SEM Visibility Announces Key Factors to Evaluate When Choosing a Magento …

Ecommerce platform offers great flexibility, but hiring the right developers to implement it will be key to success.

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) June 13, 2013

SEM Visibility, a Chicago based marketing firm specializing in Search Engine Optimization, e-Commerce and Web Site Development announced the top factors in choosing a developer to implement Magento. Magento, an eBay company, is the industry leader and currently has 23% share of the market. The Magento platform is perfect for businesses with revenue greater than $1 Million that are looking for significant scalability on the internet. If a company is not familiar with Magento, they should think of it as a blank ecommerce slate that is easily integrated with hundreds of software solutions that will make any site easily customizable to any specs. None of the basic software is proprietary and all the platforms run on open source. What this means for any small business is that they will never have a problem with licensing and working with multiple developers as well as adding or exchanging extensions.    

With the increased popularity of the Magento ecommerce solution that was first introduced in 2007, SEM Visibility has outlined the top decision factors that every company should consider when choosing a company to implement an ecommerce platform.

“Magento is a terrific platform” said Jeff Hudson, Co-Founder of SEM Visibility. “and we just want to make sure that any businesses has all the tools necessary to choose the right partner to implement it.”

Magento is a great platform because it allows for a lot of flexibility which is one of the key reasons so many companies like it. Also, with any ecommerce platform, it is only as good or flexible as the extensions and plug-ins that are available on it. Magento has literally hundreds of extensions. For developers, Magento may be somewhat intuitive, however it is much more complex than the common platform WordPress and there are many development dependencies involved that will create errors and these errors may not be visible until they are live. If a developer or company is not skilled or experienced, it will end up costing your company more in development time and also dollars in the long run.

1. Do they have experience specific to Magento?

When a company is looking to implement Magento, they need to make sure that the developers have significant experience with Magento, not just ecommerce in general. Company’s should ask them for their portfolio of Magento sites and extensions. Another good question is to ask them about their experience with Linux server administration. Hosting performance and optimization is critical to managing Magento websites.. For Magento, there is actually a certification process for developers, so be sure they have that certification as well. Lastly, be sure they have long term business relationships with their clients and that those clients are happy with their work.

2. Where are they located?

Choosing a team that will be dedicated to long term Magento needs is a critical choice because chances are this will be a long-term business relationship. The team chosen won’t just be building the site, but they will be supporting all the extensions, new releases and other development considerations in the months and years to come. Proximity should be a consideration because in-person meetings and regular conference calls should make the process of implementing and supporting the site just that much smoother.

3. What kind of Extensions are required?:

Prior to hiring any company, the hiring company needs to fully understand what their development requirements will be and which Magento extensions might solve their needs. There are hundreds of Magento extensions that support everything from site navigation, marketing, advertising, email marketing, customer experience, utilities and plenty more. Knowing prior to beginning development what type of extensions might be required will help any company choose a Magento team that has experience in those specific extensions.

4. Do they offer complimentary SEO services?

Another thing to consider is whether the company will also optimize the site as they are building it. Although there are many SEO extensions, only a skilled developer that knows the rules of search engine algorithms like Panda and Penguin will be able to navigate, optimize and ensure that all the extensions are working together to raise the search engine ranking. If a SEO specific developer or company is not developing the site, then some of the extensions purchased and installed may default to the most common SEO solution and not a solution specific to that site. In other words, by hiring someone to optimize in tandem with development, the company will help ensure that they are leveraging the site and extensions to their full potential.

5. Do they offer support?:

Just building your site using Magento is the beginning. Once the site is up and running the company will want to make sure that the developers you have chosen can provide maintenance support as well as scalable growth for the website. It will be best to negotiate the maintenance part of the contract on a monthly basis and be sure to define what the scope of that maintenance will include. Basic terms usually account for support in the existing attributes of the site and any add-ons after the initial launch would be negotiated on a case-by-case basis and rolled into the monthly maintenance fee thereafter.

SEM Visibility is proud to employ Magento Certified Developers. For more information about SEM Visibility, please visit, http://www.semvisibility.com.

About SEM Visibility:

SEM Visibility is a search engine marketing services company with operations in Chicago, Illinois and Minneapolis, MN. Servicing clients worldwide, we offer pay per click management, search engine optimization, web analytics, web design, and many other related services. For more information, visit http://www.semvisibility.com.

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