Archive for the ‘Platform’ category

Shopping Cart Migration Made Easy With Cart2Cart

June 22nd, 2010

Any small business eCommerce retailer that has tried migrating from one platform to another, knows how complicated it can get to successfully migrate all your information to a new platform.

Recently I tried moving a shopping cart from Zen Cart to Magento… with simple products it’s no big deal. You export. You modify in excel. You import. The problem is that it is not always so simple. If your store has product options on most products, it is usually extremely complicated to migrate platforms. It doesn’t have to be, it can be simple with Cart2Cart (aff link) made by MagneticOne.

Migrate Shopping Carts Easily

Since I used Cart2Cart for a Zen Cart to Magento migration, I figured I’d share the process with you.

Price

Before you start, keep in mind that this is a paid service although it seems to be reasonably priced. I tried a cart with less than 500 products and the cost was $49.00 for the products only. The estimate including the customers and orders was $129.00. You can get a price estimate here.

Migration Process – Step 1

The first step after you buy credits is to enter the source shopping cart information. As of this time, Cart2Cart supports 22 standard carts including Magento, osCommerce, ZenCart, PrestaShop, CRE Loaded and more… After you fill in the required information, you will need to download the Cart2Cart “bridge” files and upload via FTP to the root directory of the source cart.

Zen Cart - Source Cart

Step 1: Enter Source Cart Information

Migration Process – Step 2

The next step is to fill out the information of the destination shopping cart and to upload the “bridge” files via FTP to the destination cart as well.

Destination Cart

Step 2: Enter Destination Cart Information

Migration Process – Step 3

In the third step you need to select the data that you want to transfer as well as any upgrade options available for your cart.

Step 3: Select Migration Options

Migration Process – Steps 4, 5 and 6…?

Step four will help you match up the currency options from the source cart. Step five will let you do a demo with 10 items… Click “Skip Demo” if you want to do a real migration..

It should be harder, but it’s real easy. Try it and let us know how it worked for you…

NOTE: I have not tested this with a lot of products (394 to be exact). I have no idea if it can handle a few thousand products. It sounds like it can…

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10 Free Premium Magento Themes

May 24th, 2010

Want a Magento theme that is professional and free? Check out this list of free premium Magento Themes from around the web.

1 – ElectroMagik

ElectroMagik is a minimalist professional design. Lots of white-space, easy on the eyes.

Info | Live Demo | Download

2 – Absolute Theme

Absolute Theme is a slick&smooth blue theme for Magento.

Info | Live Demo | Download

3 – Classic Theme

Classic Theme is a professional theme that comes in 9 colors.

Info | Live Demo | Download

4 – HelloWired

HelloWired has a very simplistic clean look with space for gallery images on the home page.

Info | Live Demo | Download

5 – Foot Prints

Foot Prints has a cool earthy tone to it.

Live Demo | Download

6 – EversonStore

Everson Store is a grayish theme that would work well for a clothing store.

Info | Live Demo | Download

7 – HM Modern

HM Modern is a yellowish modern looking theme.

Info | Live Demo | Download

8 – Glam

The Glam theme makes your store a glamorous one.

Info | Live Demo | Download

9 – Grayscale

The Grayscale theme is minimalistic, beautiful and sleek.

Info | Live Demo | Download

10 – Oops!

You got ripped off. I only listed 9 free premium Magento themes. You’ll have to check back for more another time.

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Posted in Platform, Site Design

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4 Quick Tips On How To Boost Magento’s Speed

December 10th, 2009

3380560365_e007c91946[1]

Magento is a great open source eCommerce platform. Merchants love it for it’s full feature set as well as it’s ability to add-on features via extensions. One issue that a lot of people run into is the page load speed. Magento is very picky about the server set up. Here are some tips to help boost the performance and speed of your Magento store.

1 — Query Cache Size

Change the default Query Cache Size, it should be 32 or 64mb.

Magento Blog: Modify the configuration for your MySQL server to take better advantage of your server’s RAM. Most Linux distributions provide a conservative MySQL package out of the box to ensure it will run on a wide array of hardware configurations. If you have ample RAM (eg, 1gb or more), then you may want to try tweaking the configuration. An example my.cnf is below, though you will want to consult the MySQL documentation for a complete list of configuration directives and recommended settings.

Example my.cnf:

example_cnf

2 — Disable Access Time Logging

Magento Wiki: For Linux servers, if you have access-time logging enabled on any of your mysql, web server or cache partitions, try turning it off for a performance boost. If you’re using ext3 or reiserfs there may be faster journal write methods you can use. For more information see Linux.com.

3 — Enable KeepAlives in Apache

Make sure your Apache configuration has KeepAlives enabled. KeepAlives are a trick where multiple HTTP requests can be funneled through a single TCP connection. Since the setup of each TCP connection incurs additional time, this can significantly reduce the time it takes to download all the files (HTML, JavaScript, images) for a website. More information at Apache.org.

4 — Memory Based File Systems

Are you using a memory-based filesystem such as tmpfs? This helps Magento move faster because of all the reads/writes.

Use a memory-based filesystem for Magento’s var directory. Magento makes extensive use of file-based storage for caching and session storage. The slowest component in a server is the hard drive, so if you use a memory-based filesystem such as tmpfs, you can save all those extra disk IO cycles by storing these temporary files in memory instead of storing them on your slow hard drive.

For more in depth tips on how to boost performance on Magento, see the Magento Blog.

Image Credit: Viernest

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How To Setup Conversion Tracking In Magento

December 2nd, 2009

3rd Party Conversion Tracking

Magento Commerce has the ability to track eCommerce sale with Google Analytics out of the box (more on that in a future post). Something that a lot of merchants struggle with is how to set up conversion tracking for other tracking software or comparison shopping engines.

ConversionTracking

How To

Here is an easy hack to track conversions for Shopzilla, PriceGrabber and the likes:

Open the file: app\design\frontend\XXXX\XXXX\template\checkout\success.phtml

At the end of the file, add the following code, this will create two variables with the order number and the order total:

<?php
	//Get Order Number & Order Total
	$order = Mage::getModel('sales/order')->loadByIncrementId(Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session')->getLastRealOrderId());
	$amount = number_format($order->getGrandTotal(),2);
?>

After the above code snippet, copy and paste the tracking code from the third party analytics software of comparison shopping engine. Insert the following variable where they suggest placing the order ID and the order total:

<?php echo $amount; ?> // Order Total
<?php echo $this->getOrderId() ?> // Order Number

Here is a code example for the Shopzilla conversion tracking tool:

<script language="javascript">
	var mid            = 'XXXXX'; // Your Shopzilla Merchant ID
	var cust_type      = '';
	var order_value    = '<?php echo $amount; ?>'; // Order Amount
	var order_id       = '<?php echo $this->getOrderId() ?>'; //Order Number
	var units_ordered  = '';
</script>
<script language="javascript" src="https://www.shopzilla.com/css/roi_tracker.js"></script>
<script language="JavaScript" src="https://eval.bizrate.com/js/pos_193511.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Image Credit: Search Engine Journal

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Posted in Platform, Tracking & Analytics

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10 More Essential Magento Extensions For Your Store

October 15th, 2009

In a previous post we featured 10 really cool and useful Magento extensions for your store. Here is another selection of 10 more great extensions.

1 – Layered Navigation Pro

Layered Navigation Pro allows you to customize the look and functionality of the layered navigation/search filters on your Magento store. You can use sliders, images, multiple check boxes etc… In addition this extension uses AJAX to load the new search results in real-time and you change your selection.

Layered Navigation Pro

Extension Page | Demo | Price: $99.00

2 – Google Maps Store Locator

Great for eCommerce sites with multiple brick and mortar locations. Very easy to set up, just enter all store locations and Google Maps latitude and longitude coordinates and your done.

Google-Maps-Magento-Store

Extension Page | Price: FREE

3 – Visualize Your Attributes

Adds the ability to display attributes with icons instead of drop down lists, radio buttons and check boxes.

Visualize Your Product Attributes

Extension Page | Price: $49.00

4 – IDEALIAGroup LightBox

This extension will install a wonderful and ready-to-use LightBox widget in your Magento store.

Magento LightBox Image Display

Extension Page | Price: FREE

5 – FreshBooks Integration

This extension allows you to import your Magento Orders in real time into your FreshBooks account.

FreshBooks Integration Magento

Extension Page | Price: $19.00 per Month

6 – Shop By Manufacturer

This is an alternative the the Shop By Brand extension we featured in our original Magento extensions post. It has all the basic features need to shop by brand but is not as feature rich as the other one.

Shop-By-Manufacturer

Extension Page | Price: $29.99

7 – Order Editor

This extension enables you to edit order information in-line without canceling and creating a new order. Does not allow editing of any fields that would affect order total.

Extension Page | Demo | Price: $69.00

8 – Facebook Connect Social Shopping

This extension adds the ability for your site visitors to connect with their Facebook friends without leaving your ecommerce store. They can recommend items to their friends or ask advice about specific items on your site.

Facebook-Social-Shopping-Extension

Extension Page | Price: FREE

9 – Twit Your Products

Take advantage of Social Media and add the ability for your customers to send products to Twitter with a customized Tweet.

Twitter-Twit-This-Product

Extension Page | Price: FREE

10 – Vertical Navigation

Don’t like the default horizontal menu? This extension switches your store layout to use a vertical menu bar.

Vertical Navigation Menu

Extension Page | Price: FREE

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4 Easy Plugins To Convert WordPress Into An E-Commerce Platform

August 27th, 2009

WordPress is a very cool blogging platform. Most people know it can be used as a CMS, but do you know that it is really simple to use WordPress as a shopping cart? Here are 4 simple plugins that convert WordPress into an e-commerce platform.

1 – Shopp

Shopp-WordPress-Plugin

Extension Page | Sample Site | Price: $55.00

2 – WP-eCommerce

WP-eCommerce-WordPress-Plugin

Extension Page | Sample Site | Basic Version: $0.00 - Additional Modules Can Be Purchased

3 – eShop

eShop-WordPress-Plugin

Extension Page | Sample Site | Price: $0.00

4 – The Market Theme

The-Market-Theme WordPress Plugin

Extension Page | Demo | Price: $55.00

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Integrate Your Shopping Cart With UPS/FedEx

August 27th, 2009

FedEx UPS FedUp

Anyone who ships more than 20 boxes a day knows how annoying it is to keep copy and pasting the customers information for the shipping label. Therefore it is a great thing that both UPS and FedEx offer the ability to integrate your system into theirs. Unless you are doing a lot of business with your shipping carrier, they probably won’t mention the fact that the offer it. Your best bet is to ask your FedEx/UPS representative to point you in the right direction.

Both FedEx and UPS offer a few different ways to set up the integration. The best way to integrate your system varies from system to system, development manpower, and what you expect from it.

CSV Import/Export

The simplest way to get information back and forth betweens the two systems is by importing a Comma Separated Values (CSV) text file with all your shipment information into the shipping program. Once you process your shipments you can export another CSV file with the tracking numbers back into your system.

Direct ODBC Connection

This option is more advanced and will require a higher technical skill set, but offers a much better user experience and can be fully automated.

You will need to provide UPS/FedEx with a SELECT query to pull the order information from your database. The shipping user will be asked to input an order I’d number which will then run this query and import the shipment data into the shipping program. After it creates a shipping label, it will run an UPDATE/INSERT query which you will also need to provide so it can write the tracking number back into your system.

Now What?

Talk to your shipping carrier and let them help you decide what will work best for you. In some cases they may offer a completely different solution.

Image Credit: voon’s world

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10 Great Magento Extensions For Your E-Commerce Store

August 27th, 2009

Magento Commerce is a great open source platform. Here are some extensions that will help your store stick out from the crowd and add vital functionality to your business.

1 – Shop By Brand

Shop-By-Brand

This extension creates landing pages for each of your brands, which include information such as Brand Name, Logo, Description etc… The landing page will have an SEO link like this www.example.com/brands/sony.

Extension Page | Demo | Price: $99.99

2 – MouseOver Image Zoom

This extension replaces the default Magento image zooming feature. When you mouseover the image it will open a box to right where it will zoom into the image (sort of like Endless.com).

MouseOver-Image-Zoom

Extension Page | Price: $0.00

3 – Blog

A blog built from scratch for Magento. It’s not as extensive as WordPress or Movable Type, but it has all the basics. Should get you from point A to point B.

Magento-Blog

Extention Page | Price: $0.00

4 – Drop Shipping Management

If you do a lot of drop shipping you will definitely need help managing your orders. Magento is a great system, but it has no Drop Ship management features. This extension is pretty robust with a price tag to match.

Drop-Shipping-Module

Extension Page | Demo | Price $500.00

5 – Minimum Advertised Price

If you sell products that are protected by a manufacturer’s minimum advertised price policy (MAP), then this is for you. As always, rules are meanato to be broken. You can use this extension to work around the MAP policy withour ruining you vendor relationships.

Minimum-Advertised-Price-Policy

Extension Page | $149.00

6 – QuickBooks Integration

This is vital for survival. Accounting is key to the success of your business. This extension will synchronize your orders with QuickBooks. Definitely worth the price.

QuickBooks Integration THUB

Extension Page | Demo | $250.00

7 – Ticketing System

This extension will help you keep track of your customer service inquiries. It will help you save time by managing your workflow and will ensure that no emails fall through the cracks.

Ticketing-System

Extension Page | $0.00

8 – Color Swatches

Selling something in multiple colors? T-Shirts, Faucets, iPods? This is for you. It will add the ability to put color swatches and change the image based on the color selected.

Color-Swatches

Extension Page | Demo | $69.00

9 – Exploded Menu

Replaces the standard drop down menu with an exploded menu featuring multiple columns. Comes in handy when you have many categories.

Exploded Menu

Extension Page | $0.00

10 – Useful Product Downloads

This is great if you want to give your customers the ability to download PDF specification files for products. Just upload any file type and you’re done. Easy. Easy.

Useful-Product-Downloads

Extension Page | Demo | $49.00

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Automate Back-Office Processes & Improve Your Margins

August 4th, 2009

Shipping Process

Sometimes as a small business owner you can be so engrossed in day to day operations that you don’t have time to think about long term strategy. It is vital to strategize and think about your company’s future.

One of the many things you can do to help your bottom line is automate back office processes. By automating processes or setting procedures for how different scenarios are dealt with you can save time and money.

Say you are printing your orders for your warehouse staff who then pick, pack and ship the items. They now need to either pull up the order in your system or create a shipping label by copy and pasting or typing the name and address into your shipping software. You can eliminate a few steps of this process by creating a queue in system where all orders that are ready to ship will sit, when the warehouse staff is ready they can packing slip with a bar code which can be scanned into UPS or FedEx and automatically pull in the customers information. This can be accomplished by working with your shipping carrier to hook up your system and do a lookup by order number. You can get a cheap barcode scanner for $50 online or just type in the order number.

By no means is this an extensive bible on the subject, but just an example to help you start thinking about your business processes and what you can do to streamline them. The sky is the limit.

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Posted in Customer Service, Platform

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How To Track Your Phone Sales By Referring Source

July 30th, 2009

Old Telephone

Anyone who runs an ecommerce business will tell you that it extremely hard to track where their phone sales are coming from. Some online retailers have upwards of 35% of their sales coming in over the phone. How do you keep track os these sales from an advertising perspective? What campaigns/keywords are not performing well? Here are two ways to track telephone sales properly.

Multiple Phone Numbers

High Level Tracking

The easy way to track phone sales on a high level is to get multiple phone numbers and set you website to display a different phone number based on the refering source. For example if  someone came from Google, show them one number — when someone come sfrom Yahoo, show another number etc… Now everytime someone calls you know where they originally came from.

Depending on your phone system, you should be able to display which line the calls come in from and then have your sales people enter a referring source into your system as they put the order through for the customer. As your system aggregates this info, you will know what your ROI is. Keep in mind that this can get as granular as you’d like, but it will be a pain to manage this for very many keywords/phone numbers. This solution works best at a very high level of tracking.

Tracking ID

Granular Tracking

If you have an in-house developer and would like more granular tracking, this is for you. Every time a unique visitor comes to your site generate a unique session ID and store their referring source in your database. You will then want to display this session ID on all pages of your site. The ID number should be short and easy to tell your sales representative over the phone.

When your sales reps take an order over the phone they should ask the customer to read them the session ID (call it Phone Tracking ID or something easy) which they will then input into your system with the order. Once your sales screen has this number it should mimic the customers cookie and send the relevant order info to your tracking pixels. When it does this, the customers original referring source as well as keywords or any other data that you track with the session ID will pass through and your will be able to see your ROI on a very granular level.

Bottom Line

If you just want tracking by channel or have very few campaigns, the first option is easy to set up and will work well for you. If you like granular data and have the development resources to go crazy, go for the second option.

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