A first step in creating a successful online shop is to ask which eCommerce website builder fits the business needs most effectively. With the plethora of choices out there, the best also relies on necessary features and available budget. Does it have enough scalability? Can you create an amazing website with it? Add new functionality? Build a site without years of coding experience? Does it offer the biggest bang for the buck?
Given the reach and functionality required, one solution will be best to create eCommerce site for you. Today, we explore the costs, upsides and downsides, and features of the highest quality CMSs of 2019.
The Best Website Builders
If you’re in the field, you’re acquainted with the common eCommerce site builders: Squarespace and Shopify. Then there are the less well-known builders like BigCommerce, Volusion, and WooCommerce. Finally, an article on this topic would be incomplete if it did not mention a favorite CMS of ours: Magento®.
Before we start, let’s refer to the statistics. According to BuiltWith, the most demanded platforms that are used the most by businesses are:
The statistics are based on the total number of websites existed on the entire Internet. Now, we’ve got the understanding of which platforms businesses prefer over others to build a store, and we move on to the review of the best website builders.We’ve considered the worldwide popularity, functionality, pricing plans and overall usability and benefit for eCommerce business. The sections that follow will delve deeper into each to help you choose right from the start.
Magento is a premier CMS solution for eCommerce. It can be challenging to use, but it’s completely customizable, scalable, and adaptable. Plus, even with this versatility, it requires less intense coding knowledge than some of the other CMS solutions with similar capacity.
If you are looking to scale your business further than look towards Magento. It is a promising platform with huge support, emerging technologies implemented into the latest extensions and functionality available on Magento 2 versions.
Open Source: This version is free. Simply download, install, and begin implementation immediately.
Commerce: Here’s where you’ll be paying more for the advanced features list. Pricing is based on customization and site needs. On the lower end, it’ll cost about $15,000 annually. On the highest end, expect around $50,000 annually. This package provides supreme customization, dedicated hosting, and all you could imagine wanting in your website.
Pros
Cons
Loaded with features
Experience- and time-Intensive due to coding
Fully scalable
Dedicated hosting requires higher initial and per-month investment
User-friendly admin
Maintaining, developing, and supporting the site will cost more
Constant development and support of the platform by community
WordPress powers about 33% of sites on the Internet and remains one of the simplest and most powerful ways to create your own site or blog. WooCommerce is WordPress’s answer to eCommerce, a way to turn your WordPress site into a lucrative online store. Support is one of the most challenging aspects of a WooCommerce store. However, the pricing is competitive, and it’s loaded with features.
So, if you know how to use WooCommerce, you’ll find yourself set up with a high-performance website at a great value.
WooCommerce Features
Unlimited products
Unparalleled options for B2B WooCommerce
Product reviews and ratings
Categories, tags, and attributes make products easier to find
400 stock extensions
Unlimited galleries and images
Product filtering and sorting
Customizable by location
Open development
WordPress-built
Checkout, product, and more can be embedded on all pages
Unrestricted customization
Blogging is built-in
Different themes available
Documentation
REST API for order and product management
Packages Pricing
Starter Package: $13.99/mo Web space limited to 100 GB.
Plus Package: $17.99/mo Unlimited space.
Pro Package: $31.99/mo The advanced backup feature included.
Pros
Cons
Fully loaded with Advanced Tools and Extensions
Additional features can incur hidden costs
Accounts for Administrators and users
No central support – Support for each extension and plugin is through separate channels
So what is BigCommerce? It’s a CMS that focuses on creating customizable, responsive sites. BigCommerce websites are created on the principles of mobile-optimized omnichannel access, easy migration, and supreme ease of online selling in all its aspects. The design is centered on conversions, the key to success for any eCommerce site.
A huge benefit to working with BigCommerce is that it’s unmatched in both scalability and SEO.
BigCommerce Features
Huge range of sales features
Conversion optimized for tablet, mobile, desktop shoppers
Multi-channel syncing to increase sales across all channels
Easy management for inventory and orders
Various payment portals
More features than any other CMS
BigCommerce control panel lets you run the entire business from one portal
Top-of-the-Line Launch assistance for new sites and site optimization
Allows easy migration for stores and importation of products
Focus on selling with a hosted eCommerce website
Features a hosted, PCI compliant eCommerce website
Fully customizable
Offers lightning fast eCommerce templates
Pricing Options
Standard plan: $29.95/mo (annual billing)
Plus Plan: $71.95/mo (highest value for small businesses)
A Volusion website shines in sales, but website building is complicated, especially for those without extensive experience. However, Volusion provides loads of features and tools to manage business operations. With a Volusion web store, it’s simple to showcase products with videos and manage product inventory.
Volusion eCommerce is ideal for products that need a strong visual presentation. Plus, you can expand customer engagement with the ‘Suggest Product’ option. However, one thing to keep in mind is that Volusion is only suitable for physical goods or services.
Volusion Features
CSS Editor
Logo Favicon upload
Homepage Slideshow
Search Functionality
Customizable Product Category Pages
Excellent Navigation Editor
Custom Domain for Easy Site Access
Rich Content Editor to Update your Site without Coding
Mobile-Friendly Responsive Themes
A wide range of payment platforms with no transaction fees
Seamless integration with third-party apps
Excellent stock mobile app for managing business operations
Pricing Packages
Mini: $15/mo
Plus: $35/mo
Pro: $75/mo
Premium: $135/mo
Business: $299/mo
Volusion also offers a discounted price of $13.50 monthly for annual payments. However, you’ll need to buy an SSL for any plan you pick.
So, as eCommerce site builders go, is Squarespace good? A key to answering this question is which version you opt for. The editing interface for earlier versions of Squarespace was complicated and unwieldy. However, this has been addressed with the improvements of version 7. It comes with excellent tutorial documentation which fully describes all features and tools.
Squarespace is an excellent website builder, a feature which even some more expensive solutions lack. Another benefit for programmers and software engineers is that the Squarespace salary for these roles is highly competitive for the field.
Squarespace Features
Announcement Bar
Pop-Ups for Promotions
Stock integration for Zapier
MailChimp integration in the Newsletter and Form Blocks
Menu Block
Donation Block
Customer Accounts
Commerce and all online store features
Per-page and site-wide code injection
Information Bar mobile-optimized
OpenTable Block
Amazon Block
ChowNow integration
Code Block for iframe code and JavaScript
Facebook Pixel
Developer Platform
Acuity Block
Though this list describes only Basic Online and Business packages, they’re ideal for any small organizations and businesses. The Advanced Online package is best if you’re after scalability.
Pricing
Personal Package: $12/mo This solution is excellent unless you need an online store.
Business: $18/mo 3% transaction fee and stock online shop.
Basic Online Store: $26/mo Zero transaction fee for online sales.
Advanced Online Store: $40/mo Advanced eCommerce features included.
Pros
Cons
24/7 live chat customer support
Lacks Preview Mode (makes larger updates more challenging and leads to website downtime)
eCommerce with customer login options
SEO (low page speed and unable to edit page title in blog posts)
Extensive choice of high-quality templates, mobile-optimized
Single sub navigation option (not good for more complex sites)
One great thing about Shopify is it’s been created entirely with eCommerce in mind. Shopify is excellent for all forms of selling, from products to services, digital or physical, locally or worldwide. Shopify business benefits include product organization or tracking, and the capacity to customize or scale an eCommerce website as needed. Add an app or adjust the cart system easily even without complicated coding. It has fast load times alongside loads of ready-made eCommerce stores, adjusted as necessary.
Shopify for sale is completely integrated eCommerce, giving you a single portal to handle every aspect of eCommerce operations.
Shopify Features
fraud analysis
excellent customer support
online storage and bandwidth are unlimited bandwidth
Shopify point of sale
overview dashboard
finance reports
orders can be created manually
no limit on products
multiple selling channels
discount code extensions
allows private accounts for staff
Pricing Options
Shopify is a middle option in terms of pricing. It isn’t the cheapest available, but even the basic package offers omnichannel solutions and no limits on products. Plus, there are loads of apps that let you tailor your site as needed.
Shopify Lite – $ 9/mo (Allows you to sell through a website and social media channels)
Abandoned Checkout Recovery helps to increase sales
Hosting must be bought separately
100+ payment options supported globally
Limited customizability
High performance and loading speed
Advanced features must be bought separately
Multi-channel sales
Easy CTA “Buy Button”
Shopify POS integration
Extensive self-help documentation
Digital and Physical sales supported
Now you have all the platforms’ characteristics, and you can consider creating the store using one of the best website builders listed above to succeed online.
eCommerce has been growing steadily since the turn of the millennium, and this rate is expected to increase dramatically in the years to come. According to Absolunet, almost 60% of retail sales are influenced by digital experience in some form. Mobile sales grew more than 55% last year, and eCommerce now accounts for nearly a fifth of all retail revenue worldwide.
In order to stay competitive in the current market, it’s essential to keep up to date with the current eCommerce trends. Online sales is a dynamic field, with advancements in programming, available technology, and consumer behavior changing the face of eCommerce every year. It’s also become one of the key factors for keeping your business alive and strong. Even brick and mortar stores are discovering that their online presence is central to brand building and increasing sales. In-person and digital experiences are becoming more closely linked, and customers expect seamless integration between physical stores and their online counterparts.
Some trends have fallen out of favor in the current market. Among these are returns. Before now, offering free returns has been a huge incentive for online sales. However, according to Shopify, within the last year, returns alone accounted for nearly $500 billion dollars. Companies can no longer offer free returns without facing significant losses. Free tax is another technique eCommerce sites have used to drive sales, but with current changes in tax laws, it’s no longer profitable for businesses to continue this strategy. Apps are also dropping out of favor, replaced by fast, efficient PWA’s that customers can make use of without having to download them.
So, now with free returns, free tax, and apps on the way out, what trends are emerging in 2019? Let’s have a look at some of the biggest shifts that will impact eCommerce this year.
Increase Customer Engagement
Developing lasting customer relationships has always been the key to boosting sales and increasing profits, and it’s no different with eCommerce growth. Plus, the digital experience offers a host of unique ways to connect with customers and create a customized, immersive experience.
On the website alone, chatbots, personalization, and interactive product technology have risen to the top of current strategies to boost engagement.
More and more eCommerce sites each year are making use of video content and augmented and virtual reality. Many brands also offer online courses and tutorials for their products, a strategy which has been popular in the fashion and technology industries to date.
In addition to the digital approach, brick and mortar stores are popping up to support eCommerce sites with a physical location. This provides a physical product experience and interactions in-person, making the store more accessible and strengthening the brand. It’s also become popular to provide digital kiosks within the store to integrate online and in-store experiences.
Expand On-Site Personalization
One of the biggest challenges traditionally faced by online stores is to personalize the experience. In a physical store, clerks can engage directly with a customer, offering advice and making personalized recommendations to fit their customer’s needs. On average, according to Ziffity, when the experience is personalized, a customer will spend about 48% more per purchase. One of the most important trends in 2019 is to increase personalization to mimic this in-store experience.
Online retail sales statistics show that about 57% of customers are happy to provide personal information for the purpose of improving their shopping experience. Some of the best strategies for this include using purchase history, page visits, and search queries to offer personalized recommendations. In addition, recent advancements in personalization technology allow your site to offer ads based on previous views and search queries and targeted marketing copy.
Work on Convenience and UX
Convenience is the name of the game when it comes to eCommerce. You want to do all that you can to make the user experience easy. With the rapid growth of mobile sales, this means working with mobile-first sites. Make sure that your site loads quickly, that it’s easy to navigate and includes important features like geolocation services and a PWA (Progressive Web App) that lets customers make use of all the functionality of your site without having to download an app.
Another rising trend is to turn your targeted brand into a marketplace. If you have an established brand, you can broaden your customer base and boost sales by branching out and providing other products, or by featuring third-party retailers through your site. Omnichannel is becoming more important every year, so make sure to make use of social media and mobile marketing with options to convert directly through these channels. Image search and voice search are other great features that increase convenience and improve user experience.
Video content has become increasingly more important in customer engagement. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million. Customers are more likely to take the time to watch a three-minute video than to read a half page of content. A video is ideal for showcasing product features and sharing the message of your brand. Plus, they are a great way to introduce related products and deliver influencer content.
Video personalizes the content and increases user engagement. Try to make use of it in several ways throughout the site, including the homepage, product page, and anywhere else you’d like to make an impact and hold the customer’s attention.
Include Voice Search on Your Site
One of the most important new trends in retail industry is voice search. This is a great way to add convenience to the online experience. By 2020, voice search is expected to account for half of all searches. For the retail industry, it will account for around $40 billion in sales in the United States alone.
According to Shopify, smart speakers are already being used with Google Home and Amazon Alexa, and 22% of customers with these services use voice search to purchase online. In addition, 50% of customers that use voice search to find a local store will visit that store on the same day. More than a third of these visits result in sales. This is a phenomenal conversion rate and one that you will want to make use of in your eCommerce platform in the coming year.
Think about Artificial Intelligence Usage
Current developments in the field of artificial intelligence have opened up new avenues in the world of retail and eCommerce. AIs can now be used for a wide range of eCommerce solutions.
One of the most important applications is in product content. Content is king in the online industry. It is required for each product and category sold on your site. And, as your repertoire grows, your product content has to grow as well.
AIs can be used to generate product-specific attributes and detailed product information. They can also link this content with semantic search terms, improving your conversion rates and boosting sales. Whether you need translation, classification, organization, or content creation, AI-based solutions are now becoming accessible to provide these services faster and more efficiently than a live team.
Another important use of artificial intelligence is with a chatbot AI. Chatbots are taking the role of online sales clerks, able to engage with the customer and personalize their experience. They can also handle inquiries and manage inventory.
Chatbots are also learning algorithms. With each customer experience, customer interaction becomes more refined and more efficient. They literally evolve as they serve your business, providing higher quality user experience the longer they are used. Plus, their versatility allows them to perform several mundane tasks, allowing you to focus on the innovations that will keep your eCommerce site ahead of the competition.
Meet the Explosion of AR
One of the chief problems faced by online stores is the inability to interact physically with products. However, AR, or Augmented Reality, is helping to close this gap by allowing customers to visualize products three-dimensionally and try them out virtually.
The homeware and fashion industries have been quick to capitalize on this new technology, using AR to allow customers to virtually try on accessories or clothing or visualize how furniture or other products will look in the home.
This is one of the most exciting areas opened up to retailers by new advancements in technology, and it’s still in its infancy. It dramatically boosts customer engagement and helps customers to feel more confident about their purchases. Plus, it creates a richer and more fun shopping experience. Over the next few years, you can expect AR to be utilized by a majority of successful brands.
Offer Various Web Payments
Flexible payment options are one of the most important trends for 2019. It’s important for you to allow customers to pay with more traditional methods, such as credit and debit cards. At the same time, digital wallets have gained far more trust and recognition, and are now a common form of payment as well.
PayPal has been around for a while, but other wallets are gaining popularity as well. Some of the top options are Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay. Other couples to keep in mind are ZipPay and AfterPay. These are less well known, but they give customers the option to buy now and pay later without interest rates. The cryptocurrency market is beginning to become a major payment method as well.
The benefit of both digital wallets and cryptocurrency is that purchases can be made online without having to enter secure card details. Plus, since these payment methods are expected to exceed card and cash payments within the next ten years, this is a great way to increase mobile conversions and prevent lost sales.
Be Responsible About the Environmental Impact
Every year, customers are getting savvier about sustainability and environmental impact. They want to know that their purchases are responsible and healthy for the planet and are on the lookout for the ecological costs of internet purchases. This is especially important in packaging.
You’ll want to consider making boxes only as large as they need to be, avoiding excess packaging materials, and finding efficient delivery routes. Plus, it’s an added bonus to include messages on the packaging that highlight the company’s efforts at sustainability. These messages should focus on the reuse of materials and waste reduction. It’s also helpful to include messages about social and ecological responsibility on your site. This will align your brand with consumer values and make them more comfortable purchasing from your site.
The key to connecting with customers this year and in the years to come is to create a comfortable and balanced user experience. If you place yourself in the position of a new visitor to your site and consider what you would like to feel upon your visit, you’ll see exactly how to customize your site for best effect.
Top 10 Magento 2 Popup Extensions
Popup ads are online forms of advertisements meant to capture email addresses of the customers to increase traffic in the website. Popups are new browser windows which attract prospects’ attention to the website. They suddenly appear on the screen of the device until you press a particular function key to select one of the commands. The popup ads then disappear.
Magento 2 popup extensions have outstanding features making them versatile for the eCommerce website. Firstly, you can set a flexible display rule based on your customer store view to have a popup position on the webpage.
Secondly, It’s easy to get and add to your eCommerce shop. With it, you market your products effortlessly without IT knowledge.
Thirdly, It displays several popups in one campaign to build trust in your eCommerce business.
And lastly, you can generate banner slider HTML code which reduces the risk of duplication when integrating hence saving both time and funds. Let’s move on to the list of best Magento pop-up extensions on the market.
5 Best Magento 2 Popup Extensions
Online stores require Magento 2 popup extensions to propel marketing and business goals. Here are the best 10 Magento Popup extensions and newsletters.
Popup for Magento 2 by Magesolution
Popup for Magento 2 by Magesolution is a trusted solution for business merchants who want their customers to know the latest stuff in their online store. It has a demo version to look at how it works on the frontend and how to manage it from the backend.
Magesolution designs themes for customers. If you need a stylish modern online store, this extension and theme development company is your ever present help.
A pop-up by Magesolution is a vast extension to build them with HTML content. It is an attractive window used to collect business information to promote ads and products of the business. It’s quite easy to man the manifestation of your popup when you define widgets and show them for a specific customer group.
Pop-up for Magento 2 by BSScommerce helps business people invent multipurpose pop-ups. It’s upon one to decide where to establish the pop-up and set demo animation for clients to see. The company has served many customers all over the world. They offer innovative Magento 2 extensions with free installations.
The installation keeps your business miles away from the other competitors. It enriches your store to save management effort.
You can efficiently manage and configure the extension. To do this, you need to go to the store and click configure and then BSScommerce > Pop-up, and you will see the general configuration. Select yes to activate the setting. It has Manager Pop-up which displays all created pop-ups and their contents such as Views, Enable, Customer Group, etc. This tool helps you control everything that goes in and out of your popup.
Mageplaza is the best popup which improves customer retention. It draws attention to more subscribers. Most of the online shopping carts are relinquished at the checkout page which leads to sales decrease. However, with Magento 2 extensions you cut down the percentage of cart renouncement at the checkout page.
Mageplaza provides useful marketing tools which help the store to garner more leads. When your clients see a newspaper subscription invitation they offer their email hence providing a permanent link with your clients. This module has a report emails which shows the number of new subscribers on a weekly basis.
Popup Pro for Magento 2 triggers appearance of popup window based on different types of customer behavior. It has a flexible popup design that admin can alter to match any task. The popup may be used for promotions, cookie policy, and newsletter subscription among others.
It has more integration options which use Custom Static Blocks which many clients highly recommend. With a single promo, you can use it on any site which is valuable for both store owners and their clients.
These Popup Pro advantages outweigh the alleged disadvantages. For instance, it helps in sales promotions, product upsells, content participation and email captures. These simple processes help your store retain old customers besides having new clients.
Magento 2 popup widget extension is widely used because of its stability, performance, and Mageworx ever present solution to emerging problems. If you want to deliver the correct information to the right customers, create pop-ups for all sizes and shapes.
With this extension, you can easily add a duplicate pop-up button. Mageworx provides products which have a guarantee and a lifetime functionality update. With it, you can combine standard widgets with advanced extensions to have attractive popups. You do not need HTML proofs or design to apply templates. The current models allow you to design pompous promotional messages for any purpose to increase the efficiency of your popup messages aim at the needs and interests of the new clients.
Also, you can group your shoppers based on location, type of device used, customer category among other factors. These subdivisions help you to achieve your target quickly.
Magento newsletter popup display popup containing subscriptions. The customers receive a free discount coupon code. The discount offered makes the shop owner win the customers’ trust which translates to higher sales conversion rates.
Here are the five best Magento newsletter Popup extensions you can choose any of the three display methods: specified time delay, manually or when the user logs out. It’s upon the store owner to decide when to restrict popup messages to be displayed on specific devices.
Plumrocket solution through Magento 2 newsletter helps online store owners to increase their sales by giving good deals.
Magento 2 newsletter has critical features which help merchants give special promotions and discount codes. Such features include; display rules, animations, display rules, conversations among others.
Remember if you want to determine the efficiency of the popup campaign you can do so by accessing the user interactions with the newsletters.
MageAnts is a vital agent of newsletter pop-ups. If you want your business to bloom, add this marketing tool on your site. Source email addresses of clients who are interested in your business. Use them to generate leads, display popup rights and allow easy subscription of website viewers.
Businesses no longer use Flyers and posters to promote their Products. MageAnts has greatly is embraced the sending of newsletters via email. This process helps collect the important leads of customers interested in your company.
You can enable the extensions to acquire home page popup. This extension does well with email marketing. It ensures that you have sufficient clients who like your products due to maximum usability and customization.
IWD Agency has a classic web design for responsive newsletter popups. With Magento 2 popup you can easily adjust the content and design to fit your sales. Magento 2 newsletter has intimate settings which you can alter to suit your promotional desires. You can activate the newsletter popup, control the width and set the time taken to show the popup to your clients.
Remember to enable newsletter configuration to be able to determine whether the customers did subscribe to your newsletter. A text link at the footer helps your clients activate the pop-up. To have more subscribers, enable social media icons with specifications of hover color per social icons. IWD Agency supports all social media accounts.
Tigren has an excellent popup manager for Magento 2. You don’t need knowledge on programming to work with it. With this Magento 2 popup extension, you can create unlimited pop-ups, freely customize, track popups with detailed statistics. Once all that is achieved your online clothing store increases traffic.
You can choose any page in your online store to show popup by few clicks. There are many positions on each page, each option offers the same results which make the popups enticing to the customers.
You realize that you can’t customize some parts of a designed website, but with popup manager, you can customize popup to suit your purpose. With it, you can create and manage all popups on your website.
In addition to open popup, you can create an entirely new popup in the back-end. Popup manager for Magento 2 uses Impressions, Window closed, Click inside popup and Goal completion to analyze indicators to determine whether you use them effectively.
Solwin Infotech has demonstrated that Advanced newsletter popup Magento 2 extension is the cornerstone for the online store. It displays newsletter popup when clients log in your website with a custom message. With a newsletter, you get several orders and new subscribers.
Solwin provides easy to install and manage customizable extensions and beginners needn’t worry about the advanced newsletters. They are also fully responsive to any device. It has also delay option of the popup window which can be adjusted to fit the time that the store owner wants.
In this extension, each newsletter subscription form is displayed for only one user popup window at a time. It becomes easy for the store owner to use a custom title or message to customize newsletter popup with the background color. You can also activate social links with custom social icons as admin.
Many store owners are extremely excited by the module. You can choose your extension from Solwin because they offer 100% open source that is easy to customize.
We considered the best Magento 2 Popup extensions for any kind of store. But, we would like to tell you a couple more tips on how to use pop-ups.
Don’t hit your customers with pop-ups during the first encounter allow them to get acclimatized with the design and layout. Use only the main popup at the home page to attract customer with your current big offer.
After users have browsed enough (more than 2-3 minutes), hit them with popups and expect a positive response. Small popups at the left or right corner of the screen are smooth and won’t distract the user from searching a product.
Ensure that the pop-ups are easy to read, comprehend and exit at will and you’ll see them collecting tremendous benefits for your online store.
How to Install Magento Popup Extensions
It’s extremely easy to install Magento Popup extension.
Step 1. Using Ready to Paste, you download FileZilla or WinSCP clients.
Step 2. After downloading, log in to access downloadable products and then put the code into the folder.
Step 3. You can now extract the package and link to your server using WinSCP or FileZilla Clients and upload the folders to your server.
Step 4. To finish up, run the command line to confirm whether the installation is complete.
Debugging Magento 2 Using Logs
When working with Magento 2, sections of code are often processed unexpectedly. When this happens, developers need to understand the reason for the error and fix it.
Log files are convenient for debugging. In most cases, they help you quickly determine the cause of the error and fix it. In this article, we will examine the types of log files and the specifics of working with them.
Using Logs: Magento 2 Live Site Example
Let’s assume we’re working with a site on Magento 2 that is in production mode (the main “live” mode of Magento 2 sites) and is running on a UNIX-like OS.
Types of Logs
There are two types of logs available to developers: information logs and error logs. An information log can hold information a developer needs for debugging, while error logs hold information about runtime errors. The main information log is saved in your Magento 2 directory: var/log/system.log.
Types of Errors
There are three types of errors:
handled exceptions,
non-handled exceptions, and
fatal runtime errors.
We will consider each of these error types.
Magento 2 has a Psr logging library that implements embedded logging. To log something, you simply have to call the interface Psr\Log\LoggerInterface, which will be implemented using dependency injection of the class Magento\Framework\Logger\Monolog (the dependency is defined in the global app/etc/di.xml).
The interface declares several logging methods, and the class implements them. These methods differ only in terms of the additional information about critical messages shown in the log. The models inherited from AbstractModel, block collections, and helpers have a protected _logger property that can be used for logging. For all remaining classes, you can log using dependency injection in the constructor or using ObjectManager. In the examples below, we will assume that the class has _logger property.
The Principles of Magento Logging
Logging is simple. You just need to call $this->_logger->info(param), where param is some scalar variable that will be logged in the file var/log/system.log.
Calling the error or critical methods will write a scalar variable to this same file. If you pass an object of the class inherited from \Exception as a parameter, then the error will be logged in the file var/log/exception.log. In versions 2.0 and 2.1, the exception’s full trace was recorded to this file, making it possible to easily determine the location of the error and a way to fix it. But starting in version 2.2, only the exception message and the place where it was thrown are recorded.
To get the trace, you need to write $this->_logger->critical($e->_toString());, but the error and trace will be recorded in the file var/log/system.log. Nevertheless, this is convenient when you need to determine the full path to the location where the error occurred and also determine the current values of various parameters in order to understand the reason for the error. Exceptions can only be logged in the catch block of the construct.
If the developer didn’t use exception handling, then sometimes this handling is already implemented at the core level, in particular when outputting blocks.
When an exception occurs when a block’s content is generated, the block will not be displayed, and a message about the error will be displayed in the file var/log/exception.log. Otherwise, if the exception is intercepted by a top-level handler, the server will return an error and the exception will be logged in a separate file in the directory var/report. If the error occurred when processing an API request, the error will be logged in a separate file in the directory var/report/api.
The cases above considered errors that Magento could process. But if a fatal error occurs when executing code, Magento will not be able to process it, and the error will go to the Web server log. Next, we will look at examples of fatal errors, where they appear, and why they appear.
Fatal Errors and the Reasons Behind Them
By default, these files are located in the server’s /var/log directory, with the rest of the path determined by the type of server (Apache, NGINX, PHP-FPM) and configuration features. On live servers (and others) developers often do not have the data in these directories for security reasons, or the server administrator may redirect logging of fatal errors to other files, which will be available. This is often done if several virtual hosts are implemented on one physical server and access to the hosts is limited to certain users.
Sometimes this log is available in Cpanel, if it is supported by the hosting. Since these errors are fatal, the HTTP request will return a 50x error. These types of errors can occur at the PHP level; they can be caused by insufficient memory allotted to runtime or insufficient disk space; and they can also occur at the Apache or NGINX level. One common error of this kind at the NGINX level is be caused by a connection timeout or buffer overflow, which can only be resolved by changing NGINX settings.
There are often redirect errors at the server level as well, which return 404 server errors. There are other types of 40x errors as well, such as transferring more to POST than the server can handle, but that’s a separate topic.
Let’s summarize what we’ve gone over so far.
If the executed code isn’t working as expected, you should first check the Magento logs. More often than not, it’s easy to establish the reason for the error from these logs.
If requests to the server return 40x or 50x errors, you should check the var/report directory and the Web server log, if possible.
When debugging code, log critical variables and check their values.
If existing core code isn’t writing all the necessary information to the log (this usually has to do with error handling) then when you are debugging and finding out the reason for the error, you can temporarily add logging. Don’t forget to roll back changes to the core, returning it to its original state after debugging.
In some cases, logs are the only available means of debugging. For example, cron jobs, API requests, and payment methods can usually only be debugged using logs.
Keep in mind that logs have the tendency to grow, so don’t forget to periodically delete old Magento log files. The automatic deletion of global logs after a certain period of time is usually configured on servers.
Don’t forget to remove logging of safety-critical information from the code after debugging. This usually pertains to credit card information, but it could be other information as well.
1. Optimizing a site that has seen a sharp increase in front-end page load speeds after upgrading to version 2.3.
This may be caused by conflicts between obsolete site modules and the new core version of Magento. There is speculation that the problem may be related to the generation of a menu in a custom extension. The menu displays categories and uses flat tables. When researching, you were able to establish that category information is received in the _loadNodes method of the \Magento\Catalog\Model\ResourceModel\Category\Flat class.
Then, after loading the page without the cache in the var/log/system.log file, we see the following message:
[2019-02-04 15:20:25] main.INFO: SELECT `main_table`.`entity_id`, main_table.`name`, main_table.`path`, `main_table`.`is_active`, `main_table`.`is_anchor`, `url_rewrite`.`request_path` FROM `catalog_category_flat_store_1` AS `main_table` LEFT JOIN `url_rewrite` ON url_rewrite.entity_id = main_table.entity_id AND url_rewrite.is_autogenerated = 1 AND url_rewrite.store_id = ‘1’ AND url_rewrite.entity_type = ‘category’ WHERE (main_table.is_active = 1) AND (main_table.include_in_menu = ‘1’) AND (main_table.path like ‘1/71/%’) ORDER BY `main_table`.`position` ASC
We received a request in the message that we can optimize. If we need to get back-trace, we can get it as follows:
After analyzing the back-trace code and getting the request, we see that it’s possible to reduce category selection by restricting the level of categories that will be displayed in the menu. We can do this with the parameter of the ‘catalog/navigation/max_depth’ configuration. At the same time, we can optimize the request by adding additional indexes on the index table catalog_category_flat_store_1.
This is possible is because this is an index table and is recreated when the index is rebuilt by the createTable() method of the Magento\Catalog\Model\Indexer\Category\Flat\Action\Full class, while the method getFlatTableStructure() gets the table structure. Unfortunately, both methods are protected, so you can’t apply plugins to them, but you can redefine the indexer class using di.xml:
<preferencefor="Magento\Catalog\Model\Indexer\Category\Flat\Action\Full"type="Web4pro\All\Model\Indexer\Category\Full"/>Andtheclasslooks as follows:class Full extends \Magento\Catalog\Model\Indexer\Category\Flat\Action\Full{protectedfunctiongetFlatTableStructure($tableName) { $table =parent::getFlatTableStructure($tableName); $table->addIndex('category_active_parent_id',array('is_active','parent_id'),array('type'=>'index')); $table->addIndex('category_active_menu_level',array('is_active','include_in_menu','level','path'),array('type'=>'index'));return $table; }}
After rebuilding the Magento indexes, loading the page without the generated cache significantly sped up. All that remains is to take the logging code that helped solve the problem out of the core files.
2. Migrating a site from Magento 1 to Magento 2. Data was migrated using a migration tool. Products on the Magento 1 site are updated by cron from a CSV file generated by the ERP system. With Magento 1, MAGMI is used for import, but this system can’t be used with Magento 2. Instead of MAGMI, we use the Firebear_ImportExport module, which supports the import of products by cron. The module also supports generating unique SEO URLs for products. However, the cron import task was found to not be ending successfully. When analyzing the exception.log file, the following message about the error was found
It turns out that this URL had already been used for the product with ID 2496, and in the database, there’s a 301 redirect to this product’s page. But later it turned out that this 301 redirect leads to a 404 page anyway since the product had been Disabled and isn’t visible on the front end. This means that this 301 redirect can be deleted from the database without any negative consequences.
3. The following message was found on the site when checking the exception.log file
View code:
2019-02-1113:00:03] main.CRITICAL: Warning: Missingargument1for Magento\Framework\Mview\View\Changelog::clear(), calledin/home/magento/www/vendor/magento/framework/Interception/Interceptor.phponline58anddefinedin/home/magento/www/vendor/magento/framework/Mview/View/Changelog.phponline116 {"exception":"[object] (Exception(code: 0): Warning: Missing argument 1 for Magento\\Framework\\Mview\\View\\Changelog::clear(), called in /home/magento/www/vendor/magento/framework/Interception/Interceptor.php on line 58 and defined in /home/magento/www/vendor/magento/framework/Mview/View/Changelog.php on line 116 at /home/magento/www/vendor/magento/framework/App/ErrorHandler.php:61)"}
This error occurs when rebuilding indexes. Since the method is called in the Interceptor trait, the reason for the error is most likely a plugin that was written incorrectly. We check all the plugins defined in di.xml for the class Magento\Framework\Mview\View\Changelog. We find this definition in the Amasty Order Attributes module.
Since the original clear method of the class, Magento\Framework\Mview\View\Changelog looks like this in Magento 2.2.6:
publicfunctionclear($versionId){ $changelogTableName =$this->resource->getTableName($this->getName());if (!$this->connection->isTableExists($changelogTableName)) {thrownewChangelogTableNotExistsException(newPhrase("Table %1 does not exist", [$changelogTableName])); }$this->connection->delete($changelogTableName, ['version_id < ?'=> (int)$versionId]);returntrue;}
Since the method has the mandatory $versionId parameter, this error is thrown when attempting to call the parent method from the plugin. Amasty corrected this error in version 3.4.8, where the plugin method looks as follows:
As you can see, the problem was caused by incompatibility between the module version and Magento version, and it was solved by updating the module.
Best Magento Clothing Websites Design
Magento’s potential for customization and personalization makes it ideal for any eCommerce niche. You can create an online store with any functionality, and it offers loads of features, color options, themes, and custom modules. These features stand head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to clothing websites design.
Magento offers a clean design and easy navigation, allowing you to showcase apparel and enhance customer engagement. When it’s time for you to design online store website, Magento is the way to go. Let’s look at some of the tops of the line fashion websites built with Magento.
List of Cool Clothing Websites
Fashion websites have become the highest grossing eCommerce sites on the web. They currently account for more than 20% of all online sales worldwide.
Magento is one of the market leaders in eCommerce, accounting for nearly 12% of the market share. It allows business owners to manage merchandising and logistics easily. Plus, with Magento, the user experience is personalized, boosting customer engagement and increasing sales.
Whether you work with women’s clothing, menswear, children’s apparel, or all of the above, Magento offers solutions to grow your business and raise your profit margin.
Revenue from fashion sites has been growing steadily in the US since 2003. According to Statista, it amounted to 108 billion dollars in 2018 and is projected to top 139 billion dollars in 2023. This makes the fashion industry one of the strongest online sellers in America and across the globe. Here is a selection of USA-based fashion stores that show what Magento can do for different fashion niches.
HUF is a premium skate apparel company. The website makes use of high-quality images and photo galleries that showcase their featured lines and best sellers, right on the home page.
The site is clean and loads quickly. HUF has also offered free shipping for all orders in the US and a small flat fee for international orders.
7 For All Mankind specializes in denim apparel for men and women. The homepage features attractive images and headlines with a 10% off deal for new customers. They include a store locator and many payment options on the site. 7 For All Mankind also makes excellent use of content for brand building.
The look of the store is simple, and you zero in on the clothing and featured products, as there is no distracting colors or blocks.
Mara Hoffman focuses exclusively on women’s fashion wear. They have created a minimalist site with a homepage that presents the new lines and top sellers with beautiful, high-quality images.
The website design is elegant. The store is extremely easy to navigate, offering a list of all categories in a sidebar and search options to sort by price, size, and season. The store has creative globe shaped popups as well as simple registration forms and intuitive interface.
Zumiez offers men’s and women’s outerwear and skate apparel, both with physical stores and through mail orders or online shops. The site presents loads of deals and bundling options, as well as guaranteed delivery in three days or less for selected areas.
It also includes a store locator, loads of options for exchanges and returns, and a track-your-order feature so customers can get up to date information on their purchase. The Magento theme is ideal for reflecting their brand aesthetic.
Websites with the Best Design in the UK
According to Statista, the UK has the highest online shopping penetration rate in all of Europe. And, it’s no surprise that a bulk of eCommerce purchases are made from style websites. As of 2018, more than 23 billion dollars were devoted to fashion sales. By 2023, this revenue is expected to increase to more than 31 billion dollars with a growth of nearly 2 billion dollars per year.
Fred Perry is a well-established brand that offers women’s, men’s, and children’s wear. Several features on the homepage and throughout the site make use of JavaScript and Adobe Flash, showing a wide range of products while keeping the site clean and uncluttered.
Another Magento feature they make use of is the grid option for featuring images.
Parka London specializes in parkas, jackets, and accessories, for both men and women. The site features a JavaScript slide image and interactive image plugins to boost customer engagement and showcase the brand aesthetic.
Ease of navigation, collapsed menu options, and clear call to action buttons boost user engagement and make conversions simple.
Oliver Bonas offers a wide range of women’s clothing, fashion accessories, and home decor. The store features an attractive slide gallery and rotating images on the homepage.
The collapsible sidebar menu helps customers to find the products they want quickly and with a minimum of fuss. Plus, they have an entire page devoted to featured sales.
Paul Smith is a fashion company that caters to both men and women. Their clean, professional design reflects high-quality products, and they feature a banner on the homepage that offers free shipping for orders over 200£.
The Magento grid layout allows customers to browse entire collections quickly and easily.
Missguided is a company that specializes in women’s clothing. The homepage showcases all categories in a row of images that each link to a category page. It also has a popup for new customers offering 20% off of the first purchase.
The site offers some unique features, including a countdown timer for free delivery and other deals.
Scandinavian Websites with Modern Design
eCommerce revenue in the Scandinavian countries has been growing faster than any other region on the planet. According to the eCommerce News research, in the first six months of 2018 alone, revenues from eCommerce increased by 11%. About 60% of the population shops online each year, more than 12 million consumers. This makes the Nordic area a hot region for fashion, beauty, and lifestyle purchases.
Filippa is the leading Scandinavian fashion brand. It offers a wide range of styles for both men’s and women’s clothing, as well as accessories and clothing care products.
The site makes use of Magento’s grid options to showcase product lines on the home page. It also features a store locator and subscription options. Plus, the homepage banner advertises free delivery worldwide and free 30-day return policy.
Bjorn Borg offers mid-range clothing options for both men and women, emphasizing a unique, hip style. The site makes use of Magento’s language options to expand their reach to global proportions.
The website design is clean with rich, high-quality images and a sleek, artful look. Shipping options can also be modified from the home page to suit the customer.
Scandi Mini
Women’s and children’s wear, accessories, fashionable home décor, stationery, picnic supplies, Scandi Mini has whatever you need to spruce up your home and your look. They feature a pinned icon for customer contact, boosting user engagement and letting the customers know that they are valued.
The clean, professional design of the site is minimalistic while still offering a comprehensive look with their different products and styles.
Eton is a fashion company that specializes in men’s shirts and accessories. The homepage banner advertises free returns and guaranteed delivery within 2-5 business days. The site boasts elegance, reflecting the value of the product.
Clothing categories are features at the bottom of the homepage with high-quality images that link to the category page. Plus, ease of navigation makes it simple to go from a visit to a sale. Eton also features a wide range of payment options to suit the needs of any customer.
Tretorn offers women’s and men’s clothing and shoes. The Magento-driven site showcases a clean, professional theme with a call to action buttons that let the user browse by trend or explore new products.
They also have a page devoted entirely to sales. Tretorn does an excellent job with brand building, featuring a page dedicated to the ethic and style of the brand alongside blogs that showcase special lines.
As you can see, there’s no end to the customizable fashion options provided by Magento. Whatever your niche or brand, Magento offers the themes, stock modules, and functionality you need, and you can build your own perfect store with it.
WEB4PRO Attended E-commerce Germany Awards 2019
We always pleased with how fast eCommerce community and number of eCommerce events are growing. Keeping this in mind, we are trying to get the most of it providing the value and expertise sharing articles, contributing to the tech and eCommerce society.
Also, we love to attend conferences for their practical parts with presentations from the most experienced speakers, networking and of course the overall positive attitude of mind. Recently, our team came back from the E-commerce Germany Awards, and we want to tell more about the background of it and what was happening there.
What is E-commerce Germany Awards?
E-commerce Germany Awards is the competition between companies working in eCommerce and Tech field. It has 10 contest categories and three rounds of the competition. In the end, 10 companies are nominated to participate in the final round and then 1 company wins in each category.
Our company, WEB4PRO was nominated in the Best Agency 2019 category, and we made it to the last round. We are grateful for having this opportunity to take part in such a great event.
But that was not all. Besides, there was a huge exhibition with lots of products, services, and tools presented for a different area of focus in eCommerce. People who were looking for some specific solutions for their businesses or partners could use this time for their advantage. So below we will talk a little bit more about the exhibition and lectures.
E-commerce Berlin EXPO
E-commerce Berlin is one of the biggest eCommerce events in Europe. It provides business opportunities for people from eCommerce and retail: merchants, service providers, hosting providers, platforms and business solutions, logistics and payment processing, and for others.
Exhibition with more than 115 companies, presentations from industry leaders and overall atmosphere connected 5000 people from all over the world. For us, it was such a great time and practical experience to learn about innovations and best practices in eCommerce from experts in this field.
Tips to Work on Magento Categories
Here you will find out how to work with categories in Magento store.
A Category is needed to establish the structure of your store’s Catalog. Before creating categories you need to think about the usability of your product page, so the user can browse product from one category and easily navigate to different subsections. Try to be consistent and use the same approach for all product types in your catalog.
To create categories, use the admin panel. Below, we will show how to create and add categories, and answer other questions related to working with categories.
How to Create Category in Magento 1
Step 1. On the Admin menu, select Catalog > Manage Categories.
Step 2. Before you begin, set Choose Store View to the store or view. By default, the scope of the category configuration is set to “All Store Views.”
Step 3. In the category tree, click the category that is to be the parent of the new category. The parent is the level just above the new category.
If you’re starting from the beginning without any data, there might be only two categories in the list: “Default Category,” which is the root, and an “Example Category.”
Step 4. Click the Add Subcategory button.
After creating the category, you need to add them to create the catalog structure. Learn how to do it from the below guide.
How to Add Category in Magento 2
Step 1. Login in Magento Admin.
Step 2. Select Products -> Categories.
Step 3. Select Parent or Root Category in which you need to insert your new category and click “Add Subcategory” or you can create Root Category.
Step 4. Enter Category data. Category Name is required entry. Click the Save button.
Why Is Drupal Website Beneficial for Your Business?
With technology developing so quickly, the most important decision when you make eCommerce website is which content management system to use. The CMS handles the functionality of the site. Select the right CMS, and your site will be scalable and easily accessible across a wide range of devices. To keep up with the times, online stores also need to offer simple navigation and a personalized experience rich with interactive elements.
Drupal is a cutting edge CMS that offers top of the line digital solutions for all of your eCommerce needs. You might ask, “What is the use of Drupal? Why should I decide to make a Drupal 8 store when there are so many other choices out there?”
The answer is simple. Drupal offers customizability, flexibility, and security. It’s a modular, open source CMS that lets you tailor your site to your brand, functionality, and approach. It’s perfect for all businesses, from the largest to the smallest. Plus, its solid, versatile design lets you modify the site and develop it with a minimum of a hassle.
Let’s take a look at some of Drupal’s benefits and how some major companies have used Drupal sites to improve their business and reach new heights of success.
Benefits of Drupal Web Platform
When you create a website using Drupal, you tap into a wide range of benefits that are hard to find in any other CMS. First and foremost, customers want security. They want to be confident when entering their information to make a purchase.
Drupal Commerce offers the highest rated security currently available. It has never yet been subject to a widely exploited vulnerability, and regular patches and safeguard measures are issued to improve its safety continually.
Another great feature is that it is open source and has the backing of a strong Drupal community that exchanges ideas and innovations. Its unique design lets you add as many new web pages as you want without having to adjust the infrastructure.
Let’s have a look at the main benefits of Drupal:
Flexibility
Drupal 8 websites are modular, so they can be easily customized with thousands of plug-ins and modules to give you exactly the functionality you want.
It comes packed with custom features that can be modified, adjusted, and implemented as needed. These include features for social media, SEO, CRM, and security. Drupal also lets you manage and create many different types of content.
A site built with Drupal is designed to handle blogs, articles, polls, statistics, videos, and other content types. It lets you create content-rich sites for any niche, from media to marketing. Also, since it’s easy to edit design elements, the web page configurations can be made as simple or as complex as needed.
Personalization and Great UX
Your website is your storefront. It carries the theme and message of your brand. So, it needs to be personalized to reflect what you have to offer. Personalization is what makes the difference between a conversion and a bounce.
Drupal provides a broad range of themes and color pallets suitable for any purpose. Its advanced system is simple to build and maintain. Drupal comes stocked with built-in tools for user interface (UI) and user experience (UX).
The result is that you can offer the customer a targeted, interactive experience with intuitive navigation and a user-friendly interface. Plus, Drupal customer support is second to none. Whatever the needs of your site and your customer, they can be met with a minimum of hassle.
Mobile-first Architecture
There are more mobile devices in existence now than ever before, and they are more accessible to the global population. So, one of the most important things to keep your site competitive is to make it not only mobile-friendly but mobile first.
When sites are designed around desktop architecture, it can be challenging to optimize the mobile experience fully. Drupal 8 is designed with this trend in mind, suitable for desktop but designed mobile-first. This means that the Drupal mobile site comes fully optimized for mobile devices. This saves time and effort, as well as making sure that your site is accessible to anyone, anywhere.
All-In-One: CMS for Different Business Needs
Whatever you need for your eCommerce store, Drupal brings it within reach. Successful sites are based on customer needs. They guide them through discovery and purchase of products or services, making it a breeze for them to find any information they want along the way.
Drupal 8 eCommerce modules let you tailor site functionality to the user experience you’d like to provide. They let you connect with and engage the audience through Google Analytics modules, robust APIs, and a versatile system interface that can fit any system architecture you need.
Also, your Drupal store incorporates a wide range of features and tools that improve the experience for both developers and users. It is easy to develop a store in a short period, plus optimization and security is a strong side of Drupal CMS.
The current trend is for static sites to dwindle and make room for dynamic content. The content management system needs to be robust, accessible through a range of digital contact points, and abreast of current trends in customer engagement. Drupal excels at eCommerce. This is reflected by the many high-profile companies that have used it for their eCommerce websites.
To give you the overall vision of the best Drupal eCommerce sites, we’ve prepared a list of them based on the most successful companies:
Box is a company that specializes in collaboration software and simple file sharing. All of their services are online, unlike Tesla. They’ve used Drupal to create a website that showcases their online solutions clearly and easily. It’s user-friendly and efficient, with a crisp professional feel.
The site gives direct access to their proprietary software and code, which can be integrated with other digital solutions, like Google Apps, IBM, Slack, and Office 365. Box currently services many high profile clients, including Pandora, Boston Scientific, and P&G.
LUSH is a site that offers premium handmade soaps and body care supplies. Their site uses Drupal Commerce features to combine commerce and content, providing inspiring stories that reach users across the globe. Users can reach the site easily through any device.
The site is clean and streamlined. It engages the customer with an introduction page featuring the newest line and clear call to action buttons. The setup practically guarantees click-throughs.
Pinterest is a great place to share images, quotes, recipes, and other forms of online content. It’s image-rich and has a reach of over 175 million users. Pinterest Business was created as a branch of the parent site, designed for presented services and products to this Pinterest audience.
Once again, this is a Drupal store. It integrates seamlessly with the main website, which was built with Python. And easy is the keyword here. It’s simple to add subpages, implement additional functionalities, and integrate with external systems. Drupal has allowed Pinterest to link their existing audience with a new service in a fraction of the time required for making an entirely new website.
Royal Mail is a UK based site that offers a wide range of solutions for delivering, receiving, and redirecting mail. It also allows customers to track items, buy and print postage, and pay fees online.
Drupal Commerce has allowed them to develop a simple REST API that serves and seamlessly integrates multiple sites. The result is a content data server that combines all of their many services into one easily accessible contact point.
Savant is a service-oriented industry that offers home automation systems. Their goal was to craft an immersive experience with a modular CMS that is simple to maintain and update.
Drupal was the perfect solution. It offers strong performance, versatility, and a modular architecture that can be adjusted or scaled as necessary without a major overhaul to the whole site.
Platform longevity is key, as digital developments are moving so quickly that a poorly planned CMS can make the site obsolete in no time. This is especially important for Savant, as it is a technological service that is constantly expanding into new markets. The website reflects this, emphasizing imagery and animation and reflecting the feeling of the brand.
Hermes offers a wide range of products including women’s clothing, menswear, perfume, and fashion accessories. Their site makes use of video plugins to feature fashion shows that present their clothing lines in all their glory. It is based on Drupal Commerce and we see that it works great for the business benefits.
It also has branded preloader, perfect site colors, and fonts that represent a brand and strengthen its positions in customers’ mind. Besides smart design with various useful blocks to showcase products perfectly, it has high-quality images, and let customer complete the purchase. They offer a wide range of shipping and payment options and integrate their physical store with their online market with tools to find the brick and mortar shop nearest you.
Manhattan Associates is a company based in connecting suppliers with buyers to build an entire supply chain. To broaden the client base and meet digital strategy goals, they decided to have a premium site built with Drupal 8.
With a global client base, Manhattan required marketing automation, integration with third-party services and tech, and translation services. Given that their operations work on a massive scope and have many moving parts, Manhattan also needed a site that could fully integrate the CRM and powerful editorial tools to educate customers and users in the best use of the services.
Their website is fast, responsive, and clean. The homepage offers testimonials, demos, and CTAs. This site is an example of the power of Drupal to coordinate a host of complex functions and different services.
As you can see, Drupal is being used by some of the biggest names in commerce by niches ranging from online services to physical products. With a CMS this robust and versatile, the sky’s the limit!
Magento One Step Checkout: How to Choose and Work with It
Using a simplified checkout is an optimal way to make your store run more smoothly and quickly. That said, how are you supposed to choose between the various one-step checkouts and how can you work with one of them for your business benefits?
Below, we’re going to tell you what are the main benefits of one step checkout that are already proved by merchants. Also, the most important that you will find here list of the best one step checkout extensions for your Magento store.
Benefits of Magento One Page Checkout
To get started, let’s talk about why you should use Magento’s One-Page Checkout.
It’s easy to use. Your customers can check out and view their shopping cart from a single page to ensure their patients and satisfaction. For merchants, this is easy to use because it provides you with a way to customize your site without coding.
It’s user-friendly. Since the entire process becomes simpler for your customers, you can make user-friendly checkout page and attract customers with easy checkout steps.
It quickens the checkout time. When you aren’t being redirected to a multitude of different pages, you can complete your checkout faster. By filling out a simple form, you will save clients’ time and reduce the abandoned carts rate.
It’ll improve sales results. By using Magento One Page Checkout, you’re reducing the number of steps your customers need to make to complete their purchase. By limiting the chances for your customers to be overwhelmed, they’ll be loyal to the brand or store and complete their purchases more often.
The great thing about this checkout process is that customers don’t need to sign up for accounts if they don’t want to and if they do, they can wait until they check out. If you’re on the fence about whether you should ask your customers to sign up, there are some benefits to doing so. The major benefit of having customers sign up is that when they need to check out, their billing information will be filled in immediately.
Magento 2’s checkout process also ensures that when someone is checking out, the system filters through existing user emails to find out if the customer has an account. This is beneficial to you because customers are less likely to abandon their accounts if you make it easy for them to check out.
Magento has integrated the one-step process with an address suggestion space. When someone goes to check out, then, a number of different addresses are suggested to quicken the entire process.
One Step Checkout Extensions for Magento 2
Now you can learn more about which extensions will work for you. Here are some features you might come across with these extensions:
A major benefit of using One Step Checkout by Mageplaza is that it helps you to increase the conversion rate of your eCommerce store and it makes checkouts more direct. When you use this tool, nearly all payment methods are accepted; therefore, none of your customers will be left out during the checkout process. If you suspect that some of your clients or customers will be buying gifts, you can ask them if they want to have their products gift wrapped.
Price: $89 for a single license 12 months of support.
According to the website, this extension is best for those who are looking for a clean interface, who want to provide their customers with coupons, and for those who want to provide their customers with the option for the desired delivery date.
The Magento 3 checkout template for this one step checkout is user-friendly and provides you with an easy way to edit your overall store.
With Aheadworks’ extension, you can track conversions through checkout phases. By determining how efficient each field is, you’ll be able to adjust your checkout process to tailor to your individual clientele.
Your checkout page directly affects your sales. It’s the last point of sale and as such, it’s the last chance for you to make a good impression. If your customers aren’t sure about certain products, your checkout page is the last chance for them to make a decision. That’s why it’s so important for you to have a checkout page that assesses and adapts to your needs.
Magestore is known for being host to a number of different Magento extensions. Their One Step Checkout extension has similar features to the aforementioned extensions and overall, it’s a good balance between price and quality.
Price: $249 for the Open Source and for the Commerce edition is $549.
From a single checkout page, your customers will be able to add addresses efficiently with Google suggestions and they’ll be able to edit them on the same page. If you’re not sure whether you want to use this extension, Amasty does have extension demos for you to try out. With their easy-to-use Magento checkout page customization, you shouldn’t have a problem of using this extension to make your site checkout simple and accessible!
In a classic checkout system, your customers may experience between 5 to 10 steps. With Aheadworks’ one step checkout, you can reduce these to a single step. For $159 you can do the following:
Provide them with upfront information
Provide an estimate of how long the process will be
Price: $159 for the Open Source and $359 for the Commerce edition.
With Amasty, your eCommerce store’s shopping cart will be on the same page as the checkout page. Not only this, but you can have complete control over the fields your customers need to hand in.
Price: Free version or 25$ monthly for the advanced features list.
With Iwdagency, you have the option of using the free or the professional version of the extension. Like you might guess, the professional version of the extension will provide you with more features. This one step checkout supports a number of different payment options for both the free and professional version. The version you have to pay for, however, will provide you with the following features:
Support and installation at no extra cost.
Your customers will have the opportunity to buy or receive gift cards.
Your customers can have subscription services.
One Step Checkout for M1 by Mageplug
Price: $159 plus 90 days of free support.
According to MageCheckout, carts are abandoned, on average, over 60% of the time. At the end of the day, online shopping can be long and complicated. For impulsive shoppers, this process provides them with enough time to think and close the page completely. When you have one step checkout, your customers can shop more quickly, and as such, they’ll spend more money.
Here’s a short summary of this extension’s features:
Reduction of abandoned carts
Increased conversions
Increased sales
Tips on How to Start an eCommerce Business
Starting an eCommerce business is becoming a daily dream for lots of visionary business people. Business merchants wrestle with the question; when and how should one start an eCommerce business. It is a hard nut to crack. With the internet, there are lots of tips and strategies out there that needs careful consideration before taking an action plan.
The Internet has made many business people successful, and it has equally misled several businesses. It’s upon business merchants to carefully sift through what they read. This guide provides an original approach on how to start an eCommerce business.
Create Your Own Company Name
Ideally, a good business name for eCommerce website should relay the skills, services offered, and uniqueness. There is so much than meets the eye in your business name, and therefore it’s better to take sufficient time creating business name before you back it up with the right marketing strategy. Be unique- instead of trying to capture all brands in the company name focus on a single essential element.
You can either use phrases, Compound nouns or transmutations to give your company a good name. Choosing the right business name requires creativity, evade power words. A short name has a powerful gesture than a long one. Remember, your business name shouldn’t capture everything leave something for the imagination. If you follow the outlined process, you will discover an outstanding trademark.
Register Your Own Brand Name
Registering a business brand name is a straightforward process. It only takes less than 90 minutes when the application is made online. The shortest way to register is on the U.S Trademark Office’s Website.
Before you acquire the brand name pause enough to check the Trademark Electronic Search System to be certain that no other company that bears such a brand name.
You must have the Employer Identification Number (EIN) to actualize the process. It’s a requirement to be able to open a bank account for the payment of the taxes. Remember the process will stall if you don’t get valid business licenses and permits.
Before you begin operating consult with your state to ascertain the sales tax permits you need. In the end, you should have all the business permits and licenses to comply with the law.
Secure Your eCommerce Domain Name and Website
Creating your website entails choosing your domain name. Web hosting providers provide domain names, and you can choose to buy from either of them. You will then be required to enter the domain name into a text box.
Keyword optimization determines the domain name. You require a great keyword to invent a domain name that will increase traffic in of your site. Remember webmasters don’t use pompous words for URL.
To see how it works open Godaddy.com and enter the chosen keyword. GoDaddy.com scans the names under the submitted keyword. It extracts all the taken names, and then it provides you with suggestions for the appropriate possible names.
Select the Best eCommerce Business Structure
Many business owners wrestle with the question: What is the best eCommerce business structure? We are pleased to tackle this issue in depth. There are three business structures.
Sole Proprietorship
In this structure, you and your business are intertwined. You own all business assets and loses. This structure requires no long-term tax planning. A sole proprietorship is the highly recommended business structure since you don’t need a business license to run sole proprietorship under your name.
Partnership
In partnership, any profit or loss is shared equally to all members according to the percentage of their contribution, and the government doesn’t tax individuals. A partnership is known for its lower compliance cost. If several members are in a connection, the cost of tax work becomes less.
If the partnership is not a general one, then it is a limited partnership. In a general partnership, all members are bound to damages of the business with impeachable liability, but in a limited partnership, the non-active members are only obliged to the amount they have invested in the business.
Corporation
A corporation is an independent legal unity with its mechanisms, constitution, and management officers. The bearers of the corporation run it as a separate entity, and a member can sue it if need be. Therefore you don’t require this type of structure for online eCommerce platform because of its technicalities.
You can either start trading as a partnership or a sole proprietor. However, we normally advise our clients to consider the repercussion when incorporating their eCommerce business. A partnership is the best structure for any online store since with it you avoid major conflicts in the future.
Find the Right eCommerce Vendor
To find eCommerce vendors write down how you want to acquire your orders. Some eCommerce businesses prefer drop shipping while others choose to store their products in a warehouse set for shipping when an order is placed.
To get the best price link with the supplier and shun the middlemen. You connect with them through a phone call; you need to link someone (supplier) who can make a decision. If you connect with the supplier, you cut down cost hence making bigger profits. You also can negotiate for a better price.
In as much as you need to reduce the cost, you don’t need to interfere with the quality of the product. For the best quality, you ought to ask for samples from your vendors. Through this tactic, you will ascertain what your customers prefer. Since there are many vendors out there, don’t deal with the ones who don’t avail samples to you.
Many business merchants get too busy with their companies to spend time when selling online.
Marketing is the backbone of business success; actually, you should start with marketing your new business online before you open it. We present to you simple and effective ways on how to market your online store by yourself.
Discover the structure that best suits you. To understand eCommerce marketing for small businesses, you should know that trending online is an investment. Each different business structure works differently for each category of customers. Acquaint yourself with varying models of business before you choose what to sell online.
Design excellent social media profiles. Become a staunch member of business groups-in that offer advice on social media. If you take the provided information, you become a guru in your field which ultimately improves your reputation hence boosting your sales. Use Facebook and Twitter, for instance, to give discounts to promote your products. Get gifted writers who can do quality content for your blog. Get blogs to do a search for your niche and install a free social sharing plugin. Make sure that the readers can share the content for your blog.
Manage Work Processes with the Right eCommerce Software
When marketing your online store, you need the best eCommerce software that can efficiently manage the online store and aid in processing payment. You can either create your software or purchase.
To attract more customers to your website there must be clear-cut strategies that aid in managing your store online. Also, one of the most important decisions you take is choosing the right platform for your future store. If you just start, you can either sell on the marketplace or create a store. There are some free options as Wix and Etsy, but to grow you need something more scalable to have a room for upgrades.
We’ve written a lot o the articles covering platforms’ comparison for the past year. In short, the strongest competitors on the market are WooCommerce, Magento, Shopify, PrestaShop, OpenCart and BigCommerce.
According to BuiltWith, all of these platforms shared eCommerce software market with each other.
Another source, SimilarTech, shows that among the most popular platforms are WooCommerce, Shopify, Squarespace Commerce and Magento (all versions). Each platform has its benefits and pitfalls, but we found out that Magento is the most flexible and scalable solution.
Magento is the best eCommerce software that does well with any type of business. It has unique features compared to other software. With Magento, you go live quickly. It has a Cloud hosting and deployment feature to accelerate your sales hence connecting you with certified partners. Cloud hosting helps reduce the cost by enabling you to monitor and host eCommerce solutions by yourself.
Not only this, you can add as much functionality as you want. Different extensions from the marketplace and custom solutions will serve for your business benefits. To go deeper through this topic, you can check our research on the top eCommerce platforms and their features comparison on the Clutch blog.
After creating a name for your brand and store, and choosing the platform to start, you need to think about unique web design. If you have an online clothing store, ensure that your site has high-quality photos. Fill your store with colorful patterns of shirts, trousers, shorts, and jackets. Customers buy what appeases their eyes; therefore, feed their eyes with what they wish to see, and they will purchase something good.
After you’ve made all the important steps with documents, you’ve chosen the product that you’ll sell, you have the store, and it’s already working. However, you want to grow, and increase your sales. That’s where you can consider of improving your business strategy, and develop your brand. We recommend you to look at 9 practical tips that are adopted by successful companies, and try them for your business growth.
