'Net Features : magento

Terapeak Brings Sales Analytics to Magento Merchants

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:00:00 GMT

Analytics platform provider Terapeak has released MySales, an application extension for Ebay's Magento solution.

Terapeak will provide Magento retailer insight into sales across across multiple channels in unified view, showing merchants just how well sales and merchandise are competing in popular marketplaces - including Ebay.

“We want our customers to have access to information and tools that will enable them to achieve greater visibility into their own sales performance," said Kevin North, President and CEO of Terapeak. "By having the ability to compare their activity across multiple channels, our customers can determine how and where they can diversify their business. MySales is a natural extension of the market intelligence that Terapeak currently provides to online merchants.”

The official launch of MySales will be at the Magento Imagine Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada from April 8 to April 11, 2013. Terapeak currently services more than 1.3 million online retailers.

Video for Magento Merchants

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 20:15:00 GMT

E-commerce video platform Treepodia is bringing its services to Ebay owned Magento deployments.

Treepodia provides a sort of all-in-one video management solution, enabling users to create, host, stream, distribute and optimize video delivery. It's new downloadable extension, which it is distributing on Magento Connect (the platform's app store) brings these capabilities inside Magento installation. With built-in social sharing features and mobile capabilities, and combined with performance optimization features through built-in A/B testing mechanisms and learning algorithms, the extension is one that should definitely catch the attention of Internet retailers.

"Product videos are proven to have a major impact on ecommerce conversion rates as well as SEO rankings," said Melody King, VP of marketing for Treepodia. "The availability of Treepodia's platform on Magento Connect will make it easy for Magento-based retailers to leverage our powerful platform used by giants such as Walmart, Dell and Office Depot, at an affordable cost and backed by our 4x ROI contractual guarantee."

Magento Rules Ecommerce Community

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 20:15:00 GMT

An October 2012 survey of the top one million sites (in Alexa) puts into perspective just how popular Magento, the ecommerce platform within Ebay's X.Commerce platform), has become.

Magento captured 23% of the market according to research conducted by Tom Robert Shaw, a UK Magento developer at Meanbee. That equates to just over 8,000 sites of the top one million (Magento also lead in the top 100,000 sites). Magento has seen growth in every edition of the that particular survey since it began 2 years ago, experiencing a 20 percent growth rate since the last survey in February 2012.

Ecommerce platform ZenCart also seemed to fare pretty well, capturing 12 percent of the market. Both Magento and ZenCart both released new versions since the previous survey. Also noteworthy were that VirtueMart and OSCommerce experienced a dip in market share, while PrestaShop and OpenCart saw significant increases.

Who Is Powering the Internet?

Amberly Dressler — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 16:30:00 GMT

That’s the question Flippa, a marketplace for buying and selling websites, looked to answer when the company took more than $26 million in transactions from the last 18 months (Oct. 2012) to work out what technologies are used to power the Internet, and how this has changed in the last 12 months.

The company’s findings should prove to be particularly useful and interesting to e-commerce startups, bloggers and digital marketers, as the data shows some mainstays for development and e-commerce falling by the wayside.

For example, in the e-commerce realm, the demand for eBay's Magento (read about their most recent updates here) and Yahoo Store continues to weaken at the expense of challengers such as Shopify and BigCommerce.

According to the data, Blogger also appears to be in perpetual decline, as for Content Management Systems, it accounted for the supply of just 1 percent of those transactions.

To read about the learnings from $26 million in website sales, click here.

Magento Integrates Advanced Site Search from Nextopia

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 15:12:00 GMT

Website Magazine has written somewhat extensively on the important topic of site search before - see the E-Commerce Express column in the November 2012 edition.

It's useful to periodically explore developments from that niche technology sector as strong and unique site search functionality is one of the fundamentals of success in the competitive Internet retail market.

A good example of this comes from Nextopia, which just announced a collaboration with eBay's e-commerce platform Magento. Through the partnership, Nextopia will offer Magento merchants site search tools, provide access to purchase behavior data and the ability to deploy merchandising strategies.

"Nextopia has extensive experience with Magento and we were able to integrate their solution into our Magento store in a matter of days,” said Kyle Faino, Director of Marketing & Ecommerce for Super Supplements. “We loved the ability to customize Nextopia to our business needs and our development team liked the tight integration. Anyone on the Magento platform looking to drive results through enhanced search should take a close look at Nextopia.”

Nextopia currently integration with a broad range of e-commerce technology solutions, including custom ASP, .NET or PHP systems and even hosted solutions like Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, Netsuite and Volusion.

Imagine This: Major Moves for Magento Merchants

Allison Howen — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:00:00 GMT

It looks like e-commerce platform Magento is running at full-speed ahead.

Magento, which is a division of eBay’s X.commerce initiative, was the recipient of a bundle of new updates this week at the Imagine eCommerce Conference that took place in Las Vegas.

The new updates offer merchants and developers the ability to create more customized and easier shopping experiences for consumers, and are available in the latest versions of the Magento Community and Magento Enterprise software. The biggest updates include the integration of HTML5 for Magento Mobile and PayPal Payments.

Since smartphones are becoming one of the most popular channels for consumers, Magento is now offering its merchants a simple way to create a more compelling mobile shopping experience.

Magento’s new mobile offerings include gesture-based controls, multi-touch and image scaling, device-specific audio and video capabilities. Other new features aim at creating a user-friendly experience for consumers, including an easy-to-use search and results display, the ability to drag and drop products to the shopping cart, the capability to zoom and easily swipe between product images, as well as the inclusion of cross- and up-sell features.

The customizable HTML5 theme also supports iPhone, Android and Mobile Opera browsers.

“From research to checkout and beyond, merchants can now drive conversions more effectively, increase order size and build customer loyalty,” says Roy Rubin, general manager of Magento and chief product and customer officer of X.commerce.

The other major Magento announcement is the integration of the PayPal small-business product suite, which helps merchants compete in multi-channel retail environments. PayPal Payments offers merchants one solution that makes it simple to accept payments online, from a mobile device or in-person.

PayPal Payments is available in three tiers, with every tier offering a full suite of payment solutions. Magento users can select PayPal Standard, Advanced, Pro or Express Checkout directly from the Magento platform -- based on which solution best meets their business' needs.

Additional updates to the Magento platform include advanced visitor segmentation capabilities, the ability to enable consumers to create multiple wish lists and an improved content management system for Magento Enterprise users, as well as the automatic generation of coupon codes for both Magento Enterprise and Community merchants.

Magento has been gaining a lot of momentum recently. Prior to the Imagine Conference, the company announced partnerships with VisiStat, Bronto Software and 500friends. The X.commerce open ecosystem that Magento is a part of provides users with a large selection of end-to-end commerce technologies, including shopping carts, payment services, inventory management, marketplace integration, SEO and more.

Social Gamification Gains Momentum in the Retail Channel

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:20:00 GMT

eCommerce coupon and “offer marketing” platform Fanplayer has brought its gamification technology to Magento, the first such partner in Ebay’s X.Commerce ecosystem.

Magento merchants are now able to add the Fanplayr widget to their stores to engage consumers socially with games that provide multi-variable coupons and offers. There are currently three Fanplayr games – Spinner (see short demo video below), Mystery Game, and Card Flip.

The Fanplayr widgets can be deployed pretty much anywhere – not just a Magento shopping cart – including Facebook brand pages, email, mobile websites, even within advertising. The extension offers real-time performance insights into the coupons/offers being used by merchants and also provides social graph (and Facebook Connect) integration.

"Magento's integration partnership with Fanplayr enables merchants to better engage and convert social consumers to sales using new and traditional marketing channels," said Fanplayr CEO Simon Yencken. "We're excited to be a lead innovator for the Magento and X.commerce platforms and are focused on building new and innovative commerce experiences that drive the highest engagement, loyalty and sales for merchants."

Email Remarketing Solution from Magento

Allison Howen — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:00:00 GMT

A new partnership between customer recovery solutions provider UpSellit and open-source e-commerce platform Magento provides merchants with a solution for bringing abandoned consumers back.

The partnership integrates UpSellit’s DataHound Email ReMarketing solution into the Magento platform, allowing Magento merchants to capture pre-submit contact information in real time. By capturing abandoned leads and session data, merchants have the ability to automatically send targeted customer recovery emails to consumers that don’t complete their purchases.

According to the company, marketers using DataHound Email ReMarketing tend to see a 5 to 15 percent overall lift in online conversions and collect up to 40 percent more leads.

"We are very pleased to be a part of Magento's rapidly growing community of online merchants," says Tom Kogler, UpSellit Co-Founder and CEO. "Having recently surpassed 4 million downloads, we think Magento's diverse list of clients will benefit greatly from our unique answer to site abandonment. With the addition of UpSellit to the Magento Extension Marketplace, merchants can now quickly and easily implement our hosted and managed email remarketing solution."

PPC Ad Management Comes to Magento Connect

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 17:30:00 GMT

AdWords bid management application WordWatch announced an interesting integration with Ebay-owned e-commerce solution Magento.

The application, which is designed for small business advertisers, is the first such PPC management application in the Magento Connect store – Magento’s repository for third-party application extensions. WordWatch will have dibs on more than 110,000 Magento users. The application will enable merchants to automate their AdWords management and optimize spend through a process of monitoring, analyzing and adjusting keyword bids.

“We’re very happy to get our app into the Magento Connect store. Magento is one of the largest and most respected storefront companies on the Web and we’re sure that our WordWatch app will be helpful to their merchants,” says Todd Wilkinson, CEO of WordWatch.

View of WordWatch dashboard within Magento:

Selling on Twitter with Chirpify

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Most Web workers will consider Twitter more of a social network than an e-commerce platform, but that’s exactly what Twitter might become as Chirpify launches this week.

Once known as Sell Simply, Chirpify enables merchants (or anyone processing an order really) to conduct direct, person-to-person payments and donations over Twitter through its retail sales platform.

While a relatively new concept to say the least, it’s definitely being hyped as a way to “turn Tweets into transactions.” To determine whether or not that will ultimately be the case on a larger scale you’ll need a crystal ball far more accurate than my own, but a peak into how the platform actually works provides a good look into what you might expect.

Chirpify essentially just integrates with PayPal, but what makes the platform interesting is its ease of use - making a purchase or donation requires the user to only reply to a Tweet with something akin to @username BUY or @username DONATE. No fees are charged to the user for purchasing/donating.

Likely what will give Chirpify a boost, at least initially, is that it offers integration with existing e-commerce storefronts, including Magento (perhaps a nod in exchange for using PayPal as a payment platform. Integrating with popular e-commerce storefronts – the only others listed being Shopify and SAP – is a smart move out of the gate particularly as many likely to use the service aren’t familiar with tasks such as back-end fulfillment, listing and transaction management.

To use Chirpify, merchants simply click the “list on Twitter” button when drafting an item listing for sale in their e-commerce dashboard. Inbound sales information appears as either an email or as part of the retailer’s back-end system, as well as via a DM on Twitter. There are three Chirpify pricing plans (Basic, Pro, and Enterprise).

Chirpify receives a flat 4 percent commission on basic accounts and a flat 4 percent commission for Pro accounts, which start at $49.00 per month. For those merchants interested in going the route of the enterprise-level, Chirpify won’t take any commission at all but expect a hefty monthly or annual fee in exchange.

“Brands, retailers, politicians, celebrities and individuals have spent the past six years using Twitter to build communities and brand affinity, so why not allow them to sell on Twitter directly?” says Chris Teso, founder of Chirpify. “Customers don’t have to leave Twitter to make a purchase or donation. Chirpify removes the frictions of traditional e-commerce check-out processes.”

Selling Digital Goods on Magento

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:30:00 GMT

Marketers have one more reason to take a look at Magento. The platform has partnered with ifeelgoods, a service which offers brands and retailers the ability to offer digital goods such as Facebook Credits or Skype minutes as incentives for customer actions including purchases, registrations and social media engagement.

"In digital goods, marketers have found a new strategy that lowers their costs, increases conversions and creates social media engagement," Bob Schwartz, President of Magento said. "Ifeelgoods has developed a product that makes it easy for retailers and brands to enjoy the benefits of this new and innovative approach to marketing."

There are clearly a lot of benefits to offering incentives in exchange for user activity. For example, advertisers could increase CTR and improve cost performance by offering digital goods/freebies. It’s not difficult to see that it could help in spurring virality and engagement in social media and apps. Plus, it adds a layer of “gamification” when done well which can only benefit the shopping and buying experience – something (gamification) which is certainly on the minds of advertisers, retailers and publishers – everyone.

E-Commerce Platform Magento Acquired by Ebay

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 20:52:00 GMT

Ecommerce platform Magento has been acquired by eBay and will take its place within X.Commerce, eBay's newly created integrated open commerce platform group. Ebay has held a minority stake in Magento since 2010.

The Magento platform has grown very quickly since its launch in 2007 and now serves tens of thousands of merchants according to the company.

“Technology-driven innovation is blurring the lines between online and offline commerce, changing the way consumers shop, and enabling retailers of all sizes to benefit from the latest innovations from the developer community,” said John Donahoe, President and Chief Executive Officer, eBay Inc.

More details will be shared with developers during the X.Commerce Innovate conference on Oct. 12-13 in San Francisco.

“The feedback we’ve heard from external developers has been clear — they don't just want payments or an ecommerce site; they want access to a full set of commerce capabilities to build complete shopping experiences for merchants. We believe the acquisition of Magento and creation of our X.Commerce group will enable us to meet developers’ needs and drive global commerce innovation for retailers and consumers.”

Magento Merchants Gain Solutions from Listrak

Linc Wonham — Mon, 16 May 2011 07:39:00 GMT

Ecommerce platform provider Magento and email marketing solutions firm Listrak have announced their partnership to provide online retailers with Listrak’s fully-integrated Magento Extension, which includes solutions for automated shopping cart abandonment, purchase cadence optimization and click and conversion tracking.

With shopping cart abandonment averaging 70 percent, according to Forrester Research, online retailers are losing significant revenue. Listrak’s integrated shopping cart abandonment solution enables Magento merchants to recoup that lost revenue with an automated email series that reaches back to shoppers who have abandoned their carts. The solution includes custom messaging, personalization, merchandising, split testing, click and conversion tracking and promotional offers to prompt the purchase.

The purchase cadence optimization solution enables merchants to proactively prompt the re-purchase of consumable items with email campaigns that are triggered by identified purchase cadence. Additionally, the click and conversion tracking feature provides retailers with success metrics and the ability to optimize their site and marketing campaigns.

“We are committed to helping online retailers drive sales; and with shopping cart abandonment costing retailers more than $18 billion annually, our partnership with Magento allows us to provide a fully integrated solution that immediately impacts the merchants’ revenue stream,” says Ross Kramer, Listrak CEO. “Our solutions provide more ways for retailers to drive business and engage their customers to increase lifetime value.”

Listrak and Magento are jointly hosting a webinar highlighting the capabilities of the extension and success of a current etailer using the solution. The webinar will be held at 2:00 ET on May 25.

Listrak has also recently announced similar partnerships with Miva Merchants and 3Dcart to enable online retailers to utilize powerful email marketing tools to increase sales and engage customers.

eCC Mobile for Magento from Webgility

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 22:00:00 GMT

Can you manage your online storefront from your mobile device?

Webgility (a provider of eCommerce and QuickBooks integration software) is making that task possible with eCC Mobile, an iphone application that enables merchants to manage their online store through their mobile device.

eCC Mobile currently supports the Magento eCommerce platform (Community, Professional and Enterprise editions) and will be integrating with other shopping cart platforms this year, including X-Cart, Ubercart, Open Cart, ZenCart, osCommerce and many more.

eCC Mobile is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, and requires iOS 4.1 or later. Users of the application can monitor sales performance, view order status, review store catalog, and update product details (pricing, quantity, etc.). You can also directly contact customers using native iPhone features, such as text messaging, email and phone.

Magento Enterprise Edition Available

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 03:19:00 GMT

Open source e-commerce platform Magento released an enterprise edition of their solution last week. Consider it a premium grade Magento product geared towards larger companies.

This edition has additional features, including ROI-specific features not available in the open source product. Magento enterprise will also include SLA (service level agreement) based support with guaranteed response times, warranties and indemnification and soon, PA-DSS certification (PCI Data Security Standard). Let's see your open source software do that.

Magento has created a handy product comparison page to help merchants determine which is right for their e-commerce enterprise.