Magento web development is now becoming an essential part of online businesses who are selling their products on the online platform. Designers and developers use Magento for meeting their development needs. However, Magento developers need to strive to avoid blunders that usually occur during the Magento development process. They should utilize Magento customization to come up with innovative eCommerce solutions for retailers who wish to achieve tremendous online growth.

The fiercely competitive online environment urges businesses to create unique and user friendly eCommerce website. If you are a developer looking forward to a career in Magento customization or Magento web design then it is imperative for you to learn some simple yet effective design and development tricks. Following are some of the tricks for front-end developers as well as so that they can come up with an effective eCommerce website using Magento.

For Front-End Developers and Designers:

• It is better to create a custom theme rather than going for modification of core Magento theme files.
• Understanding the package or theme relationship can give you a clear idea on how to effectively utilize it for the website you are building. Smart use of the packages or themes can give rise to innovative ways to manage the small differences required among different templates or pages.
• Always use the correct starting theme, especially in a community. While dealing with a community project, blank theme saves a great deal of time as it eliminates a lot of unrequited CSS styling. This helps front-end developers to expedite the overall development process.
• It is important for developers to bear in mind that Magento makes use of tables in some places. It is always advantageous to go through the sample or demo site to view source and cloning said source as the HTML you utilize while creating your own CSS.

For Magento Programmers:

• While extending the functionality of a core class, it is important that you don’t end up overwriting the core class by entering the same file path on the local code pool, app/code/local/Path to core class/… Instead, it is better to use class rewriting than to overwrite. The new class must inherit from the class you wish to prolong. This makes room for greater compatibility and brings down the chances of breaking things when upgrading to a newer version of Magento. It is beneficial to tackle the module conflicts.
• Never ignore nested collections. Every collection is a query which implies that if you have a collection within a look, then there surely exists a query within a look. This will bring down the overall speed of your website.
• Writing a module is good, but to test it with full page caching it’s better. A number of times module works impeccably over the local server but fails to give the best performance on a live site. Hence, it is imperative to test it with full page caching to avoid problems.
• Not being attentive to the namespaces utilized for custom modules, which may clash with the namespaces of core Magento modules.

It is important for you to keep these tips and tricks in mind when you are taking up any design and development project using Magento. This will ensure the success of your Magento web development project.

Magento based Web Development is one of the best website development options among the eCommerce organizations & companies. Varien Inc has developed Magento as an open-source content management system. Since its advent in the market, it has firmly captured the audiences’ attention as the perfect eCommerce solutions for the store merchants.

Millions of online retailers hire Magento web developer for building robust and user-friendly websites for their businesses. It won’t be an exaggeration if we say that as soon as it entered the virtual business arena, it had changed commerce scenario from the top to the bottom. And as the day passes, its hold is becoming stronger and more compact. Till date, there is no synonym of it in the industry.

Most of the retail users choose Magento technology because of its unique and feature-rich quality. This helps in making search engine friendly websites that are easy-to-use and you can get optimum traffic on your website. Being an online trader or a merchant, driving targeted traffic to your business website to earn higher profit is your primary target. Magento serves that purpose with flexibility.

One can notice that thousands of web sellers create their sites using Magento platform. The system offers best User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX). This open source system also has a easy to use Content Management System [CMS] that enables creation of enchanting and creative designs. Apart from this, it provides several customization features, third party integration abilities and use of content blocks of content/data.

Magento technology is a web guru in the eCommerce arena as it has many awesome features and qualities that make both the store owners & the customers shopping experience easy and quick. They can perform any of the online activities hassle free. It offers great features like:

– Secured payment gateways

– Fast & Affordable Deployment

– Search Engine Optimization

– Currency Converters

– Buyer friendly features such as reviews, wish-lists

– Multiple Store facility

– And others

When you hire a skilled Magento developer for crafting a website as per your needs, you would save lots of bucks. Because once your robust web platform is ready to go-live, you will reap unbelievable lucrative profit out of your little investment. This is one main reason, 99% love to build their websites in this feature-rich web platform. In simple sentence, I would say, it is a perfect online eCommerce solution for the store merchants.

In today’s growing market, everybody wants to enhance his business boundaries globally with perfection and excellence. And Magento offers state-of-the art features that are incomparable with any of the present day web platforms.

If you are really serious about your online business, Magento eCommerce website development is ranked #1 online eCommerce platform for the merchants. Millions of successful businessmen are reaping fruitful results of creating websites in Magento. And more importantly, you can easily perform many online activities like updating your product catalog, images, tags, texts, prices and other information by your own. It is really easy to use and implement.

Its modules, interfaces and themes are the main extensions that can be changed from thousands of online themes. It simply gives maximum output to the users with user-friendly websites.

A recent interaction with the CEO of Magento Web Guru, a sister wing of Atlas InfoTech helps me understand that the demand of Magento based online stores is increasing day by day. With the latest release of Magento 1.8 lot more features and security concerns are addressed. For high end professionals Enterprise Edition is available as well.

In today’s time, it’s important to have a solid presence online. Not doing the same means your business will fail to benefit from an ever-rising marketplace. To go online and get the best there, your business will need to create an e-commerce website or an online store. This will help you list together products and services in a standard way and reach to the target audience. You should first select a right framework to develop your e-commerce website. You should trust Magento as it has all what a feature-rich and high-quality e-commerce site needs. It will make your business’ online journey utterly smooth and productive.

Magento is designed to meet e-commerce purposes where it lets business display products, enable online transactions and run back-end processes with a greater efficiency. What’s more, businesses can leverage this platform to offer customer service in a prompt manner and realize their goals in a desired way. It’s a full-fledge e-commerce framework unlike other content management systems which only have few e-commerce plugins. It is packed with some key e-commerce features to let businesses spread and expand their presence on the internet. So, businesses will get user dashboards and inventory management features with the platform to have ease of running day-to-day operations.

In addition, Magento is fitted with advanced shipping and supplier management so that businesses face absolutely no problem with operational efficiency. Apart from enabling entities a bundling of products, it also comes packed with built-in capabilities for cross sell and up sell. The platform allows easy integration with third-party apps to boost their performance and extend their reach further. So, businesses can find any app of their choice and plug in into the site to add a new dimension to the operations and efficiency. More so, it is highly customizable and modular which lets businesses meet different goals with ease.

In addition, Magento is a kind of platform that helps sites load faster. It also allows caching of web pages in a quick time. Both these features are extremely important in today’s time where users want to visit only those sites that load extremely fast. It also delivers great results with retrieving data and processing queries of any scale. Similarly, it’s SEO-friendly and sites built using the platform perform great in search engines. Its source code will have all elements built-in that help sites become more visible in search engine or on the internet. This is how every business owner wants their website to be for better results.

Furthermore, Magento gives businesses an opportunity to run more than one website with just one common back-end system. Each of these websites can have poles apart layouts and design, and each can have a separate domain. In overall, this framework has everything that businesses often need for their c-commerce site. So, you should go ahead and hire only an experienced Magento developer to leverage all those built-in features and help take your business forward. After all, only quality e-commerce sites will have any chance of success on the internet, not all.

Magento eCommerce website development has seen a revolution in the recent years with the number of extensions that are made available to help customize the store and tailor it to suit your marketing needs. These Magento extensions help modify your online store to create exemplary shopping experiences for your customers. Some of these extensions are available for free and some paid – but all of them add some value to your website.

So, with thousands of extensions to choose from, how do you know which one will benefit your store? How do you decide which one to purchase or try for free?

Here are a few pointers that will help you make the right decision:

Define your purpose

Magento is a feature rich platform that provides all the basic functionalities that an eCommerce store requires. However, your store might need some specific features to run a sales campaign or a discount offer or holiday gifts campaign etc. This is where extensions come into play. Well, some extensions are offered on Magento Connect by the company itself. Some other interesting extensions and Magento customizations are offered by other web development companies. Well, you can select the right extension only by defining what exactly you need. Define what your online store wants and then go out in search of the right extension.

Get to know the extension

Once you know what you want, shortlist a few extensions by different providers, or even better, get one custom built for your website. This could be easily achieved by hiring professionals from a Magento eCommerce website development company. Well, get to know the extension and its features.

Try it out for free

Many providers give you a ‘trial’ period for free. Some of the extensions are free too! So, if you are in doubt, try it! Try it in a test environment t understands how it works and match its features to your requirements.

Check out the functionalities

Along with every extension, you get a long list of its features, functionalities and what it can or cannot do. Read the instructions thoroughly and make sure that you know what you have purchased. Study the functionalities that are documented.

Read customer reviews

The best input you could get about a product is through customer reviews. You can easily get these from the websites where you download them or from social channels like Facebook or Twitter. Well, everybody’s experience with the product is different and there are several other dependencies such as the environment in which they are installed etc.

Provider’s history

This is a very important point. Make sure that you purchase from an authentic source. Research and check out the provider’s history. The Magento market is very competitive. So make sure you buy products that are tried, tested and have a good review.

Well, Magento eCommerce web development and customization is getting popular by the day and many online stores resort to extensions to build a store that can give their customers a great shopping experience. Make sure that you choose the right extensions and add the right features for the success of your online store!

Magento has recently announced the release of its new enterprise edition 1.14.2. This new version has opened up new opportunities for Magento development professionals and eCommerce businesses to leverage from in order to accelerate business growth.

Some of the highlights of this new release are:

Category sorting rules

The all new Magento comes with five new automated product sorting rules that help you drive more sales from category pages. It also helps you better engage your customers. This new feature enables you to completely re-arrange the category pages to feature best sellers or low stock items or new products at the top of the list. You can also sort products by color within a category. This makes it easy to configure color grouping for seasonal sales.

The highlight of this feature is that merchant intervention is not required for maintaining the merchandizing strategy.

Google Tag Manager

Google tag manager is included with the new Magento Enterprise Edition enables merchants to add tracking tags to their eCommerce site that allows you to measure audience, personalization, retargeting and search engine marketing and lots more. All this can be done without modifying the code. It enables faster time to market and enables accurate data collection and allows you to ship the results directly to Google Analytics or other third party analytics solutions.

Overall, you can gauge how well your site is doing and how successful your campaigns are.

Technology updates

Among the technology updates, this version of Magento includes the latest version of the Zend Framework. It also includes Redis integration.

Community Edition coming soon

Magento also announced that Magento Community Edition 1.9.2 will soon be available for download.

Mobile SDK for iOS

With the Magento Mobile SDK for iOS, you can easily create a full featured eCommerce app for your iPhone. It includes all the features required to run a successful mobile store like checkout process, customer accounts, and promotions. It also includes an API to connect to your e-store.

Functional Testing Framework

Around 170 automated functional tests are included which will help improve the quality of your online store.

Reporting and Analytics

Reporting and analysis is made easy with the new Relic integration and gives you great insights into hosting environment health. You can also measure your app performance and identify potential problems and sort out issues with performance. You can also create customized dashboards to better understand your reports.

Web performance

Improvements will be seen in the web application performance and improved cloud deployments to offer a great customer experience no matter where the site is hosted. It proactively optimizes the website performance and dynamically scales with traffic demands. This is very useful at peak traffic when website demands high server resources and capacity.

Well, Magento has come up with great features in this new and improved Enterprise Edition, opening up new opportunities for online stores and Magento development professionals to take advantage of. Since it includes a mobile software development kit and performance enhancing features, this version of Magento seems just right to build a perfect online store!

In today’s advance epochs, the World Wide Web has put forth an assortment of opportunities for all type of business entities to escalate their business success. Among all other web portals, one type of resources which are getting all the attention are e commerce based online stores.

Assisting them is Magento an avant-garde PHP based open source ecommerce solution which offers it users an enormous amount of advantages. Some of the major benefits of using Magento themes, Magento templates and Magento extensions are utter flexibility, complete control over appearance, functionality and content of the online e commerce shopping cart store.

The brains behind these shopping cart websites will discover Magento extensions to be utterly resourceful and alluring as the designs used are very attention grabbing, appealing and user friendly. The USP of such Magento extensions are that once a web visitor comes to your web site, he/ she will be allured by the stunning graphics and the awe inspiring feel of browsing through your store; which results in the persons pending more time on your web portal.

The browsing experience is sure to be tranquil and stress free which increases the chance of that specific customer using your products and services thereby escalating your ROI (return on investment). Not only appearance, but e commerce web site owners will also have complete authority over client’s usage such as their buying habits, the ease of use, their choices, and other pertaining facets such as content, shopping deals, categories, inventory, etc.

Shopping cart features proffered by Magento e commerce is of unsurpassed quality and furnishes a horde of resourceful and ingenious features. E commerce shopping cart web sites can be customized to a large extent by using Magento extensions and Magento modules. Magento e commerce is fabricated on an entirely modular depiction and can proffer web site owners with unlimited quantifiability and suppleness. When it comes to Magento extensions, you will stumble upon three major categories of them namely Magento themes, Magento interfaces and Magento modules.

The sheer number of Magento extensions that you can lay your hands on will definitely sweep you off your feet. Not only do these Magento extensions proffer enhanced functionality but also depict uncompromising standards and compatibility. There are also a multitude of plugins accessible on the World Wide Web which can be made use of to escalate the existing functionalities.

Some of the much sought after features which put Magento extensions in the fore front are: multi currency support, order editing, guest checkout, comparison of products, easy search options, order tracking and management, free shipping alternatives and multiple images per product, etc. Many a populace is perplexed by the question as to what is the need for customized Magento extensions when the default extensions are equally functional. Well the answer is that since Magento is open source, many an online store owners will chip in for the same and a lot of default themes on the web will make the visit of a curious web visitor boring and cyclic.

Magento is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms and powers over 80 percent of the online stores. For online stores, page loading speeds are very important. This is because a customer does not wait for more than 3 seconds for a page to load. If your website takes longer than that, your bounce rates will definitely be high. Well, for this reason, Magento Performance Optimization is of utmost importance. It is one way to maintain customer satisfaction.

Firstly, let’s take a look at what causes poor performance in websites. The main reason is the size of the website. Statistics show that there has been a 25% increase in the web page size. This means that businesses are incorporating a lot of content on the websites. This dramatically pulls down the loading time for the website. Thankfully, Magento has a lot of speed optimization techniques that you can implement. Performance optimization has become a necessity for eCommerce websites.

Here are some of the facts and figures that you might want to take a look at:

• 40% of the users abandon a website if the load time is more than 3 seconds.
• Reducing the page load times by 100 milliseconds will increase the customer conversion rates by 1%.

Well, Magento offers you with plenty of options to improve site load speeds.

Sprite Images, CSS and JS file merging to reduce HTTP requests

Sprite Images are a reliable way to improve Magento site performance. In this method, all the images are merged and combined into one single image source. This source will be placed under one single URL and requires a single HTTP request. This greatly helps speed optimization, as otherwise, each image would require one HTTP request.

Lazy Image Loading

Magento speed optimization can be achieved by Lazy image loading techniques. This means that as the user scrolls, the images load.

Performance tuning for MySQL server and enabling PHP realpath_cache

MySQL can be tuned to cache database queries and improves the web page load times. The database cache can be effectively activated by using the query_cache_size parameter. Similarly, the realpath_cache size can also be used to reduce the number of disk lookups.

Varnish and nginx

If your Magento store is heavy with content, Varnish cache is a good way to deal with poor loading speed. The reverse proxy makes page load faster as it returns results from the cached version of the pages rather than processing a new request each time.

Using PHP accelerator

PHP accelerator is the best solution for Magento site speed optimization. It is an extension that caches all the PHP scripts. Thus the scripts need not be parsed each time they are requested and website speed is improved.

Utilizing full page cache

Magento provides you with an excellent option for improving speed. Full page cache is a way in which Magento stores user behavior right from the first time he logs in. The next time the same user logs in, Magento uses this cache instead of the server to process the request. This significantly reduces Magento website load times and improves performance.

When you integrate the web development platform with an efficient ERP software that you are using, many disparate and diverse parts of the business become inter-connected. This not only enhances data accuracy but improves the data visibility as well. If you break the data out of the archive, you can avail a handful of facilities such as speedy processing of orders along with improved customer experiences. A seamless ERP integration with your web development platform helps to carry out such business goals easily. Are you wondering how to do it? Go through the article that is going to highlight 4 best ways to integrate Magento smoothly into an Effective ERP System.

Pinpoint Data that You’re Going to Incorporate

If you cannot successfully pinpoint the data that your website generates and are essential for integrating into the ERP, things become really troublesome. Well, some of the basic info like product details, data related to the order processes along with inventory are integral parts of a potent ERP integration. The main purpose is to make sure that the capabilities of seamless integration of technical data align well with the business goals that you are thinking of attaining. Hence, it is vital to figure out the business processes, brand goals along with flawless customer journey.

Look at Triggering and Timing

While establishing the data workflow connections between the Magento platform and the ERP that you are using, you should not forget about considering the timing aspect for different process triggering. With an instance, you can understand it better. When you buy things from any online portal, the payment procedure only proceeds when the ERP system confirms and verifies the readiness of fulfilling the product order and triggers event of fulfillment.

Make Sure Tracking Info Reverts to Website

After generating the product shipping details, the ERP system generates a tracking number of the placed order. Until and unless the Magento website gets back this tracking number, it can’t include this info in the customer emails. With the help of the smooth integration between the Magento and the ERP software, retailers can easily keep track of each crucial data. Moreover, it caters to avoid data redundancy and enhances process efficiency.

Avail Benefits of Middleware Opportunities

Usually, multi channel selling comes up with a great number of difficulties in data integration that includes managing various API connectors. In this scenario, the middleware solutions offer facility of streamlining the data workflows and with the help of such middleware solutions, you can easily interconnect information of your Magento platform and ERP software that would allow them to work together as an active hub. Moreover, this system makes sure to add an extra security layer by keeping the back-end ERP software segregated from the functions of the front-office of web development platform.

A successful integration of your Magento platform and ERP software can come up with a lot of benefits such as improved scalability, maximized value of the Magento investments along with enhanced efficiency of the entire system.

Magento web development is right on top of all preferred eCommerce solutions on a global scale. There are many companies who like their site to be developed with the help of Magento since they know that this ecommerce platform is known to offer awesome features which can be leveraged for better ROI. And what’s more, Magento is open source which implies that it is free.

There are hundreds of thousands of companies globally which offer services related to Magento web development. There are specific services for implementing the e-commerce solution which include:

Magento shopping cart development

Magento theme and extension development

Magento skins development

Magento ecommerce development and payment gateway integration

Magento add-ons and customization

Top quality development services are available at very affordable rates by highly talented resources including solutions for complex problems with top quality output!

The main reason behind the popularity is the user friendliness and the ease in which the software can be implemented. A non-techie can also understand how to operate a Magento ecommerce site. The customization does not require much time and cost and what’s more, there is a fantastic community for referring for solutions related to Magento while there are sites which offer some free modules. Different types of themes and features can be implemented in the platform.

Magento shopping cart development also offers security options for keeping your transactions secure and safe. Many companies think that with the help of Magento, they can set out their e-store perfectly with a comprehensive listing of their products and services and also integrate payment gateway integration with a seamless transition from shopping carts.

One needs expert Magento theme designers and programmers who are particularly adept in creating innovative and original themes which are in sync with the branding perspective of a site and the company that owns it. The tailored themes work well when they are designed keeping in consideration the image of the company.

Companies who wish to implement Magento for their sites need to have fantastic service providers at their disposal. The web designers can work out a “boutique” look for the list of items on display and also integrate a lot of third-party application features which would guarantee ample store functionality and a single click check-out system.

By outsourcing Magento development and theme integration to offshore companies who are experienced in implementing the ecommerce solution, one can get best returns on investment. Offshore centers can build up a robust and full-fledged e-Commerce web portal which can assure you of brisk business.

Magento 2.0 has arrived for businesses of all sizes in the United States and Europe. If you are unfamiliar with the eCommerce platform, it provides extensive tools for growing your business in the fast paced, constantly changing eCommerce environment. Magento 2.0 is being rightfully labeled as one of the world’s most flexible, cost effective, and successful digital platform.

Before discussing the benefits of upgrading your business to Magento 2.0, let’s review what the original platform offered to businesses world wide. Firstly, it offered commerce order management for its clients to stay on top of imports and exports. Magento 1 allowed consumers to have a more inviting and satisfying eCommerce experience, letting your brand make a lasting impression on customers. Magento has began to obscure the definitions between online and in store retail. It’s no wonder 1,500 (and growing!) businesses in the US, Europe, and Australia are using this platform. Magento web development is easier than ever, so get your old Magento Website Design updated or get a new Magento website today!

Since Magento 1 is so great, what will Magento 2.0 improve upon? Here is the exciting part! First off, 2.0 improves product overview, decreasing the time to market each product, a simpler customization tool, and much easier upgrades to have you running your business quickly and effectively. Checkout processes have also been modified. Each checkout is now a simpler 2-step flow, eliminating confused customers and cart abandonment. Returning clients will be recognized by email and their order baskets visible at the top of the page. Customer payment information will be securely transmitted so your business will remain in compliance with PCI (Payment Card Industry).

Once again, easy customization is a key focus in 2.0. So, let’s see some numbers! Catalog pages run 56% faster than Magento 1. Customer checkout ranges between 28%-33% faster allowing for up to 250,000 orders to be processed per hour! That’s about 69 orders per second! Also, about 3 million page views will be supported through this new platform. Since you customers will be having a much more time efficient experience on your site, you will too with increased simplicity adding products and 4 times faster import export management. Magento 2.0 is allowing you to control the customer experience and helping you feel connected your brand and clientele.

With any new platform comes a learning curve, but Magento has done their best to help guide you through. Unlike Magento 1 which announced big releases and extensions annually, Magento 2.0 will be announcing these quarterly, in a solid attempt to deliver transparency between the company and its consumers. The Magento Development team has also created a curriculum, offered though on-demand courses. Magento has also trained individuals, known as the Magento 2 Trained Solutions Partners, who have developed sufficient knowledge and skills to train you through your Magento 2 learning curve. Trust K2 Website Design for your Magento website design needs.

http://www.k2websitedesign.com