Magento Enterprise 1.9

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.

Adding a blog to your Magento store is an excellent way to connect with your customers, increase your SEO efforts, and make your store an authority site on the products and services it offers. With a blog you can constantly add relevant content(for both your customers and search engines) making your store a destination for information relating to your product or service.

A blog allows you to connect with your customers on a never before seen level. You can publish news releases, detailed product reviews, related content, take customer comments/questions/concerns and respond to them in kind. Coupled with the latest social networking platforms you can cultivate this relationship even further. The relationship you establish with your customers is a great way to see market trends and analyze customers wants in needs. Most importantly it will increase conversions, purchases, and create a loyal customer base.

By successfully connecting to your customers through your blog posts your Magento store will become an authority destination on the product or services you sell. Along with this authority status will come an increase of traffic.  The increase will come not only from returning readers and customers but those looking for information. As your authority status grows people will link to your site from other websites further increasing traffic flow.

Connecting with your customers and becoming an authority site on subjects concerning the products and services you sell will cause your search engine rankings to improve dramatically.  You can further your SEO efforts by providing links to different pages in your Magento store in each individual post. Not only will your customers be lured in by this stream of content but search engines will use it to determine what your site is about. By keeping your posts focused you can manipulate this into better SERPS (Search Engine Results Page) rankings for your site.

A blog for your Magento store is a good idea on many levels. By becoming an exporter of fresh relevant content related to the products you sell, your blog will become an importer of customers and indispensable marketing tool.

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 advanatge 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 then 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, ect..) managing your storefronts from a single portal will be 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 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.

Cincinnati Ohio – 04 June 2010

High Tech Systems & Equipment specializes in complex high end thermal imaging equipment. The products they carry contain a large amount of specification detail and customization.

High Tech came to InteractOne looking for a powerful yet flexible eCommerce system that could properly represent their brand and also account for complex product configurations and specification content.

We delivered a custom designed Magneto eCommerce solution that allows High Tech to feature their entire product line on the web. High Tech makes use of almost all of Magento’s product types allowing online configuration and checkout of all their complex products.

Complex, yet easy to use this website features the benefits of using Magento in combination with expert guidance from InteractOne.

Visit: htsei.com

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. 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. For a full list of Magento features click here. 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 makes this eCommerce system one of the most secure in 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 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 don’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.

An “abandoned shopping cart” happens when an online shopper adds items to their cart, then decides to just close their browser or go somewhere else.  It happens to every site at some time or another for various reasons, most of which are preventable.  To help minimize abandonment, there are steps you can take to ensure that your shoppers will see your checkout procedure through to order fulfillment.

Think of your online checkout process like a traditional brick and mortar store.  In a physical store, shoppers browse the aisles to locate the products they want to purchase.  When they find one it is placed in their metal cart.  At this point there is no commitment to actually buy the items in their cart.  If they see something they don’t like, they can simply park the cart where it sits and walk out of the store.  Most brick and mortar stores have an advantage over e-commerce because the customer is physically in their building.  The shoppers had to walk or drive to the building, and most are already certain of the items they want to buy.  Online storefront shoppers don’t have to do anything except turn on their computers and type in your store’s website address or find your online shop on a search engine.  Abandoning an online cart is very easy to do so your storefront should take extra precautions to make the shopper feel comfortable and safe.

The first thing to do if you haven’t already is purchase an SSL certificate.  SSL, or Secure Socket Layering, is a protocol that web browsers use to give the assurance that the data being transmitted from the shopper’s computer is encrypted, making it illegible to anyone who might intercept it.  SSL is what gives websites the httpS:// instead of just http://.   SSL certificates are relatively inexpensive and can be purchased from vendors like GeoTrust, Verisign, Thawte or GoDaddy.  After installing an SSL certificate, most vendors provide a “site seal” which is usually a tag that can be inserted into your website to show that your store is secured.  If you have SSL installed but don’t have your seal displayed on every page, then go do that now!  It sends a clear message to your customers that you are aware of Internet security and have taken an extra step to protect their private information.

When you need help or have questions while shopping in a physical storefront, it is nice to be able to ask a smiling, friendly employee to guide you to what you are looking for.  People that shop online expect a level of customer support comparable to what they would receive in person.  If there is no way to contact a representative then how is the customer supposed to know that your store is still accepting orders?  There are many eCommerce web sites that were created and then forgotten.  At the very least your online presence should not feel like no one is home.  Post your 800 number prominently on every page of your site.  Have an “About Us” page that details your physical mailing address so the customer knows that they are dealing with a real business.  There are also online Help Desk packages available ranging in price from free to a few hundred dollars that gives the customer a direct line straight to you!  Using an online chat or help desk, if someone has a question they don’t have to even pick up the phone.  A small piece of software on your computer will tell you when someone needs to chat.  Having a real person available can make a huge difference if someone is on the fence about their purchase.

Keep your checkout process simple.  This point can’t be stressed enough!  Don’t make your customer fill out a form with so many fields that they feel like they are applying for a bank loan.  Filling out a long form online is comparable to waiting in a long line at a physical storefront’s checkout.  Get the information you need to fulfill the order and to contact them with confirmation information or if there is a problem.  A short checkout process gives the shopper less time to close the browser window.  Offer the customer a Guest checkout, or checkout with creating an account.  If your customer likes your store then they’ll create one, so don’t make it mandatory.

Showing your customers that you care about their privacy and security is key to stopping shopping cart abandonment.  A shopper must trust your online storefront.  There are services that can offer your customers some peace of mind when shopping online.  McAfee offers a badge that your store can display that shows you have someone on the outside verifying that your store is safe from hackers.  They do this by scanning your site every day for vulnerabilities, similar to how a virus scanner checks your local computer for problems.  The result of the scan is displayed on your website along with the last date of the scan.  It is updated daily which shows that your online shop is safe and secure.

Here are a few more credibility indicator tips that will give your shoppers more confidence while browsing:

Check your grammar and spelling!  A poorly worded sales pitch or a simple spelling mistake can give the impression that you don’t care about what you are trying to get the customer to buy.

“If I have a problem, can I return the item?”  This question should be answered as soon as someone visits your store.  A clearly labeled Return Policy link with clear and concise information will help put the shopper’s mind at ease.

Be sure to have a product review section on each product page.  Don’t make the mistake of faking reviews.  It might look good to see positive reviews but your customers are no dummies!  Authentic positive reviews from real customers will go a long way to building trust in your store.  Offer some kind of incentive to get customers to post reviews on products they have purchased.  A follow up a few days later is a great way to build trust and open a line of communication.

Keep your website simple.  Don’t complicate your site with loads of graphics and animations to get people’s attention.  Remember that the shopper is already on your website so you don’t need anything else to bring them in.  Instead, make their shopping experience enjoyable by providing a straightforward and easy to navigate website.

Comparing some aspects of physical storefront shopping to online shopping can give a different perspective on what the shopper expects from their online shopping experience.  There’s no way to stop all instances of shopping cart abandonment, but it can be reduced by following the advice that we have provided.  If you haven’t at least added everything in this article to your eCommerce website then go do it as soon as possible.  You may be missing out on sales over a simple mistake that your competitor didn’t make!