It is a season of good news for all the online merchants and shoppers. According to the recent report by the eMarketer, the eCommerce industry proudly surpassed the trillion dollars mark in the year 2012. The B2C sales have increased by 21.1 percent and the experts predict that it will increase by another 12.3 percent in the current year. This only gives much more hope and promise to the online merchants to plunge into the deeply rewarding and thriving sea of eCommerce and concentrate their eCommerce websites in a better way to capture the flourishing business potential.
Last year, it was North America that registered the highest sales, claiming 30.5 percent of 364.66 billion worth of total sales. Though the experts predict that the trend will continue in the increasing order, it is also expected that North America will lose to top spot to the Asia Pacific in the coming years. While the country with the largest involvement in the online shopping and eCommerce world will remain the United States of America, a close second is expected to be China.
These recent reports by the eMarketer are only fueling the fire that Magento is the future web development platform to look for. If the acquisition of Magento by the eBay shows anything, it is the fact that the giant eCommerce portal is now ready to venture into the new phase of eCommerce industry. According to Tom Robertshaw, the famous UK Developer, Magento got the highest percentage of votes in the Alexa’s list of most popular platforms, with over 1 million sites being powered by the functionalities of Magento.
As the true potential of Magento dawns upon various online merchants and marketers, the true potential impact lies in the Magento partners as a whole. Though the eCommerce publishing platform is pretty expansive and winsome on it’s own, it continues to grow and enthrall others, with the help of it’s various Solution, hosting or industry partners. In the recent announcement, even the management team working behind Magento seems to entertain the same thought. Roy Rubin, the COO of Magento and X.commerce was heard saying “We’ve seen tremendous growth in the size and scale of merchants choosing Magento and as a natural evolution of the business it made sense for us to launch a new Solution Partner Program,” and added, “our partners are an important part of the Magento ecosystem and we are committed to working with them to help them deliver high quality services.”
The interaction between the online merchants or partners and the leading eCommerce development platform is quite important for Magento’s reputation as a whole. Therefore, Magento has taken it upon itself to ensure that the optimum quality of partners is maintained, so that the success rate does not get affected. It’s inclination towards restructuring the partner program only conveys a better understanding and much improved multi-disciplinary collaborative efforts across.
Here is a brief glance at the Magento Partners:
1. Solution Partners: You would want Magento as a solution partner when you are either launching your first every online store, or need help in the re-launching or redeveloping the current site. After the consultation, the solution partners from Magento will develop through design, development, integration and marketing strategy. It goes without saying that the choice of the solution partner will have a long term and irrevocable impact on the website.
2. Industry Partners: Industry partners is the assortment of various industries that work towards creating integration and applications for the purpose of marketing and selling, processing payments, shipping, customer relationship modules, accounting, back end integration, SEO and SMO and a lot more. A synergized mix of the solution partner and the industry partner is not just desired, but absolutely indispensable for the growth of eCommerce platform.
3. Hosting Partners: A quality hosting provider ensures that your eCommerce website will remain up and running round the clock, and will not be a challenge to the patience levels of you online store’s visitors. A hosting partner ensures that the server is best optimized for Magento and thus has positive impacts on the speed, loading time and performance of the website.
