Category: Magento 2

Get ready to boost up with the latest Magento!

Magento has been improving every year to become the first choice for the eCommerce platform and the latest release of Magento Commerce 2.2.6 and Magento Open Source 2.2.6 has given a prime focus on performance and security enhancements.

Between the patch release time, Magento will also fixsingle high-priority issues for keeping your site protected.

MAGENTO COMMERCE CLOUD

Multiple updates have been made to the Magento Cloud Tools package which is also known as ECE-tool.The updated feature list includes environment configuration validation, zero-downtime deployments, configuration process, and an improved Docker setup.

Following are the key highlights of Magento Commerce 2.2.6 and Magento Open Source 2.2.6:

Performance Enhancements

It consists of catalog indexing improvements like high-performance layered navigation, improved search & indexing actions and optimized category product indexer logic for Magento instances with multiple websites as well as stores. Overall, 10 significant performance improvements plus product quality enhancements including 100 contributed by the community.

Better reliability and checkout process

Still suffering due to the deletion of shipping address on the guest checkout while the checkout page is reloaded several times? Worry not, shopping cart won’t be emptied any more. WithMagento, the various shipping options don’t decrease the speed of order!

Improved Amazon Pay, dot-mailer and Klarna

Some of the core improvements include New Consent Insight of dot-mailer, uplifted virtual products handling, as well as Klarna automated onboarding with the link inclusion along with account sign-in options.

The Features of Magento Shipping include:

• Click & Collect
• Reference to Shipment
• Processed Batch

Improvements in CAPTCHA

The error “Provided form does not exist” is solved in the latest version of Magento 2.2.6. Along with this, now, CAPTCHA validation also works pretty well with enhanced Website Restriction setting.

Sales and Payment Methods Improvements

There are improvements in Paypal and Braintree payments methods with the release of Magento 2.2.6. Sales enhancements include a solution to disable invoice emails, betterment in order status and the ability to create multiple credit memos in one session.

Miscellaneous

Other notable improvements include an elevatedsitemap, themes, shipping, UI, testing, URL Rewrites, and minor code corrections, etc.

The new version of Magento will definitely bring some noticeable performance improvements to the core Magento code so we strongly recommend that you upgrade to ensure your sites maintain the highest level of security.

When it comes to the benefits of using the latest features and improved security, it is always good to stay updated! It’s not everyone’s cup of tea to upgrade themselves to the latest Magento 2 version; it’s a complex task. Planning to upgrade your Magento 2 store to Magento 2.2.6? You are always welcomed here.

Magento announced its integration with Amazon Marketplace at MagentoLive Australia 2018. The integration gives merchants to simpler and cost-effective and they can manage inventory directly within the Magento commerce admin. As we all know about the popularity of Amazon, the addition to the new sales channel capability is a revert to the trend and it will let merchants capitalize on Amazon’s popularity by growing sales on the third-party marketplace.

Magento 2.0 Integration with Amazon

In 2017 round about 45% of online retail sales were made on Amazon marketplace and this year also the amount of sales is expected to grow. Currently, the presence on Amazon plays a huge role for nay merchants and Magento users are not the exception so, no wonder that Magento took the wise decision to implement a native integration with Amazon.

A recent survey states that 92% of Magento merchants said that they expect to grow their Amazon sales over the next 12 months and of course it is a great opportunity provided by Amazon to the Magento community.

Merchants are very well aware of using Magento as multi-channel software and of third-party modules or extensions so Magento is providing their users a native tool for integration with Amazon.

Moreover, there are numerous new features planned which will benefit merchants:

• The support of all Amazon’s marketplaces worldwide means not only in North America but also in Europe and Asia-Pacific including the Amazon Business marketplace.
• With the centralized order management tool now you can get all the information about the orders under one roof.
• The product listing across all Amazon’s marketplaces will be done automatically.
• You can have access to profound reviews of the competitors’ prices.
• Now you get to access the unique tools that aim to enhance the product visibility and increase sales.
• The access to the Amazon Strikethrough Price.
• Leverage Amazon’s extensive catalog data for storefront enhancements like advanced search, filtered navigation, and promotional rules.
• With the help of advanced marketing tools, you can manage listings across marketplaces which will increase sales by enhancing a listing’s urgency.

The whole idea behind the native Magento integration with Amazon is designed to assist merchants to sell their products fast, easy and cost-effectively. Magento streamlines multi-channel retailing, so now merchants will have more time for improving their brands.

However, only Magento 2 users will be able to make use of this new feature.

Now it is much easier to configure Magento 2 translation. All thanks to its continous updated dictionaries, the localization and customization of Magento. Moreover it has been enhanced with code coupling and duplication has decreased to improve performance of the translation. All you have to do is to adjust your store with multiple languages for different regions and markets to make the most of this effective feature.

Translation file is located in i18n folder.

This is example of MageMonkeys

CSv file is located at: app/code/Magemonkeys/Osc/i18n/en_US.csv

Let us show you how to translate string from English to other language.

Let’s take an example of translate to es-ES

Namely, we need the following changes: Place Order => Realizar pedido

Now you have to create a new file app/code/Magemonkeys/Osc/i18n/es-ES.csv

Find string Place Order on the second columns and replace with Realizar pedido

After that, you save the save on your server. If you edit it locally, you should upload to your website.

Then Flush Magento cache

Outcome:

Magento 2 has an improved translation mechanism with less abstractions and reduced dependencies. It gives an overall better experience for developer and translator, and also empowers them to create a better user experience than with its predecessor.

Every online merchant is aware of email sending system. In this blog, we will guide you on how to set up default SMTP Email for your Magento Stores. The setting might be little complicated for some Magento owners.

Introduced in a late 20th century, SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. There are 3 Steps to set up SMTP in Magento 2.

Step 1: Create an Email Address for Your Domain

This step is for setting SMTP for your Magento 2 where you need to obtain a valid email address for your domain before you configure SMTP Email for your Magento store. Your store admins can set up Email address by following guidelines from server administrator or email hosting provider.

Step2: Configure Email sending system for Magento Stores

Here you need to navigate Magento Admin Panel, go to Stores -> Settings -> Configuration. Then navigate the store Email Address on the left side of a panel under General. Then you have to select General Contact section to start making the adjustment in a default setting.

In Sender Name, fill the names that you expect it to appear as the sender of any Email. Newsletters. We recommend that you should keep a name that bears association with the General Contact identity.

Provide the associated Email address in the field of Sender Email

You can repeat these actions to each Email address that you want to make use of it in future. Remember to click on Save Button to apply Email setting for your Magento stores.

Step 3: Your Sales Email Configuration should always be updated

In the last step, you need to set up the Magento sale system for your store. In order to keep your sender’s information correct, you have to pay attention to the configuration of any related Email messages.

In Admin panel, navigate sales and then select Sales Email; then you will see the setting edit page. Further, select Order and then check all the sender information.

After all the necessary changes are done, click Save button to complete your setting.

Conclusion

Email sending system is one of the most determining factors of any online merchants’ success. Magento 2 default SMTP is to support store owners in accessing more customers and increasing sales but many store owners are unaware that most of their emails were left silently in spam or outbox instead of customers’ inbox and it is the biggest drawback of default SMTP which makes it unproductive for any E-commerce. So here comes MageMonkeys SMTP extension to handle your this problem and increase the effectiveness of your Email marketing.

For more information and details on how greatly this extension can contribute to your store’s success, you can fill the form below and our team of certified Magento developers will give you the best result.

Let’s admit that if your checkout process is complicated and time consuming, unfriendly and insecure then there are chances of customers abandon a shopping cart. It is said that as high as 80% of your online shoppers will abandon their carts because here a shopper turns into a paying customer. Further, if you are unable to manage your site well then they can easily navigate from your site to another, no matter how great your products are.

Cart Abandonment

• 67.91% is the average cart abandonment rate.
• $260 billion is recoverable only by better checkout flow and design.
• 39 potential areas can be optimized to enhance checkout.
• 35.26% increase in conversion rate through better checkout design.

Hence to optimize checkout process and increase your sales and trust we have mentioned six tips.

1. Mobile Friendly Site

Today every business is run in the mobile ear so it’s important that your site should be optimized for mobile devices and for the checkout process. Customers will not like to visit your site if the text or products information/images are too small to read. So make sure that your website is mobile-friendly.

Tip: 88% of smartphone shoppers have faced a negative experience due to difficult navigation (51%), too small product images (46%), and inconvenient checkout process (26%).

2. Guest Checkout

Sometimes login can be the painful step when it comes to registration. Shoppers refuse to register for checkout hence allow checkout as the guest.

Tip: Allow checkout without login or ask them to login via social accounts.

3. Easy Checkout

Some online stores offer an insanely long checkout process with endless steps and this can be a real challenge for your shopper’s patience. In some cases, they might give up right in the last step due to the frustration of having no idea when it is completed. So make sure that your customers are aware of the whole checkout process and inform them about all the steps.

Tip: go for one Step Checkout, it’s the most ideal for online stores especially with shops on Magento platform. This will enable shoppers to clearly know where they are in the process and it will cut down checkout time. (Thanks to no difficulties in website navigation)

4. Secured Checkout Process

Nearly one-fourth of online shoppers have the concern when it comes to payment security. They are worried because it holds their personal details and payment information. Give them confidence by featuring trust signals, that all your checkout process is secure. This assurance will make them complete their checkout process.

Tip: Very few people have heard about “thawte” (Teleflora’s badge) but they know what “secured” means they are aware of Padlock indications. They also know that the style of symbol usually means that there are security measures in place on the site.

5. Necessary Information Only

Additional information can be confusing or annoying such as ID card no, Mobile phone or company address. This information is sometimes hard for customers to remember and its time to consume as well. And no customer is free to fill all these unnecessary details. So just ask them only important information.

Tip: if you want to know more about your customers or for other purposes then mark those fields as optional. It will make it little easier for a customer of what to fill or omit.

6. Different Modes of Payment

If you don’t want to lose your potential customers then be generous with payment methods. Your customers may want to pay through different methods to make sure that you offer the most popular methods like the debit card, credit card, net banking, etc.

Tip: In Armour and Nike’s checkout process features the “Checkout with PayPal” button at the very beginning of the cart.

7. Opt for one click checkout:

In a researched, it’s noticed that one click checkout has increase online sales tremendously. MageMonkeys has experience in designing one step checkout process.

Mage Monkeys‘ one step checkout form features:

• One page optimized checkout.
• Compatible with the 3rd party modules.
• Supports nearly 100% of payment methods.
• Supports Ajax popup “Terms and Conditions” checkbox.
• Auto-update the total price, discount and other information.
• Google address suggestion
• Allow buyers to checkout as a guest or register of login in a popup box.
• Easy drag and drop to customize checkout layout.

Imagine 2018 – one of the most popular platform had conducted a three days mega Magento event full of informative breakout sessions, inspiring keynote presentations, and engaging networking opportunities.

Mage Monkeys was one of the attendees who joined this tech event. As an attendee, we had a lot to take away from this three-day knowledge-filled event where a number of merchants shared their keynotes and many breakout speakers shared their insights and best practices for leading the charge in commerce. The event also highlighted few major success due to Magento commerce tool like:

Audience Overview:

There has been an impressive growth in website insights and audience behavior data. Page views and pages per session have improved with 30.6% and 36.5% respectively. Magento also got positive intensification in Average Session Duration of 14.2%. you will find the latest version more user-friendly as on-site bounce rate is reduced by 14.9%.

Revenue Performance:

As we can see the above graph, the website revenue of Magento has increased by 28.8% which is a remarkable difference as compare to previous year. Further, Website conversion rate has also been up by 6.7% and the number of Transaction by 2%; all together hike in Average Order Value by 26.2% hence the overall revenue performance of Magento is on the growing scale.

Mobile Performance:

The next is mobile performance, online stores who had responsive mobile has seen a rise in the mobile revenue of 45.6% with an organic search of 128%. Moreover, the Mobile conversion rate has gone up by 20.1 % with an improved number of transaction of 19.6%. Thus, Magento has helped in changing their marketing mix in real-time.

That’s how websites who adopted the latest version of Magento recorded positive curve in sales.

Conclusion:

To drive growth with sales, drive greater customer engagement, improve operational efficiency upgrade your Magento website with the latest version and consider the changes you want to make to take your e-commerce store to new heights.

Meet the luxury leather fashion company preferred by royalty.

In the early 1980s, British entrepreneur Graeme Ellisdon used to drop into Kensington Palace to hand samples of his leather belts to one of his favorite customers, Princess Diana. “If there was anything she liked she would take them,” Ellisdon told the Times of London, “but all of our customers are VIPs.” OSPREY LONDON, his luxury leather, lifestyle, and retail company today boasts sales of £12 million [$16.8 million] and employs 150 people, with a global reputation for creating uniquely British, affordable luxury handbags, accessories, scarves, silk ties, clothing, and more.

In 2016, the company set an aggressive goal of doubling its online business every year for three to five years. The brand’s popularity was already driven in part by its highly-anticipated catalogs, and OSPREY LONDON wanted to integrate that marketing operation into a much larger digital marketing program. However, their existing website was based on a bespoke platform that wasn’t up to the challenge. It was unwieldy, inflexible, and torturous to maintain. To achieve their vision, OSPREY LONDON needed a modern, responsive, and flexible solution.

Having chosen to work with Vaimo, the Magento Global Elite Partner, OSPREY LONDON decided on Magento Commerce. Together they formulated a plan: the brand would launch their new Magento site ahead of dropping their latest catalog program to drive more traffic to the site, deliver an innovative digital experience, and turn more catalog readers into online shoppers.

“We had been looking longingly at Magento Commerce for two years. There were several issues that made Magento Commerce the right choice for us – but Open Source and Cloud were top of the list.”

AXIA GAITSKELL-KENDRICK
HEAD OF BRAND, OSPREY LONDON

Relax, it’s on Magento Commerce Cloud.

OSPREY LONDON planned their launch date to coincide with the company’s largest ever catalog drop. The latest book would feature their iconic belts, handbags, scarves, and new accessories, and push readers to their brand new webstore. Meeting the launch date was critical: the largest catalog campaign in the company’s history was depending on it. Vaimo started work, building the site on Magento Commerce Cloud. With a cloud-based platform, the OSPREY LONDON team knew they could focus their attention on their business rather than on server performance and capacity.

To connect to younger customers, OSPREY LONDON added video capabilities to their product pages. Now customers can see how a belt looks, how a scarf moves, and where a cross-body bag falls on the body. With a DotMailer integration, the company could then enjoy the benefits of an abandoned cart automation. Meanwhile, by adding the ShipStation plug-in, OSPREY LONDON was able to streamline their dispatch process. This, says Ben Jones, the brand’s eCommerce Manager, “was just the start.”

However, just two weeks before launch, the project hit a roadblock when it came to payment processing. Their payments’ vendor identified technical problems that could delay the launch. The team reached out to Braintree. The PayPal company helps businesses accept and process payments across all devices, using almost any payment method. The Braintree solution was integrated in just ten days, providing the security and scalability the brand needed, saving the day. “Today with Braintree, we have a good level of control and visibility, whether that’s adjusting the fraud rules to suit our changing requirements or helping a customer complete a transaction. Overall it’s a service that we know we can rely on,” says Jones.

Handbags are flying off the virtual shelves.

On April 12, 2017, the new OSPREY LONDON site was launched on schedule, just as the brand dropped their latest catalog. The integrated digital marketing push drove massive traffic to the new site. With OSPREY LONDON on the cloud, the team had no concerns about the stability of the platform. The site was solid, performance never lagged, and straight away, handbags began flying off the virtual shelves. Their first day’s sales were just the start. The net result of moving to Magento Commerce was a solid basis on which to add additional digital marketing activity, and OSPREY LONDON has enjoyed an increase in online revenue of 300 percent year-over-year. This beat the brand’s aggressive target of doubling their online business.

Behind the scenes, the team was thrilled with the ease of use of Magento Commerce, and the flexibility of the platform. Merchandising is “so much easier,” says Jones, and the team particularly loves the drag-and-drop functionality. Re-merchandising products multiple times each day is a significant business driver, and sales and promotions are now fast to implement.

Meanwhile, the brand’s customer support operation also uses the Magento Commerce back office, helping staff manage customer orders. With access to customer records, the support team can resolve issues faster and improve the sales experience.

For Graeme Ellisdon, the secret of his success, he believes, is his ability to adapt and compromise: “In all things you need to be prepared to compromise,” he told the Times, “You need to be willing to change and adapt along the way and not be too fixed in how you achieve things.” And with Magento Commerce, OSPREY LONDON is ready for anything.

Source : magento.com/customers/osprey-london

There was a buzz of excitement in the E-Commerce world when Magento 2 was released and people all around the world were waiting for the launch of this wonderful platform. The entire development team of Magento was putting their best effort to pack this new version with as many features and improvements as they could.

Magento has always given its best to the users as far as customization is concerned and with this Magento 2 is no different. But hold on this is not the only the reason for many merchants switching loyalties and opting for Magento hence the below-mentioned reasons will make our point clear of stating Magento 2 is so awesome.

• Better Performance

A study says that 47 percent of online shoppers want any website to load in the fraction of seconds. In fact, 40 percent of them are likely to abandon the page if it takes longer than 3 seconds. Though Magento 2 is much faster than the first Magento version, say it runs 20 percent quicker than the older version and the reason behind first Magento version being slow was that its iteration was not built with a full page cache.

Magento 2 has a full page caching which makes it speedy at the time of loading. Another highlight of Magento 2 is its compatibility with the latest MySQL 5.6 for query processing, re-indexing, and caching, making it a lot faster, more efficient, and supportive of website performance. With the addition of Magento 2 forms, developers will improve the performance of the platform as it gives you a freedom to create a custom form which allows users to create forms of dragging and dropping thus capturing customer information effectively.

• Advanced CMS Content Interface

Magento 2 has got a brand-new WYSISYG interface which is the lot more polished than the older version and it will help for a content creation. Given that an e-commerce platform with a subpar content interface will not win any favors in the e-commerce industry so the developers at Magento have stepped up their game to produce a new interface that stacks up well in the industry. Overall, we can say that Magento has learned a lot from its past mistakes, therefore, created a content interface that improves upon the earlier version when we talk about creative control and content development.

• Better Admin Menu Navigation

Earlier, admin find it hard to navigate between system configuration, catalog, products, and reports but now admin can manage their stores more efficiently as Magento 2 comes with its all-new menu navigation which enables admin to navigate to any section of the admin panel as per their requirement. Further, now you can easily find all the relevant information and details thanks to its new interface.

• Sophisticated Product Creation Interface/Page

Magento 2 comes with a step-by-step product creation tool which makes it easier to form new products with an addition to this it also supports videos and images of the products so users can add media to highlight their goods.

• Better Grid UI

Now you no longer have to get in touch with the developer every time to add a new column yes you read that correct thanks to it vastly improved grid UI that merchants are able to select the required number of columns from the list featured in the Magento 2 platform an admin panel.

• Customer UI Interface

An older version of Magento was really time-consuming and tiresome as the customer needs to go through four or five steps before they could complete the order but the latest Magento 2 has made the order process easier. Now the merchants can find the registered customer automatically by analyzing their Email address. Along with this, the registration process has also been simplified considerably. Now customers and users are able to complete the registration process on the checkout success page itself. The guest checkout percentage for Magento 2 is 38 percent faster than the earlier version of Magento.

• Full Page Caching

Earlier site loading speed was a major concern for customer because older version did not feature a built-in full page cache system due to which user experience was affected significantly and it caused sales conversion rates to drop but this is history now with release of Magento 2 a full page cache system both in the community and the enterprise edition have been included which you can optimize efficiently to make your website load faster.

• Check out Made Simple

Nobody likes to wait in line to complete their purchase especially in online shopping where an order can be placed within a fraction of seconds so for those who can’t wait for them Magento has come up with a new assumptive guest checkout method that consists only two steps. Now the customer needs to enter into the website during checkout is when the shipping details are asked and for the registered or guest user the automatic Email recognition property is given which allows streamlined checkout experience. Moreover, shipping rates are applied to a specific order only when the full details are completed and it will ask for billing address only when the payment needs to be made. Hence the current iteration of Magento is the lot less intrusive than the previous version.

• Improved Frontend Capabilities

Magento 2 now has the new UI library which allows development of custom front-end widget and pages. Extra widgets might include product widgets that simplify the process of adding featured elements and products to different pages and CSS pre-processing with the help of LESS. Additional JS, CCS3, and HTML5 will make the development process a lot more streamlined and modern. It has also got blank theme feature and the base Luma theme has been improving significantly and yes good news is that you get access to all the mini cart features out of the box. The maximum prototype can be removed for iQuery. Finally, B2B E-commerce users can now enjoy the faster, simplified quick order functionality.

• Advanced Development Capabilities

Magento 2 has a feature of composer dependency system which updates both the core and the marketplace extension a lot simpler and faster for the merchants. The console commands are a lot like a symphony, and the modules now happen to be entirely self-contained rather than being scattered among the different root-level directories.

The latest version of Magento has improved plugins which minimize the need to directly override the classes and now merchants can look forward to better dependency injections so that the code base is a lot more modular in nature. Thus the extensions of the platform have a minimal chance of breaking each other down. One more thing now there is a built-in testing suite which includes PHP unit and users can easily add to the new automatic tests so that custom features may be implemented.

Now users are happy with the new version of Magento when they compare it to the older version. The thriving community has given thumbs up to this platform so it’s a matter of time before the software is upgraded further and at a faster pace.

Around thousands of extensions have already been released for this platform and it can be downloaded from the marketplace either a free of cost or after paying a premium rate.

Bottom Line

It might have taken two long years to reach this level of development but the end result is worth the wait providing merchants with a good reason to upgrade to Magento 2. The platform is not out of the running yet as a serious contender for the best e-commerce builder. Hence now Magento developers can provide a favorable customer experience with new upgrades and improved look.

Three years ago Magento 2 was released but still many people are running the old-school version.

Magento came up with the upgraded platform and many vendors decided to switch to the new platform for its new features. Many are not fully aware of its advantages so we thought to share with you its key benefits and on how to perform the migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2

Here’s how to do it…

Planning

It’s never easy to migrate between the 2 versions of Magento. If you want to keep your existing site the way it is then you need to have a sorted plan for it. During the planning stage, you have to lay out all the required details. Announce that during migration process your site will be down for a short time. Draft a wireframe layout of each page and how are you going to implement tools in it. Remember, the more detailed, the better.

Testing

Keep it in mind to perform each step of migration separately and it should be tested individually. To avoid any problem with functionality in future you need to spend time testing the migration over and over again.

Install Extensions

You can upgrade your existing extensions from Magento 1 and moreover, you can develop your own extension or install a new third-party extension. Make a note of detailed list so that you don’t miss out on anything and lastly install them on your server.

Migrate Data and Sync Databases

This part is vital during your Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration. You’re going to transfer all of the databases to your new Magneto 2 platform and ensure that they are both the same. Magneto provides a special tool to aid in this process which can be obtained from their official site.

Build a Design

When it comes to design, Magento 1 and Magento 2 themes are not compatible so it means that you need to select a similar or new theme for your site. To make things easier you can start off with an approved Magento theme instead of opting for the third-party theme because it will ensure that everything runs smoothly and the site is bugs free.

Initiate

When everything gets ready then it’s time to plan your launch. Set a date and time and initiate your new Magento 2 platform on your host. If all goes well then you don’t have to face any problem. Send a batch Email or notification to all your customers that your site is back and it’s active.

And you sit back and enjoy your new site!

Magento 2 is not the mirror of Magento 1. Magento rolled out numerous drastic updates with its newer version 2.x.

Someone has quoted it very well,
“Magento 1 is the context and Magento 2 is the story.”

Below visual from MageMonkey is talking about the technical differences between Magento 1 and Magento 2.

Have a look,

Our Verdict

Magento 2.X comes with an improved functionality and over 350+ extensions so we recommend our E-commerce and multi-channel retailer to migrate to the latest version for better performance. If have an enthusiastic team of 1-3 employees and if you can uphold $2 million or up then Magento 2 is the best solution and if you are already on Magento 1.0 then it’s high time to migrate to Magento 2 without a doubt within the next 18 months as Magento has officially stated that they will continue to support older versions for an additional 3 years. Magento 2 provides features of scalability along with security and maintenance hence it is a great option for SMBs who are looking forward to taking the next step in the Magento ecosystem.