The internet has changed the business landscape forever. Now we have online shops within our reach with a single click. From groceries and clothing to electronic gadgets and homeware to personalized print products – everything is within our reach.
If you want to start a printing business in today’s digital world, having an eCommerce presence is paramount.
You have no other choice. Regardless of your location or offering, the online medium is cost-effective and empowering as you get access to consumers across the globe.
Magento is an open-source eCommerce platform that has been a market leader for the last six years consecutively. It offers attractive themes and robust frontend and backend technologies with cutting-edge features to help you run your online print store more effectively.
As of June 2021, Magento holds 1.1% of the market share compared to websites using a CMS and has more than 250,000 eCommerce merchants worldwide as customers.
Magento offers plenty of options for an online print business that wants to deploy a Magento product customizer.
However, in this article, we are going to find out if it is suitable for small printers or if it is built to support only large eCommerce printing businesses. Let us begin:
DesignNBuy now provides the DesignO tool as an easy-to-install plug-in on Magento Marketplace.
Why use the Magento platform for your eCommerce website?
Magento is a feature-rich platform that offers a comprehensive solution for building and scaling your online print store. Some of the key reasons why you should pick Magento as the platform for running your business are:
- Caching techniques of Magento are designed to improve your customer’s experience with lightning-fast shopping.
- With over 50 payment gateways to choose from, you are sure to find one that will suit your payment processing needs.
- The robust CMS and catalog management system of Magento makes it suitable for large eCommerce printing stores.
- Magento’s scalability features support the growth of your online print business as you expand your customer base and product range.
- As an open-source platform, it is constantly updated by a large and diverse group of developers who help refine its features and add new ones consistently.
- It allows you to customize features as per your needs and deploy enhancements as your business grows. Being highly customizable, Magento enables you to create a store to cater to the individual retailer and customer needs.
- Magento is equipped with powerful reporting tools and allows you to integrate other popular analytics software, giving you better insight into your customer base’s shopping preferences. Use that information to optimize the store experience and review the performance of your sales campaigns.
- Sell worldwide with multi-store and multilingual support. The Magento 2 product designer allows you to manage product sales in specific regions and host your print store in different languages with ease.
- The platform enables complex discounting and voucher distribution during checkout if you club a set of products or customer groups. Use the feature to entice shoppers to buy more to get a discount or pick products from specific categories to avail of free delivery.
- Accept payments through credit cards with in-built PCI compliance.
So, is Magento apt for large-scale printers?
As you can see, it offers many benefits to printers in general. But how do they help large printing companies make a difference? Well, let us have a look at the following advantages:
- Magento offers an intuitive and visual-based page editor along with an option to use a WYSIWYG content management interface. Even printers with no coding knowledge can set up their store with ease.
- Shopping carts built using Magento are responsive and can be seamlessly viewed on smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other electronic devices. This is beneficial as there is a constant rise in consumer shopping over mobile.
- The platform provides efficient SEO services to sway higher organic traffic flow to your print store from popular search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!.
- Magento allows you to expand your print store to up to 500,000 products on a website while handling more than 80,000 orders per hour with optimal hosting.
- The platform helps you enhance your sales potential with its built-in upselling and cross-selling features.
- Easy third-party integrations to your Magento site aid in data analysis.
- Being open-source, Magento offers an expansive library of extensions and support from a global community.
- The standard version of Magento offers PCI-compliant data security to keep your online print website safe from security breaches.
- Dynamic search features on the online product configurator help your end customers filter products using search terms, product reviews, and products they have recently compared and viewed.
We have provided useful tips on Why Set Up A Custom Table Cloths Printing Business in our Blog article to help you make the right knowledge
Is Magento Commerce ideal for small-scale printers?
It can be. Small print businesses can avail of the following benefits from using Magento for eCommerce:
- Magento provides a mobile-friendly interface.
- Creating a web store using a Magento product configurator is easy and quick.
- Magento is an affordable platform though hosting charges may go up as you scale.
- The Magento community support and user-generated content help you resolve issues on your own quickly.
- Functionality can be enhanced through extensions for order archives, running special promotions extensions, product review incentives, and fancy FAQs.
- Since Magento is open-source, it offers more control over the content and functionality of your print store, which is not guaranteed by other platforms.
Related: Shopify vs. BigCommerce vs. WooCommerce: Which is Best for Your Online Print Store?
The three editions of Magento
Once you have decided to opt for Magento regardless of your business size, the next challenge is to pick the most suitable edition. Yes, that is right. These are Magento Open Source, Magento Commerce, and Magento Commerce Cloud.
Each editing is equipped with a specific set of features. So, it is crucial to select the option which directly aligns with your print business needs. Let us study all three in detail:
1. Magento Open Source
A free version of the platform, Magento Open Source, is also known as the Magento Community Edition. It is available for anyone to use and comes with modules to customize the offerings according to your specific company needs.
Magento Business Intelligence gives you access to powerful features and advanced reports to help you grow your business. You can review the data related to marketing and promotion campaigns and integrate features such as quick checkouts and advanced reporting.
However, Magento Open Source is not the answer for large setups or B2B businesses as it is unable to support a large number of products or complex services.
2. Magento Commerce
Magento Commerce is an enterprise-level eCommerce platform that was previously known as Magento Enterprise Edition. It offers high degrees of customization in addition to a rich suite of features that cater to B2B sales.
The easy order processing will allow you to process orders quickly and streamline your business using corporate accounts and customizable catalogs.
Magento Commerce’s Content Staging feature allows you to use the Admin panel to create, preview, and schedule updates for your eCommerce store.
It is a powerful option for printing companies looking to create dynamic sales pages and easily update information related to seasonal discounts or upcoming offers.
3. Magento Commerce Cloud
Magento Commerce Cloud is built for the cloud and was previously known as Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition. It offers an automated hosting platform equipped with all the features of Magento 2 Commerce to provide unbeatable services to the end customers.
It offers Git integration and critical environments for development, staging, or production on top-notch servers that are managed by expert team members. With the ability to test and deploy as needed, your online store will function and look flawless.
Magento Commerce Cloud is perfect for large-scale brands with complicated requirements as they get complete control over how their website works. It helps them deliver a polished end-user and admin experience.
Hmm…which Magento platform is best for your printing business, you ask?
With a decent number of options, it can be hard to decide which platform is right for your eCommerce printing business. The good news is you can find the best online Magento product configurator for your business on your own by answering the following questions:
- What is your budget for building your print store, and how much can you pay for its maintenance?
- Do you need cloud or on-premise solutions?
- What are the features you wish to offer?
Now, depending upon your answers, compare the three platforms to select the right fit for you. In the opinion of Design’N’Buy experts, Magento Open Source is an excellent option for those looking for something on a minimal budget with standard services.
The other two options, i.e., Magento Commerce and Commerce Cloud, are available as licensed versions.
They are not free and may even seem expensive, but they offer extensive features with a lot of functionalities. Really, it all depends on what you want to achieve with your business.
Need Help In Turning An Idea Into A Successful Magento Project? You’ll need Magento developers to create a website using the platform.
Famous brands that use Magento
There are many well-structured, high-performing, and SEO-optimized Magento eCommerce stores. Even though they are not from the print sector, here are some famous brands that use the Magento eCommerce platform:
1. Helly Hansen
This is a famous Norwegian brand with a long history of selling sportswear and gear for extreme sports. They sell high-quality products across the globe through their online stores.
2. Sigma Beauty
It is a popular British makeup brand that has leveraged Magento 2 for a beautifully designed digital store, which is user-friendly.
3. Ford
Ranked #4 in the largest car manufacturer segment in the world, Ford has set up its online store for accessories using the Magento 2 product designer tool.
4. Monin
A significant player in the beverage industry, Monin has made a place for itself in the international market. They opened an online store in 2019 using Magento to sell bottles of syrups, fruit mixes, smoothies, frappes, and sauces.
5. Liverpool
This is the world-famous English football club that opened an online store using Magento 2. It sells the club’s clothing, which makes it popular with both Liverpool fans and people who are not interested in football.
Over to you
Magento has long been the go-to platform for building eCommerce stores, and it offers robust support for businesses with a wide range of features.
But is Magento Commerce for small businesses? No, Magento Commerce is definitely not an option for small print businesses as the advanced features of Magento are not suitable for retail sales, and they are designed for wholesale companies.
However, Magento Open Source is an excellent option for those looking for something on a minimal budget with standard services. On the other hand, Magento Commerce Cloud is perfect for large-scale printing companies with complicated requirements as they get complete control over how their website works.
If you are looking to start your own print store and want to deploy web2print technology on Magento, contact us at [email protected] to receive help in setting up.
