Whilst many small business owners will be panicking at the thought of Magento Go closing down in February, it is not like they are being left with nowhere to take their business. In fact, Magento has suggested that small businesses take the plunge and upgrade to their Community Edition in order to benefit from the familiarity of the platform and much, much more.
With this in mind, we thought we’d look at why Magento Go shutting down is actually a good thing for small businesses.
More flexibility
A common issue that many small businesses experienced with Magento Go was its lack of flexibility. Its architecture was great if you were happy with a basic ecommerce store, but in all honesty with all the competition brands are facing today, a simple store is not going to win over customers.
The benefit of migrating to the Magento Community platform is that you will have all the flexibility in the world to customise your ecommerce website’s appearance and functionality. It will allow you to build a truly unique ecommerce website and also benefit from scalability.
Scalability
One of the best things about using the Magento Community Edition is that it will always meet your needs, no matter how big or small your business is. Whilst you could start out selling fifty products on your Magento store, in the future you may be selling five hundred or even five thousand so it’s good to know that the platform offers scalability and will be able to continue supporting you, no matter how big your business gets.
Access to a host of useful extensions
Although Magento Go merchants were able to install some extensions on their ecommerce websites, they had to be from Magento’s approved list. This, a long with the fact that file uploads to the website were not permitted, somewhat limited what merchants could do with their ecommerce stores.
The great thing about using the Magento Community Edition is that you can access and install a whole host of useful extensions. Simply visit the Magento Connect store and you will see there are thousands of free and premium extensions that offer all sorts of exciting functionality benefits.
Create a completely unique ecommerce website
Whilst Magento Go had many benefits for small business owners, it did not necessarily allow them to create ecommerce websites that had a chance of standing out in their industry and beating off competition.
Using the Magento Community Edition, merchants have a much greater chance of this, as it enables them to create a completing unique ecommerce website that embodies their brand and all it stands for.
As well as having access to a wide range of pre-made themes and extensions, merchants also have the opportunity to have bespoke themes and extensions built for them by Magento developers. Having a theme or extension made just for your website is a great way to make it stand out and offer something your competitors don’t.
Appear more professional to customers
One of the best ways to win over customers is to gain their trust and the only way you are going to be able to do that is with a professional-looking website. The problem with Magento Go is that it was renowned for being for small businesses and unfortunately consumers don’t always have the best impression of small businesses or confidence in their abilities.
Using Magento Community as your platform will help you to make your small business appear more professional to customers, which should go a long way in building their trust in your brand and in turn, increasing your conversion rates. If you are looking for a Magento agency in Manchester or the UK in general, contact Fluid Digital for advice.
Conclusion
Whilst you may be sad to see Magento Go and somewhat frustrated at the fact you are going to have to migrate to a new platform; just looking at the benefits of Magento Community Edition will help you to see that this might be the best thing that has ever happened for your small business.
