Many online businesses are modernizing their web site presence with a new website through Magento. And while there are still some companies who need to face facts (change can be good!), the ones who have chosen to go with a new eCommerce platform might be excited by the possibilities Magento offers.
From a financial stand point, Magento Go, was the best option for my employer. It offers hosting, and installs the store itself upon initialization. Unfortunately, if you don’t know what you’re doing you can quickly become overwhelmed as soon as you log in for the first time. Go doesn’t offer as many Add-ons, or fancy doo dads as Community or Enterprise, but you don’t have to dig as deep (which leaves some advertising room if you’re smart).
From a Web Designer’s stand point the user interface is well laid out. There are a lot of subcategories within the mass of categories, but we do have a lot of ground to cover here. Long menus are to be expected when you’re building a web site. So, before you decide to get down and dirty, pick out your template and meet me in the configuration menu.
From System nav you’ll find Configuration at the bottom, and from there you will upload a logo and set your store name, header and footer information. Before jumping right into the CSS, I find it’s better to set up the initial look of your store rather than fretting over a shade of blue. In most cases you want something for Google’s crawler to take a look at rather than uploading images and switching from Arial to Times New Roman.
One thing I appreciate with Magento Go is the Meta Data capability. You are responsible for selecting and entering keywords and a description, as well as page URLs. While this might not seem important, Search Engine Optimization requires that you provide this information to separate yourself from the spam and, trim the fat if you will.
Another interesting point? The content editor box. As a Dreamweaver junkie, I really enjoy the possibility of switching from code view to visualization without saving, refreshing, and refreshing again. Now, the layout you see cannot be relied upon 100%, but it gives you an idea while you tweek everything between site check intervals.
Need a little more? Stay tuned for my next Magento post in this eCommerce series, as I go over Mouse Over prompts, Clicky reports and PHP include possibilities. Thanks for reading!
Ericka Sheppard 