What is E-commerce?

E-commerce (Electronic Commerce) is a type of business that involves the commercial transaction or purchasing or selling of goods and services through electronic channels known as internet. It was first introduced in the year 1960 through EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) on VAN (Value-added network). Using E-commerce, you can sell physical products or services (where the payment is made online).

Following are the categories of E-commerce −

• B2B (Business to Business) − This transaction is between businesses. It is between the wholesaler and the retailer or between the manufacturer and the wholesaler.

• B2C (Business to Consumer) − This transaction is between businesses and consumers. In this type of transaction, merchants sell products to consumers through shopping cart software.

• C2C (Consumer to Consumer) − In this type of transaction, one consumer or customer interacts with other consumers through internet.

• C2B (Consumer to Business) − This transaction is between the consumer or the customer and businesses or organizations where the consumer makes a product that the organization uses it to complete the business.

What is Magento?

Magento is an open source E-commerce software, created by Varien Inc., which is useful for online business. It has a flexible modular architecture. It is scalable and it has many control options that helps the user to build both user-friendly and search engine friendly websites.

Magento uses E-commerce platform which offers companies the ultimate E-commerce solutions and extensive support network. Magento allows user to update E-commerce website automatically. It is simple, quick and versatile to use.

Magento was developed by Varien Inc., and it was first released on March 31, 2008.

Why to Use Magento?

• Magento is an open source E-commerce software.

• Magento is scalable and offers small organizations to build business.

• Magento enables searching and sorting of products in several ways.

• Magento easily integrates with many of the third-party sites which are needed to run effective E-commerce website.

Features

• Magento provides different payment methods such as credit cards, PayPal, cheques, money order, Google checkouts, etc.

• Magento enables shipping of products in one order to multiple addresses.

• Magento helps to manage the orders easily by using the admin panel.

• Magento provides order of product status and history of product. It also supports e-mail and RSS feeds.

• Magento supports multiple languages, different currencies and tax rates.

• Magento filters the products and displays in grid or list format.

• Magento makes it easy to browse the products. It has features such as image zoom-in and checking of stock availability.

• Magento has built-in SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Advantages

• Magento is user friendly E-commerce software.

• Magento is compatible with smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.

• Magento provides multiple payment options, so every visitor can make payment based on their preferred payment gateway.

• Magento has many extensions which support the development of an online store.

Disadvantages

• Magento uses larger disk space and memory.

• Magento takes longer time to build the customized functionality.

• Magento is very slow compared to other E-commerce sites.

• Magento needs proper hosting environment. If the hosting environment is improper, the user can face many problems.