Magento developers should realize that simply having a good design for an Ecommerce website may not be that effective if some of the extensions provided by Magento are not used. These extensions assist in improving user experience and enhancing the look of a web site. A few of the most useful ones are listed below:
-    Feature products
-    Best seller
-   Smart Label
-    One step Checkout Pro
-    Help desk Pro
-    CMS Pro
-   Gallery Pro
-    Magic zoom (Mouse-over image zoom)
-    Ajax cart
-    Colour swatch module
-    Water mark images
-    Exploded menu
-    Enhance admin product grid
-    Magento easy tabs
-    Direct resize
-    Magento easy light box
-   Free Magento themes

The above extensions can be used by Magento developers to improve the functionality, flexibility and usability of Ecommerce websites designed by them.

magento · magento developer · magento web design

As the name suggests, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a list of techniques used to increase the rank of the Ecommerce website in search engines. SEO can be both onsite (involving optimising website code, checking & updating metadata, internal linking, etc.) and offsite (blogs, article writing, link-building, etc.). If the chosen Magento developer has given you a well-designed website, then the next thing is to ensure that you have strong search engine optimisation. One of the most favoured Ecommerce platforms for SEO is Magento. Some Magento developers offer special Ecommerce SEO services. They use the Magento platform to create site maps for your website and ensure each product and page has unique meta-tags and meta-data.  The Magento developers target keywords specific to your target market to optimise search for your product/service offerings.

When loading data and products to your Ecommerce website, it is advisable to seek the services of an Ecommerce Web Design company with SEO experience. This is because your product descriptions and other related data plays a significant role in optimiing the search results pointing to your website. An experienced Magento developer knows the best method and techniques to load your product data so as to enhance your SEO.  Effective Magento developers track the latest updates in search engine ranking processes as they change regularly.

magento · magento developer · magento web design

While considering an Ecommerce website, it has to be appreciated that a well thought-out Ecommerce SEO strategy is a basic necessity for the success of any proposed online business. Magento is one of the platforms with high-end features and remarkable SEO capabilities. There are many companies offering Magento developer services. Ability to utilise the Magento platform in order to offer effective SEO services is a key determinant in the selection of a Magento developer for Ecommerce web design. In addition to having onsite SEO, you should also reserve a budget for offsite SEO, which involves article writing, blogging, link-building and many more related activities focusing on SEO optimisation.

It is beneficial to have onsite as well as offsite SEO so that your Ecommerce website ranks well in search engines. Onsite SEO includes optimising your website code, checking & updating all your metadata, internal linking, etc. Offsite SEO includes blogs, article writing, link-building, etc. A good Magento developer is one who can offer E-Commerce website development with strong onsite and offsite SEO. While an Ecommerce website owner may have some knowledge of SEO, the fact remains that it may not be possible for the owner to allot the time and effort needed for SEO. Hence, it is preferable to outsource SEO work to companies offering professional SEO services. Such companies study changing trends regularly and use latest techniques and software to increase your website rank.

magento · magento developer · magento web design

Magento developers can utilize the features of the Magento Enterprise Edition to help online store owners enhance their sales.

The Magento Enterprise Edition lets you maintain a database of customers and allows you to give them store credits and gift cards, making them return more often to your website. You can choose to either send them the gift cards in the mail or send virtual gift cards to their inbox. It allows customers to select a price level or lets them enter an amount within a specific range and displays the products in that range. The Enterprise Edition enables a personal touch with customers by providing you control over defining the card lifetime and enabling personalized gift messages. Any number of gift cards can be given or used by the customers. The Enterprise Edition maintains a gift card record so that you can analyze the gift cards usage patterns.

Recipients can confirm their card balance prior to checkout so that they can ascertain whether the balance is sufficient to make the purchase. Rewards points can be distributed to loyal customers and tracked. Management of sales returns through the issue of store credits, which can be redeemed in future, is also possible in the Enterprise Edition. Throughout the refund process, either the full refund amount or a partial amount can be entered, to create an automatic store credit. Customers can club their store credit, gift cards and alternative payment options during checkout. Thus, The Magento Enterprise Edition makes the entire process of purchase, rewards, redemptions and returns simple and flexible.

magento · magento developer

A Magento developer can install Magento software in any of the following 4 ways:

• Manual installation: By manually downloading and uploading all necessary files.
• Downloader installation: It requires downloading a script for some of the files, which when uploaded and run, will download the rest of the files, including the executable ones.
• SSH installation: This involves connecting to the server by means of a shell and running a set number of commands which will download, unzip, and setup all the necessary files and permissions.
• SVN installation: SVN implies subversion installation. It involves checking out or exporting from the repository to your server, before committing it to the local directory in which you wish to install the Magento software.

It is helpful for Magento developers to have a preliminary knowledge about all of these methods so that they can choose their preferred method.

magento · magento developer

Even the best have to constantly innovate and upgrade themselves in order to stay ahead of the competition. Magento, too, has released its latest version – Magento 1.5.0. This new version has eliminated performance related issues and problems Magento developers faced in the older versions 1.3.x and 1.4.x. It has also included some more functions to facilitate store owners who still prefer self hosted versions.

Magento developers can now look forward to the following features offered by Magento in this latest 1.5.0 upgrade:

• Superior Import/Export functionality for products and customers
• Facility to insert and administer multiple products when creating or editing orders from the admin
• Improved shopping cart features to support editing of product configurations
• Better wish-list functionality
• Optional media storage using either file system or database
• PayFlow Link integration
• Upgraded Zend Framework to 1.11.1
• improvements to the core API
• Improved Magento Connect Manager
• Allow changes to the address even after placing the order.

magento · magento developer · magento web design

Magento Performance

Magento has a very wide range of system requirements. It requires PHP 5.2.0 extended with mcrypt PDO_MySql and simple xml. For the database Magento requires at least MySQL 4.1.20 with InnoDB storage engine. A magento developer should be aware of all of these requirements .You can get a full list of requirements at magentocommerce.com.

How to increase Magento performance?

Magento is infamous for its speed and performance. But it’s not essential to have a powerful web server to get very rational performance. It’s all about your server configuration and the code of your model. But since discharge of version 1.3 there are several performance enhancements like Frontend Flat Catalog and people assess cutback of loading times up to 40%. One of the latest advancement is the Magento Compiler module that compiles all Magento files with better performance. To achieve better performance you can also enable compression of your files and optimize your template for speed.

magento · Magento Commerce · magento developer

Were quite excited here at 2J Design to be attending to UK conference, Meet Magento.

As Magento Developers we are very excited to meet some of the people behind this platform and other agencies and contibutors to the platform.

It will be a great event showcasing the new X-Commerce and the plans by Ebay and Paypal for the Magento platform.

The event takes place on the 26th October 2011 in London, to view the event visit the Meet Magento Website.

If you are attending the event, get in touch and let us know so we can say hello on the day, email jamie@2jdeisgn.co.uk

magento · Magento and Ebay Conference · magento developer · Meet Magento Conference · Meet Magento UK · X-commerce · xcommerce

Apparently Magento may not have some upright CMS functionality, but it is very useful in some cases. With CMS provided by magento you can manage every part of the pages. After giving each CMS page some sophisticated content, choose a SEF URL Identifier and page title and move to the Meta Data tab to write a description for each CMS page that you essentially wish for rank. It’s good to keep “Keywords” empty. The description is a very important function which can get people to click, so make sure it says what is on the page they are clicking in the direction of, and it draws their interest. Hence, the only well written description is a manuscript. If you do not use a Meta description, the search engine to find the keyword searched for a document and automatically chooses the string. There are some companies who provide magento developer services with CMS support.

magento · magento developer · Magento Developers

We have worked on various Ecommerce platforms like Oscommerce, Zen Cart, Open Cart, Prestashop etc. From our experience we can say that Magento is the one which is excellent and best from the other platforms for ecommerce. While we are glad to work with any Ecommerce Web Design platform including custom developments, we typically recommend Magento as a best solution for your Ecommerce Website by reason of its advanced backend system and excellent Ecommerce attributes such as Newsletters, Customer and Order Management and reporting system.

We many years experience in developing Magento Ecommerce Website’s from conceptual designs, development and SEO.

We have built highly custom, professional and startling designs for ecommerce site. Our Magento developers can develop and customize website that will fit to your business needs. Our portfolio includes fresh Ecommerce Web design projects and solutions starting from only £950, call 0114 321 8635 for more details and a Free Quotation.

eCommerce Web Design · magento · Magento Commerce · magento developer · oscommerce · Prestashop · search engine optimisation · seo · Zen Cart