The Most-Common Magento Questions Answered!

When it comes to Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source, there are several commonly asked questions we see from our clients, and how they relate to their projects. They can range from working with an agency, the cost of your build, installing Magento / Adobe Commerce, and plugins to help manage your day-to-day business operations. Rather than holding back any secrets, we will go in-depth looking at our most-common Magento-related questions, and give our honest answers.     

Let’s dive in! 

How do I install Magento? 

There are two ways you can go about installing Magento; you can install Magento yourself, or work with an agency to complete the installation for you. If you go the route of installing Magento on your own, you will need to complete these six steps: 

1. Prepare your server
2. Download Magento
3. Create a database in your hosting environment
4. Upload and unpack Magento
5. Setup Magento
6. Install and finish the installation

When installing Magento, we strongly recommend working with your internal development team, or an Adobe-certified solution partner (such as 121eCommerce) to ensure your new build gets started on the right foot. It is great to be ambitious, but sometimes being too ambitious could lead your development project to go wrong. While installing Magneto may seem easy to do with no development team or agency partner, we can assure you that it is not. It takes an expert, or at the very least someone extremely tech savvy to complete the install successfully. In short, we recommend working with an agency for the install. In the long run it saves you time, hassle, and headaches if you don’t have a development team in house. If you’ve decided to work with an agency, it ties perfectly into our next question.    

Should I work with an agency to help with my install? 

When it comes to completing your install of Magento Open Source, or Adobe Commerce, ultimately the decision is up to you. While this may seem like a “copout” answer, it really does boil down to what finances you have available for your project, or the staff you have. If you decide to bring your install internally, having a developer well-versed in Magento/Adobe Commerce is an absolute must. While other platforms such as BigCommerce and Shopify are easy to install, Adobe Commerce is not. By winging your install, you will ultimately need to have your web project rescued, which can not only lead to frustration, but additional costs financially and with your time. 

If you choose to work with an agency, finding one that works with you, and truly understands your business is of the utmost importance. Some agencies over-promise and underdeliver, are cheap and unresponsive, or deliver on time with transparent communications. At the end of the day keep in mind, you can only choose two of the three when it comes to quality, speed, or cost of working with an agency partner.    

How much does Adobe Commerce / Magento Open Source cost? 

Depending on the size and complexity of your build, the cost of your Adobe Commerce / Magento Open Source build can vary greatly. When budgeting for your build, Adobe Commerce and Commerce Cloud have annual licensing fees based on the size of your business, average order volume, and gross merchandise volume. If you have plugins/integrations that you would like to migrate over to your new site, this will also add costs monthly or annually to your build. Furthermore, if you develop internally, or work with an agency, these costs will also factor into your build cost. 

While there is no exact number to give, it’s important to do your research before making the leap, and make sure you have all costs accounted for.      

What Magento plugins are the best? 

Magento has by far and wide the most extensive list of plugins that can integrate with your eCommerce site. We’ve mentioned it a few times previously, and it’s worth mentioning here again, the “best” plugins to use are the ones that fit your business’ needs. When it comes to our clients, there are quite a few plugins that we would recommend regardless of what your business sells online.

• Bolt: Bolt’s one click checkout helps streamline your checkout process, and protects against fraud.  
• Amasty: Amasty helps your business with a slew of integrations ranging from digital marketing to SEO. 
• ClearSale: Clearsale is a leader in eCommerce fraud protection, and even offers a chargeback protection guarantee! 
• dotDigital: dotDigital helps you take your customer data to deliver exceptional marketing campaigns. 
• Brightpearl: Brightpearl is a great solution to help manage orders, inventory, and finances.  
• Yotpo: Yotpo helps with customer reviews, loyalty, referrals, and SMS marketing. 
• TaxJar: This solution helps you manage your sales tax compliance. 
• Extend: Extend enables merchants to offer extended warranties, risk-free and at no cost.
• Gorgias: Gorgias is a solution that helps you manage your customer service, and answer customer questions in minutes.  

While this is by no means a comprehensive list, this does provide a good starting point for looking at new integrations, or seeing what alternative options you have. 

Is Magento valuable for my business? 

While it can seem like a hefty investment to make initially, it’s important to think about the long-term revenue potential of your new website. Typically, when we work with other businesses, we see their average order volume increase, their cart abandonment rates decrease, and other performance increases to help drive more traffic, sales, and better their user experience. If you’re interested in calculating your website’s ROI, our ROI calculator can help you determine how long it will take you to break even on the investment on your new site. 

In short, yes, Magento is valuable for your business compared to the competition. 

Is Magento really flexible to meet my business’ needs? 

Yes! Magento is unbelievably flexible, and can meet whatever your business’ needs are. Since Magento is open source, any/everything you think of with your website can be customized from an aesthetic standpoint. This flexibility ties into the user-experience of your site, checkout process, and even the layered navigation on your site. This flexibility also works with plugins, which we mentioned above. Magento really can help your business grow.     

Can I add a blog to my Magento site? 

By default, your Magento site will include a blog where you can start adding posts once your site goes live.  

To add a blog post to your Magento site, you can follow the below steps:

1. Click on Content, Blog, Posts, and select Add New Post. 
2. Enable the post, and give it a title.    
3. Select your blog’s category. 
4. Write your blog, and add any images. 
5. Upload the featured images, and select a publish date. 
6. Choose the website(s) you would like the post to be published on. 
7. Hit save, and your post is published! 

How can I manage my product catalog? 

The product catalog for Adobe Commerce / Magento Open Source is extremely robust, but the setup of your product catalog is key to your site’s success. When it comes to managing your products, we recommend starting with a smaller import to ensure that your data is formatted correctly, and import is successful. To break it down from our long-form guide, these steps will ensure your product catalog is managed effectively.    

1. Start with a small import file of your products. 
2. Add the appropriate fields that are required and recommended to get the most out of your data. 
3. Break out the additional_attributes into multiple columns; a single column will get messy!
4. Keep your data clean, and your naming conventions consistent. 
5. Remember the KISS principle, and keep your initial imports simple. 

We hope this helps answer some of your most-common questions about Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us!