Create A Magento Store In 10 Simple Steps

By Author: Suresh Kumar
Total Articles: 73
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Magento content management system, an open-source ecommerce solution, is perfect for online stores. This Zend PHP based software offers immense flexibility and outstanding functionality to your online store. Magento development has made ecommerce website development fairly simple by providing strong SEO, catalog-management and marketing tools. With the help of this brilliant software, it is no longer difficult to create and manage your products catalog. Magento development fulfills the exclusive business needs of those merchants who want to manage their online business with great control and exceptional security. Let’s see 10 simple steps to create a Magento Store.

1. Choose a Domain Name: These days online merchants prefer to get a keyword loaded domain for their ecommerce store, like ‘handblockprinting.com’. However, the domain name keywords are an aspect for SEO, but those who are looking to create a small house web store, it is probably better for them to use their own brand name. Always get ...
... domains separate from your web hosting and choose a .com domain from a reliable domains provider.

2. Magento Engine Installation: To install the latest Magento version 1.3.2.1, just visit http://www.magentocommerce.com/download/noregister and download the Downloader as zip (do not download the Full release). Extract the files and upload them to server through FTP. You can also do it by cPannel -> File Manager.
If you do not have adequate knowledge or time to go though the entire customization process, seek the help of Template Tuning services by ordering the template customization at a reasonable price. Qualified Magento developers will perform all the required changes for you.

3. Google Apps Email: This is the best platform to run your business email. Request your host to set up a you@yourdomain.com email for you. Otherwise Google’s own step by step instructions are actually very simple. So, follow the steps carefully to have an email setup.

4. Template Installation: However, there are many of places selling Magento templates but if you want to create a low budget store, better to buy a template that is close to your requirements so that you can easily customize it. Once you choose a template of your choice, you’ll need to install it. If you are hiring a Magento developer, nicely ask him to install it, otherwise most template sellers provide template installation services at a very reasonable price.

5. Template Customization: To customize your template just go through the demo template site and make a note on the things you want to change. Better to look at the product types when deciding layout changes. Once you have your list of changes, post a job request with your list and a link to the demo template. Ask the bidders to give you an idea if anything is really hard in your list, you can communicate with the bidders about this.

6. Email Template Configuration: However, this step can be performed by anyone by editing the templates via Magento admin interface, System -> Transactional Emails but it is better to hire an experienced Magento developer for excellent results. They will make sure that the logo and language is just like the way you want.

7. Extensions: Magento connect with so many great extensions to offer but it’s essential to know that extensions are not like apps on the AppStore. Each one you install will increase the chances to have some incomprehensible bug in your store.

8. Product listings: Try out several products types to decide the way you want to present your products on the front end. This decision should be take place before hiring Magento developers to make some changes to your template. Once you decide what product type you’ll use you can start adding the products and categories.

9. Content pages: To obtain the trust of your customers, you need to add pages with some informative content about you, your product, shipping and tax, etc. You can use the built in editor to create the pages, but it leans to generate awful HTML which will lead the iteration of a store. So, it is worth to pick an experience Magento developer who can provide a nice clean HTML.

10. Payment Provider Configuration: Paypal and manual bank transfer are two very quick and easy options that don’t require monthly fee. If you are getting a high rate of abandoned orders, you can a better payment gateway. But be careful of PCI compliance as you never want to get in a problematic situation.