As a Certified Magento Developer, InteractOne knows that one of the most important decisions that a retailer will make is their product presence online. For the small retailer it may be the decision to take their products online; for the large retailer- updates. Your company’s online store is integral in building your overall brand outside of your perceived geographic limitations and allows you to build a broader customer footprint- which in the end will increase traffic and revenue to your site.
Regardless if your store is receiving and update or you are in the infancy of creating the idea, important planning sessions need to take place to make sure that your site is built to meet the needs of your business model- AND that it is built accurately.
Some companies will decide to take this task on themselves without first understanding the size and scope of the Magento platform and will omit key features of the software and sometimes compromise crucial elements of the software core and therefore operate what will become broken site unable to be updated.
Since its inception, Magento has implemented a network of worldwide solution partners that are skilled specifically to develop your online store and train your staff to maintain and make updates. InteractOne has been a Magento development and implementation specialist since the Magento software launched in 2007 and continues to bring in new clients from all over the spectrum:
New site development
Existing site updating
Maintain and repair sites that have been abandoned in development
Magento is best in class when it comes to online store platforms. Because the software is so robust many companies that try to go at it alone will overlook core features or low-bid a designer to modify code to work for their purposes. Most of these strategies will end up costing more in the long run. Contact InteractOne- who is a certified Magento Solutions Partner and Developer- to come alongside your organization and strategically plan the success of your site.
I tried it once when I was in college I have to admit it made me laugh afterwards. I did it on a dare for a Social Club Rush activity. I went to the Target store on the southern edge of Anderson, Indiana, went all through 20+ aisle’s of the store filling up the shopping cart- and literally for no reason other than to fulfill my bullet point list of annoying tasks- I abandoned my overflowing cart in the middle of the store. Granted, I had no illusions that I would be purchasing the $100+ of items that was in the cart (by 1994 standards)- but to Target it could have represented $100 of sales lost on someone who may not return to buy.
With Black Friday and the whole Christmas corridor coming up, eCommerce marketers will be plugging through all of the headaches consistent with the shopping season with how to get Cyber Monday buyer from abandoning their shopping carts online- and perhaps more importantly, how to get them back to complete purchases they may have abandoned.
The number 1 reason for most online shopping carts to be abandoned is because the consumer was “comparison shopping.” This means that while they are on the site is the easiest time to convert that window shopper to a sale. The goal from this stand point is to make it so the shopper has as few obstacles to the checkout as possible.
Magento has developed a One-Step Checkout extension that simplifies the process for their sites. This extension’s main feature is that it takes the six normal Magento checkout procedures and simplifies it into one. The cart totals are dynamically updated as different options are selected in the checkout process (ie- shipping). All address, payment and delivery methods are selected on the same page as opposed to different pages for each. As Cyber Monday approaches, this figures to be a key tool in reducing your online abandoned shopping carts.
Are you looking to purchase a Magento Enterprise License for web development? Well, look no further. InteractOne has been an authorized reseller of Magento Enterprise licenses since 2009. If you are a web development company that needs a Magento Enterprise License but aren’t yet a Magento Partner, simply fill out our contact form or call 513.469.7042 to speak with a representative today. InteractOne will put you on the quick path to obtaining a Magento Enterprise License.
Magento Services from InteractOne
InteractOne is the ideal company to purchase a Magento license from because we can offer development services, live site support, and marketing strategies like no other firm can. We are their second oldest partner. Our relationship with Magento harkens back to a time when they were known as Varien. As one of the oldest partners, and one of only four worldwide development trainers, very few companies can say with authority that they know Magento as well as we do. We don’t like to brag, but InteractOne was also the first partner to work exclusively with Magento.
InteractOne can provide a level of support for Magento sites, unlike any other company. We are proud to say that all of our support is on shore. When you call for help, you won’t be routed to a call center half a world away. Instead, you’ll be speaking to a representative in our Ohio office. If your Magento site is running slowly or crashes, we can troubleshoot your technical issues. And our load speed testing is a capabilities test that is truly unique among our competitors.
In addition to our full array of marketing services, we have our own Magento Certified Developer, Magento Certified Developer Plus, and Magento Front End Certified programmers on staff. In order to maintain our well-rounded approach to marketing and programming, we have Bronto Certified Specialists and Zend Certified PHP Engineers on staff as well. Oh, and did we mention that we have Project Management Institute certified project managers on staff as well, in order to make sure that site development projects run smoothly? But again, we don’t like to brag…
To obtain a Magento Enterprise license, please call InteractOne at 513.469.7042 from 8 AM to 6 PM EST and speak with one of our representatives today.
The latest version of Magento Enterprise comes with a host of new features that focus on improving the shopping experience for customers, improving consumer/seller communication, and makes meeting the PCI (Payment Card Industry) standards much simpler. This upgrade highlights why Magento is the e-Commerce platform of choice for merchants who are serious about selling online. The following is a list of the the major features with a short description. Please view the video above to learn about Magento Enterprise 1.9 in further detail.
Magento’s Gift Registry Module – Now your customers can search gift registries by name, email or ID. This module allows you to glean rich customer data while giving your customers more options, added convenience and most of all another reason to shop at your store.
Advanced Attribute Management – Customize your marketing campaigns for individual groups of customers. With this new versatile tool you can grow sales as well as improve the shopping experience for customers.
Solr Search Module – This module vastly improves Magento’s search capability. Stop words, spelling suggestions and attribute sets are all combined to help the customer find what they are looking for and the seller to make a sale.
Full Page Caching Module – Magento is taking site speed very seriously and it shows with this new full page caching module. Entire pages both on the front and back end are cached resulting in significant improvements in page load times. Any Personal information is excluded of course.
Magento Secure Payment Bridge (PA-DSS Compliant) – Magento’s payment processor meets the very stringent standards and requirements that it takes to be PA-DSS Certified. Build customer trust and rest easy knowing that the personal information on your Magento site is safe and secure.
Magento Enterprise 1.9 is a great illustration of Magento’s commitment to the continuous improvement of their product. With the Enterprise 1.9 update, Magento store owners can be assured they are using the best e-commerce platform on the market today.
Writing product descriptions in Magento can be challenging. With a limited amount of room in the short product description you must entice your target audience while also baiting the search engines. By writing good product descriptions (both long & short) you will encourage customers to sell and search engines to give you a favorable ranking in the search engine results page (SERPS).
To entice your target audience you must get to know them. Think about how you would talk to your customers in person. Why are your customers coming to you? How would you introduce your products to them? Most importantly, what questions are they asking? By doing your research (analyzing search engine data here would help also) you will learn that your customers can be classified into segments. By understanding each customer segment you can write copy that meets their needs, increasing your sales dramatically!
Be loud and proud about your products benefits. Don’t just tell the viewer what the product is. Instead, tell them why it would benefit them. Going back to the first step, focus the benefits toward your different customer groups.
Incorporate your SEO keyphrases into the product description. Use these keyphrases in the image alt tags, product title and in the image descriptions. Remember to review your descriptions. If it sounds like you are repeating the keyphrases then adjust until it sounds right.
After your products have been on your site for some time, review the products that are converting to sales and attracting traffic. For the ones not seeing success, tweak and adjust product titles, descriptions, images and so forth. You don’t necessarily need to rewrite the whole description. Start with minor changes and track the following changes in sales, traffic and customer perception.
Product descriptions attract traffic to your site and ultimately convince your customers to make purchases. By taking the time to optimize your product descriptions you can turn a stagnat product into a fast selling mover.
The use of mobile devices used for internet search and purchases is on a dramatic rise. Ross Sandler of RBC is predicting mobile searches to rise from its current level 9 % of all searches today to 20% of all internet search queries by 2012 (See Techcrunch). As our cell phones evolve into more sophisticated portable computers you can be sure that this trend will continue to increase and mobile commerce (m-commerce) will become the norm and a huge percentage of retail sales. Is your eCommerce business ready for the change?
Enter Magento Mobile. With its full release expected later, it will be the worlds first mobile commerce system. The biggest advantage Magento Mobile has over its competitors is that is doesn’t just rebrand re-theme a merchant’s website for mobile browsers. Instead, a retailer’s product catalog is transformed into a fully-functional, branded, native application.
This app makes for a great shopping experience for the buyer. Load times are fast. Purchases are secure. Navigation is easy and logical. Page functionality is great. Everything online shoppers have come to expect from Magento while shopping from their home computers or laptops can be found in Magento Mobile.
For the seller, the benefits not only include satisfied shoppers but a hassle-free product that fully integrates into their existing Magento store. The full list of Magento Mobile benefits include:
Integration with Online Magento Store – The Magento-mobile admin will fully integrate with your store’s catalog, checkout, inventory, reporting, and other features.
Magento Managed Submissions – Magento will take the worry out of submitting your online store application. The time and complexity of maintaining application standards will be taken care of for a low monthly fee. This lets you focus on selling to your customers instead of dealing with the latest upgrade and/or complicity issues.
Build customer Relationships – How better to build customer relationships than through their smartphone? Geo-targeting and the ability to provide users with an immersive native experience are enhanced with Magento Mobile.
Manage Multiple Devices – With new mobile devices coming out almost yearly if not monthly (droid, iPad, etc..) managing your storefronts from a single portal will save time and improve efficiencies. Customizing and creating different reports will also be simplified.
Fully Customizable – Device oriented features and branded themes can be added and modified with just a few clicks. You can easily and quickly update the colors and layout of your app with the new Magento mobile admin, even after customers have downloaded your app.
Low Cost of Ownership – Bring the high end experience of a mobile app store to your customers for a low price. By paying for the feature you only want or need saves you money.
The Age of Mobile eCommerce (m-commerce) is here. Mobile Magento is a great cost-effective way to get a piece of this quickly expanding marketplace and grow your bottom line.
Choosing the right eCommerce system for your business may seem difficult and challenging. As a company that has been developing online shopping carts for over ten years, the staff at InteractOne know a good system when we see it. This is why we think you should choose Magento. The online shopping cart that tops all others in functionality, marketability, versatility and individual customization is Magento. For companies who are serious about their online eCommerce the choice has become much easier. The Magento platform is a proven system that continues to evolve with each extension developed and with each system upgrade.
One of Magento’s key selling points is its ease of use for both the seller and the customer. For the seller the list of benefits is seemingly endless.
Some key features include:
Marketing Promotions and Tools (coupons, featured items, gift cards & more)
Analytics and Reporting
Search Engine Optimization
Site Management
Catalog Management
Advanced Shipping
For customers the benefits are equally as impressive, including:
Navigation for Filtering of Products in Categories
Effective and Fast Search Results
Easy Product Comparisons
Product Reviews
One-page Checkout Capability
Extensive Shipping Options
Believe it or not, these features are just the beginning of what Magento has to offer. Be sure to see the sample Magento shopping carts we have built for our customers. To learn how Magento can fit into your company’s eCommerce strategy, contact us today.
You have looked into using Magento as your eCommerce system and liked what it has to offer. In fact, you liked it so much you could only find three problems with implementing the system for your business. One, Magento Community Edition was too limiting and had no support. Two, Magento Enterprise offered way too much and was beyond your budget. Three, these were the only two platforms to choose from.
Enter Magento Professional Edition, the middle ground between the two. Built on the same platform as the Enterprise edition, Magento Professional boasts additional features, full product support, and a warranty. Best of all, as your eCommerce store grows, you can easily and fully upgrade into Magento Enterprise.
Magento Professional edition includes additional revenue-generating features not included in Magento Community Edition:
Data Encryption: Supports PA-DSS standards and heavy data encryption and security measures that make this eCommerce system one of the most secure in the market.
Customer Store Credits: Give your customers the option to obtain credits that can be tied to their account. This feature gives customers the convenience of refunding orders for store credit, redeeming gift cards for store credit and using their credits to purchase items during checkout.
Gift Cards/Certificates: Give your customers the ability to purchase physical and virtual gift certificates/cards. Physical cards will be mailed to recipient and gift card code will be emailed to the recipient. Gift cards/certificates can be personalized with used to make purchases at your store.
Reward Points System: Encourage your customers’ loyalty and purchases with a Reward Points system. Customers accumulate points based on configurable exchange rates for purchases and promotions, as well as customer actions such as submitting ratings and reviews, signing up for the newsletter and more.
Magento Professional addition is a great option for those businesses looking to make a serious step into the world of eCommerce but doesn’t have the inventory, budget, or customer base to justify using the Magento Enterprise system. If you would like to learn how Magento Professional Edition fits into your business strategy contact InteractOne for a free consultation.
The product pages on the Magento Shopping Cart system are often overlooked and not optimized to their fullest extent. Optimizing them properly for both search engines and human visitors might take some extra time but is well worth the effort. Here are some tips to make your Magento product pages easier for search engines to find as well as more inviting and encouraging for the people shopping them.
Magento’s product pages are pretty well optimized for search engines right out of the box. Most meta tags are automatically filled given the data you include when loading products into the system. The key is to fill out as much of the product fields as possible. This can prove challenging but will pay off in a big way with your products getting found on the web. The job of search engines is to provide relevant search results for the user. The more product description, images and related information you can provide, the more of a chance you have of getting found.
An often overlooked field is the label field in the image tab. Think of this tab as another place to add keywords that support the title tag and description. By filling it out, your image title and alt tags will have unique values instead of using the title tag text that Magento includes by default.
Providing an adequate amount of information not only helps with the search engines but with selling and gaining a loyal consumer base. Consumers often use the web to find information on the products they want to purchase. Product descriptions that are complete, point out all the product benefits and features and are supported with multiple images and video that are clear and crisp will not only encourage viewers to buy but to come back, tell their friends and come to rely on you as a the guru in your market.
As you can see, optimizing for search engine robots and human online shoppers are not completely opposite practices. Making sure that your products pages are geared toward both, you can ensure that your site is found and your products are seen. More importantly, product page optimization will result in converting your traffic into sales!
There are thousands upon thousands of web hosting companies out there. It can be overwhelming to sort through them all to find out who has the best price for what you need. A lot of times with web hosting the saying “you get what you pay for” is very true.
“…but I just found a host that says they offer unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space for $15 per month! What’s the catch?”
For a lot of websites an unlimited plan is just fine, especially if your site has little traffic and not a lot of database access needed to display the pages. A simple WordPress site or even a small company site would be no problem. A lot of times under these circumstances a cheap unlimited plan is just fine as long as you aren’t expecting very much growth and page load time is not a concern. These companies can offer “unlimited” everything because there IS a catch. If you start using a lot of their server resources, space or bandwidth they will pull the plug, plain and simple. As soon as you go over a comfortable amount of space or usage then chances are your site will go offline. Again, this is not a problem for a small site, but what if you wanted to host Magento on an unlimited plan?
The short answer is yes you can, the long answer is no you shouldn’t.
Magento has some very specific requirements to function properly. The fact that it is working “properly” doesn’t mean that it’s running efficiently or quickly. Speed is a very important consideration when dealing with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is the lifeblood of a lot of storefronts online. With SEO you get the traffic from people using search engines like Google who are looking specifically for what you are selling. When these web surfers arrive at your website, how long do you think they’ll wait before moving on? Eight seconds. If your page doesn’t load in eight seconds then it is widely accepted that a majority of people go back to the search results to find someone else.
When you have an unlimited plan you are sharing the server with hundreds, possibly thousands of other clients. This translates into slow loading times since requests being sent to the server have to wait in line to be served, where a fast server will dispatch requests quickly so there is no waiting. Your page could be very small in size but still take a long time to load on a slow server. Magento is a robust and highly customizable platform that is built to be fast but you have to put it on a fast server to realize its full potential.
Magento takes up a fairly large amount of resources on a server due to the complexity of the code and database. Even with caching enabled, the smallest Magento site is still at the mercy of the server that is running it. When shoppers come to your storefront the home page should load very fast. On an over-utilized server the loads times are always slower. When selecting a hosting company be sure they don’t have your website on a server with hundreds of others. There really is no way to know if this is the case or not. Usually the only recourse you have is to ask and to search the web for reviews or comments about the company you are considering.
I have found that the best practice is to see if the company that designed your site also provides hosting services. The company that develops your online presence is going to want it to load quickly since they will most likely use it as an example to get more customers. Everyone wins in that situation because you can be sure your site won’t just get stowed away on some overcrowded server and the company that designed your site will be able to proudly display it in their portfolio. Most design companies are willing to allow hosting somewhere else under the condition that they are not responsible for load times or other issues that can happen on a server not in their control.
When you are ready to design your Magento store be sure to keep speed in mind! Use a company that allows your site to grow as-needed. Don’t forget to ask your designer if they can also host the site for you. Most times it will not be as cheap as a shared server but the benefits to your traffic and overall customer experience over time will make the server pay for itself.
