PRWD

Over the last few months, we’ve begun using the Magento e-commerce platform. As leading suppliers of usability analysis, training and evaluation, as well as software development, we’ve worked with a wide range of e-commerce platforms and technologies and are now focusing on Magento as our primary e-commerce platform.

What is Magento?

Magento is an enterprise-ready open source e-commerce platform. What that means in practice is that it provides an equivalent feature set to big-budget e-commerce platforms, but at a substantially lower cost. In place of a single vendor selling licenses and support, there is a global network of providers with skills and knowledge necessary to create and maintain new sites using Magento, headed up by Varien Consulting, the founders of Magento.

What does PRWD bring to Magento?

What we bring is our relentless focus on creating effective user experiences. We’re the North West’s leading usability company – the only North West company to be listed in Econsultancy’s buyers guide – and we’ve also provided training to other digital agencies based here. Visitors to your site might not know anything about the technology you’re using, but they will care about how easy the site is to use. Our usability work ensures that once people are on your site, everything is set up for them to buy as much as possible, as easily as possible.

PRWD’s User Experience Director, Paul Rouke, has written extensively about best practice for online retailers, and gives a training course in that subject. You can find Paul’s blog here – be sure to check out the ‘Most Popular Posts’ in the top right-hand corner for some instantly applicable insights for retailers.

We also bring the technical expertise necessary to get the best out of your Magento site. We’ve begun developing Magento modules which extend the functionality of the system. Having the design and development capacity in one firm means that we can work quickly to update and improve websites once they’ve launched.

How flexible is Magento?

Whilst there are certainly best practices to stick to in e-commerce site design, there’s nothing worse than a fashion site that looks like it should be selling fridges, or a cookie-cutter e-commerce store that fails to build on a company’s brand and marketing strategy. Magento’s modular design means that we can customise design and functionality without limits. Custom shipping charges? Discount vouchers? Twitter or Facebook integration? Advanced analytics and CRM? All of these are possible with Magento, often much more easily than they would be on any other platform.

How can I find out more?

If you want to know more about Magento, or about our e-commerce usability training and consultancy, give us a call on 0161 918 6729 or contact us via our website. Our offices are in Manchester so we’re well placed for anyone in the UK, especially the North West.