It became the CMS of choice for tens of thousands of other smaller shops as well. Although there is quite a big community of Magento developers, designers and administrators out there, the actual CMS itself is not the easiest one to understand. The same goes to official Magento documentation. Based on experience of many people involved with Magento CMS, the best start is usually to get your hands on to tutorials and practical implementation examples.

Today we are giving you great list of such beginner to advanced tutorials. You’ll see how learning from tutorials can actually be fun and not a scary at all. And it makes much easier to understand how Magento CMS is working. Hope you will enjoy.

Official Magento CMS Tutorials

Official Magento product site has extensive knowledge base with one section dedicated to tutorials nad examples on how to implement and tune Magento Community editions. One thing to notice, on the official site Magento tends to talk a lot about Magento Enterprice edition.

Magento Tutorials by SiteGround

SiteGround is a hosting company which pays a lot of attention to hosting Magento and has written several beginner tutorials on installing, configuring and tuning performance of Magento content management system. Worth to check, specially if you are just starting your Magento learning process.

Magento tutorials by Alan Storm

Alan is an author and contributor well known in Magento developer community. His site has section dedicated to Magento code, tutorials and tips. Topic range from using JavaScript with Magento, analysis of awailable Magento API’s to customizing Magento admin console and interface.

Introduction to Magento layout

Extensive Smashing Magazine article about Magento CMS layout customization. In this tutorial you will create a simple plugin to manage front end layout for Magento platform. Its well documented and clearly written tutorial.

Setting up blog within Magento store

Quick tutorial explaining how to setup blog section within Magento content management system. Even if Magento is created to serve as eCommerce solution, blogging is playing big role today for communicating with your online customers and usually plays great part in your eCommerce store. Follow this tutorials to understand how Magento deals with blogging.

Magento events. Tips and Tricks

Inchoo people have much experience once it comes to Magento topic. Their site is full of tutorials and we have picked the one with a little bit advanced topic – Magento events. Read this article about event – observer system within Magento CMS and how to best use it within your ecommerce projects.

Magebase Magento Tutorials

Over 60 well written tutorials starting from the beginner level tips to covering the advanced topics like caching and optimizing Magento CMS (not such an easy task by the way..). Tutorial authors are well known Magento consultants and developers. Megabase tutorials are much recommended to everyone who wants to better understand how Magento CMS works.

Introduction to Magento Themes by SitePoint

Another great tutorial to better understand Themes for Magento CMS this time published on well known developer site SitePoint. Introduction to main Magento Theme elements and tips for creating a Theme. In this tutorial you will create a simple Theme from the ground up.

MagentoGarden Tutorials

Several tutorials and blog posts describing skill set needed for maintaining, administering and developing Magento based eCommerce store.

Tips and Tricks by Code Magento

Another site with tips and tricks on how to maintain and extend Magento CMS. From debugging to rewriting specific classes and entire modules. Recomended for advanced Magento developers and users.

If you know any other useful Magento tutorial sites let us know and we will update this post to include them.

The post Learn Magento eCommerce by reading the best beginner tutorials appeared first on ENFEW.

High Margins & Cost Effective

There is no comparison when looking at the cost effectiveness of ecommerce versus a traditional business. Transactions become electronic processes and because of this, fees are highly reduced or non-existent when payments are made. For example, the processing fee that you might incur as a car rental business might be $15, but if processed online, the cost drops down to $3. Big savings right there.

Ecommerce is extremely cost-effective. You don’t have high rent to pay on physical premises, costs on infrastructure or insurance payments. Marketing costs decrease significantly yet still reach a wider audience. There are no or fewer staff wages to pay, that means more money in your pocket. In comparison to a physical store, an ecommerce business is a lot cheaper to run.

Evens Out the Playing Field

An ecommerce business can compete on a more level playing field with larger companies. Even though big multinational corporations have what seems like unlimited online promotional budgets, with the right strategic plan and tools your online business can compete with the big guys.
Your customer base can thrive to levels unmatched by a physical store, and you don’t need a ton of money to achieve it. For example, using an analytics tool can give you instant and valuable information on your customers – such as how they use your site and how to keep them coming back – for a fraction of the cost compared to hiring a market research company to do it for you.

Taking advantage of the boundary-free nature of the internet will serve your business well and keep it competitive.

24/7 Global Trading

Your customers have the ability to shop 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from anywhere in the world. That means the restrictions of normal trading placed on physical businesses is non-existent for yours.
A lot of people enjoy shopping online and consider it a leisure activity because they don’t have to get changed, get in the car, drive to the store, get out and then find out that the product they were looking for is not available or sold out. The convenience to customers really is unbeatable, including foregoing the queues at the checkout desk, the distance, traffic and lack of parking space, and the lugging of goods from the store.

You can reap the benefits too because you will be able to manage your online business from anywhere in the world. Say you want to attend a trade fair in China; well you could do that and still manage your online store with no replacement staff necessary. It’s definitely a win-win for both you and your customers.

Simple and Cheap to Set Up

It could take months to set up a traditional business. You have to find the right location and building at the right price. Then you will be locked into the lease for a minimum amount of time regardless of whether you make money, lose it, or break even.

With an ecommerce business, there is no need to devote a whole wad of capital on set up costs like rental property, insurance, utilities, staff, etc. which can be extremely risky when first starting out. You don’t need much hardware to set up your business – just a reliable, good quality computer and an internet connection. However you will need to be well researched and prepared to use readily available online tools and techniques that will give you the best possible chance at success – and yes, this will require an investment of your time and money.

These are just a few advantages to having an ecommerce business. Of course there are disadvantages so it’s wise to get acquainted with those as well. If fear is the only thing stopping you, here’s a tip – start small and do it in your spare time. That way you can decide for sure whether it’s for you.

This guest post has been provided by Mia, working in partnership with Vibrations Direct – an online adult ecommerce store.

The post 9 to 5 grind? Consider Ecommerce appeared first on ENFEW.

Use the Right Software

It’s a good idea to look for an e commerce platform when you are first setting up your shop, because this type of software will help you run your business with ease. A good platform will not only provide web hosting for your online store, but will also give you design templates, a content management system, and assistance with analytics and marketing tasks. All of this is what you need to initially get your business off the ground, and manage it for the long haul. Another benefit of using the right tools is that they will help enable payments for you, adding to the ease of your customers. When it’s easy to pay, customers are more willing to buy.

Sell Products You Enjoy

A common mistake that people make when they are first setting up an online business is choosing an industry based on what they think will sell, and ignoring their own interests. Business owners who work in an industry they’re passionate about tend to do better, because they are willing to invest more time and effort into it. This is no different in the world of ecommerce and online sales. You can take a look at sales figures to determine which industries are showing rapid growth, but you should also take into account your own feelings towards these products. It’s also important to note that ecommerce shops can sell services and digital products as well as physical ones, opening up a wide array of options.

Use Categories to Manage Inventory

If your product catalogue is easy to navigate and browse through, customers will be more likely to put something in their shopping cart. It will also be easier for you to manage your own inventory if you group it into logical categories or groups. To further entice customers, you can include specialty categories for promotional items or gift ideas.

Create Daily Growth

Many new business owners find that setting up a daily work schedule with maintenance tasks and sales goals is a good way to manage their project most effectively. There are many ways to stay on top of your business, including setting up email alerts and instant notifications when a sale is made. It’s a good idea to work on your website every single day, whether it’s reaching out to clients through social media, managing blog content, or finding new inventory to help build your business. Small but consistent steps will help you keep moving forward.

The post How do you boost Ecommerce site sales? appeared first on ENFEW.

• Track every individual page – including sections retrieved via AJAX during one-page-checkout
• Optionally track to a secondary profile
• Enter DomainName to track via the Magento back-end / check here if you should use it
• First Touch tracking with thanks to Will Critchlow from www.distilled.co.uk and Ashley Schroder – read all about the technique here (no file edits needed)
• Filter your reports by customers and returned customers (custom vars c=1 and rc=1 respectively)
• Optionally track Adwords conversions for purchases

2. Jirafe Analytics – Free Extension by FOOMAN

Deeply integrated real time analytics for Magento store owners delivered daily to user email inbox and mobile. The analytics application will provide daily summary statistics via email covering the following Magento results per store:  – Number of orders  – Revenue – Number of Visitors

3. Magentoo Getclicky Real time web analytics Integration by Magentoo.fr

Getclicky Real time web analytics Integration

4. Advanced Reports 2.1.1 by  aheadworks

The Advanced Reports extension improves functionality of native Magento reports and creates a complete picture of your business situation. Advanced Reports is a perfect solution for all your reporting needs whether you want to display data from various charts, aggregate information by week or anything else. Moreover, this Magento extension can be expanded with additional units!

5. faett-piwik

Magento extension for tracking with the Open Source tracking tool Piwik. This extension provides functionality for tracking Magento with the Open Source tracking tool Piwik. Faett_Piwik also replaces the Google Charts with a internal PHPlot rendering engine for chart generation. So no order or amount data will be sent to google for rending the charts any more.

6. StateBoard

See your Magento states in realtime on a small taskbar in the bottom of your desktop.

With 2 easy steps you can get your current states on your desktop.

1. create your API Account in your magento admininterface

2. Enter your API account data on your stateboard

Features

• Bestsellers
• Last Search Terms
• Top Search Terms
• Most Viewed Products
• New Customer
• Customer Online
• Sales (Lifetime / Average)

7. Advanced Reports

Let’s face it – if you cannot analyze your current activities using up-to-date, comprehensive reports, you cannot effectively and efficiently conduct business.

That’s simply not acceptable.

To assist your company in achieving success in today’s fast-paced, competitive global marketplace, the Advanced Reports extension by aheadWorks is ready to be your reporting partner. Not only does this Magento extension allow you to obtain more sales information than ever before, but you can also use the information you cull to better draw conclusions about the status of your business.

Whether you want to run reports by countries, hours, days of the week or other criteria, Advanced Reports can help you get a complete picture of your business situation. It’s the perfect product to help you maximize your organization’s profitability!

The post 7 Analytics & Tracking Extensions For Magento appeared first on ENFEW.

We have got many requests lately about how to add SSL (https)-support in Magento. Here is instructions on how to add SSL-support to a Magento-installation.

Who needs SSL? – SSL is important for stores who want their customers to be sure everything they enter in the Account-areaand Checkout-area is encrypted along the way from their browser to your server. Stores with payment-gateways where the customer type in their creditcard-information directly in Magento and is not transferred to a secure page at the creditcard-providers servers will also need SSL.

2. Installing SSL in Magento

1) First, install the SSL certificate on the account. (if purchased through us, we perform this for you)

Note: cPanel users go directly to step 3.

2) Next, login to directadmin -> domain setup -> click your domain -> check on “make private_html symbollic link to public_html” and hit save. This will mirror your private_html with public_html so you don’t need two separate folders for SSL and non-SSL files.

3) Finally, login to magento admin -> system -> configuration -> web -> secure -> set “Use secure URLs in frontend” to Yes -> of course, you’ll then select save.

3. Adding and Installing an SSL Certificate Through Plesk

In Plesk, go to Domains and select the domain you want to add an SSL certificate for. This domain must be on a dedicated IP Address to work correctly.

1. Select SSL Certificates
2. Click Add SSL Certificate
3. Fill out the information correctly and accurately, select in 2048 bit format.
4. Click the “Request” button.
5. Go to your choice of SSL providers. In this example, we are using GoDaddy.
6. Once your SSL certificate has been signed and issued, GoDaddy will send you an email message that allows you to download the signed certificate and their intermediate certificate bundle, both of which must be installed on your Web site.
7. Download the certificate to your computer.
8. Follow the instructions below to install your SSL certificate and the certificate bundle on your Web server.
9. Installing SSL Certificate and Certificate Bundle (gd_bundle.crt)

4. How to set SSL Certificate in Magento

Setting up SSL certificate in Magento requires purchasing SSL certificate and then certificate can be through the Magento Admin area -> System -> Configuration -> Web. Before going for setting SSL certificate in magento we need to know what is SSL.

The SSL certificate is an important upgrade to your website. The basic function of an SSL is to encrypt all communication between the browser and the server, ensuring that all data goes through a secure (HTTPS) connection.

The post How to Add SSL certificate in Magento – 4 Best Tutorials appeared first on ENFEW.

This is very common question in magento that how to import csv files in magento.

2. How to import configurable products from CSV File into Magento System

Unlikely the default Magento import module, this fully customizable bulk import module allows you to import configurable products through CSV feed.

Module features:

• Import from CSV feed
• Create CSV for import
• Import configurable products and their associated simple products.
• Import images / multiple images / gallery images from remote server.
• Supports cron job

3. How to Import Products into Magento

There’s a little confusion among some on how to import products into a Magento ecommerce store. I spent some time today researching and trying to find the best method on doing this. The reason for my research is because there was no simple documentation anywhere that I could find on how to import products. Magento actually has built a pretty robust import/export mechanism into the ecommerce cms that has a ton of flexibility to do many things. I’m not going to cover all of those. This is just for those of you who simply just want to import products into their Magento cart.

MORE <

• Product Importer (XML & CSV) [Extenstion]

Magento XML & CSV Product Import Extension allows the store owner to easily import simple products directly into their Magento store in both XML and CSV file format. This extension provides a fast and effective way to update your Magento store with hundreds even thousands of products in one go, providing the ability to map the Magento product database fields with the product XML and/or CSV data file fields. This is suitable for website product importing and migration from other eCommerce shopping carts to Magento Commerce.

The post 3 ‘How To Import Magento Products From .CSV File Into Magento Store’ Tutorials appeared first on ENFEW.