Why SilverDisc Chooses Magento® for eCommerce Websites
17th May 2021
A Bit of History
We all know technology evolves very rapidly, and this of course applies to web development platforms, too. For many years, SilverDisc has embraced open-source platforms, which is why, back in 2007, we chose Drupal as the content management system that we would use to develop all websites. After a few years, we were faced with our first ecommerce client, and since then we started using Drupal Commerce as our ecommerce development platform, which is effectively the Drupal core, plus a suite of ecommerce modules.
SilverDisc’s Strategic Transformation
Since 2017, SilverDisc has undergone a strategic transformation, which means that we are now focusing on medium-sized retail companies. We soon noticed that Drupal Commerce falls short of the requirements to serve this client profile. Add to this, its market share has been gradually shrinking, meaning that prospects are increasingly reluctant to have their ecommerce website built using Drupal Commerce.
All of this has required an analysis of which ecommerce platform best fits SilverDisc’s new prospect target and takes advantage of SilverDisc’s software development strengths. We have been noticing that most of our SEO and PPC clients who have had their websites developed either internally or by other agencies are already using Magento®. However, rather than using this as the reason to adopt Magento as our preferred platform, we carefully analysed which platform we should choose to replace Drupal Commerce.
Requirements For Chosen Ecommerce Platform
SilverDisc’s requirements for an ecommerce development platform are:
- Security: Security is the most important aspect of ecommerce
- Speed: A vital aspect for SEO and CRO
- Large market share: Very important for clients to trust we are making a savvy choice
- Cost-effectiveness
- Open source: Allows SilverDisc to conduct deep analysis and integration
- Large support community
- Vast training material and documentation
- LAMP stack: Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP
- Flexibility
- Integration with third-party systems
- Integration with mainstream payment gateways
- Migration roadmap from Drupal Commerce
The requirement of an open-source system SilverDisc can host and manage, rules out all SaaS (Software as a Service) platforms, of which Shopify is the biggest competitor to Magento. This also rules out the Magento Commerce (also known as Magento Commerce) solution, which is cloud-based SaaS. After discounting these, we went through the list of features outlined above and could see that Magento Open Source ticks all the boxes.
The next step has been to train our very experienced development team on the ins and outs of Magento 2.
Currently, SilverDisc is fully managing a Magento 2 website. We are also in the process of redeveloping a client’s ecommerce website using Magento 2, which integrates with suppliers, Quickbooks accounting package and Zoho CRM. We also give SEO and CRO consultancy to a large retailer that went live with their Magento 2 website in October 2019. SilverDisc audited that migration to ensure a seamless process from an SEO perspective.
Conclusion
Although SilverDisc currently runs a number of legacy Drupal Commerce websites, we are strongly encouraging new ecommerce clients who are building a new website to choose Magento 2 as their preferred platform. If your company is considering developing its first ecommerce presence or modernising its existing platform, contact SilverDisc to get our expert advice.
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