Magento Ecommerce Development

Hire a Magento developer to Improve mobile commerce

2011-01-04T05:05:00.000-08:00

Now managing your mobile commerce store is as simple as running your online business. If you have an existing site that is running well on internet and you are looking forward to convert it to mobile commerce as well, then hiring a Magento developer is the best option.

A good Magento developer will help you in making finest use of Magento e-commerce software. As they are well versed in using this software, they can help you get best mobile commerce solutions. They will integrate various features of e-commerce and present you with the website, which is apt to use on mobile. Hence, you will be able to connect to your customers and expand your clientele as well.

We, at Softweb Solutions, have team of Magento developers who can help you develop a complete mobile commerce store. The Magento customization services offered by us will be very useful to you. This is one of the most popular tools used by our developers to provide the merchants with exactly what they want. Our team will help you to get a theme design of your choice. Our Magento online store development services include;

• Magento shopping cart development
• Magento skinning
• Creation of CMS
• Integrate various payment gateways
• Magento web development

Hence, the users can get exactly what they want. If you are looking for an experienced Magento ecommerce solutions provider, Softweb solutions is the right choice for you. Few of our special offerings that distinguish us from other Magento providers:

• Magento Themes
• Custom Magento Website Template
• Custom Designs for your Landing Page
• Rapid Shopping Cart Development
• Enhanced Navigation System
• Bespoke Font Usage

To know more about our services, contact us today at info@softwebsolutions.com

Seven Reasons To Opt For Magento E-Commerce

2010-12-29T03:49:00.000-08:00

Online e-commerce has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. Every store owner wants to modify the design and look of their store in an attractive manner. Although, there are number of open sources available on internet to create an online store, Magento is the most favored option for e-commerce website development. One of the prominent reasons for using Magento e-commerce is owners of the software can easily add or edit information without having complete knowledge of the software. In addition to this, Magento e-commerce is an open source e-commerce software which allows users to have complete control over the presentation, layout, functionality, and content of the website. It attracts more users and increases the customer base thereby, enhancing the chances of getting higher return on investment for the organization.

Let us now look at the reasons which make Magento e-commerce the best alternative for e-commerce website development:

Evaluating and informing: Magento web development amalgamates google analytics in such a way that the admin panel can see various reports such as; sales report, stock report, sales invoice report, and products report etc. This helps the organization in tracking progress of their sales and stock.

Product browsing: Magento e-commerce provides a winning look to the website. Users can browse through multiple images with zoom-in and out options, related products, option of selecting the product, stock availability of the product, and send the pictures of the product via emails.

Order Management: The admin panel can see, create, modify, and take orders of the customers. Magento e-commerce software also helps the organizations in creating invoices and credit memo for each order. Orders once generated can be sent for notification through emails with the help of Magento e-commerce software.

Shipping: In Magento, organizations can select the countries where they wish to ship the products. They can even specify the shipping cost per order/per item or can also opt for free shipping.

Payment: Magento e-commerce provides multiple payment options to the users. The payment system is integrated with Google checkout. Charges are levied after generation of invoices and payment can be made through various methods like: cheques, money order, PayPal etc,

Intrinsic SEO tools: Magento e-commerce has in-built SEO features which play an important role in achieving better search engine results.

International support: Magento is popular all over the world. It supports all the major languages, currencies, and taxes. It helps bringing the whole world under a single platform.

Irrespective of whether you have an existing store or wish to build a new one, Magento e-commerce is the best alternative available at the present times. Even if you are not familiar with all the functions of Magento it is worth giving it a try. Magento has gained popularity very quickly and will only get better as the time goes on. It is better to take the service of an experienced Magento e-commerce developer now at: info@softwebsolutions.com. You will relish the opportunity of contacting an expert Magento developer

Six Enthralling Features Of Magento Shopping Cart Software

2010-12-16T05:42:00.000-08:00

Magento e-Commerce is amongst the most popular e-commerce software solutions on the web. Being an open source software platform, it is freely available and also provides flexibility to the developers in developing improved applications through its software. Magento helps the organizations in creating multiple online stores. It enables users to control the online functionality of the website by managing multiple online stores through a single source point. It also helps users in creating a search engine friendly web store. This helps the organizations in building maximum traffic which ultimately leads to increased revenue and growth. But what makes Magento such an invincible platform for e-commerce solutions? The answer to this question can be found out by going through the features of Magento shopping cart software:

Page jumps: Magento shopping cart software enables the users to browse through category-wise navigation. It filters the results based on the user’s requirement giving customized solutions to the users. For ex.: You can create Magento e-commerce store which will help users to browse through different categories of the product. If your product is shirt you can design various sub-categories for the product like: Price, Color, Manufacturer etc. This feature helps the user in narrowing down their search results and the outcome is positive brand building activity of the organization.

Cross-promotional activities: During the check-out process of the buyers, companies can display other products which are related to the product bought by the user. This is also known as up-selling. With the help of Magento e-commerce shopping cart software, organizations can promote multiple items even before selling one product.

Multi-websites and multi-store functionality: With the help of Magento shopping cart software, organizations can manage multiple websites and stores from a single point. For ex.: You have three kinds of products: Shirts, Shoes and Watches. You can create three domains for the three products like: shirts.com, shoes.com and watches.com. You can keep the first store under the domain shirts.com, the second store under the name shoes.com and third store under the name watches.com. This way an organization can manage various different stores and websites simultaneously.

Magento’s dynamic user interface: Magento software has an in-built advanced AJAX interface which automatically updates shipping and billing. The customer can see the final figure of his purchase on the same page without refreshing it.

Shipping and payment methods: Magento offers flexibility to the administrator in setting their shipping method and payment modes on the webpage itself. This saves the buyer’s time and since, there is a default price of the product available on the website itself it gives an idea to the buyer of the estimated price tag.

Tailored layout: The layout for Magento can be customized as per the requirements. Hence, every online merchant can have personalized look and feel for their site. By customizing Magento CMS (content management system), administrators can add the content at the checkout page also.

Magento has taken over the charge from osCommerce, which was the widely used e-commerce platform before Magento was introduced. It takes into account all the positive features of osCommerce and takes e-commerce development to the next level. You can download the free templates of Magento e-commerce and can customize your own Magento CMS. If you are looking for an open source technology for e-commerce solutions contact a knowledgeable Magento e-commerce developer now at: info@softwebsolutions.com.

4 Path-Breaking Features of Magento Mobile

2010-12-06T19:56:00.000-08:00

Magento, the fastest growing e-commerce platform, announced the official launch of Magento mobile on September 8^th 2010 through their corporate website. Magento Mobile allows retailers and online merchants to exploit the growing need for e-commerce applications. Although, Magento has provided web optimized themes (WAP) since 2008, there is still no viable mobile application for e-commerce solutions. But with the launch of Magento mobile, this phenomenon is about to change. With the help of Magento Mobile, merchants can create branded applications attuned with Magento’s widely popular e-commerce platform.

Some of the path-breaking features of Magento Mobile include:

Manifold device management: With the help of Magento Mobile, users can manage multiple devices with single installation. Although, it has been launched with iPhone compatibility only, users would be able to use these services for iPad and android devices with single installation in near future.

Admin Manager: This is a new feature which would be included with Magento and distributed as a component for existing Magento installations. Magento is compatible with previous versions of Magento including Community Edition 1.3+, Enterprise Edition 1.6+, and Professional Edition 1.8.

Seamless Storefront Application: With the help of Admin Manager, users will be able to maximize the utility of Magento mobile commerce. Some of the services offered by this application will include: full integration with the store’s catalog, checkout, inventory, reporting, and many more.

Customizable: Magento Mobile is very easy to customize. Users can integrate device-specific features and layouts with one click. With the help of new Magento admin manager feature, users can quickly update the colors and appearances of the applications even after customers have downloaded the application.

Magento has initiated the move and now it is to be seen how the market reacts to this new device. But one thing that cannot be undermined is the fact that Magento has an edge over others in creating e-commerce devices. This new platform also gives developers a chance to showcase their talent and come up with out-of-the-box products and services. If you are looking to add mileage to your website contact an experienced Chicago Magento e-Commerce developer now at: info@softwebsolutions.com.

Magento's Mobile Commerce Platform and Its Features

2010-09-04T03:12:00.000-07:00

Do you want to increase your sales? If yes, then offering online shopping via mobile phones can be the perfect solution for you. When mobile commerce is becoming a buzz word, Magento has recently announced the Magento Mobile extension for delivering unmatched shopping experience. Using Magento Mobile, you can easily get a native application for your store. Just install the Magento Mobile extension, pay for the online set up and maintenance, and Magento System will build a customized application for you. To know more about Customizing a Mobile Store, check out this webinar recap now.

With Magento Mobile, you can easily create storefront applications integrated with Magento’s eCommerce platform. Let us check a few Magento mobile features :

Storefront integration : The new admin of Magento Mobile will enable to integrate the Magento eCommerce with your mobile commerce channel including your store’s catalog, reporting, inventory, and more.

Multiple devices with single installation : Install once and use it for various devices. Installing Magento Mobile once, you can easily extend your reach to the iPad and Android users.

Easy and free submission : Magento team manages your submission and supports lifecycle for one low monthly fee. Thus, it allows you to pay heed to your business.

Wholly customizable : There is a wide scope of customization of your application using Magento Mobile. You can easily update look and feel of your application with a few clicks.

Better customer relationship : Smartphone is the best way to be in touch with your potential customers and target audience. From geo-targeted push notifications to persistent native experiences, Mobile applications unleash new horizons for your business and take it to the new heights.

More return on investment : Magento’s cost-effective solutions enable you to deliver industry best mobile experience to your customers. Pay for the features and device and Magento will handle ongoing maintenance of your application.

Mobile Commerce has gained momentum from the fact that internet has become an inevitable part of our life even in researching and purchasing. Come to us at Softweb Solutions for Magento Mobile Solutions and thin out the gaps with your potential customers.

3 Awesome Ways to Glue Customers to your E-commerce Store

2010-07-21T02:05:00.000-07:00

Marketing your eCommerce store can be a daunting task especially in times when consumers are bombarded with advertisements unceasingly. Customers have naturally become repulsive and ad resistant killing sales pages at the first sight. With rising competition and repulsive behavior, how do you put your message across? The blog describes three sure-shot ways to get your customers stuck to your eCommerce site like bee to a honey-comb.

Connect with customers
Several factors, other than the product itself, influence the buying decision of your customers. One of them is establishing connection with your customers through website or customer service. You can make a connection with your customers by patching relevant information all over the site. Think about who is your target audience, what kind of information do your customers seek, and how do you present it attractively. You may even add additional information on the products, interesting trivia or quizzes to your website to lure customers. Make sure your store stands out from others in a way that it persuades the user to take action quickly.

Unleash your personality
Just posting relevant content isn’t enough; it has to be engaging. The goal is to reach a point where your customers are so engrossed in the content that they don’t realize you are selling. The eCommerce store should look like a content site that happens to sell products. If the customers find your content worthwhile, the word will spread eventually. The people will willingly link to your website and you will receive organic traffic in huge numbers. Initially, it will take time to build your content stack and market it, but once that stage is over, you will start receiving traffic.

Don’t stray from the basics
• Add information regularly – Keep updating your site with information in the form of articles, blogs, videos, and slideshows. See that your content is fresh and website interesting for people who visit your website on a consistent basis. Moreover, refurbishing your portal with fresh content will make it search engine friendly.
• Site Speed –Customers hate waiting so ensure that your site loads quickly. Ideally, 3-4 seconds is considered good timing. According to studies, after every 4 seconds you lose 10% visitors.
• Grammar check – Mis-spelled words or bad sentence structure leave a bad impression on the readers. To build a strong relationship with your audience, you need communicate your message properly without any silly typos.

Anything that looks, feels, or smells like a sales page is likely to be discarded. (Notice your own behavior as you browse through sales content) Therefore, be as natural as possible when posting content and keep striving to reach the goal.

Next Move: Softweb Solutions is your partner when it comes to developing engaging eCommerce solutions as well as marketing them. Don’t hesitate to visit our website, to know more about Magento Development.

Why Magento Beats All Other Ecommerce Platforms

2010-06-13T22:16:00.000-07:00

Online stores face grilling competition as customers become more demanding and look for the best user experience. Magento is a new generation PHP based open source e-commerce solution with rich features and user friendly capabilities. No doubt there are several ecommerce platforms having splendid features but Magento surpasses all. It is a comprehensive platform with a wide range of benefits of which some are described below:

• Strong Capabilities – Magento is the platform of choice when it comes to developing a shopping cart within a short span. It is equipped with all the advanced capabilities that complete your shopping cart.

• Growing Community – As Magento is the most popular ecommerce platform it has a large pool of developers, it is easy to report problems, offer suggestions, and share important facts. Presence of open source extensions is an added benefit.

• Transparency – As the ecommerce platform is open source, the operations are transparent which makes it easy for users to understand how Magento works. Developers can stay abreast with changes and prepare for future needs.

• Quality Traffic – Attracting quality traffic that is actually interested in buying products is very important being an online shopping site. Magento has extensive search engine optimization capabilities that help you convert quality traffic into conversions.

• Plug-ins – Magento supports a number of plugin features that helps users extend their functionalities. It helps make your shopping cart more customized and improve the existing features.

• Payment Options – The ecommerce platform supports a number of payment modes and international currencies. This irons out the shopping complexities for visitors and delivers an unmatched shopping experience.

• Flexibilty – With Magento you can add or eliminate features easily. If you plan to migrate from another platform to Magento, tools are available that help you import products, customers and order information. This a remarkable advantage when using this platform.

Softweb Solutions has an adept team of Magento developers proficient in using the most vital Zend framework. We implement best practices in Magento development to give you high quality results. If you are looking for a consultant who can provide you the Magento Platform for the enhancement of your ECommerce Business, contact us at info@softwebsolutions.com.

Magento Connect offers Facebook like Extension

2010-05-11T04:05:00.000-07:00

Magento Connect, introduced in 2008, serves as a marketplace for the distribution of Magento’s community and commercial products and services. Magento Connect offers product extensions, themes, design packages, 3rd party integrations, language packs, installation packages and much more. It provides third party development organizations and individuals get in touch with the Magento community.

What is Facebook Like button?

In the recent F8 conference, Facebook announced a universal ‘Like’ button. It is a social plugin that improves social interaction between you, your customers and their friends. This button can be added to any webpage and allows Facebook users to post pages they like to the profile pages. With this extension, Magento product pages incorporate a Like button. When the visitor clicks on the Like button, the extension helps users share product image and product name.

The Facebook Like for Magento was made available within a day that Facebook unveiled the ‘Like’ button at the F8 conference. The universal ‘Like’ button is important for Magento as it gives merchants an opportunity to promote their products through Facebook. Having product information directly posted on Facebook feeds means easier word of mouth marketing for users and easier way to pull customers on board. Ecommerce merchants who have adopted the technology early are likely to get the most advantage by having a faster time to market.

Facebook Like for Magento comes at $29 and is available on Magento Connect. Here are some of the features (as given on the Magento website):

· Add Like buttons (iFrame type) to your entire catalog in 5 minutes - XFBML also supported
· Like buttons can be placed on category and product pages
· Configure all aspects of the Like button from one place in Magento admin
· Supports both iFrame and XFBML buttons
· Automatically provides a quality title and image for your shared content
· Quick and easy install - just upload and refresh your cache
· Works with Magento versions 1.2.x, 1.3.x, and 1.4.x

With Magento Connect’s Facebook extension, users will be able to leverage the combined advantage of Magento’s flexibility with Facebook’s popularitry. At Softweb Solutions, we have a rich experience in creating web applications using Magento. Please visit our website for details.

Magento SEO extension: easy solution for Magento’s SEO problems

2010-04-06T22:35:00.000-07:00

Magento, an ecommerce platform, incorporates different methods that can help you improve the ranking of your online store in a short time. The search engine optimization (SEO) capability of Magento is exceptional. The ecommerce platform itself has seo-friendly and seo-optimized properties as a part of its core built up, however, there are certain performance issues that can be resolved using Magento SEO extension.

Site Map
A standard Magento sitemap does not have seo friendly capability inbuilt. It is separated by product and category sitemaps. This implies that the list of all products and categories are separated on various pages with pagers on each page which isn’t SEO friendly at all. In addition, the sitemap does not have static pages which mean they aren’t listed.

SEO extension for sitemap helps display the products, categories and CMS pages on a single page in the order of hierarchy. This makes the sitemap SEO friendly.

Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is one of the key problems that Magento users face. This happens because users can access the products in Magento through multiple URLs. Therefore, the pages having the same content can be indexed from different URLs. The answer to his problem is canonical tag, an official tag added by Google to amend duplicate content issues. Once a canonical tag is added to the pages through Magento SEO extension, the duplicate pages are connected with the main page. The SEO extension is a rational solution for the duplicate content problem.

NOINDEX, FOLLOW tag
Pages such as cart, checkout, enable cookies, etc are meant for correct functionality rather than having any SEO value. Adding NOINDEX, FOLLOW tag to these pages will not allow them to be indexed but help follow by the links from these pages and index them.

Comment below if you have anything to share with us.

Advantages of using Magento as an e-commerce platform

2010-02-23T22:07:00.000-08:00

Magento has steadily gained popularity among online merchants as an e-commerce platform for creating online stores. As it nears three years of success, businesses are becoming increasingly capable of meeting their unique business requirements using the technology. The advantages of developing an online store using Magento can be summarized as follows:

Inbuilt features:
Magento has unique features that give it an edge over its competitors. This comprehensive and user friendly platform incorporates a variety of inbuilt features including advanced search, layered navigation, wish lists, multi store feature, product comparisons, email list, SEO performance, content management system for static pages, and grouped products.

These features greatly increase the productivity of the online store and provide a rich user experience. The SEO functionality helps online stores gain popularity easily as keywords are already embedded in the website.

Code Structure:
Magento is well defined with core code and third party code or community code marked by a clear line of difference. A well defined code structure allows users to download other extensions or modules without worrying about the impact of future upgrades and or disrupting the current appearance of the website. The corporate world has seen a widespread adoption of Magento owing to this capability. Other users who have been using earlier open source software are switching to Magento because of this technology.

Integration:
Magento connects with both web applications and standalone applications through an extensible API. It integrates seamlessly with external accounting systems, email list management tools, ERP systems, and many more. In addition, the e-commerce platform can combine with customer systems to extend the functionalities. This extensible API feature helps businesses to gain flexibility according to changing requirements.

Development Assistance:
Magento boasts of an active community of both users and developers. This makes it easier for users to get professional help from other Magento experts. In addition, a large number of free and commercial extensions are designed for the e-commerce platform. This helps businesses customize their stores in a variety of ways using third party services.

SEO Friendliness:
SEO friendly website designs of Magento enable you to easily achieve ranking on major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. It gives you ease to create suitable xml code, Meta tag, Title, and Keyword for your product and category pages.

These are few of the very attractive features of Magento which makes it a highly praised platform for developing a Shopping Cart. For more information about Magento Customization, talk to a Magento expert.

Attractive, user-friendly and cost-effective shopping carts with Magento 1.4.x

2009-11-24T03:09:00.001-08:00

Magento eCommerce platform is a versatile and flexible open source eCommerce platform that enables developers to create attractive, user-friendly and cost-effective shopping carts. It allows users to set up a feature-rich online store in a brief amount of time.

Chicago based Magento developers, have developed an eye-catching Magento based ecommerce portal. Softweb is satisfying one more client by developing a striking Magento based eCommerce portal. Recently it has developed a top-notch ecommerce portal for a company, Beansprouts. It has unique concept that offers you personalized hand-painted growth charts for children. They market colorful charts with creative themes so you can mark your child’s growth and keep track of it. They deliver personalized growth charts incorporating your child’s name and specifications.

The client wanted his portal to be redesigned adding the best shopping cart features to it and so it is decided to revamp the site using Magento 1.4.x and PHP 5.2.x. As a result, the developed portal enables the company to exhibit their products in a more attractive way. The comprehensive, feature-rich and SEO friendly eCommerce portal developed by Softweb, a leading IT consultant, gives increased web identity to the company.

Know more about Softweb’s Magento Development Solutions.

Magento Enterprise Edition 1.6

2009-10-22T04:53:00.000-07:00

Magento Enterprice Editions provides optimal platform for business growth. Recently launched Magento Enterprise Edition 1.6 incorporates lot of attractive features for developing online eCommerce web sites.

Let us check some of the most useful feature of it:

Enhanced CMS
•    Use a WYSIWYG editor with support for inserting rich content.

Rich Merchandizing Suite
•    Provides targeted, rules driven promotional marketing banners for each customer segment.

Administrator Permission Roles on Website
•    Enables you to restrict access roles so the staff can view only the data of the stores relevant to him.

Limited Catalog Access
•    Restricts the catalog access to few Customers with the ability to restrict on a category basis or global basis.

Gift Certificates/cards
• Allows customers to purchase physical and virtual gift certificates/cards.
Well-built Data Encryption
• It Supports PA-DSS standards ensuring that Magento is a fully secure solution.

Magento Ecommerce Development

2009-04-26T22:13:00.000-07:00

Magento is a new professional open-source eCommerce solution, made up of a few different elements which define the functionality, design and business logic of the site. Magento is built on components of the Zend Framework ensuring that the code base will be secure and scalable. Magento is a feature-rich eCommerce platform offering complete flexibility and control over the look, content and functionality of an online store. One of the most powerful features of Magento is its ability to manage multiple websites and stores from single Administration Panel.

Some of the Best Magento Features for Online Shop:-

• Content Management System for Informational pages
• One-Click Upgrades
• Default Billing and Shipping addresses
• Auto-generated Site Map
• Search Engine Friendly
• Google Base Integration
• Search Results rewrites and redirects
• Best Customers Report by Total and Number of Orders
• Auto-Generated Popular Search Terms Page.
• Product listing in grid or list format
• Integrated with Google Analytics
• RSS feed for New Orders

Softweb solutions being an expert of Magento can offer you Custom Magento Themes, Magento Custom Designs, Magento Integration, Magento Shopping Cart and more.