Magento is an advanced ecommerce solution. What is so different about it compared to the rest? Everything. From the architecture, to the built in functionalities. It includes product ratings, reviews, creating various types of products and to these products you can attach as many atributes as you want (ex: ISBN for books, years of usage for a car etc) and all this without modifying the database yourself.
All these operations can be done from the administration backend by the shop owner. It also includes payment systems, filtering on any attribute, advanced and quick search on any attribute, easily define promotions, easy design customisation, adding new functionalities and many other features. Being a system based on the Zend framework, the MVC architecture allows separating code from design, this way you should not have any problems in switching the designs.
What does this all mean? It means you are using the latest generation of online shops, with a lot of functionalities your clients will love. It means you are using a well designed system, which can be updated easily, it means you can add in functionality and design changes without fearing you will break the current layout and it also means a much easier way of dealing with invoices, administering clients, orders, products and cool reports for all these tasks.
All in all, it's a general view which speaks about the direction your business is heading.
You can see a demo of Magento in action here http://demo.magentocommerce.com
To access the backend, use this address http://demo-admin.magentocommerce.com/index.php/admin/, with the login admin and password 123123
To ask for a price quote regarding a possible Magento project please use the contact form.