Businesses may not realize the advantages of launching an online shop versus a physical store. But online shopping brings new customers, new sales options, and for many, an easier way for consumers to get what they want.
If you’re thinking about having an online store, you should consider Magento. Magento empowers users to shop from the convenience of the Internet, with lots of features to help you and your customers along the way.
What Is Magento?
Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform released in 2009. Over time it was improved and eventually was re-branded as Magento 2.0 in 2015.
You can equate Magento to a content management system (CMS), akin to WordPress, but specifically in the realm of shopping cart software.
Magento was written in PHP and works with several PHP frameworks. It’s most notable are the Laminas Project and Symfony.
The Laminas Project – formerly called the Zend framework – is an object-oriented web application framework that Magento makes use of. Symfony is a web application framework that offers reusable components.
Adobe Inc. acquired Magento in 2018 with a price tag of $1.68 billion. You can guess that this investment only boosted Magento’s productivity.
More than 250,000 active sites rely on Magento for their e-commerce. The space it takes up on the Internet is quite large, to say the least.
What Is a Magento Developer?
Magento developers are effectively web developers who work to build and maintain websites that run on Magento. Magento developers can specialize in front-end development or back-end development.
Front-end Magento developers use Magento themes to ensure the website’s aesthetic appeal. They’re also responsible for making sure that a Magento website is mobile-friendly, meaning that its function, performance, and design is optimized for smartphones and other mobile devices.
Back-end Magento developers create features that provide the overall functionality of a Magento website. They can do this using Magento extensions – of which there are over 5,000 – or develop their own code, as Magento is an open-source framework.
Why Use Magento?
There’s good reason to use an e-commerce platform. These platforms attract more consumers to your store who otherwise wouldn’t turn their heads outside of the virtual space e-commerce provides.
Magento comes with some of the basic features of any e-commerce platform and then some. To list a few, some of Magento’s site-building features include:
- Instant purchases
- Site searches
- Customization options
- Functionality in the app marketplace
- Global sales
- Integrated payment and shipping at checkout
- Mobile optimization
- Catalog management
There are two very big reasons why Magento would be a good choice for your business.
The first is that Magento is an open-source platform. This is particularly beneficial to your business as your team of develops can create and modify anything you need.
The second reason involves the same reasoning. Magento is very popular. Therefore it has a large community. If you have a question, it’s probably already been answered. If you need some extra functionality, it’s probably already been made.
Any platform or software that is both open-source and popular is, by affiliation, widely supported. And a great support network makes for great business.
Advantages of Using Magento
Magento was designed to be scalable and offer businesses a way to grow. In that scheme, the platform was made to extend flexible features and an intuitive interface. Here are the features that make it the most compatible with business development.
User Accounts
With Magento, users can create accounts to store their data. They can check on orders, look at purchase history, and bookmark products they want to save for later.
Ease of Management
Magento has functions to monitor the admin panel, manage shipping processes, and respond to complaints. You can also find out your most popular items are and when a shopper puts items in their cart and neglects to purchase them.
Shopping Cart Managing
Registered users and guests will have the same access to a shopping cart with Magento. It has multiple payment options so users don’t feel limited.
Quality Marketing
Businesses have the mobility to market their products how they feel is best. This might look like individual sales contracts, running advertisements on your page, and offering free shipping and/or special discounts.
You can also solicit feedback about products and check recently viewed items. Customers can share your product pages as well.
Multiple Portals
Magento allows multiple managers to handle the platform at a time. In the same vein, you can manage multiple operations at the same time from an account.
Companies That Use Magento
- Ford
- Nike
- Vizio
- Olympus
- Christian Louboutin
- Landrover
Reasons to Hire a Magento Developer
Merchants using Magento grow three times faster than those that don’t. Magento is most suited for small to medium-sized businesses that are well-established.
The platform is admittedly very powerful with thousands of extensions. However, its competitors require shorter development times and a smaller budget.
Given how popular Magento is it is certainly advantageous. But you should allocate your resources wisely. Magento is not helpful to amateur PHP developers.
Magento is a highly scalable platform that was specifically built for e-commerce needs, unlike other content management systems. If you have skilled Magento developers, you can rest assured that you’ll get your buck’s worth.
Hire a Magento Developer
Starting an online shop is a low-cost way to get customers to your door. But really, they’ll be on your website.
The flexibility and speed that an e-commerce platform offers benefits you and your customers. You’ll be deemed a professional business even in the absence of a physical location and no one will think twice about it.
Not to mention, e-commerce platforms give you an easy way to store important data about your customers. You can use that same data to improve your products or marketing.
What’s most important about using an e-commerce platform, however, is that you have the right developers so that it can run smoothly. Customers won’t trust your website enough to make a purchase if your platform isn’t pristine and functioning at its best capacity.
How do you hire a Magento developer?
For those who wish to take the high road and hire Magento developers on your own, we’re still here to help. Hiring a developer on your own is a very focused and hands-on process that requires considerable knowledge about software development in general.
The last thing you want to do is trust your hiring process to someone with no technical ability. If you are a non-technical manager looking to learn a thing or two, we have a great resource here for you to learn more about the hiring process in detail. Otherwise, we’d recommend you contact Trio for consulting and developer allocation.
What should you look for in a Magento developer?
A skilled Magento developer should be able to do the following:
- Demonstrate experience with and thorough familiarity of PHP
- Configure Magento with recommended settings (depending on the given project)
- Install, set up, and test various payment modes such as PayPal or Sage Pay
- Provide support for multilingual and multicurrency setups through Magento configuration
- Integrate other business-oriented technology systems to work with Magento like accountancy software and customer relationship management (CRM)
How much do developers cost in the U.S.?
According to ZipRecruiter records, the average salary of a Senior Magento developer is $116,731. However, all-around salaries can range from $79,000 to $145,500.
Here’s a chart that visualizes the salary ranges within the United States for a Senior Software Developer.
How much do developers cost in South America?
Due to economic differences between the United States and South America as a whole, the cost of offshoring software development is significantly lower than hiring full-time with U.S talent. For Magento developers in South America, the average salary is currently around $100,000 whereas a mid-level developer costs around $76,000.
How much do developers cost in Ukraine / Eastern Europe?
Eastern Europe shares very similar rates to South America, again due to the economic differences. When looking at salaries in Eastern Europe, data shows that a Senior Magento developer costs around $100,000 on average.
Hourly Rates for Developers
Another way to look at developer costs is through hourly rates. While salaries are good to understand for hiring developers for full-time and long-term, you might just need a developer for a period of 3-6 months or 6-12 months. In these types of situations, it’s best to calculate your costs based on the hourly rates of a developer.
Below is a table that lists the various hourly rates of developers in different locations based on their job title.
Why Hire a Magento Developer?
Trio Magento developers are pre-vetted, interviewed, and then trained further to become true software professionals, capable of adapting to situations that are both within and outside of the scope of their general expertise.
At Trio, we hold our developers to a higher standard. Much like how elite special forces units recruit only the best from main branches of the military, we recruit developers who either show amazing potential or demonstrate exceptional skill. We then take their talents and sharpen them even further.
Another benefit of hiring a Trio developer is that you won’t incur the costs of hiring, which can add up to be around 30% of a developer’s salary on average, as well as overhead costs associated with full-time employment.
By working with Trio, you can enjoy a highly experienced full-time developer for a fraction of the cost, along with the added project management assistance.
To learn more, get in touch with Trio today and tell us about your project.
Trio offers unparalleled software wisdom and access to South American developers. Meet our elite Colombian developers, Mexican developers, and Brazilian developers for outsourcing excellence.
