Magento Shopping Cart – Part 1

After first discovering Magento a few weeks ago, I was really looking forward to spending some time exploring this shopping cart. When I finally had enough time to really look into the cart, I was excited by what I saw. Very clean layouts and a nice user interface, I couldn’t wait to get down and dirty.

Magento PABP PCI-DSS Compliant?

While searching for PCI-DSS shopping carts, I ran across Magento eCommerce shopping cart. What really got my attention was open source. I love open source software. And an open source shopping cart with PCI-DSS compliance – I nearly fainted. But alas, Magento is NOT PCI-DSS compliant. But I read a thread at their forum that Magento was pursuing PCI-DSS compliance testing. Maybe they would be compliant in the future – I hope. But at this time, the lack of PCI-DSS compliance is a major obstacle Magento needs to overcome to big a big player in the ecommerce shopping cart future.

Installing Magento

Magento’s documentation could use some work. Installation instructions do not come with the download and the directions for installing Magento on their website are not accurate or complete. It took me a while to get Magento to install. I had to download a patch that was several months old, which I felt should have been included in the install. But maybe they’re busy with PCI-DSS compliance testing, so I gave them some slack. You’re going to have to wade through the forum to get complete directions for installing and that is a bit of a pain. I have to CHMOD a lot of files and folders to get the cart to install and then I had to do more CHMOD to get the administrator backend to function, a problem that many others seemed to have from reading the forum. Many of the CHMODs were not in the install directions and had to be discovered by searching the forums for people who had similar problems with installing Magento. Overall, the install is fairly easy, but if you’re not comfortable with creating SQL databases and changing file permissions, get someone to install it for you.

Search Engine Optimization

Magento is ready to go for SEO. The cart makes SEO as simple as any cart I’ve used and that’s a major plus. You have complete control over the product URLs and that’s amazing. And it’s not an file edit, you can change the URL in Magento’s administrator access panels. One of my current favorite shopping carts, which costs over $1295 has nothing on Magento’s SEO abilities. Dare I say, Magento has ‘the best’ SEO capability of any shopping cart I have ever used. Yes, I dare say it. With Magento, SEO is both easy and powerful. Magento has the easiest and most powerful SEO control in the administrator panel of any shopping cart I have ever used. And remember, this is ‘out of the box’ no customization needed. Brilliant SEO Magento.

Features and Style

Well, I have to say, it sure looks like Magento did a great job on designing a default storefront. Of course, it’s basic, but it’s not ugly and that’s a major step up from any open source shopping cart I’ve used. Magento gets extra credit and a gold star for default buttons and colors that are stylish, easy to read and made finding the next step to purchase easy. I was really impressed, they spent some time building a piece of software that was appealing to the customer and they did a fantastic job. On the backend, the administrator side, the layout and design are fairly intuitive and thanks to JS, you have everything at your finger tips… so to speak. The template system is promoted by Magento as being easy to use, but I haven’t tested it yet as most shopping carts are customizable as long as you understand the system.

Adding Attributes and Options in Magento

I couldn’t seem to figure out how to add attributes, and three days after starting this review of Magento, I still don’t know how to add products and attributes. It’s really bery confusing and I even watched the demo videos. Yes, Magento has instructional videos! To be fair, I haven’t had a lot of time to play with the cart, but after several hours, I can’t get products to have size and color options – grrrrr!!!  Maybe once I figure it out, I will feel differently.

Magento – Give Us Security !

One of the biggest reasons I’ve stopped playing with Magento is what I consider a SERIOUS SECURITY FLAW! I tried processing a few test orders, just to see how it went and I noticed, in the admin back end, you don’t have the customer’s IP available. I’ve never used a shopping cart that did not include the IP of the customer. I won’t process an order with a bad IP. Getting orders to a address in the US and find out the IP is from Ghana… Why Magento does not include the customer’s IP baffles me. I think it would be fairly easy to add IP to the orders and read in the forum that adding the IP was being looked into, but the thread was a year old and obviously, the issue hadn’t been addressed.

Magento – More to Come

I’m not finished with my review for Magento, but I have to figure out how to add attributes before I can continue with a complete review.  So far, Magento looks really good, but fails miserably is some areas. However, despite the IP problem and the attribute issue with Magento, I can’t wait to explore this shopping cart more. The wealth of features and abilities may make the shortcomings worth the hurdles.

Magento Shopping Cart Review Part 2 Coming Very Soon!