposes. This will be very helpful in attracting new traffic to your site. This step is a very important one for SEO purposes!

Payments and Shipment

Now you need to set up payments and shipping options. These are also very crucial for your business. You can simply click on the “start my store” button on the top left to get started. It’s a very easy process, just like other eCommerce platforms. 

Let’s Go Live!

Now, when you are done designing and customizing, you are good to go. To launch your Magento eStore you need to click on the “Get Going” menu to launch the store. Now you can begin selling through the platform. 

Magento is a highly scalable and very flexible platform. But, the platform will either require a little coding knowledge or the help of a professional Magento developer to create the best store for you!