• Part I — 10 Great Magento Extensions For Your E-Commerce Store
• Part II — 10 More Essential Magento Extensions For Your Store

Here are some more extensions that add a lot to your eCommerce store.

#1 – Follow Up Emails
	The Follow Up Email extension is a powerful auto-responder and customer relationship tool that helps to keep your site in the customer’s mind always. Use this automated email follow up Magento module and you’ll never lose track of your customers even if they have abandoned their shopping carts. You can set up as many alerts as you want.
	Demo | Extension Info | Price: $199
#2 – Easy Catalog Images
	This extension will help to display child categories in products catalog. Installation and configuration will take approximately 5 minutes.
	Demo | Extension Info | Free
#3 – Canonical URL for Magento
	This extension adds the new canonical links to the head of your Magento pages.
	Extension Info | Free
#4 – Daily Deals
	With an eye catching flash countdown our extension adds a deal of the day functionality to your magento store.
	Demo | Extension Info | Price: $99
#5 – Customers Who Purchased This…
	The extension displays in different Magento blocks products that were purchased by other customers together with the product being viewed.
	Demo | Extension Info | Price: $39
#6 – PDF Customiser
	Easily change the look of your PDF print-outs. This extension adds 20+ new options to your Magento back-end to fully customise the PDFs your shop produces.
	Extension Info | Price: $59
#7 – Unirgy Gift Certificates
	Allow your customers to purchase and use Gift Certificates.
	Extension Info | Free
#8 – Refer A Friend
	Refer a Friend extension is a smart piece of software that helps you benefit from a combination of viral and affiliate marketing (without launching a conventional affiliate program). It stimulates your customers to invite their friends to your store.
	Demo | Extension Info | Price: $99
#9 – Product Questions
	Let your potential customers ask you product-related questions and display the answers on the product page itself.
	Demo | Extension Info | Price: $129
#10 – Call For Price
	This mod adds a new administration tab to all products that will provide the option to remove the “add-to-cart” button from that products Grid/List/Display page and allow you to display a custom text snippet of your choice. This is great for items which have a MAP policy that does not allow you to show a price.
	Extension Info | Price: $27

Did we miss any of your favorite Magento extensions? Let us know in the comments.

More From This Series: Magento Extensions

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III

What is Magento Go?

Magento just announced  Magento Go, a hosted version of the popular Magento eCommerce. This is very exciting news for small businesses that want the benefits of a platform like Magento, without the hassle of getting it set up and managing the server. Just sign up, fill out a few forms and you’re good to go (pun intended).

The idea behind Magento Go is almost as old as eCommerce itself. A few of the big names in hosted eCommerce are BigCommerce, Volusion, 3dCart, AmeriCommerce… There are so many, it hard to keep track. The question is… How do these stack up against Magento Go? Stay tuned to find out once we receive more info from Magento.

From The Magento Blog:

Coming in February, Magento Go is a hosted, SaaS service designed for small and emerging merchants who want the benefits of selling online, without the complexity of managing servers and software. It provides them with a robust platform at a cost that any small business can afford.

I’ve outlined some really cool Magento extensions in the past. What are your favorite extensions? Which are impossible to live without?

Finding a reliable hosting company that fits your needs can be tough. As with any other platform, Magento has it quirks and needs to be set up on a decent server. Here are a few of the hosting providers I’ve dealt with and some basic info on their services and pricing.

Nexcess:

Nexcess, a Magento Enterprise Partner, has a few hosting plans that are optimized specifically for Magento. For a starter site, the Nexcess mag|SIP 100 account works well enough. If you have a site with many products or a lot of traffic, you may want to try one of their better plans.

• Support: The support team is available via email only (no phone support), however their support team is VERY responsive and I consistently get replies to my emails within 10-15 minutes.
• Pricing: The Magento optimized plans start at $24.95/month. They do have other plans that start as low as $6.95/month, but these are not recommended for use with Magento as you will have very high page load times.
• Up Time: I have been using Nexcess for several years for a few different clients and I have found their up time to be pretty good. They do have occasional downtime, but they are very responsive in such cases.
• Features: Nexcess uses the SiteWorx control panel, it has everything you need from DNS Settings, Email Setup and MySQL management.

Bottom Line: Nexcess is a great host with reliable service. Recommended.

Sign Up w/ Nexcess Hosting »

Crucial Web Hosting:

Crucial Web Hosting, a Magento Professional Partner, has two levels of hosting plans: Split-Shared and Split-Dedicated. The Split-Shared plan is perfect for a start site. While larger sites will want to go with the Split-Dedicated option.

• Support: The support team is available via email only (no phone support), however their support team is responsive and I consistently have gotten replies to my emails within 15 minutes.
• Pricing: The hosting plans start at $25/month.
• Up Time: I have used Crucial for a few clients and I have found their up time to be pretty good.
• Features: Crucial uses cPanel, so if you are familiar with cPanel you should feel right at home.

Bottom Line: Crucial Web Hosting is a reliable host with very simple and efficient service. Recommended.

Sign Up w/ Crucial Web Hosting »

Simple Helix:

I have not used Simple Helix, but I have heard great things all around. They offer 3 simple plans, the starter which is $20/month, professional for $50/month and semi-dedicated for $75/month.

Sign Up w/ Simple Helix Hosting »

Blue Host:

They only offer a simple shared hosting solution for $6.95/month. If you are just looking for cheap hosting to get started with, Blue Host may be for you. This is not optimized for Magento but will handle a small site.

Sign Up w/ Blue Host »

NOTE: Links in this article contain affiliate IDs, if you sign up by clicking on any of the links I will get commission. Please support eCommerceCircle.

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.

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.

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…

When Facebook announced they were launching a “Like” button for the whole internet, you knew you had to get in on it. The Facebook Like button is part of Facebook’s new Open Graph Protocol which allows users to easily share content (including yours) from across the web. For the developers amongst us, you can get all the code and info on Facebook’s developer site. For the rest of us, here are 4 Magento Extensions that will easily integrate Facebook’s Like button.

Facebook Like Button Extensions

The first two are simple implementations of the standard Like button. The next two are more complex integrations with many more options and with Open Graph support.

Pick one, buy it, install it.

1. Facebook Like Button by RetailEvolved
2. Facebook Like Button by TSDesigns
3. Facebook Social Plugins by Magento Ireland
4. Facebook Like Button with Open Graph Support by Soleun

Track Like Button Activity With Facebook Insights

Once you have the Facebook Like button installed, you’ll want to set up Facebook Insight for Domains. This will allow you to see what is happening in the world of Facebook in relation to your store.

1. Go to Facebook Insights
2. Click green “Insights for your Domain” button
3. Enter your domain name and select your account from the drop down list.
4. Copy the Meta Tag that Facebook gives you and paste into your Magento Admin -> System -> Configuration -> Design -> HTML Head -> Miscellaneous Scripts
5. Confirm the domain with Facebook

You should now be able to see all kind of cool reports in Facebook Insights.

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.

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:

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

Magento Configuration

In Magento, navigate to System –> Configuration –> Google API –> Google Analytics. Select “Enabled” and enter your Google Analytics account number. (The account number can be found when you login to Google Analytics on the main page, right next to the site URL.

Google Analytics Configuration

In Google Analytics, navigate to Analytics Settings –> Profile Settings –> Main Website Profile Information. Set “eCommerce Website” to “Yes, an E-Commerce Site”. This will track orders, total order amount, products ordered and quantity. It will also allow you to break down revenue by geographic location.

Bottom Line

eCommerce Tracking is very simple to set up in Magento. You may as well take advantage of it.

Read how to track eCommerce sales in Google Analytics on other platforms. You can also track Site Search behavior in Google Analytics.

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.

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