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Attending a live version of our Fundamentals of Magento Development class can require a significant time investment. But the payoff could be huge. Watch the video below to hear one of our expert instructors explain the business value your classr…
Magento congratulates Gold Solution Partner Precision Dialogue for being recognized as a “strong performer” in a Forrester Wave Report. Forrester Research, Inc., a leading global research and advisory firm, recently released a report titled “The Forrester Wave™, Customer Engagement Agencies” (Q4 2012). The report focuses on a new breed of company that has emerged in recent years, customer engagement agencies (CEA). Forrester defines CEAs as agencies that focus on defining customer-oriented business strategies and mapping them to tactics and execution. They help clients maximize customer profitability and optimize customer experiences by applying data and analytics to every interaction. Forrester invited more than 50 agencies that deliver cross-channel, data-driven customer engagement strategy and services to participate in the study. Precision Dialogue was one of only 13 companies to be featured in the final report. Using a combination of client surveys, detailed case studies and executive briefings, participants were evaluated based on current offering, strategy and market presence. Precision Dialogue (known as Metrics Marketing before November 1st) finished as a “strong performer.” The report provided the following assessment of Precision Dialogue’s capabilities: “Clients praise the agency’s strategic thinking across marketing, operations, and customer management, which it supports with rigorous ROI-backed business rationale.” Precision Dialogue received the highest scores among all participants for business strategy capabilities and among the highest scores for analytics capabilities and technology integration. Precision Dialogue is the only Magento Solution Partner to be recognized in Forrester’s Customer Engagement Wave Report. To download a complimentary copy of the report, please visit http://www.precisiondialogue.com/forresters-cea-wave-report. Congratulations Precision Dialogue!
The Magento Community is continuing the tradition of spreading the Magento spirit throughout Vegas before Imagine even begins. They are organizing a group to run together in the Rockin Rabbit 5k/half marathon taking place in Boulder City, NV on Sunday…
Tell us about BareBones WorkWear We’re a retailer that has provided useful apparel, footwear, and accessories for work, life, and outdoor for over 15 years. We have five retail stores in Northern California and a successful online store at barebonesworkwear.com. Why did you select Fanplayr’s Smart & Targeted Offers Platform? BareBones pricing policy is a no-nonsense, every day discounted price. We don’t raise our prices, just to offer a discount. When we do offer purchase incentives, we want to make sure programs are well thought out, targeted at specific customers segments and that we maintain visibility and control over coupons collected and redeemed. Fanplayr gives us all this and more. What has your Fanplayr deployment strategy been? We first added Fanplayr’s tracking code to our site, and after three weeks we received a detailed report outlining detailed profiles of visitors’ behavior, for both those that converted and those that did not. We then set up campaigns targeted at profiles that would most likely be persuaded into purchasing through offers. We were also able to exclude segments that we felt did not need purchase incentives. We also added minimum purchase incentives at strategic points during the sales process. Do you view Fanplayr’s Smart & Targeted as a strategic tool? Absolutely. Unlike other discount campaigns, with Fanplayr we can pinpoint who and when to target, with complete visibility into the effectiveness. We can make real-time adjustments to live campaigns without disrupting traffic flow. Since launching Fanplayr’s Smart & Targeted platform, we’ve seen significant improvements to our conversion rates and average order values. We’re also pleased with Fanplayr’s performance-based pricing model where we pay only on successful purchase transactions. In a short period of time, Fanplayr has become an instrumental marketing tool for us.
User experience (UX) is the overall emotional feeling a user gets after interacting with a product or website. It’s also an important factor in turning browsers into buyers. So how can you optimize the UX for your customers? Here are four tips from Magento design experts Something Digital: 1) Let shoppers browse their way – Create an intuitive navigation structure and add breadcrumbs so shoppers can navigate back to main pages. Include comprehensive search tools, with multiple ways to filter and sort; incorporate options for viewing product results. 2) Give products the spotlight – Provide shoppers with multiple views of each product; include as much detail about each product as possible (size, material, weight, etc.); show related products, up-sells, and cross-sells on the same page; enable wish lists, sharing, and notifications; display product reviews and ratings. 3) Highlight “calls to action” – Add primary and secondary action items (examples: sign up now, shop now, enter now) to the homepage; include at least one call to action on every page (examples: add to wishlist, read reviews); use active language to describe the action and differentiate between primary and secondary action items using caps and bold fonts. 4) Streamline the checkout process – Make the shopping cart clearly accessible from every page; show all fees in shopping cart (shipping plus estimated tax, for example); allow customers to buy without creating an account; make checkout a single page, with fewer forms for fastest completion. Learn more about the powerful features and benefits Magento Enterprise Edition has to offer to help you create the best user experience for your shoppers.
Yotpo is a new Magento Silver Industry Partner, specializing in social reviews. They boast an impressive 10% conversion rate of shoppers-to-reviewers. And they do it for free. How does Yotpo do this? Their most effective feature is called Mail After Purchase. This feature automatically emails shoppers, at a set time after purchase, encouraging them to leave a review. Yotpo has developed proprietary technology that enables shoppers to leave reviews inside the emails, making the process easy and effective. This feature alone is responsible for over 90% of reviews. What’s more, it helps turn one-time shoppers into repeat customers, by referring them back to the shop. In addition to generating many more reviews for shops than other review systems, Yotpo has figured out how to use these reviews to help shops generate more sales. Yotpo encourages reviewers to post their reviews directly to their social networks. This maximizes the visibility of the reviews, and promotes the shop being reviewed to new prospective buyers. Moreover, Yotpo allows shop owners to connect their business’ social pages to Yotpo, and automatically publish new reviews to their community. This encourages social conversation which drives both new and return customers to the site. Yotpo provides Magento shop owners with deep analytics to help them better understand their customers. Furthermore, they provide useful moderation options: shop owners can choose which reviews to publish and which to hide. A nice bonus is that Yotpo is already translatable into many languages, and they provide an easy platform for shop owners to translate the widget into the language of their choice. For more information, please refer to Yotpo’s extension page in Magento Connect: http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/yopto-reviews-5759.html
Since the first-ever blog post welcoming you all to the wonderful world of Magento posted by Roy Rubin, one thing has been clear; the ever growing embodiment of the community’s strength. From revolution to innovation, the Magento community’s passion and desire to improve the Magento open source platform has been tremendous and uplifting. As the platform matured, so did the requests for new features, functions and removal of pesky bugs. We have heard. We have listened. And now we want you to contribute. In keeping with the spirit of open source, we invite you to join your fellow community Magento developers and key Magento developer core team members to a Magento Bugathon stomping out issues that had been a bug in your daily work life. This will be a great opportunity to meet and mingle with fellow developer community members and have face time with Magento key developer core team members. With your eCommerce knowledge and Magento skills, we’ll create projects and stomp issues together. Got the urge to stomp some bugs now? If you’re a Magento developer and have the yearning to close issues and reduce the Magento bug count, then we want to hear from you. The Process?A list of functional issues provided by our Magento core team or a bug burning inside of you to fix will be worked on in groups. Our engineering team members will review your fixes at the event to make sure they adhere to Magento development best practices. Once approved, commit and test the fixes to make sure we include them in the next release version of Magento Community Edition. The When?Weekend of March 8 through March 10. The Agenda?
The Prep Work?
The Where?Join us at one of the following Bugathon locations. Los Angeles The Bugathon will be hosted by Magento at the Magento Headquarters.
Where to stay? Four Points by Sheraton Call hotel reservations and request eBay rate at (310) 641-7740 Zürich Bugathon Event – organized by Tim Bezhashvyly and Sylvain Rayé Magento key developer core team members will join Tim Bezhashvyly and Sylvain Rayé, the organizers of the Mage Hackathon, in beautiful Zürich, Switzerland. The event will be held at the offices of Unic AG.
Special thanks to all Zürich sponsors      More details will be sent by email to all attendees. Let’s get stomping.
In response to numerous requests to take this popular on-demand course live, we’re pleased to announce the newest addition to our instructor-led course offerings: Managing Your Magento Store. The instructor-led version of Managing Your Magento store is intended for Magento store owners, merchandisers, and operations management staff who want to learn how to best navigate and use the Magento Admin panel.
The instructor-led version of Managing Your Magento Store is offered through our an easy- to- use, online web-conferencing tool designed for training, so no travel is required! Our first course offering will be held March 4 – 8, 2013 at 9am PST. Click here for a full course description.
WEBINAR RECORDING AND SLIDES AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION COMING UP NEXT ABOUT MAGENTO’S EXPERT CONSULTING GROUP (ECG)
Did you know that Magento Enterprise Edition comes with powerful marketing tools designed to help you increase revenue? Magento’s Customer Segmentation and Targeted Promotions & Merchandising features let you target content and promotions to customers who share common characteristics. By personalizing the customer experience you can increase customer satisfaction, order values, and overall sales. The Customer Segmentation feature makes it easy to segment customers based on characteristics such as purchase or browsing history, items in wish lists or shopping carts, age, gender, location, and more.
Once you define your customer segments you’ll be able to use Magento’s Targeted Promotions & Merchandising feature to target those customers in several different ways:
class=”disc”> For example, a clothing store could display a 30% off promotional banner within its active gear section, targeting women in their 30s who live in California, who previously purchased running shoes, and who spent more than $200 over the last six months. Now that’s segmentation! Want to take advantage of these powerful features? Here’s how to get started: 1. To create a new customer segment, navigate to Customers > Customer Segments. Click Add Segment and configure the desired conditions. 2. To associate a segment with a banner, navigate to CMS > Banners, click Add Banner or select an existing Banner 3. To associate a segment to a shopping cart price rule, navigate to Promotions > Shopping Cart Price Rules and click 4. To generate a spreadsheet report, navigate to Customers > Customer Segments and select an existing Customer Whether you run a small store or a multichannel business, Magento’s powerful marketing features can give you an advantage over the competition while helping you build your business.
Learn more about the powerful features and benefits Magento Enterprise Edition has to offer.
In celebration of Valentine’s Day, we’d like to share an open letter to the heroes of the Magento ecosystem… Dear Magento Certified Developers, It’s hard to believe, but only 14 months ago there was no such thing as a “Magento Certified Developer.” Sure, there were lots of great Magento developers out there…but there was no objective way for these developers to validate their skills and no practical way for companies who hire Magento developers to know which of you were truly qualified. What a difference a year makes! Today, there are more than 1200 of you: individuals who have earned the “Magento Certified Developer” or “Magento Certified Developer Plus” credential. You work for our top Solution Partners, Industry Partners, and customers. You live in 52 countries around the world. And you bring the highest level of expertise to your projects. As you know better than anyone, Magento solutions are powerful, flexible, and sophisticated. In the hands of experts, Magento can do pretty much anything, as our customer’s success stories demonstrate. And you have demonstrated your unsurpassed skill – as well as your commitment to quality – by earning our most prestigious credential: Magento Developer Certification. We’re not the only ones who hold you in high regard: wherever companies are implementing Magento solutions – which is pretty much everywhere – demand is soaring for your services. And we’ve made it easier than ever for these companies to find you.
We’ll close with three quick Valentine’s Day invitations:
Once again, our very best Valentine’s Day wishes to all of our Magento Certified Developers. We love your passion, and we honor your commitment to doing great work!
Your participation is requested. SignatureLink, a Magento Gold Industry Partner, is conducting a comprehensive payment fraud survey and analysis for the eCommerce industry. This brief, multiple-choice survey is your opportunity to contribute to an educational study of Magento users. You will also learn how your business stacks up against the Magento ecosystem in regards to fraud practices. The survey results and analysis will be used to update and educate the entire Magento community on current payment fraud trends, technology, and best practices. All participants will receive an advance copy of the completed survey with analysis and a VIP invitation to attend a webinar in which the results of the survey will be discussed. Additionally, the survey results and study will be the topic of a breakout session at this year’s Imagine eCommerce Conference, April 8–10 in Las Vegas. In appreciation for your participation, SignatureLink will randomly select two survey participants to receive a new iPad 3 or iPad Mini. The winning participants will receive notification within five days of the survey closing date. Your company name, website address, and personal contact information collected in the survey will not be shared, disclosed, or sold to any outside party. Your email address will be used only to verify your submission and send notification if you are selected as a winner. To complete the survey, visit http://www.signaturelink.com/magento-2013-fraud-study.html.
Enterprise Edition: Driving Magento’s Growth Throughout Magento’s history, we’ve pushed ourselves to evolve our product and service offerings in order to support the growth and success of our customers. In the past couple of years, much of our growth has been driven by the widespread adoption of our Enterprise Edition offering. This product’s unique combination of features, flexibility and low total cost of ownership has attracted businesses ranging from industry-disrupting startups to established brands transacting hundreds of millions of dollars online. And our being part of eBay Inc. is accelerating this growth by opening up new opportunities for our customers and partners to access industry-leading capabilities and resources. Innovation to Support Customer Growth To help support the continued growth and success of our Enterprise customers, we are introducing innovations across every area of our business in the first half of 2013. The first of these moves is focused on strengthening a key driver of customer growth and success: the Magento As our merchants’ needs become increasingly sophisticated, they need to feel confident that they can find the right Solution Partner to help them build, deploy and grow their online business. We’re strengthening our Solution Partner program to ensure that every Magento Solution Partner has demonstrated:
Raising the Bar for Solution Partners We’re raising the bar for our partners by requiring them to meet more rigorous criteria, and by providing them with the resources they need to deliver the best possible Magento Enterprise implementations. The updated program includes:
Introducing Magento Associates We recognize that there are hundreds of system integrators worldwide that work with Magento but may not meet the requirements of the updated Solution Partner Program. We’ve created the Magento Associate program as a way for these companies to create or maintain a relationship with us while strengthening their Magento practice. Our goal is to help Magento Associates develop the skills they need to become Magento Enterprise experts and engage in Enterprise implementations. These companies may or may not have the goal of joining the Solution Partner program, but we will provide them the resources and opportunity to do so if they choose. By building both our Solution Partner and Associate programs, we’ll maximize the opportunities for the healthy growth of our ecosystem, while ensuring that only the most qualified companies are designated as Magento Solution Partners. Looking Forward Our commitment to customer growth success doesn’t stop there. In the weeks leading up to the 2013 Imagine eCommerce Conference we’ll be rolling out other enhancements to our product and service offerings that will set the foundation for our next wave of growth and the growth of our customers. Stay tuned for details on these efforts in the weeks ahead. These new additions to the Magento family will continue to further position Magento Enterprise Edition as the solution of choice for innovative, agile online merchants. Our thanks to the merchants, Solution Partners, Associates and community members whose passion and commitment continues to fuel the growth of Magento.
The Magento Connect team is excited to announce our new Ratings & Reviews system! We’re making it easier for developers to use the power of the Magento Community to promote and support their extensions while making it easier for merchants to choose extensions that fit their needs. The new Ratings & Reviews system will go live on February 19, 2013. Read our FAQ outlining the changes. Developers: Do you currently offer extension(s) in the Magento Connect extension marketplace, or do you plan to submit an extension soon? Be sure to read about the new features and follow the recommended actions outlined below:
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Q: What happens to the popularity score? Q: Will the default sort be based on ratings or popularity score? Q: What happens to our existing reviews? Q: What happens to new support questions that are posted in reviews? Q: What is being moderated? Q: Why ask the user to include “other extensions in my store”?
02/22/2013 Update: We are still moderating the old reviews (i.e. the reviews posted before Feb 19, 2013), and they are showing up on the Connect site in a rolling pattern. We plan to complete moderation of all old reviews by 03/04/2013.
02/25/2013 Update: We have received feedback from extension owners requesting old reviews to be displayed on the Connect site sooner than later. We understand how valuable the reviews are in promoting your extensions; hence we have decided to publish all old reviews (pre-Feb 19th) and we will be post-moderating them through March 4th to remove support questions and inappropriate material. Please contact the Connect team for any further queries.
Magento Certified Developers are our heroes! We love to hear their stories—and help them get recognition by sharing their stories on our blog.
Tell us a little about your business, and how you became involved with Magento.
What are some of the key factors behind your success with Magento?
Why did you decide to have your developers take the Magento Developer Certification exam?
How many Magento Certified Developers do you currently have on staff, and how will having these Magento Certified Developers on staff help your business? The certifications are also important for our Magento consulting business and our new Magento Code Review offering, because they reflect our depth of experience and the quality of our development services.
What types of projects have you worked on? What types of projects most interest you? Beside my work with Magento, the progress of PHP in recent years has fascinated me and I’m excited about how development will evolve in the future, especially for enterprise systems. Really interesting and also a lot of fun for me are the Magento events in San Francisco and Las Vegas. Besides learning a lot of new information we always find that Magento organizes the best parties.
Would you like to share anything else about TechDivision? Developers: find out how you can join the growing ranks of Magento Certified Developers:
For only $250 you can network with some of the leading companies in the Open Web – including major players in eCommerce. Attend the The Small Business Web Summit in San Jose, CA on February 18-20. The Small Business Web it is an organization comprised of almost 200 SaaS companies with the common goal of making the Open Web the best place to build, find, and sell software for small businesses. The annual Summit is an intimate and interactive gathering of marketing, technology, and business development leaders making decisions to move the small business software industry forward. Your event ticket includes an open-bar networking event on Monday with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and investors in the SMB space, plus lunches, dinner, and two days of interactive sessions! >> REGISTER NOW for THE SMALL BUSINESS WEB SUMMIT & MAGENTO EVENT The Magento event will be held on Wednesday February 20th at 9am. Registration to The Small Business Web Summit is required to attend the Magento session.
GET NOTICED! Sponsorship opportunities are available!
We’ve added two new courses to the Magento Checkout Series to help you distinguish yourself from the competition and take your training to the next level. These new courses represent the second and third installations in a six-part series designed to teach experienced Magento developers how to customize Magento Checkout.
Magento Checkout – Part II: Onepage Checkout* Dates: This course can be completed online anytime. Magento Checkout – Part III: Shipping** Dates: March 4 – 7, 8am – 12pm PST. Additional courses in the six-part Magento Checkout Series will cover Payment, Order Placement, and Taxes and Discounts. Stay tuned for course descriptions and dates!
*Requires developers first complete Part I: Shopping Cart & Price Calculations (next class starts February 4!)
Jan 29, 2013 | 9:00am PST Learn how to integrate your Magento site and connect via EDI with suppliers, systems, and marketplaces. Easily add drop shipping to expand your product offering without the headaches of managing your own inventory. Sales orders, purchase orders, invoices, shipment notices, and other procurement related transactions flow electronically without data entry or human involvement. Amazing speed and significant cost savings has made EDI the medium of choice in today’s omni-channel retailing and eCommerce ecosystem. Takeaways
Score all the benefits of having an online store, without the burdens of maintaining and storing your own inventory, by registering and attending this webinar by Logicbroker.
With today’s Presidential Inauguration Magento is pleased to share that both the Obama and Romney campaigns tapped the Magento platform to engage with voters in new and innovative ways in the 2012 campaign season. Much like the 2008 campaign was a turning point for social media use in politics, 2012 was the coming of age of ecommerce in political fundraising. What started as a successful experiment in the Obama camp in 2008 is now a new standard for both Republicans and Democrats that can drive new channels of fundraising. We can expect the 2016 campaign season to take an even more targeted approach to encourage micro-donations (under $200) from voters during critical election milestones. While both Obama and Romney turned to Magento to support the astronomical scale of their ecommerce initiatives, each campaign used the platform to engage their voters in very different ways. Obama targeted a younger demographic with the Runway to Win campaign which partnered with the fashion community to source limited edition items from top American designers including a geometric tote by Derek Lam and a floral scarf by Thakoon. First lady Michelle Obama helped drive critical awareness heading into the Democratic National Convention through her support of the Runway to Win designers.
Source: Obama Blog Romney on the other hand worked with Magento partner Groove Commerce to hyper-target voters with an integrated social campaign with great results. A day after launching his presidential bid site on July 4th weekend, the Romney campaign kicked off a Facebook drive offering fans t-shirt from the campaign’s online store that was claimed by more than 13,000 people over a three day period. Integrating the Magento ecommerce initiative with social strategy helped push the boundaries of what was possible – Groove Commerce expected the offer to generate sales of more than 20,000 t-shirts alone.
Source: Mitt Romney Official Facebook Page As we look ahead to the next election cycle, it will be interesting to see how both Democratic and Republican campaigns might innovate on the Magento platform for future state, senate, and presidential campaigns.
Registrations are filling up fast so don’t delay and secure your spot at Magento’s premier eCommerce conference. We have had an overwhelming response since registration opened on Tuesday at 12:00pm PT and expect to sell out of the discounted early bird tickets by the end of the weekend! Register now before the first $100 price increase goes into effect. Still trying to decide if you should attend the 2013 Imagine eCommerce Conference? Here’s a quick reminder of some of the many reasons to join us:
If You Miss Out on Early Bird Pricing, There is Always the Imagine Challenge! Every year we offer an opportunity for Magento community members to win a trip to Imagine! Magento enthusiasts can enter the contest by showing off how they are leveraging Magento to create a unique site design, promotion or customization. To view the official rules and enter for your chance to win the grand prize, visit the Imagine Challenge site. We hope to see you there!
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