Magento for Small to Midsize Businesses

An online store was once tough for small businesses to build. Now, the requirement to pay for a domain name, developer and web host is a thing of the past as eCommerce software such as Magento makes it easier than ever to create web stores. Still, larger enterprises continue to have the edge in driving traffic to their sites. With more resources to dedicate to CPC (cost per click) ad campaigns and website performance, bigger companies make it tough for small and midsize businesses to win online sales.

However, the advantage big business holds in the eCommerce marketplace doesn’t render eCommerce useless for smaller companies. As an increasing number of brick and mortar stores are closing, online shopping continues to rise, making web stores a crucial means to attracting customers for businesses of all sizes. But to compete with heavy-hitters in your industry, your smaller company must develop smart, cost-effective tactics that will take your web pages to the top of search results pages and have customers adding more items to their carts. In this piece, we offer tips and tricks to help businesses of any size make the most out of their web store using Magento eCommerce.

Engaging Website Experience

As people spend an increasing amount of time on the internet, it’s harder than ever to not only attract visitors to websites but also keep them on pages long enough to complete a purchase. To gain traffic, you need to create compelling content and a functional platform that will be both easy and enjoyable for visitors to navigate. Here are some tips to get you started on creating an engaging website:

1. Provide a variety of content. To keep shoppers glued to your site, provide an array of content. Magento provides drag-and-drop content management tools, making it easy to amplify your web pages by including anything from third-party videos to Google Maps.
2. Improve the checkout process. A complicated checkout process can frustrate visitors so much that they abandon your site altogether. With Magento Enterprise Edition 2.0, online shoppers enjoy a streamlined checkout procedure with faster add-to-cart server response times.
3. Increase page load speed. Though you want a variety of content, don’t go overboard. Magento offers fast page load times, but too much rich content on one page can drastically slow down your site and deter business. Diligently check page load speeds and make smart use of images and videos.
4. Support mobile compatibility. Too often, the fast, easy shopping experience visitors enjoy on their desktops is lost once they pull that same site on their mobile device. Fortunately, Magento enables users to create one quick, functional site for all devices.

Maintaining an easy-to-use, attractive website requires a multi-step strategy and constant attention. However, even for small businesses unfamiliar with developing online stores, Magento will help them easily create and manage sites, providing automated processes and open source coding to improve efficiency and enable customization.

Insight from Analytics

Having the means to produce a quality online store is a must, but small and midsize businesses often fall short in leveraging eCommerce tools to attract specific shoppers or drive traffic to certain product pages. Insight into top products, customers and promotions enables marketers to create content and design web pages to make more sales. Magento Business Intelligence consolidates data from multiple sources into automatically updated reports, empowering your business to make smart decisions that bring in customers. In a data-driven industry, you can’t afford to go without BI tools in any aspect of your company, including eCommerce. 

Wrap Up

For small businesses to compete against industry giants, a robust online store is imperative to closing deals in both B2C and B2B markets. As eCommerce software is becoming increasingly available to businesses of all sizes, users should take advantage of not only web design and content development features but also data analytics and business intelligence tools.

The best way to get the most from your data is to go beyond a Magento eCommerce implementation and integrate your eCommerce system with Epicor ERP. Unity, Datix’s flagship integration solution, seamlessly connects an array of software, including Magento and Epicor. With an ERP-eCommerce integration, data across your enterprise is updated in real time, ensuring accurate orders and deliveries.

As specialists in providing enterprise software solutions to the mid-market for over 20 years, Datix is your one-stop shop for software projects. Reach out to us today for more information on eCommerce and integrations!

{{cta(‘770c1544-d87d-4acb-9fc4-7a25e1385094′,’justifycenter’)}}