A useful step-by-step guide to building your Magento Store

Customer engagement and interaction are key when you plan to build your eCommerce store for your online business. Magento eCommerce development leads in comparison with other eCommerce store development platforms. As you plan to build your online store, we tell some great techniques to owners for their businesses on the Magento platform.

Know about Magento before you build your eCommerce Store

Adobe is a testament to the stability it gives to your Magento eCommerce development. Currently, it ranks third among some of the leading online website eCommerce development platforms. Unlike WordPress, it does not fit all size, yet it diversely fit every business needs-small, enterprise-level, and large.

There are different levels of platforms for store management available ata service package. Even though it takes little time for initial set up, it takes much time and effort to build your online store with specific product pages and configuration of themes.

That’s being said, Magento offers valuable features to integrate your physical store with an online shop and transform the shopping experience for your customers. 

Different Magento products

When you expect to get dedicated eCommerce development services, Magento gives you many options. There are three different versions including,

Magento Open Source

• Free and open source 
• Limited features 

Magento Commerce

• More features like PWA studio
• Drag-n-drop page builder 

Magento Commerce Cloud 

• PWA studio 
• Drag-n-drop page builder 
• Cloud services from AWS

Some popular features of Magento 

• Order management 
• Business Intelligence 
• Third-party extensions 

Building a Magento eCommerce shop with easy steps 

Let’s begin the process with the Magento open-source version of the platform. As though it appears a little tough at the beginning, we boil down it to small steps to simplify the procedures for you.

At the beginning, it is best you create a free Magento account. This is different from the website portal. But, once it is built, you can transfer it to another version of the platform easily. Let’s begin.

Step 1: Server Requirements for Magento 

Like every eCommerce development platform, Magento has a specific server needs. The server of hosting providers is a must to run your shop efficiently. Your Magento shop must adhere to the following specifications.

Operating system

• Linux x86-64
• RedHat/Ubuntu
• Virtualization application based Mac or Windows 

Web server 

• Apache
• Nginx

Database

• MySQL 5.6 and 5.7

PHP

• PHP version 7.3. 

Security 

• SSL certificates needed for payment integration

So, these are the basic requirements as you go on developing Magento eCommerce shop. 

Step 2: Choose a domain name 

Choosing a domain name is essential when you are determined to sell online. This is central to making an online identity. However,your domain name must be precise and unique to find an instant connection with the customer base. A domain is also a secret marketing tool for your online store. 

• It creates a brand’s identity
• It improves SEO functions for marketing
• It helps identify brand easily

In addition, a web host service is necessary too. 

Many domain providers bring the facility of web host together as well. Look for it in your package. So, in such case, you must choose your product carefully.

Step 3: Magento Open Source Installation 

After you get your account set up and hosting service is in place, you can install Magento Open source. It is a long process and trickiest chore with high expertise being at core of eCommerce development on Magento framework. To get the pain out of this mind-bender job, you better rest the responsibility on the expert Magento development service provider to make your website go live sooner. 

Figure 1Magento Open Source installation for download

When you do this installation manually, you must follow several prerequisites or you can find some guidelines in Magento’sinstallation roadmap. 

Step: 4 Admin configurations

Customizing the admin along with its username and password is essential. Do it before you go for the installation process. If you want the installation to be live on your server or want a different path to your admin login page, this is something to determine. Click ‘install’ once the customization is over.

Figure 2Magento Installation

After you finish, you are directed to the dashboard page once you put in all the login details. This is the window where you can customize and build your new eCommerce shop.

Step:5Page Management

Now, it is important to see how your aspiring eCommerce shop should look like. And hence, you must work on the pages and themes. Some important page elements including the home page, privacy policies, and even the 404 error page must be taken care of. In Magento, you can build your own pages and themes as it requires per your business model.

• Theme installation 

As you need to design your shop’s look and feel, you must choose themes that work best for your store. If you wish, you can modify or customize your theme to match it to your branding.

You need to retrieve key access to download themes from the Magento Marketplace. Navigate to Marketplace>My Products>Access Keys.

Figure 3 Page to get hold of access keys

Once the navigate access keys are generated, you can get back to your dashboard leading you to the extension manager list. 

As you choose any themes or extensions, they will appear in the Extension manager list. Go to your admin panel check with Settings>Web Setup Wizard> Extension Manager> Review and install. 

Figure 4 Theme list in Extenion Manager

The list of themes is sitting at the extreme corner of the extension manager panel. Navigate through your extension list and install the right one. 

• More from Magento section

Let’s look into Magento content hierarchy. It is important to know as you proceed with your page customization and revamp.

In the Magento dashboard, you can several content sections to works with. They are as follows as,

• Websites
• Stores
• Store views 

Certified Magento developers can find a few scopes to work on these elements and give your web store desired aesthetic look and functional advantages.

• Theme customization 

Figure 5: theme customization dashboard in Magento

In order to customize themes, you must click on content icon on the left to the dashboard.

Magento already have 4 default pages including 404 not found, Home Page, Enable Cookies, and Privacy and Cookie Policy. 

Figure 6 Home Page

To go to this home page, choose the path to Content>Configuration. Add a logo or other elements that provide a customized look to your store.

In addition, you can also go Content> Elements to customize widgets and website pages. 

Step 6: Adding Extensions 

To add essential functionalities and amp performance of your Magento store, you can work on these extensions or widgets. 

Figure 7Magento Extension dashboard

You can add extension to your store the same way as we did for new themes. Once you choose the extensions, you can install and download to your website as per your preference.

Marketing: 

What strategy you follow is important for your store as you are intended to add a marketing feature. You can either choose upselling or cross-selling marketing extension or a blog extension to carry out blog marketing. 

Payment gateways:

You can configure your payment gateway in Magento dashboard by clicking on ‘store’ icon.

Figure 8Extension to Payment Gateways

In order to give your customers the flexibility to choose the desired payment gateway options, you can choose from a list of extension featuring PayPal, Stripe, Braintree, and more. 

Shipping:

You can even find extension that helps your customers track the shipping orders of their physical products. It provides real-time tracking data and keeps your customers informed about the delivery status. 

Security:

To prevent malicious bug threats or privacy infringement, you can put into use active and comprehensive security extensions 

Find Google reCaptcha to add it to your security page. 

These are some of the best extensions you can use to set up your Magento store. 

Step 9: Store setting modification

Now it is time to personalize your eCommerce store. Navigate to Stores> Settings> Configurations. 

Include some of the essential options as follows below,

• Email address
• Location and time zone
• Type of price scope
• Customer account settings
• Shopping and payment options 

Once you are done, save the configuration.

Step 10: Configure Your Store with Product Images and Prices 

Figure 9 Adding Product List in Magento

It just takes you a few steps to build your store with product images and prices. Navigate Catalog>Products. It directs you to the merchandizing list. Choose the Add button. As you choose it, a dropdown menu list will appear.

Choose from the list below,

• Simple products
• Grouped products
• Configurable products
• Bundle products
• Virtual products

The product type you choose comes with a specific Magento store template that corresponds withthe page. Along with it, you must also add product name, price, SKU number, and other important information. As you finish the chore, you must save your operation. Wait for preview before you publish them to customers. 

Step: 11 Preview and Launch your eCommerce Store

It is always recommended to take help from expert Magento Development Company that reserves a better environment for Magento Development. Once you proceed with development locally, they can help you push your store to the server. To push a locally development store to the webserver, you can use either a local development application or FTP client file. You can publish your eCommerce website over the internet and operate your online business. 

Magento always gives you more when you look to open a store online. 

Endpoints 

Magento is no doubt is growing in popularity due to its ease-of-use and open source advantages. Sometimes, setting up your Magento store is easy with one-click only, but if you want the store to reflect your passion and brand vision, you must take some time. In such a case, you must take help from the proficient and dedicated Magento Development Company, Bytes Technolab. So, when you are getting started, you must give Bytes Technolab a though to launch your web store.