Once you decide to create and eCommerce store on Magento there's no going back. Why? Since you won't find any other platform or third-party tool to manage multiple stores within the same admin. That's exactly what Magento multi store feature offers.
Not only can you create as many stores under the same website, but translate each of them into a different language.
Intrigued? Today you'll learn everything you need to know about Magento 2 multi store feature, it's benefits, drawbacks and management.
There's a lot to cover. So let's get right to it and start with the basics.
What is Magento Multi Store?
Magento 2 multi store is a feature that allows merchants to manage multiple stores (usually as subdomains) within the same Magento installation to cater to different consumer demand.
e.g. you sell pet food, clothes and accessories and set up different stores for those products. Or you divide your stores based on the types of pets: cats, dogs, birds, etc.
Magento Platform Structure
To understand the multi-store in Magento better, have a look at it through the Magento platform hierarchy.
There are four main levels in the Magento hierarchy: global, website, store and store view. Each of them offers different features to help you manage and scale your business.
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Global Level — the main level which represents the Magento platform itself.
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Website Level — the second level, where you can create separate websites with unique currency settings, payment methods, tax rules, shipping, and customer databases, using a single Magento installation.
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Store Level — the third level, where multiple stores sell different products within the same website.
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Store View Level — the fourth level which allows merchants to localize, translate their stores into multiple languages for the customers, adding different payment methods, shipping options and so on.
Benefits of the Magento 2 Multi Store
Whether you want to sell your products in different countries or across various markets, Magento multi store is extremely handy in covering these needs. And here are 4 reasons why:
1. Easy updates and configuration
Having all your stores within one admin panel significantly reduces management and updating costs. Since multiple stores share common design elements and layouts, making any updates or changes across all of them becomes much easier.
Besides, you can tweak different settings on each store according to the consumer requirements.
And you don't have to worry about setting up payment methods, shipments, product options, etc, for each store view separately. Unless you want to.
In Magento all store settings can be inherited from the main website.
2. Better catalog management
Each store in Magento multi store structure can have a unique catalog of products or share the same catalog across all stores, if needed.
The first option helps you to engage with diverse customers, taking into account their needs and preferences. While the second one simplifies catalog and inventory management.
3. Better customer experience
Multiple stores share the same customer data and shopping cart information. It creates better experiences since customers can check other stores, place orders and save wishlists without switching between different websites.
What is more important, it allows you to tailor your pricing, products and content to the customer's needs.
You can offer them different payment and shipping methods, share content in different languages or track their purchasing preferences.
4. Unified SEO management
The sharing of the same settings within all stores facilitates SEO management for you. You customize content, meta tags, URLs, sitemaps and other settings or save the same configuration for all stores.
This makes SEO optimization easier since you don't have to set or optimize each SEO feature for each store separately. Isn't it time-saving?
Magento Multi Store Challenges
Although Magento multi store comes with a lot of benefits, there are some challenges to consider.
1. Complex catalog
As we've told before, managing multiple stores in Magento is easy. But only if you use the shared catalog option.
Otherwise you might get lost in adjusting catalogs, languages, prices, currencies, shipping methods across numerous stores. So either go with the simple option or get someone who'll be doing all the set up and management for you.
2. Slow website performance
Running multiple stores within the same website will definitely affect the loading speed. The system has a lot of requests to process after all.
To overcome this challenge, you need a secure hosting with adequate resources. But don't forget to research ways to speed up Magento regularly if the performance is slow.
3. Theme and design customization
If you decide to create a unique brand identity for each store, things might get complicated in terms of design. Setting up and maintaining unique themes for each store is rather complex.
Instead, use Magento fallback system to inherit design from a parent theme. Then customize some elements for each store or reuse certain elements across them.
It will facilitate updates and management for you.
4. SEO challenges
While having unique SEO options for each store creates a lot of opportunities, it can backfire if not implemented properly. Especially in terms of content.
Since you target a unique audience with each store, you need to make sure the content is unique to avoid duplicate content issues.
Follow the best Magento SEO guide to implement proper canonical tags, use unique meta tags and other options for each store.
How to Create Multiple Stores in Magento 2?
Now we come to the main part of the Magento multi store guide — how to set it up. The process comes down to a few steps.
1. Create a store
First go to Stores > All Stores and press the Create Store button to start. Then fill out the Store Information.
- Choose a Website, the new store will be assigned to.
- Set the store Name and Code.
- Choose the Root Category.
Don't forget to Save your store and check if it appears on the list of stores.
However, for your store to be complete, you must set the default store view for it.
Just navigate to the store you've just created, after you create a store view, and set the Default Store View.
2. Set store URL
As we already know, Magento allows you to have multiple stores under the same domain, set them as subdomains or have completely new domains.
Based on that, one last step here is to set the store URL. To do that, go to Stores > Configuration > General > Web and switch to the Store you want to set the URL for.
Then set the Base URL and Base URL (Secure) for your store under the Base URL section.
That's it, all you need now is to create other stores so that your Magento multi store setup is complete.
Multi Stores or Multi Websites
Having multiple websites or stores clearly depends on your needs, goals and strategies. And while having multiple stores comes with some challenges, a website set up is not far behind in this regard.
So, in case you're still wondering — why do I need multiple stores if I could just have multiple websites — let's sum things up.
Multi websites are perfect if you have separate brands or work in several regions. That's the case when you need to target different markets and audiences.
Each website has a unique customer database, product catalog, design, layout, pricing, currency, shipping methods, regional settings, contributing to that.
At the same time, multiple websites are much more difficult and expensive to set up and manage. So be ready to invest into advanced technical support, SEO, hosting and custom development team to achieve your long-term goals.
Magento multi store, on the contrary, offers a more centralized and cost-saving approach. It does allow you to customize each store’s content, payments, currency, and shipping, etc or share them for all stores.
But since you do that within the same website, you can share the settings across all stores. It saves time and management efforts.
| Characteristic | Multi Stores | Multi Websites |
|---|---|---|
| Hierarcy | Lower level | Higher level |
| Domains | One domain with multiple store views | Different domains or subdomains |
| Independence | One admin panel | Several admin panels |
| Customer database | One shared database | Different databases |
| Customer accounts | Same for all stores | Unique for each site |
| Catalogs | Same catalog for all stores | Different catalogs |
| Design and layout | Same for all stores (in general) | Different for each site |
| Prices, taxes, payment method, shipping | One for all stores | Different for each site |
Whether you decide to use multi websites or multi stores in your Magento, develop a strategy first. Unless you want the challenge of switching to a multi-store setup or vice versa in the future.
However, in either case, invest in a Magento website switcher or store switcher to improve user experience in your store.
