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Posts Tagged ‘Magento’

We’ve Released Version 2.0 of the SUMO Magento Coupon Generator. Still Only 5 bucks!

November 14, 2011 by John Suder

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Update:

As of November 14, 2011, we are discontinuing sales and support of the Magento Coupon Generator. Thank you to all the users who’ve downloaded and used our plugin over the past year and a half. Your comments and feedback will help us to build better products in the future

We Recommend:

If you’re looking for a solid coupon generator plugin for Magento, we recommend the plugin developed by Amasty.

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Sumo Heavy Coupon Generator Version 2.0

The SUMO Heavy Coupon Generator is a custom-built Magento module to auto-generate random coupons that online shop owners can distribute to their customers.

Since the initial release in November 2010, we’ve listened to your feedback, made some improvements and fixed a few bugs.

New Features

Coupon Code Format: By specifying a pattern you can now choose your coupon code format:

Coupon Generator Code Pattern Option

Bug Fixes

• Expiration date column in CSV is empty • Creating 2 pools fails • CSV/XML Issues • Wrong coupons discounted • Incorrect number of coupons

Purchase: The coupon generator module is just $5.00 (USD) and is available for immediate download. Once your payment is approved, you’ll be sent a download link (make sure to double-check your SPAM folder).

Installation: To install the module, download and unzip the file, then upload to your Magento Root Folder. Once installed, you can generate the coupons via the Admin panel under Promotions > Shopping Cart Price Rules.

Compatibility: The SUMO Heavy Coupon Generator works on Magento 1.4.2.0 and later.

THIS PLUGIN WILL NOT WORK IF YOU ARE RUNNING Version 1.4.1.1 or below.

Our Offices Will Be Closed October 12 & 13, 2011

October 3, 2011 by John Suder

SUMO Heavy Industries will be offline on Wednesday, October 12 and Thursday, October 13, 2011 so that our team members may attend the x.commerce Innovate Developer Conference 2011 (sponsored by Magento).

Between the days of  Tuesday, October 11 and Monday, October 17, we will be available, but on a limited basis (as limited as our available travel WiFi allows).

We’ll be back online at full strength on Wednesday , October 19, 2011.

While we hate to close our offices at any time during the normal work week, we also feel it’s important that we attend certain conferences and events to keep our skills strong and our finger on the pulse of the industry.

Get Ready for Magento 1.6

August 18, 2011 by Bob Brodie

We’ve all been waiting for it – Magento 1.6. It’s here – but are your projects ready for it? If you’re not sure, here are a few things to check for to upgrade to Magento 1.6. Use this to build an organized plan of attack.

Stage it! Set up a copy of your site, either locally or on a staging server. If you’re on a version control system, branch it and commit the 1.6 files from subversion. If you’re not on a version control system (shame on you!), upload the files to your site. After the files are up on your server, clear your cache and make sure it upgrades.

Theme Go through your site! If you launch a client’s site and something doesn’t work, you’re going to eat a bunch of time, and maybe even get fired. That’s no good. Build a test plan for your theme. Think of all the different scenarios that are possible. Even simple things like home page features, categories, products, and search that are all vital parts of your website.

Modules We typically write between 20 and 50 modules for a client. You need to test them all. Magento’s database and models change often, and things will break on an upgrade. If you have integrations, have your client set up testing environments of the software you’ve integrated with. You’ve done your part – they need to do theirs. Always make sure that test environments are in your client’s budget. If they use Microsoft products, have them get Technet. If they’re with another vendor, make sure they have seats available. It’s your job to educate them. Test, test, test your modules. EcomDev has a great module for PHPUnit Testing. We’re in testing phases of using a Build.xml file triggered from Atlassian Bamboo to run PHPUnit tests. You can run manually, but in the end PHPUnit will be more efficient.

New Features Magento 1.6 has some new features, and they’re pretty fantastic. Right now, it looks like the big ones are Minimum Advertised Price, Persistent Cart, and Shipping Labels. Magento’s upgrades are big for keeping your customers signed. Make sure you test the features. Learn them – and learn them well. Write plans for the future of the site you’re working on, and explain how it will help your client, and instill confidence that you can implement it.

Magento 1.6 is now available for download here.

Magento 1.6 Minimum Advertised Price (MAP)

June 16, 2011 by Bob Brodie

Magento 1.6.0.0-beta1 was released today, and has some pretty nifty features. One of those is an implementation of “Minimum Advertised Price”, or MAP. Many vendors enforce restrictions on how low of a price you can show on your site, until either adding it to your cart or performing come action. Here’s how to take advantage of this feature:

First, enable MAP. It’s under Admin > System > Configuration, on the Sales tab. There’s an accordion panel titled Minimum Advertised Price. Here’s your options:

  • Enable MAP – Yes / No
  • Apply MAP (default value) – This is the master switch. (For some reason, I couldn’t get it working unless this was set to yes – even if it was set to yes at the product level.)
  • Display actual price – This is another default setting. Your options are “In Cart”, “Before Order Confirmation”, and “On Gesture”. I’ll cover these in a minute.
  • Default Popup Text Message – This is the text that will show up at the bottom of the popup when “On Gesture” is enabled.
  • Default “What’s This” Message – This is the text that shows when you click the “What’s this?” link.
Next, create your item. I’m going to assume that you are familiar with this process. When you get to the Pricing tab, you’ll see three new options:

Under Apply Map:

  • Yes – This option will apply MAP to the product page
  • No – This option will cause MAP not to apply
Display Actual Price – In Cart

Display Actual Price – Before Order Confirmation

Display Actual Cart – On Gesture

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t rely on any beta functionality as it may go away in the stable version!

 

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eCommerce Giant eBay Acquires Magento

June 6, 2011 by John Suder

Ebay announced today that it will acquire Magento, Inc., developers of the Magento eCommerce platform. The announcement comes after eBay announced in February to purchase a 49 percent stake in Magento, valued at $22.5 million.

eBay’s Strategy Magento will eBay’s strategic component of X.commerce. X.commerce is an open platform that offers a selection of end-to-end services to merchhants. Many of their recent acquisitions are filling in the gaps of all phases of the eCommerce transaction process, as well as giving tools to merchants at the local level to help them innovate and compete.

The Future The acquisition is expected to close by around the third quarter of this year. No immediate change in Magento overall strategy is expected because of the acquisition and will continue to support existing partners and customers.

Our Thoughts While some acquisitions leave us scratching our heads, we think this makes good sense and can only make Magento a more visible product as it moves towards being the ‘gold standard’ in open source eCom platforms. The financial muscle behind eBay can’t hurt either. Let’s hope that eBay’s size won’t get in the way of Magento’s contunuing innovation in the eCommerce space and allow the product to grow organically. We’re also wondering how the purchase of Magento affect the recent GSI Commerce acquisition, and where the GSI platform fits in. We’ll be watching closely over the next few months to see what changes eBay will make to Magento’s strategy and products.

Magento’s Acquisition Announcement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0FKogIBKo&feature=playerembedded&w=600&h=400

Magento Usage on the Rise

April 19, 2011 by John Suder

Adoption and usage of Our favorite eCommerce CMS Magento is on the rise. Out of the top million sites on the internet, Magento usage has increased from 0.05% in March 2011 to over 0.29%. as of April 18, 2011.

Magento Usage Chart

This chart represents Magento web usage trends over a historical time period on a large selection of website homepages queried by BuiltWith. According to BuiltWith, there are currently over 56,505 websites using the Magento CMS. (The usage trends within the top million sites are updated once per week with the last update occuring on 18 Apr 2011.)

If you’d like to know how we can make Magento work for you, drop us a line at hello@sumoheavy.com

Source: BuiltWith Magento Commerce

 

 

Client News: SUMO Develops Listrak Magento Extension Partner Module

April 18, 2011 by John Suder

Listrak, a full-service email marketing firm, recently tapped SUMO to develop their Magento Extension Partner Module. The extension allows Magento merchants to easily incorporate various ROI-driven email marketing solutions, including Shopping Cart Abandonment Solution, and Purchase Cadence Optimization into their Magento store.

The Shopping Cart Abandonment Solution provides merchants with automated remarketing campaigns that recoup lost sales from shoppers who abandon their online carts before completing the purchase; which has grown to 7 out of 10 shoppers according to Forrester Research.

The Extension includes:

  • Behaviorally triggered messaging
  • Email capture of guests
  • Advanced segmentation
  • Dynamic merchandising
  • Series or single message
  • Multi-path offer testing
  • Offer suppression and randomization
 

Additional Benefits of the Extension include:

  • Repurchase prompting campaigns
  • Click and conversion tracking
  • Order history analysis
  • Catalog synchronization
  • List subscription & synchronization
Listrak’s Module is easily installed with a Magento extension package. The solution does require a Listrak account. Contact your Listrak Solution Consultant to get started.

Listrak Website

‘Magento Go’ Launches: Is It the Right Solution for You?

February 28, 2011 by John Suder

Magento is a powerful eCommerce development platform. It’s open-source, built on the powerful Zend framework and is supported by a fast-growing community of users. It’s a feature-rich platform that has most of the features you’d expect from top-of-the-line eCommerce platforms. The downside is that it’s a bit of an overkill for someone who might be looking to start an online store with only  a few products. The full Magento product has specific resource and hosting requirements and, while it looks and performs beautifully when set up correctly, it’s just too complex for the small eCommerce store operator.

Today, Magento fills in the gap for store owners looking to set up online shops with their new Magento Go solution. Magento Go is a SaaS (Software as a Service) and makes it easy for small business to get up and running, quickly and easily. There is no software required, no servers to manage, and very little technical know-how is required to get started.

Magento Go includes these key benefits for small and emerging merchants:

  • PCI Level-1 certified solution
  • Fully supported by their team of experts via email and/or phone
  • Complete Design Control
  • Industry-Leading SEO
  • Support for Multiple Languages and Currencies
  • Powerful Coupon and Discount Tools


For Developers: The Magento Go Platform

Magento will soon launch the Magento Go Platform, which will allow developers to build applications for Magento Go. The Magento Go Platform features a full range of APIs that will expose all of Magento’s functionality, both front-end and back-end, to developers. The Platform uses best of breed open standards, such as OpenSocial and OAuth, and developers can use any programming language to create applications.

Magento Go Apps will work both on the SaaS and the deployed products of Community, Professional, and Enterprise Edition – enabling developers to write applications once and deploy them across all of Magento’s solutions.

Conclusion

If you’re small business looking for a Magento store, without the learning curve or resources required, Magneto Go may be a good starting point for you. Magento Go gives you the starting point and resources to grow your online business.

Scenes from the Magento Imagine eCommerce Conference

February 17, 2011 by John Suder

The Magento Imagine eCommerce Conference took place last week in Los Angeles. Hats off to the Magento team for putting together this amazing sold-out event. Our minds are reeling from all that happened out there, so we’re still working on our recap.

In the meantime, here’s a video review and some images from the event:

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Full Flickr set here.

Why We Choose Not to Be a Certified Magento Partner

January 6, 2011 by Bart Mroz
Magento Logo
Image via Wikipedia

Working with the Magento Commerce system has been great. It’s the fastest growing eCommerce platform on the market. We’re proud to be developing on this platform and recommend it without hestitation to new and potential clients.

That being said, we’re often asked if we are a Certified Magento Partner. The answer, simply, is no. This is a concious decision by us, and I’ll explain why.

What we refer in this instance as a “partner” means that our company would receive financial incentives to get a percentage of sales to push someone else’s product or service. We don’t feel comfortable with this type of arrangement and don’t think it’s a good for our clients. First, if we have to be committed to selling licenses every year, we can’t provide good solutions for our clients. This means not being restricted to sell another license just to meet our quota.

The other side is financial incentives we’d get for using a certain product. Again, not good for our clients – trying to shoehorn them into a product that might not be the best fit just so we could gain a little financially. We feel the biggest gains are by being transparent and winning the clients’ trust by letting us tailor the best solutions for their business.

The kinds of partnerships we do like are working with other companies to turn out great products and help mutually grow our businesses. We see that as more of a long-term financial incentive, instead of turning a quick buck pushing something onto a client that might not be a good fit.

Yes, we’re probably leaving a lot of money on the table, but we’ll sleep better at night.

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