What Is a Magento Cart?
Running an online business can become quite complicated, particularly when it comes to receiving and processing customer payments. In the early days of the Internet, the ability to do so required a comprehensive knowledge of Internet technologies and security. More recently, several companies have released top-to-bottom shopping cart solutions that even inexperienced online merchants can adopt and use securely. One such solution is offered by Magento, Incorporated.
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Online Shopping Carts in General
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In the eCommerce world, the term “cart” has two, closely related meanings. It is used as a general term to refer to the software used by merchants to manage and process customer orders. In this sense, “Magento cart” refers to Magento’s software in general. The term is also used to refer to the virtual shopping cart used by customers on a given merchant’s site. In this case, “Magento cart” refers to the actual shopping cart interface used by the customer on a Magento-based site.
Magento
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Magento, Inc. was founded in 2001 and has grown to be among the leading companies offering comprehensive eCommerce solutions to merchants. Several options, each tailored to the needs of a particular class of merchant, are available. Magento’s emphasis on flexibility has produced products that give merchants the ability to design their online store to their exact specifications, in contrast to some of the more limited eCommerce solutions such as Zen Cart.
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Magento Editions
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Magento’s Enterprise and Professional Editions are commercial products requiring an annual licensing fee. These products are intended for large-scale online stores and are widely used by recognized brands such as K-Swiss, Pentel and Oneida. For smaller-scale and home-based online merchants, Magento offers the Community Edition which, although open-source and unsupported by Magento, is also widely used and equally customizable. The Community Edition is free to use. Magento also offer Magento Go, intended for smaller merchants lacking the resources to host and manage their online store.
Magento Cart Demonstrations
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For those thinking about adopting Magento as their online shopping cart software, Magento offers online demonstrations. These demonstrations imitate an actual online store, complete with cart and check-out procedures. Orders placed in these stores are fictional — they are there for demonstration purposes only and take you through the entire shopping experience from adding tems to paying for them. There are demonstrations of each version of Magento’s software. They are found at magentocommerce.com/demo.
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