Benefits of Magento Web Development

Do you also want to start an online business? If yes, so, this is the correct time to put your efforts into actions. And when it comes to choosing the right platform for your online business, so, the first name comes in mind is Magento. It’s because Magento is one of the most popular open source e-commerce platform that it loved not only by the e-store owners but also by countless web developers in all around the globe.

It ensures the quicker development of shopping friendly sites and it gives you a sense of achievement. If you truly want to provide a better user-experience to your users, so, you should choose this platform. It offers various benefits have a look below to know about them.

Customer interaction: It is very important to choose a Magento Web Development Service if you want to provide a customer-friendly solution to your users. Its major benefit is that it allows you to carry out features like account creation, currency conversion, customized forms and different language conversion etc. without facing any kind of trouble.

Cost-effective: Another major benefit of using Magento Web development is that it requires a very little running cost. For setting up an online business on this platform you just need to pay hosting registration cost, custom theme development, and extension cost etc.

User-friendly solution: Magento helps you to develop a user-friendly e-commerce platform, so, that one can easily modify it even without much technical knowledge. It allows you to add images, new products, and services in your catalog and can also adjust different payment gateway in an effective and efficient manner.

SEO-friendly: The major benefit of Magento that attracts the attention of various web developers is that it is an SEO-friendly platform for your e-commerce business. And allow you to easily view your SEO report and change accordingly.

Themes and Add-ons: last but not the least, Magento offers plenty of themes that help you to develop a website, which exceeds your expectations and helps you to attract customer to your site.

All the above points clear all your doubts and help you to understand that Magento is the right option for your e-commerce business. For this, you can also take the help of any Magento Web Development Company near you that help you to cater your online business needs in the best possible manner. So, what are you waiting for? Time is running out before your competitors take your customers away, you should opt for this platform. It offers you all such benefits that you are actually looking for your online business.

4 Major Questions to Ask While Interviewing a Magento Developer

The key to success of your online store lies on how efficiently you can build it. User-friendliness, functionality, SEO-friendliness and a number of other factors are responsible for the success of your online website. Thus, choosing the eCommerce platform is a crucial phase of development. Magento is the most powerful platform and recommended choice of developers for eCommerce development. However, things certainly become more productive when you choose the right Magento developer for your eCommerce website as well.

Skill set and knowledge of a developer greatly affect the efficiency of a website and thus, while interviewing a developer it becomes crucial to check his credibility rightly. Keeping this in mind, here are some of the important questions to know before hiring a developer.

Question 1: Is your company experienced in Magento eCommerce development?

One of the major questions to ask a developer is whether he has a fair experience to work with Magento development projects or not. Magento is typically a complex software which, certainly requires relevant experience to make sure that the project doesn’t get stuck in the middle while addressing the technical challenges. Keep in mind, that the developer has sound experience to work with different types of projects and stay ready to face various technical challenges.

Question 2: Is your work process focussed on quality?

Quality is something of greatest importance while building a Magento online store. Thus, while choosing the right developer for your web development project, it is ideal to keep a note of the QA methods adopted by him to test the process of quality management. Furthermore, you can look for the certifications and accreditation achieved by the developer to know about his level of credibility.

Question 3: How effective is your mode of communication?

Effective communication is a major requisite to carry a smooth relation between the development team and stakeholders. Thus, make sure that they have an effective communication mechanism to connect with their clients. Starting from the first project meeting to its delivery, constant communication with the project managers, development team and account managers is necessary.

Question 4: Do you offer post-development support?

Post-development support is important to deal with the bugs and issues before the eCommerce site goes live. While considering complexities of this platform, it makes the right sense to have extensive support for your post development needs such that you do not need to suffer from and functionality or technical issue in the future course.

Developing an eCommerce store powered by Magento is certainly a daunting task as this platform requires deep technical expertise. Thus, even for making minor changes and enhancements, the skill set of a developer is necessary.

Magento Developer Powers Up Your Businesses Now With Ecommerce

These days no business can afford to ignore the benefits of selling online. The Internet is fast becoming the number one retail destination in the world as more and more consumers go online to purchase a wide range of goods and services. A Magento Developer can offer cost effective ways for you to get your business up and running online.

Ecommerce Platforms

Ecommerce software platforms provide businesses with the tools and features they need to start selling online. If you do want to sell your goods or services over the Internet then you will need a robust and secure website that can offer the following features:

– Professional and easily navigable website design.

– Comprehensive e-catalogues featuring products/services and full images and descriptions.

– Secure customer account pages (so that customers can set up a personal account).

– Secure online payment portal and shipping options.

– Customer service support structure including online help (such as FAQ and knowledge base) and contact options.

Setting up your business with an ecommerce online website can dramatically increase your ROI. This can provide you with fast and easy access to a much wider customer base. A successful online web store can significantly increase turnover and give businesses a welcome boost that can help you to move forward into the future.

Magento Developer

Magento is a popular and well-established ecommerce platform. This has been around for a number of years now and can offer a very versatile and user-friendly package for small to medium size businesses.

– The great thing about Magento is that is easy to use. The client interface is straightforward and has many helpful features to get you started.

– From the central administration control panel you will be able to carry out all your daily tasks including processing payments, organising shipping, managing online content, organising marketing campaigns and more.

– There are many ways to individualise your web store and ensure it is attractive and engaging for your customers.

– For example you will be able to easily change the theme of your store to suit key seasonal retail periods such as Christmas and the New Year.

– Magento is also a SEO friendly platform. This means you will be able to ensure your web store is search engine friendly and achieving high page rankings.

– This combines with your marketing campaign to ensure the maximum online and offline visibility for your new web store.

If you do not have the time or resources to set up your own Magento system then there are many expert ecommerce and Magento Developers out there who can help. Professional ecommerce services can help you to make sure you set up a robust and effective web store for your online business.

These experts have the experience and knowledge you need to ensure your online store is highly visible and reaching out to customers as soon as possible.

Top Five Reasons To Hire Professional And Experienced Magento Developers

Magento is a robust, powerful and feature rich eCommerce platform that scalability, flexibility and complete control over the content, functionality and look of the eCommerce website. Being one of the most popular platforms, Magento features flexible product display and multiple transaction options, mobile templates, multi-lingual, multi sites functionality, shopper filtering and many more functions. It helps in designing and developing a visually attractive as well as user-friendly store having advanced features. If you want to build your website on this platform, you can go for quality Magento development services, provided by eminent companies at affordable prices.

Let us discuss the top five reasons to hire highly competent and seasoned Magento developers:

Extensive experience and expertise: The experts have all the required knowledge and experience of developing Magento based eCommerce stores. From designing to development, they look after the project and work closely with the organization to deliver tailor-made solutions. They are adept at working on Ajax, MySQL, PHP, XHTML, JavaScript and CSS.

Client satisfaction is the priority: Following a customer-centric approach, Magento developers work according to one's specific business needs and requirements. They ensure that their client is satisfied from the services. They follow business ethics and ensure cordial customer experience.

Round the clock support: Understanding that designing and developing an eCommerce website is an ongoing process, experts offer 24/7 technical support. They also work in shifts to deliver services within a stipulated span of time.

Help you boost store's efficiency: The Magento developers analyze business substantially, conduct market research and skim through the competitors to help boost your online store's efficiency and output. They ensure that the website is powered with advanced features and functionality.

Quick turnaround time- Highly proficient developers work to deliver services in a quick turnaround time.

Some of the Magento development services that eminent companies offer are:

  • Magento Shopping Cart Development and Integration
  • Store development
  • Customization
  • Magento theme development
  • Magento migration
  • Payment gateway integration
  • Custom template template
  • Extensions development
  • Module integration
  • Magento maintenance and support
  • It is a highly customizable tool with a wide variety of plug-ins to enhance the functionality and features of your store.

If you are planning to make a foray into eCommerce business, Magento is the answer for you. You can outsource store development needs to an eminent company. You can concentrate on core competencies while seasoned Magento developers will work on your project to deliver tailor solutions at the most cost-effective prices and in the fastest possible turnaround time.

5 Reasons to Use Magento ECommerce

There are many ecommerce solutions on the market. Magento is quickly becoming a very popular choice for many companies. Magento is an open source ecommerce content management system which is famous for being the best shopping cart software that meets the goals of businesses worldwide. Magento developers recommend this software to all their ecommerce clients and it has been highly admired for a variety of different reasons, below are the 5 top.

Multi-Site or Multi-Store Functionality

Magento is designed with the intention of accommodating more than one online business. Magento is a powerful platform where there can be 2, 10 or even 20 online stores running simultaneously from the same admin panel. Orders can be placed and managed from one site instead of switching between different sites. And even then, reports can be easily prepared separately with unique details.

Guest Checkout Option

Another good feature of Magento development is its ‘Guest Checkout Option’. It is a very small feature but helps a lot to keep the visitor on the website. In online businesses, the visitor has to register before making a purchase and sometimes this diverts traffic from the site which results in less conversion rates and high bounce rates. In Magento, to fight this situation, the visitor may control whether they have to register or can optionally checkout as a guest to help save time.

Search Engine Friendliness

Magento development is very SEO friendly and this feature makes it very easy to manage by web developers. Magento’s built-in tools help to boost business in search engine ranking.

Built-in SEO tools:

1. Search Engine Friendly Rewrites or Canonical URLs

2. Control over Meta Tags for each Webpage, Product and Category

3. Auto-generated XML Sitemaps

4. CMS pages

These features can significantly help to improve a websites viability online and is a great reason to choose Magento.

Huge Collection of Extensions

Magento ecommerce solution is 100% customisable. PHP developers love this feature. If you are looking to alter the way in which products are being displayed or trying to improve the loading time of your website, there are thousands of extensions in the Magento Connect store.

Here is a quick list of our top 3 Magento extensions:

1. Fontis WYSIWYG Editor

2. Fooman Google Analytics Plus

3. Royal Mail Domestic and International Shipping

Reorder Facility

It’s always good to retain old clients because they are always less costly than acquiring new clients and hence, it also lowers the cost of business attainment and increases your gain. Magento development helps online businesses by keeping their last order information available on their account page. So, if your customers/visitors want to make the same order again then they are just a click away. This feature makes the order facility just a click away.

Surefire Ways to Improve Retention Rates of Magento-Built Stores

Magento has become the recommended choice for web developers while concerned to premier eCommerce development. Millions of Magento stores are available online and it becomes real difficult to hold customers' interest and increase customer loyalty. Having these in mind, it becomes crucial for eCommerce store owners to not only deploy the right platform but, also build the right strategy for increasing customer loyalty. Winning customer retention programs is one of the critical tools for long-term success of an eCommerce store.

How a Customer Loyalty Program Helps
These types of programs hosts a range of benefits and perks for existing shoppers which, instill them to visit the store again and again and buy more. Most of the eCommerce retention programs run on the basis of the Points System, where with every dollar spent by a shopper helps him to earn an amount of store credits, popularly known as reward points. The store accounts of customers get filled with these points which, they can redeem for making future purchases.

How it Works for eCommerce of Recent Times
The landscape of this business genre has drastically changed over the recent years where, some of the most effective things in the past are not much productive now. Thus, it led to a shift from the traditional approach to planning retention programs. Nowadays, every other store provides shoppers with different types of payoffs to hold their interest. So, just rewarding them for purchasing your product is not enough for driving them to make repeat purchases.

Following here are some of the most effective ways of retaining customers and getting long-term success.

Offering Long-term and Short-term Loyalty Perks
Stirring up the interest of existing customers is one of the best ways for keeping them interested. You can develop a tiered reward system which, will allow you to incentivize your customers for staying loyal to you. You can offer small rewards to the shoppers while joining the loyalty program such

  • Personal discounts for buying first time and other repeat orders.
  • Reward points.
  • Store credits for opening an account on your store.

Meanwhile, as shoppers start making repeat purchases, you can give them bigger benefits as well.

Offering Non-Material Values ​​to Customers
Every other store is offering exclusive deals and attractive discounts to loyal customers. To stand ahead, you can offer them something of real value and better than other forms of material things. You can think of contributing something to the community which, will certainly offer a feeling of belonging and fulfillment. Magento itself, hosts a growing and dynamic community where, people can:

  • Share their experiences.
  • Offer product-oriented services.
  • Sort out each other's queries.

Magento stores get the most online visibility in the eCommerce marketplace. Yet, to cherish long-lasting relationships with your customers, you need to plan out innovative retention strategies and stand out in the race. As the worthy choice, you can join hands with skilled Magento web developers who can guide you thoroughly and drive long-term success.

Magento Takes Ownership Of Amazon's 1-Click Button

The last thing that shoppers want, especially when they're cramming for last-minute presents during the holiday season, is an excruciating checkout process.

Nothing can be more frustrating than having to fill out a form which they have previously provided with their payment information and shipping addresses. To many people, it's just pointless to waste their time on a repetitive task which a store owner obviously has to find a solution to.

Thanks to Amazon who 1-click patent expired in September this year, Magento has become the first eCommerce platform to offer a similar feature in their checkout process to ease the checkout experience of customers and boost the conversion rates of online sellers like you.

The new Instant Purchase button helps speed up checkout, especially during important shopping events like Black Friday and Christmas as every minute of your customer's shopping activity counts.

It spares repeat customers the trouble of re-entering their payment methods and shipping addresses, a grueling process which discourages many from completing their checkout as it eats up so much time.

A one-click checkout reduces cart abandonment

The average cart abandonment rate back in 2016, according to Magento, was 70 percent or even higher when mobile shoppers are to taken into account. That figure is expected to climb in the years to come as mobile devices are increasingly changing the way people shop online.

Did you know over 50% of online shoppers shop either in the toilet or in the bedroom?

Since they can not possibly use a laptop or a desktop computer in the toilet without getting it soaked, they, of course, use their ever reliable smartphones or tablets to shop. By the time they step out of the bathroom, their orders are already being processed.

However, if they get stuck on the checkout page of your website, then that becomes a massive problem.

Now now, getting stuck does not only mean a page freezes or a button is not working. Asking your customer to put their payment details and shipping address in a checkout form, which they already filled out during a previous purchase, is a form of impediment.

Using and modifying Instant Purchase

Magento's new button not only provides your customers easy of checkout, but also gets them to buy more.

That's the beauty of liberating them from repetitive forms to fill out.

Once a customer clicks on Instant Purchase, it automatically places their order using their previously-stored data and takes them at once to a confirmation page.

Note that the text on the button is totally customisable, so put anything on it that reflects your business.

The Instant Purchase feature, according to Jason Woosley, senior vice president of product and technology at Magento Commerce, is just one of the many tools which their company has created to address the growing needs of people who shop online.

"This milestone is yet another proof point of the combined power of our platform and global ecosystem in providing cutting-edge technologies customers need to react to changing market dynamics," he explained.

Do you already have the Instant Purchase button in your Magento store's checkout area? How has it improved your conversion rate?

Why Is Magento the Best Ecommerce Platform?

It is raining eCommerce everywhere, and Magneto makes these online portals run flawlessly while presenting top-class customer-friendly features. Magento is, in fact, everything that an eCommerce marketer would want to have on the online shopping platforms- exhibit product lines, offer simple payment gateways, deliver 24/7 customer service and manage all back-end operations effectively.

If you are looking for a simple content management system, that almost 50% of the major brands are using, hop onto Magento Platform. Here are 7 top of the line features that makes it the “go-to” choice for all eCommerce operations.

Open source… Freeware

What more could a developer want from an eCommerce-friendly platform! Magento is an open source product and has a huge community that consistently upgrades it to latest tools and features. As one of the most active eCommerce platforms, Magento enjoys the advantage of a reliable open-source freeware with minimum glitches.

If you still wish to have a support team to keep you updated on the “what’s new” in Magento, you have two other options:

  • Magento Enterprise
  • Magento Go (paid version with hosted service on exclusive Magento servers)

Easy to download and install

Apart from being a freeware, Magento is easy to download and gets installed instantly. All the versions are available on Magento Connect- which by the way is the largest eCommerce app store. Once installed, you can enjoy free upgrades as well as plug-ins to set your eCommerce plans rolling.

The features are free from security flaws and even from the point of enterprise applications, Magento offers a Secure Payment Bridge with PCI Data Security Standard.

Superior integration with 24/7 admin support

Magento is a highly flexible package considering its PHP-driven integration. With scalable solution and real-time network support, its eCommerce compatibility allows successful integration, that too with superior user interface and compelling marketing features.

Easy to use features load instantly, even when upgraded and migrated to a different platform, its automatic updates and versatile functionalities push sales revenue by prompting visitors to navigate through relevant pages and galleries.

Exclusive package of eCommerce features

Be it for start-ups or for established retail brands, Magento more or less offers all the contemporary features that would make an eCommerce site run efficiently. The freeware offers:

  • Interactive user dashboards
  • Robust real-time inventory management
  • Logistics and shipping strategies
  • Integrated Cloud-based CRM and ERP platforms
  • Mobility capabilities with automated marketing
  • Email, SMS and visual marketing

Fast loading, quick returns

Web users want a particular site to open in less than 3 seconds flat! ECommerce platforms powered by Magento generate a significantly higher conversion rate as compared to other established paid and open source suites. Its quickness is built on its capabilities that allow Varnish-powered page caching and humongous volume of data retrieval in few milliseconds.

SEO-friendly like never before

Magento is the most updated eCommerce CMS platform with its flurry of SEO-friendly features. Optimised pages assure good traffic and higher page ranking. When a website is competing with hundreds of other sites, creating SEO web pages and URLs with powerful meta-tags and descriptions push the rankings even further.

One-stop solution for every business

With hundreds of ready-made templates and full range of customization tools, users can build any website from ground zero, suiting their requirements and budget. With a dedicated set of features and applications, Magento is a step higher from where platforms running on plug-ins are working.

Choose your own hosting service and control your costs without compromising on the results and the benefits of running an ECommerce platform on Magento.

In a nutshell

Magento for eCommerce platform is extremely modular when it comes to developing responsive websites or mobile apps. Rewrite codes to exemplify your business with a rock solid series of mobile-friendly capabilities, controls and scaling options.

Custom Magento Design

Everyone today knows just how much Magento ecommerce has grown over the years and how much Magento has become popular. The largest contributing factor for the popularity and large deployment of Magento is the active participation of the  developer community. Since it favors huge customization, this has become a much popular exercise to cope with the increasing customization demands of Magento customers.  While custom  Development takes a holistic approach and encompasses both the development and design services of Magento, custom Magento design confines itself to the design services of Magento. This is all about Magento Themes, Templates, Skins and stores.

Since this platform facilitates the loading of many Magento themes, skins and store designs, customization of the Magento ecommerce store is really interesting and challenging. Since Magento ecommerce is based on Object-Oriented programming, all the themes and templates are easily accessible. Every developer or service provider company should specialize in design and offer such services to its demanding customers. Each ecommerce online store can sport a different and distinct looks through such creative customization, thereby eliminating the drabness and dullness from the online stores. This has several components like design and modification of themes, creation of templates, design of  themes and design of each web store page in tune with the customer needs. themes design is really very helpful in bringing unique looks to each  ecommerce store. The themes can be both default and custom. These can be stored conveniently and embedded in the web stores as when desired. Similarly the highly customized design of templates, extensions and skins can be done and the files stored in the  directory, to be embedded whenever called for.

The linking of the existing web store with the newly customized Magento online store is the single most user-friendly component of design. Since this is modular in design, developers find it easy to customize through the design of each module separately. Right from the customization of web store landing pages through to the themes, templates, extensions and skins, customized designing is really challenging and highly in demand. Magento providers often offer a package of custom Magento design services, instead of piecemeal services. Such packages often take care of the entire customer requirements.

Product display, grouping, order status and order tracking are enabled even in the highly customized Magento design environment. The full flexibility of this ecommerce platform is brought to the fore through such innovative  design, meeting the customer needs in full. With the steep rise in the usage of ecommerce online web stores, the demand for quality design has gone up considerably. It is imperative therefore that all Magento customization service providers adhere to strict quality standards and thus endeavor to provide high quality design services. Please do get in touch with quality customization service providers, to get a new and refreshing look to your ecommerce online web stores.

Magento 2.0.6 Security Update: How Magento Is Making Changes to Keep Your Business Safe

Magento is one of the best ecommerce platforms for businesses to take their business online! The best thing about it is that the company regularly introduces security patches and takes care of the safety and security of its users.

Recently, it introduced the Magento 2.0.6 security update for the Enterprise Edition as well as the Community Edition. It includes multiple security enhancements as well as a few functional ones. If you have not downloaded the Magento 2.0 release, you must download it.

Security Enhancements mean a Safer Environment for your Business

Magento has addressed several security issues with its new update. It involves the following:

  • It blocks unauthenticated users from executing PHP code on the server via REST or SOAP API. It means it has become even more difficult for hackers to cause a problem to your business by running a malicious code on the server.
  • The company has made the installation code inaccessible after the completion of the initial installation process. The / app / etc directory is not left writeable after the installation which makes remote re-installation of Magento impossible. It means that no cyber-criminal can cause harm to your website.
  • Anonymous users can not obtain private information of registered customers. The company does not include the cart_id_mask value in the quote_id_mask table making it difficult for hackers to obtain information.
  • Even authenticated users can not change customer information via SOAP or REST calls. It requires matching of the customer ID with the authentication token to ensure that neither a polite worker nor a malicious hacker edits customer information and causes a problem to your business.
  • It has resolved a vulnerability that implied cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks in the Authorize.net payment module making the ecommerce platform a better place for its users.
  • Previously, an application error message showed the path of the file where the problem occurred. But, now Magento does not disclose sensitive information of the file because such information was used against the business by hackers.

If you are downloading Magento 2.0.6, make sure that you are first implementing it in a development environment. It will give you ample time to check wherever the update works as per as your expectations. Updating Magento is simpler when you work with it on a regular basis. If you find it time-consuming, consider hiring a managed IT services provider for your day-to-day IT operations. The company will update security patches regularly as well as protect your business from unauthenticated access. Also, it will ensure data back up and proper functioning of the IT infrastructure of your business.

Freelance Web Designer | WordPress Developer | Hong Kong