Magento – Revisited

Magento is Changing...

A while back, I made a review about Magento shopping carts.  Well, it’s been 2 years and a few things have changed and a few things have stayed the same…

I had quite a few gripes against Magento shopping cart the last time I used it and I still do, but my list has shortened, but also grown.  For the Mom & Pop DIY shopping cart, Magento may be out of your league, unless you know a programmer or can figure out PHP.  On the backend, Magento is still not a user-friendly shopping cart.  However, on the front-end, Magento is one of the best shopping carts you’ll find and that’s the important part.

Security and Magento
One of the big gripes I had about Magento 3 years ago were security issues.  Thankfully, many of those issues have been resolved.  With proper hosting and data collection, Magento cart is about as secure as any shopping cart online and that’s a big improvement.  But, you need to know what you can and can not do, in order to keep Magento shopping cart PCI-DSS compliant.  The good new is, many of those issues can be solved by choosing a hosting company that’s PCI-DSS compliant.

One big fail for Magento is AVS reporting in the admin section. By default, there’s no AVS results when an order is processed and that’s HUGE! AVS results let you know if the shipping or billing address matches that of the card used for the online transaction.  Without that information, fraud is a real concern. There are ways to incorporate AVS into Magento, but as of the latest build, (1.5 CE) there is no method to show AVS for one of the more popular card processing companies and that’s a HUGE oversight!

Magento Hosting
Good luck!  Almost any server can ‘host’ Magento Shopping cart, but many are underpowered.  Think of Magento as a 2,000 lb rock.  Think of the $9 a month hosting as a car. Yes, a car will move a 2,000 lb rock, but not for long and not at anything approaching a good speed.  You need both horsepower and torque and just like in the world of cars, you’re going to pay a premium for something that will provide your with good results. I think a fair minimum price per month, for reliable Magento hosting is $25 a month and that’s if you have only a few products and only a few visitors. You’ll get what you pay for, to a point and then there’s other factors to consider as well.  Magento hosting can be a nightmare. I’ve been through about 6 hosting companies so far, I’ll post result on those in the coming weeks.

Layered Navigation
If you don’t have layered navigation, you’re behind. Magento uses layered navigation out of the box and does it well, with a little configuration.