New Requirements for the Responsive Design

Responsive design is among the most essential elements of web design. Thousands of different smartphones, tablets, and phablets require a unique approach to provide customers with maximum accessibility on whatever devices they use. The difference between 2015 and previous years is in the appearance of new devices and platforms. Smart watches and home appliances, smart TVs, and smart glasses make the definition of responsive design much broader than before.

Scrolling over Clicking

With the popularization of smartphones and tablets, scrolling became more popular than clicking. Compared to clicking, it is more convenient and takes less time for a page to load because you get everything within one page and don’t need to open additional elements on new pages. Thus, scrolling also provides users with the ability to get all the information they need without any unnecessary actions on additional screens and windows.

The Importance of Typography

Content was always extremely important, but every year customers, search engines, and competition provide stricter requirements and new trends. It is obvious that in 2015, typography will play a more essential role in ecommerce website design. Simplicity, bold elements, and large images are going to be among dominating design trends this year. We can even speak of responsive typography,” a new approach to typography with strong emphasis on a responsive design. Typographic flexibility and webkits are other key features of typography as an ecommerce website design trend.

Ghost Buttons

Ghost buttons have a chance to become a new favorite web element. They are nice, minimal, and useful. Ghost buttons look good and attract shopper’s attention in a subtle way. They are not really a call to action but a useful addition to every ecommerce website. You can see the example of ghost buttons in the image (Mission, Play, Touch).

Material Design by Google

Mobile commerce also has its own trends. Material design is a design direction that Google implemented. It relies on skeuomorphism and entirely flat design. Material design covers different platforms and has its influence on ecommerce website design.

Microinteractions

“Microinteractions are contained product moments that revolve around a single use case—they have one main task. Every time you change a setting, sync your devices, set an alarm, log in, or “like” something, you are engaging with a microinteraction.” They revolve around a single use case, when a customer interacts with a website. Microinteractions are incorporated in the improvement of customer engagement. During 2015, we will see more useful and sophisticated microinteractions.

Card Design

Card design is an integral part of responsive websites. The card approach to ecommerce website design provides the ability to organize and arrange things more effectively. In addition, cards allow visitors to get more information easier than any other solutions. Card design is simple, clear, and informative.

Background Images and Videos

The background is always among the most attractive parts of every website. Keep in mind that great content looks better over a stunning background image. That’s why background images and videos are always important. They have become a trend with ecommerce website design.

Hidden Menus

The popularization of mobile devices has a great influence on the design of websites. Because of small screens, smartphones require some site elements to be hidden, but a user can always reach them. That’s why global or product navigation is absent in its full size until you hit a special button. Thus, hidden menus are becoming more popular. These elements are widely used, even on relatively larger screens. Still, many people don’t understand the meaning of hamburger menu icon, so there is a possibility that ecommerce website designers will use it in a tandem with the word menu.

Large Photography

Large images always had a negative impact on the site speed, so website designers tried to avoid using them in recent years. But everything has changed with an improved responsive design. New techniques and adaptive images make it possible to serve fast-loading even with large images. Of course, better content can help ecommerce websites sell more; therefore, the community expects larger images on home and product detail pages.

Nearly Flat Design

Thanks to Google, Apple, and Microsoft flat design occupied major mobile platforms. Of course, this idea isn’t new, but it is fresh for ecommerce websites. The trend continues to expand its influence, because flat design is more pleasing to the customers and easier to understand, develop, and make it responsive. Another advantage of the flat design is the focus towards the content. The core principles of skeuomorphism make such elements as call-to-action buttons unobtrusive. The same holds for the use of shadows. With the flat design, ecommerce web developers can bring an element to the front of the screen and make it an integral part of the site. The “less is more” principle continues to enhance its influence, becoming one of the leading ecommerce website design trends.

Device Agnostic

Modern ecommerce website should be device agnostic . It’s unacceptable to design web pages for particular devices. They must function properly on all screen sizes. Today, ecommerce web developers must take into account the amount of screen resolution variations, all the possible input methods, connection speeds, and browser requirements to create a universal experience for every visitor. With device-agnostic design visitors will leave the ecommerce website wanting to return. Users will be able to navigate through the site and complete the checkout without any need to pinch the screen or aim at buttons.

Tile Navigation

Images always were more time-saving and captivating than text boxes. The “less is more” principle lies at the heart of modern navigation. Instead of the standard bar, ecommerce websites are implementing tile navigation. By using image tiles instead of lists, web designers provide users with a preview of what they’re going to see. Keep in mind that tile navigation is more user-friendly than any ordinary solution. It has a huge potential to grab the attention of visitors after the first few seconds of interaction with an ecommerce website. Tailed navigation recreates the feel of walking into a brick and mortar store, so visitors stay entertained as long as possible.

Parallax Scrolling

You have probably already seen websites with tantalizing background animation or parallax effect . It can be very impressive, but there is a problem when parallax turns into distraction. The ecommerce website loses its main goal, and instead of presenting products it demonstrates impressive design effects. Keep in mind that design should be beautiful and at the same time useful. Animations, images, and effects should support sales, not overshadow products.

The following websites provide examples of the most inspiring ecommerce web designs. They illustrate the most modern, beautiful, and practical solutions.

• Webdesign Inspiration

• Awwwards

• Inspirational shops

Now, when you are familiar with ecommerce design trends and know major marketplaces, you can look for the Magento template, but don’t spend too much time on choosing the right solution, next I will tell you about the must-have extensions and how to install them.

Performance

Being a part of customer relationships, good performance is the key to a growing revenue and profit. This significant aspect positively affects customer loyalty and search engines ranking, and as a result your cash flows. You can improve your Magento store performance by using proper settings and extensions.

If Magento store is not set up correctly, it becomes slow and alienates customers. Sometimes even experienced web developers could miss some settings, so it is necessary to monitor if everything is set up correctly. The probability for correct settings can be increased with the help of extensions. Several correct extensions can dramatically change the speed of your Magento store. The most reliable solutions will be discussed next.

Fooman Speedster is your performance tool number one. It combines multiple JavaScript files into a single one. The same holds also CSS files. As a result, you get shorter page load time. The other feature of the Fooman Speedster extension is the ability to reduce the total size of all the files required for loading empty and primed caches. In addition, Fooman Speedster reduces the number of HTTP requests. The extension doesn’t require any gzip support on the server; therefore, all files are compressed without any additional tunings. Fooman Speedster is fully automated, supports multistore capabilities, and uses the Minify library. You can install Fooman Speedster here for free.

Figure 1-2. Fooman Speedster

Lesti::Fpc is another useful module designed for performance improvements. It is an internal full page cache for Magento, which works with events. One of the most important features of Lesti::Fpc is its simplicity: the extension doesn’t need any external software. Being an internal cache, Lesti::Fpc replaces dynamic blocks before sending a response to a customer. You can find more information on the extension and install Lesti::Fpc here.

Figure 1-3. Lesti_Fpc

More Performance Extensions¹⁵

CloudFlare is a world-leading content delivery network that is optimized for Magento. With the Control for CloudFlare Magento extension, you are able to integrate your store with this service. As a result, dozens of JavaScript, CSS, and image files loaded from your server during every page view (even if you use Full Page Cache and minification) are loaded from distributed servers around the world. This will dramatically reduce server load and provide your customers with an amazing page load speed. The additional features of this extension include resource caching, DDoS protection, additional forms and files security, and async JS load. You can download the Magento extension here: Control for CloudFlare. And don’t forget to check CloudFlare’s plans. There is a free one.

SEO

According to Wikipedia, SEO is the process of affecting the visibility of a website in a search engine’s organic search results. The earlier and the more frequently your Magento store appears in the list of search results, the more visitors come to your website. That is why SEO optimization is crucial for your ecommerce business. There is a SEO guide discussed in this chapter, but nevertheless, at this point I will explicitly discuss the key SEO extensions. Magento is SEO-friendly right out of the box, but you can always enhance the default capabilities with the help of proper modules.

Creare SEO for Magento adds a lot of new features to your ecommerce Magento store. By installing this extension, you will enhance your website with the following features: HTML sitemap; Noindex on category filters; unique category headings; default metadescriptions and page titles for products and categories; config-editable .htaccess and robots.txt; 301 redirects for discontinued products; Twitter cards for product pages; the ability to disable keywords and metadescription tags; an SEO checking page in the admin; a performance cleanup script; a breadcrumbs schema; XML sitemap fix; canonical product redirect; a product attribute validator; and duplicate product button removal. You can install Creare SEO for free here.

Figure 1-4. CreareSEO

Schema.org is another must-have tool for SEO optimization. The extension adds metadata to the product pages of your ecommerce store. The product name, its description, price, stock status, ratings, and a non-cached image path are used in addition to the default information about every product page of your website. The extension is compatible with such search engines as Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. Check this page for additional information.

With SEO Pagination extension, you can provide search engines the ability to properly understand the structure of your Magento store. This leads to a higher keyword ranking in search results. The extension allows you to implement Google recommendations to target pagination issues in SEO with rel="prev" and rel="next" markup tags. It means that the category pages of your Magento store will be optimized for most search engines robots. Having installed the extension, search engines will receive a strong hint to treat pagination within the category pages as a logical sequence. By providing search engines with the information on how to work with the pages of your webstore, SEO Pagination helps to avoid duplicate content issues. You can download SEO Pagination here.

More SEO Extensions¹⁶

Front End, UI, Usability

The front end, user interface, and overall usability are closely related. Since the front end is responsible for collecting data from the visitors, think of it as of an interface between your customers and the back end. The user interface is the place where interaction between customers and the store occurs. As you can see, front end and UI are closely connected and have significant influence on overall usability. By using the following extensions, you can improve the front end, the UI, and the usability of your Magento store. The following modules are designed to improve the usability of your ecommerce store. They add lots of new features, making the user experience better.

One Page Checkout Magento module significantly reduces the steps required during the checkout. In ecommerce, fewer steps mean that your customers are more likely to complete the full checkout process. Thus, One Page Checkout extension allows users to checkout without any hesitation. Moreover, the extension provides numerous configurations, so the new checkout process can be modified to fit your webstore needs. Learn more about One Page Checkout.

Social Connect is another important Magento extension. It adds Google, Facebook, and Twitter buttons to your login page. As a result, customers experience a much faster login and registration options. They just have to hit one button to complete login or registration. Information from their Google, Facebook, or Twitter accounts is used. Thus, the overall process becomes easier and dramatically faster. You can find more information about Social Connect Magento extension here.

Figure 1-5. Social Connect

Toogas Featured Popup extension provides you with fully customizable options for pop-ups. All of these options appear in Magento’s admin. With this module, you make the pop-up windows within your ecommerce store nice and friendly. The corresponding image and its dimensions, the associated store views, and several other settings, such as opacity and priority, are offered by this extension. Toogas Featured Popup is absolutely free and you can download it here.

Figure 1-6. Toogas Featured Popup

Improved Navigation : the name of this extension speaks for itself. The default navigation within Magento store is far from being top-notch, but with Improved Navigation by Amasty you will make your store much more user-friendly. Your customers will easily find the way from the main page of your Magento store to the products they are looking for. Thus, you will be able to increase revenue and customers loyalty. Improved Navigation offers such features as SEO-layered and Ajax-layered navigation, navigation filters, advanced menu categories, price slider, and so forth. For additional information, look here.

Figure 1-7. Improved Layered Navigation

By installing the AddThis extension, you enhance the usability of your Magento store with the help of a sharing tool. Thus, your customers are able to share content from your ecommerce website to more than 350 social media services. You can even see some sharing stats with an AddThis account. The tool provides information on the number of shares among your visitors, services used for sharing, shared content, and even copied text. You can install AddThis extension from here.

Figure 1-8. AddThis

The Easy Lightbox extension is a special tool designed for installing a Lightbox widget for your Magento website. It replaces the default product image zoomer with an attractive lightbox window. With the extension you can install and configure Lightbox within five minutes. The process is free and extremely easy, since no coding experience is required. Moreover, you don’t even have to replace the existing files. Hit this link for additional information.

Figure 1-9. Easy Lightbox

Quick Contact extension provides your customers with the ability to leave feedbacks about your ecommerce website. Using this module, you will be closer to your customers. Furthermore, you will always know why your visitors are dissatisfied. The tool is absolutely free, upgradable, customizable, and easy to install. You can download Quick Contact extension here.

Figure 1-10. Quick Contact - Free Extension

Banner Slider extension is the most powerful banner management tool among all similar Magento modules, since it offers 36 available positions for displaying banners and slideshows. The extension supports ten banner rotator effects and a customizable slider. Banner Slider provides an easy banner management due to the following parameters: URL, showing time, image, appearing order, and so forth. You can download Banner Slider here.

Figure 1-11. Banner Slider

Applying the Advanced Product Options module, you can specify the available number of every standard custom option offered on Magento. The extension also provides the ability to upload images for all these options, so you can represent your goods in a more convenient and affordable way. The Advanced Product Options Magento module is used by thousands of ecommerce merchants all over the world. It is a time-tested reliable solution designed to make your store more user-friendly. Visit this page to purchase the extension.

More Frontend Improvements¹⁷

Loyalty and Referral Campaigns

It is extremely important to increase visitor loyalty to turn buyers into returning customers and create buzz within social networks. When different stores sell similar products, loyalty means almost everything, since the growing loyalty paves the way to an increase in sales. Posts from random users on Facebook or Twitter have become one of the most trusted forms of advertising. Thus, there is no question of whether to start a referral campaign. The question is how to do it with maximum output. I recommend that you begin with the following extensions.

Sweet Tooth Loyalty and Reward Points Magento extension provides you with the ability to create reward points programs developed to increase loyalty, and as a result, sales. Sweet Tooth offers tons of customizations and unique features. You will be able to turn your visitors into buyers, buyers into returning customers, and returning customers into brand advocates that bring friends to your ecommerce store. Note that Sweet Tooth is available on a monthly subscription basis. For additional information, go here.

Figure 1-12. Sweet Tooth

Refer a Friend by aheadWorks is another reliable tool when it comes to loyalty and referral campaigns. As you might have guessed by its name, it is established to stimulate customers to invite other people to your ecommerce website. A buyer gets a reward for every new invited customer. It can be a percentage or flat discount on a purchase. While you are getting new customers, your revenue is growing. You can get more information about Refer a Friend by aheadWorks here .

Figure 1-13. Refer a Friend

By using the Unirgy_Giftcert Magento extension, you provide your customers with the ability to use gift certificates within your store. Moreover, these gift certificates support custom gift messages. There are no transactional fees or other hidden payments. For more information, visit this page.

Figure 1-14. Unirgy_Giftcert

By installing the Gift Registry module, you can help your customers get the gifts they want. The extension allows them to create and manage gift registries with the information about their wishes for special occasions. Of course, these gift registries are often posted on social networks in order to inform friends about the desired gifts. As a result, you get lots of new visitors and additional buyers. You can purchase the Gift Registry extension here.

Figure 1-15. Gift Registry

More Loyalty Tools¹⁸

System and Back End

There are also some extensions developed for system and back-end enhancements. Usually, they simplify the work of administrators, providing some new features and extra customizations. As a result, you spend less time on different routine processes. Thus, you can concentrate on other vital aspects of your ecommerce business. Next, I show you the most reliable solutions, which can make the back end of your store better.

By installing the Enhanced Admin Grids Magento extension, you obtain extra customization options for most admin grids. As a result, administrators receive many new useful features, new columns, and a powerful editor. The module provides the ability to edit values directly in grids, shows hidden columns, and offers several rendering options. With the Enhanced Admin Grids Magento extension, you are able to customize such column base values as header, width, and alignment. Moreover, the module’s drag-n-drop feature simplifies the columns order modifications. You can find more information about the Enhanced Admin Grids (+ Editor) module here.

Figure 1-16. Enhanced Admin Grids

The Pulse Storm Launcher is a Magento analog of the Spotlight app. This extension is designed to save countless hours previously spent on traveling through the Admin menus. It is a free, fast, and highly productive tool for the Magento admin console. Get one-click access to the system with the Pulse Storm Launcher. You will be able to save your time and money. For more information, look here.

Figure 1-17. Pulse Storm Launcher

The Improved Import extension enhances the ability of the default Magento import procedure. By installing this module, you will add the most requested import features to your ecommerce store. The extension works with the out-of-the-box Magento Dataflow import/export from CSV files. It allows you to import multiple product images from external URLs along with product custom options and tier prices. Check this page for the full list of features.

Figure 1-18. Improved Import

The Seamless Delete Order module features the easiest way to delete orders on the back end. It adds a new option into the Action drop-down box from the native Order Manager. As a result, you get a fast and seamless option for deleting orders. Hit this link for additional information.

n98-magerun is the most robust CLI tool for Magento developers. It provides a large set of tested commands that save hours simplifying common processes. All commands are extendable via a module API.

• Description¹⁹

• Official Website²⁰

• GitHub²¹

More Backend Modules²²

Marketing and Sales

There are also Magento extensions that can be used in various marketing campaigns. They have different purposes, but the same final goal. Such extensions are aimed at the implementation of a successful marketing campaign and a sales increase.

For instance, Ebizmarts provides many opportunities for the email marketing, since it is an official extension for Mandrill and MailChimp integration. With the aid of this Magento module, you will be able to utilize Mandrill to send transactional emails—up to 12,000 per month for free. Additionally, you will obtain such features as an email Autoresponder and Abandoned Carts Recovery. The extension is absolutely free and you can download it here.

Figure 1-19. Mandrill and MailChimp integration

Improved Newsletter is another reliable marketing tool. It is designed for collecting customer emails. With the aid of this module, you can easily create a large database required for a successful email marketing strategy, as well as autosubscribe customers to your newsletter with their registration. In addition, the tool can detect unsubscribed customers and subscribe them while they are placing orders. The module is really powerful. You can purchase it here.

Figure 1-20. Improved Newsletter

Another important group of marketing extensions is represented by Advanced Reports. This module creates a complete picture of your ecommerce business. It provides reports related to sales, customers, and other marketing data. The default Magento solution is limited, so I strongly recommend that you use this third-party solution. You can find more information on Advanced Reports here.

Figure 1-21. Advanced Reports

LUKA Google AdWords Conversion Tracking is developed for seamless integration with Google AdWords. By installing this module, you will be able to add Google conversion tracking codes to every page of your store. The extension is absolutely free. Take a look at this page for additional information.

Blog is another core tool for your ecommerce business. You can post recent news, promotions, and information about upcoming products. The Blog extension by aheadWorks not only provides your customers with this data, but it also brings new visitors to your Magento website and helps with search engine optimizations by building relevant SEO-friendly text links. The Blog module provides wide opportunities for building successful sales strategies. In addition, it can be used for gathering feedbacks from your customers. You can find more information here.

Figure 1-22. Blog

Related Products Manager is a special Magento extension that uses existing shopper data to generate related items, cross-sells, and up-sells for your ecommerce store. This is another must-have module for your ecommerce store. It not only gains sales, but also helps with growing a customer loyalty. The tool is free, but for shops with more advanced needs, there is a paid version. You can get the Related Products Manager extension here.

More Marketing Extensions²³

Magento Hackathon Extensions

And don’t forget about Magento Hackathon extensions . Magento Hackathon is a series of community-driven events where Magento community enthusiasts create amazing open source Magento extensions and tools within just a couple of days. The core aspect of all Magento Hackathon events is intensive team collaboration: the best specialists develop top-notch solutions during short periods of time. The most prominent results of such cooperation are listed next. Please note that all Hackathon extensions have been tested by a broad Magento community, so you can easily use them not only during development, but also in production (if a project is stable, of course).

Magento Hackathon Extensions²⁴

How to Install Magento Extensions Manually via FTP (Six Universal Steps and Troubleshooting)

The following FTP (File Transfer Protocol) guide is designed for basic webserver setup: MySQL, Apache, and PHP. For a server with a more advanced setup, you have to adjust these steps. Ask your system admin about the details. You can also automate the installation process with the help of a command-line equivalent.

I strongly recommend that you use a test site to install modules. You might get into trouble even with the best Magento extensions, so you should check how they work without doing any harm to your live store. Therefore, install your modules in a test environment first. If everything is OK, repeat the installation on a live site.

Now I’ll explain how to install Magento extensions while avoiding Magento Connect. I have described the most common problems with a manual installation and show how to fix them. The following are the six universal FTP steps:

1. Turn off compilation.

2. Turn on cache.

3. Perform installation.

4. Refresh cache.

5. Re-enter back end.

6. Turn on compilation .

Turn off Compilation

If your Magento compilation mode is enabled, you have to turn it off; otherwise, your ecommerce store and its admin could be inaccessible after you install an extension. To disable the Magento compilation procedure, go to System ➤ Tools ➤ Compilation.

If you prefer working with the command line, you should use this equivalent:

1   php -f shell/compiler.php -- clear

In addition, I recommend that you create a backup of all Magento files. Thus when something goes wrong, you will be able to fix all problems with ease. You can also refresh the cache and check if your website works well. Don’t start the installation if there are issues with your ecommerce website.

An optional step is a database backup. You should create it for additional safety purposes. You can take your website offline or keep it live. In the second case, you will have to re-add orders manually after you create the backup.

Turn on Cache

Now, you have to turn on the configuration cache to prevent an early installation, as it could be the reason of errors. Go to System ➤ Cache Management.

Perform Installation

When you’ve found an extension that is necessary for your ecommerce website, you have to read its installation instructions first. That way, you get all the essential information for a successful installation. Don’t ignore this advice.

When you know all the nuances, you can download a Magento extension and unzip it into a separate folder.

You have to upload the unzipped content to a server via SFTP or FTP. Connect to your Magento server. Go to the root directory. Upload the appropriate files to the root folder. The root folder includes such subfolders as app, downloader, errors, and so forth.

One of the best free FTP tools is Filezilla. You can freely use it to simplify the installation.

Note that the uploaded files have to be readable by a web server. This means that they must have the same permissions as the existing ones.

Refresh Cache

Now you should go to System ➤ Cache Management once again and refresh Magento’s cache. This step is necessary for providing Magento with the ability to register a new extension.

Re-enter the Back End

To prevent the Access Denied error, you have to re-enter the back end. Log in with a full administrator account to get new permissions.

Check whether your ecommerce website works as always. If you’ve turned off the store, you should bring it online.

Turn on Compilation

If you are using the compilation mode, which was previously disabled, you have to turn it on. Go to System ➤ Tools ➤ Compilation and hit the Run Compilation Process button.

You could also use the command line instead:

1   php -f shell/compiler.php -- compile

1   define('COMPILER_INCLUDE_PATH', dirname(      FILE   ).DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'src');

1   #define('COMPILER_INCLUDE_PATH', dirname(__FILE__).DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'src');                  

How to Install Free Extensions via Magento Connect

Please note that you must use the previous guide for commercial extensions.

Some specialists don’t recommend using Magento Connect. Although it is the easiest way to install an extension, there are several drawbacks:

• By using the same key at different installations, you can install the wrong version of a module.

• It is unsafe to use Magento Connect Downloader with the 777 permission.

• You don’t have any ability to inspect code.

• By using Magento Connect Manager, you can accidentally trigger the upgrade of the Magento core.

If these aspects don’t deter you, then you should perform the following steps:

1. Go to the profile of a preferred extension.

2. Check supported versions of the platform.

3. Select your platform (e.g., Community).

4. Hit the Install Now button.

5. Choose the Magento Connect channel: 1.0 for Magento CE 1.4.x and below; 2.0 for Magento CE 1.4.2.0 beta; CE 1.5+; EE 1.9.0.0-RC2+.

6. Don’t forget to check the license agreement box.

7. Get an extension key .

8. Copy the key by clicking Select Key.

9. Log in to the admin of your Magento store.

10. Go to System ➤ Magento Connect ➤ Magento Connect Manager.

11. Paste the key into the appropriate field.

12. Click the Install button.

13. Now you can cancel or proceed to the installation. Click Proceed.

14. A console box will appear. It shows the installation process and displays issues (if there are any).

15. Hit the Refresh button to finish the installation.

How to Install Magento Extensions via SSH

Another installation method is based on using SSH (Secure Shell). It is a little complicated, but you can still utilize it.

1. Go to the directory with your installed Magento.

2. Run these commands:

1   chmod +x mage
2   ./mage mage-setup .
3   ./mage config-set preferred_state stable
4   ./mage install http://connect20.magentocommerce.com/REPO PACKAGE_NAME

Note that you must replace REPO and PACKAGE_NAME with values related to your extension.

For Magento 1.4.x or earlier use the following commands:

1   chmod +x pear                                                                  
2   ./pear mage-setup .
3   ./pear config-set preferred_state stable
4   ./pear install EXTENSION_KEY

You have to change EXTENSION_KEY with a new value related to your extension.

You can use Magento Connect to check if core Magento extensions are installed. Just log in to get this information.

How to Install Magento Extensions with Composer

I also recommend that you check these tools because they significantly simplify the installation: Magento Composer Installer and Composer Installers.

The purpose of Magento Composer Installer is to enable Composer to install modules and integrate them into a Magento installation automatically. It adds Composer’s vendor autoloader ability; as a result, Composer-compatible third-party tools can be used. Read about the project here: Magento Composer Installer²⁵.

Another useful tool is Composer Installers. You can examine it here: Composer Installers²⁶. Composer Installers also simplifies your daily routine by installing extensions or modules on Magento.

If the aforementioned information is not enough, check these manuals on module installation:

• How to install Magento extensions²⁷

• How to install a Magento module²⁸

Congratulations! Now you can install Magento modules. Now it’s time to choose a payment gateway for your ecommerce website

Minimum Required Columns for a Simple Product Import

The easiest way to understand what data is required in a CSV file is to export some products from your Magento store. If you don’t have any ecommerce stores based on this platform, you can always use several products for a test. Fill in all product information, add images, and then try to export them. Just go to Magento admin ➤ System ➤ Dataflow profiles ➤ Export all products. As a result, you will get a CSV file with dozens of columns. Let’s take a closer look at them. Next, I provide a brief description of a CSV file’s parts.

• websites. A website entity is associated with a product. In default Magento and in most other cases, it is “base.”

• store. A store entity is associated with a product. In default Magento and other cases, it is “admin.”

• type. The types of a product: simple product, grouped product, configurable product, virtual product, bundle product, downloadable product.

• attribute_set. The “default” or another attribute set used for a product. See it in Magento Admin ➤ Catalog ➤ Attributes ➤ Manage Attributes sets.

• tax_class_id. Product tax classes: None, Taxable goods, Shipping. You can manage them in Magento Admin ➤ Sales ➤ Tax.

• status. The status of a product can be enabled or disabled. If a product is disabled, it will not be displayed on the front end.

• weight. The weight of a product; just use 1 if you don’t need it.

• sku. A unique product identification.

• name. The name of a product.

• price. The price of a product.

• description. A full description of a product that is displayed on a product page.

• short_description. A short description is displayed on a product page and on other pages, depending on template settings.

• visibility. The visibility of a product on the front end: Not Visible Individually / Catalog, Search / Catalog / Search.

• category_ids. Magento category ids are associated with different products. They are created in Magento admin ➤ Catalog ➤ Categories. To get a category id, check it in Magento admin.

• qty. The available quantity of a product. It is used to control the in-stock/out-of-stock status of a product.

• is_in_stock. Sets up a default status of a product (boolean value 1 or 0): in stock (1) or out of stock (0). Out-of-stock products are not displayed on the front end and can’t be sold.

• image, small_image, thumbnail. First, you have to upload images into the media/import folder in your Magento installation folder, and then enter an image file name prepended with a slash. You can use the same large image for all three types of product images; Magento will scale it to other required sizes.

To import multiple product images and galleries, you have to use the Improved Import³² extension, since Magento does not provide this feature out of the box (more extensions follow) .

CSV File sample consists only of the columns described. If you’ve decided to give it a try, you need a category with id=3 and placeholder images copied from skin/fron-tend/default/default/images/catalog/product/placeholder to the media/import folder.

Extended Import with Additional Features

To get the full list of columns, you can just export existing products, as well as imported earlier (as in CSV sample). Appropriate export options are situated in Magento admin ➤ System ➤ Import/Export ➤ Dataflow ➤ Profiles ➤ Export all products.

Now you can get a complete list of default columns used in Magento product import. You can use them for the import procedure which includes column names and example data. In most cases, it is not difficult to understand what data can be placed there.

store, websites, attribute_set, type, category_ids, sku, has_options, name, meta_title, meta_description, image, small_image, thumbnail, url_key, url_path, custom_design, page_layout, options_container, image_label, small_image_label, thumbnail_label, country_of_manufacture, msrp_enabled, msrp_display_actual_price_type, gift_message_available, price, special_price, weight, msrp, status, is_recurring, visibility, enable_googlecheckout, tax_class_id, description, short_description, meta_keyword, custom_layout_update, special_from_date, special_to_date, news_from_date, news_to_date, custom_design_from, custom_design_to, qty, min_qty, use_config_min_qty, is_qty_decimal, backorders, use_config_backorders, min_sale_qty, use_config_min_sale_qty, max_sale_qty, use_config_max_sale_qty, is_in_stock, low_stock_date, notify_-stock_qty, use_config_notify_stock_qty, manage_stock, use_config_manage_stock, stock_status_changed_auto, use_config_qty_increments, qty_increments, use_config_enable_qty_inc, enable_qty_increments, is_decimal_divided, stock_status_changed_automatically, use_config_enable_qty_increments, product_name, store_id, product_type_id, product_status_changed, product_changed_websites, additional_images

Full CSV File sample

Product Import Custom Options

Unfortunately, default Magento lacks custom options for product impor t. But you can solve this problem by using the Improved Import³³ extension. With the help of this module, you can get new options and a new column in a CSV file. This column includes the following specific options: name, type, and price.

Product Attributes

Magento doesn’t provide you the ability to import product attributes and values out of the box. But you can use this solution: Import Product Attributes into Magento³⁴.

Products with Multiple Attribute Values

You can import products with multiple attribute values if you have attributes with values in the Magento admin and you want to associate them with existing imported products.

Import Multiple Product Images and Images from External URLs

By default, you are not able to import multiple product images and images from external URLs, but it’s possible with the Improved Import extension. With this Magento module, you can add as many images as you need in an additional CSV column and upload them to the media/import folder. The same process is suitable for images from external URLs.

Product Tier Prices Import

You can easily import product tier prices from different customer groups with the Improved Import extension.

Image Does Not Exist

If you’ve got an “Image does not exist” error in any product images required for import, you didn’t properly set that image in the CSV image column in your media/import folder. To solve this problem, you can use the trick described earlier (import everything without images) or use the Improved Import extension to find out which product images are missing.

Products Are Not Displayed on the Front End After Import

If products are not displayed in your front end after import, you must check "columns = values" in your CSV file. Check the following column descriptions:

• websites = base

• store = admin

• status = Enabled

• visibility = Catalog, Search

• category_ids = NUMBER (must be valid enabled category id in you store)

• qty > 1

• is_in_stock = 1

Products Are Not Displayed on the Back End (Magento Admin) After Import

Primarily, you have to check "websites = base" and "store = admin" in your CSV file. If everything is alright there, you should go to the next step of this guide and perform some cleanup in Magento.

Strange Stacks and Other Errors

If nothing else helps, use the Magento cleanup tools. Read this article: http://goo.gl/izm1Zo . It shows how to clean up Magento after a failed import process. Before using this method, make sure that you’ve double-checked your CSV files according to the requirements described.

Magento Optimized Hosting Services

You need to choose a hosting service for your Magento store. With a web hosting service, you make your ecommerce Magento store accessible via the World Wide Web. Th hosting service greatly influences performance. For example, a poor hosting solution can noticeably slow down your website. You can check our “Best Magento optimized hosting” blog post to find out the best solution for you. I would now like to draw your attention to Nexcess and Rackspace.

With Nexcess, you get full hosting options for your Magento website. The basic plan is $19.95 per month, but you have to pay annually if you want this exact price. If you choose a monthly payment, Nexcess costs $24.95 per month. For both solutions, you get one IP, 7.5GB of free space, 16GB RAM, 2x Quad Core E5620, 75GB of data per month, 9 additional stores, and 30 accounts per server. You can launch a demo for all proposed Nexcess plans.

This hosting service is the cheapest and the most stable and reliable among all Magento-optimized hosting services. I highly recommend that you try Nexcess SIP 200 as the perfect Magento hosting solution for both small and middle-sized Magento stores.

Rackspace is another top-notch hosting provider. The company has been on the market since 2008. Today, it includes more than 1,000 Magento clients worldwide. The cheapest Rackspace solution costs $499 per month. It best suits stores with 100 concurrent visitors and 150,000 products. For this money, you will get one quad core processor, 1 x 146GB 10K SAS, 4GB of RAM, Cisco ASA 5505 firewall, and 2TB Bandwidth every month.

Nginx as a Magento Web Server

Magento Nginx configuration

Official manual on Magento wiki

You can always use LAMP as a simple hosting solution for your Magento store, but there are cases when the usage of Apache with mod_php is not the best idea. For instance, when your ecommerce Magento store has dynamic content generated by PHP scripts in addition to static files. For such situations, Nginx with PHP-FPM can be a better idea .

For simultaneous HTTP/HTTPS connections, Apache uses a large quantity of RAM and CPU cycles. The problem is particularly acute for the standard Apache configuration and the mod_php prefork. Since each Apache child process generally requires around 100MB RAM for every request, a dedicated 16GB RAM web server is limited to just 150 concurrent requests.

One of the major advantages of Nginx is its event-based structure (Apache is process based). Thus, Nginx doesn’t require any new process to increase the level of concurrency. As a result, the memory footprint of Nginx is very low. In addition, Nginx exploits asynchronous and nonblocking I/O.

Nginx is operated by a pre-set number of worker processes, and each of them exists in the form of a single isolated process. Due to the event-driven and non-blocking architecture, Nginx allows every single worker process to handle requests from multiple clients.

You can benefit from Nginx even if you aren’t going to handle thousands of requests at the same time. This server solution scales in all directions: from the smallest VPS to servers’ clusters.

Nginx handles about 10,000 HTTP/HTTPS requests per second. It uses just 10MB to 20MB of RAM and averages 10% to 15% of CPU. Notice that in HTTPS, the usage of CPU is higher because of decryption/encryption routines.

The biggest drawback of Nginx is the absence of mod_php or its analogs designed for the direct execution of PHP apps. Being a static content web server and a reverse HTTP/ FastCGI proxy, Nginx can’t run Magento directly. In order to do so, it must utilize other means. The most reliable solution of this problem is PHP-FPM established for running high-load websites with PHP web apps. PHP-FPM consumes a small amount of resident memory and offers some unique features, such as adaptive process spawning, advanced logging with a slow log for slowly executing PHP scripts, the ability to start workers with different php.ini and "uid/gid/chroot/environment", an emergency restart for an accidental opcode cache destruction, real-time data on performance, and server activity.

To use Nginx with your Magento store, you need the front end enhanced with the following :

• Caching

• Reverse FastCGI proxy, which handles all HTTP/HTTP connections

• All static file delivery

• PHP-FPM

In this case, Nginx performs as a reverse FastCGI proxy for all dynamic content requests. All of them are proxied to a back-end PHP-FPM app and delivered back to a visitor after a response.

The usage of Nginx as a load balancer (one Nginx front end plus several PHP-FPM back ends) leads to a back-end failover and both high scalability and availability for the Magento installation. And you eliminate the need to utilize a hardware load balancer or any other associated expenses.

Monitoring Tools and Analyzers

A slow page or other negative user experiences could be the reason for leaving a webstore long before getting to checkout. Luckily, there are a lot of different monitoring tools and analyzers designed to identify a problem in time.

New Relic can be used to mark various operations, such as key transactions, for example triggers for custom alerting. Another function of this tool helps observe the slowest queries. Thanks to the “app map” feature, New Relic provides a clear view of the application dependencies that occur on your Magento ecommerce site. This feature also works along with third-party extensions and external services. With the app map feature, you can easily find the “weakest link” in your application chain. However, there are two other features that should be mentioned: Apdex scoring and alerting. With the aid of Apdex scoring, New Relic evaluates how well the Magento app is performing according to industry standards. Since the feature is combined with alerting, you will be always notified when the performance of your Magento store is challenged, due any variety of reasons.

Debugging Magento Performance with New Relic

Magento New Relic Integration on GitHub

Yireo New Relic Magento Extension

With the AppDynamics platform, you get full visibility of Magento-based PHP app performance. The solution provides rapid installation and high scalability. AppDynamics automatically discovers the Magento application topology. The tool provides the ability to customize a monitoring process by choosing which transactions to include or exclude from a real-time view. It also distinguishes web and mobile experiences, and expands visibility from the user to a database by correlating the performance of the database to originating transaction performance metrics. In addition, you are able to monitor root-cause errors and exceptions in real time.

Magento MySQL-Optimized Configuration

Proper MySQL configuration is among the most robust enhancements made to ensure the supreme performance of a Magento store. It requires an understanding of your hardware–primarily the available RAM. Next, I discuss the most reliable solutions elaborated to optimize Magento and that enhance a website’s performance with the help of proper MySQL configurations.

This is an example of proper MySQL configurations:

  1   ##########################################################################################              
  2   ####              
  3
  4   ##  http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/innodb-parameters.html  ##              
  5
  6   ##  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rackerhacker/MySQLTuner-perl/master/mysqltuner.pl  ##              
  7
  8   ## https://launchpadlibrarian.net/78745738/tuning-primer.sh ##              
  9
 10   ## yum install mytop / apt-get install mytop ##              
 11
 12   ##########################################################################################              
 13   ####              
 14
 15   [mysqld]
 16
 17   ### MyISAM #              
 18
 19   key_buffer_size = 16M # keep it low if no myisam data              
 20
 21   myisam-recover-options = FORCE,BACKUP
 22
 23   ### SAFETY #              
 24
 25   innodb = force
 26
 27   max_allowed_packet = 150M
 28
 29   max_connect_errors = 100000
 30
 31   bind-address = 127.0.0.1
 32
 33   skip-name-resolve
 34
 35   ### CACHES AND LIMITS #              
 36
 37   back_log = 200
 38
 39   interactive_timeout = 7200
 40
 41   wait_timeout = 7200
 42
 43   net_read_timeout = 120
 44
 45   net_write_timeout = 300
 46
 47   sort_buffer_size = 2M
 48
 49   read_buffer_size = 2M
 50
 51   read_rnd_buffer_size = 16M
 52
 53   join_buffer_size = 4M
 54
 55   tmp_table_size = 128M
 56
 57   max_heap_table_size = 128M
 58
 59   query_cache_type = 1
 60
 61   query_cache_size = 128M
 62
 63   query_cache_limit = 4M
 64
 65   max_connections = 150
 66
 67   thread_cache_size= 32
 68
 69   open_files_limit = 65535
 70
 71   table_definition_cache = 4000
 72
 73   table_open_cache = 4000
 74
 75   ### INNODB_ #              
 76
 77   innodb_thread_concurrency = 0
 78
 79   innodb_lock_wait_timeout = 7200
 80
 81   innodb_flush_method = O_DIRECT
 82
 83   innodb_log_files_in_group = 2
 84
 85   innodb_log_file_size = 256M
 86
 87   innodb_log_buffer_size = 16M
 88
 89   innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 2
 90
 91   innodb_file_per_table = 1
 92
 93   innodb_io_capacity = 400
 94
 95   innodb_read_io_threads = 8
 96
 97   innodb_write_io_threads = 8
 98
 99   innodb_buffer_pool_instances = 8
100
101   innodb_buffer_pool_size = 4G
102
103   ### LOGGING #              
104
105   #log_error = /var/log/mysql/mysql-error.log              
106
107   #log_queries_not_using_indexes = 1              
108
109   #slow_query_log_file = /var/lib/mysql/mysql-slow.log              
110
111   ### BINARY LOGGING #              
112
113   #log_bin = /var/lib/mysql/mysql-bin              
114
115   #expire_logs_days = 14              
116
117   #sync_binlog = 1              

How to Use CDN with Magento

A content delivery network (CDN) is a complex of servers with multiple data centers around the world and across the Internet. The main goal of every content delivery network is to provide content to end users with the highest possible performance and availability. CDNs work with different web objects and store downloadable content. They also provide faster access to apps, streaming media, and social networks. Thus, CDNs play an important role in modern online content delivery. There are dozens of possible solutions, but I would like to draw your attention to CloudFlare.

CloudFlare relies on recent hardware innovations, advanced network routing, and modern web server technology improvements. As a next-gen CDN, CloudFlare works better than its competitors. It is also more affordable and easier to set up. This CDN solution provides your website with a load speed that is twice as fast (regardless of the location of your visitors). I should also mention that CloudFlare works well with both static and dynamic content. Furthermore, the company guarantees that your Magento store will always be online. Last but not least, there is support for IPv6 networks and other CDNs. To set up your web store to use this CDN, you can utilize our CloudFlare control extension.

Get access to CloudFlare CDN³⁷

Control for CloudFlare® Magento extension³⁸

The Best CDN Services ³⁹

Full Page Cache Magento Extensions

There are a lot of full page cache Magento extensions designed to improve website speed and reduce page load time. All modules from this group are based on the same principle explained next. Magento automatically generates and delivers pages to first-time visitors. These pages are copied and saved to cache. At some point, all the pages of your Magento store get cached copies, and the necessity to generate new pages from scratch is eliminated. Therefore, the full page cache extension reduces the load from the database and the server, and decreases page load time.

You can find a complete list of the Full Page Cache extensions here: The Best Magento Full Page Cache Extensions⁴⁰.

The best free solutions among these is Lesti; whereas the most robust paid FPC Magento module is Extendware.

The Lesti::Fpc Magento extension ( https://goo.gl/NHxxDs ) doesn’t require varnish or any other external tools and solutions. It works with events, replaces dynamic blocks before sending a response to the visitor, and caches cms_page_index, cms_index_index, catalog_product_view, and catalog_category_view pages by default. The module supports multiple stores and currencies. Additionally, Lesti::Fpc provides mobile themes and custom price groups. Hit this link for further information. Please note that the extension is good for small projects, but if you have a growing store, I definitely recommend that you use Extendware Full Page Cache.

Figure 1-24. Lesti_Fpc

This solution possesses a positive reputation and tons of reviews from professionals. It features several add-ons that make it even faster, offers support for Redis, and provides reliable customer service. By using this full page cache, you will be able to receive help from Extendware specialists. Here are the core features of the module :

• Extendware Full Page Cache does not use the database, handling 90% of all requests. Thus, you can see the same speed as in Varnish, but with a better cache hit rate and easier configurations.

• The module enables entire page cache, groups of pages, or just specific pages related to an affected product. Thus, you don’t flush what you don’t really need to.

• Moreover, Extendware Full Page Cache fully supports catalog sorting. Please note that other similar extensions do not support the default Magento sort order changing in the catalog, which is the reason for incorrect caching in the default category sort order.

• There is multi-level cache support. The Full Page Cache extension offers three cache systems combined in one. Primary Page Cache increases server throughput by more than 100+ times. Secondary Page Cache offers hole punch support for logged users or visitors with products in a cart. Lightening Page Cache is 2–200 times faster than the primary cache level.

Don’t forget to check other features in our Extendware Full Page Cache review: Extendware Full Page Cache Magento Extension Review⁴¹. You can also purchase the extension there.

Magento Cache Crawler/Warmer Extensions

It’s extremely necessary to enhance your Full Page Cache Extension with a warmer/crawler module. This module crawls your ecommerce store to ensure that all pages load as fast as possible. In addition, a warmer/crawler extension refreshes old cached pages. Thus, all of your customers get the newest content at the fastest speed.

Moreover, cache warmer/crawler extensions help improve a website’s cache hit rate by pre-caching uncached pages. As a result, you get more cached and less uncached requests. A list of warmers is here: The Best Full Page Cache Warmers/Crawlers For Magento⁴². I recommend that you use a solution offered by maverick193. You can get it for free. The best paid module is Extendware, which provides more robust features.

CSS and JS Minification

Another method of the Magento speed optimization concerns JavaScript and CSS files. It is possible to combine, compress, and cache them to enhance Magento’s performance. I recommend that you use the Fooman Speedster Advanced Magento extension for the aforementioned operations. The module combines multiple JavaScript files or CSS files into a single file. It reduces the total size of loadable files and the number of HTTP requests, so you get a shorter page load time. You can download the Speedster Magento extension for free.

Figure 1-25. Fooman Speedster

Download Speedster Advanced Magento extension

Speedster Magento extension on GitHub

Extendware Minify JS / CSS / HTML Magento Extension⁴³

One Step Checkout

First, I’d like to draw your attention to One Step Checkout extensions, since they are more user-friendly than a default solution. There is an appropriate list of such modules on the Firebear blog (The Best One Step / Page Checkout Extensions For Magento⁴⁵). The best free tool is One Step/Page Checkout by IWD ( https://goo.gl/72qrA8 ). The most reliable paid solution is One Step Checkout ( http://goo.gl/2MjSf ). By installing one of these extensions, you significantly improve the time required for checkout.

Figure 1-29. One Step Checkout

PHP Accelerators

Another crucial aspect that helps to increase site speed is the usage of PHP accelerators designed to improve the performance of PHP apps. Most of them cache compiled opcode/bytecode to avoid overhead caused by compiling source code during each request. The cached code is stored in a shared memory and executed from there. As a result, PHP accelerators minimize the amount of slow disk reads and decrease memory copying at a runtime. The best PHP accelerators are described here: The Best PHP Accelerators⁴⁶.

Cache Back End

You can easily improve your cache back end with the help of the Performance Cache Backends extension by Extendware. The module provides improved file-based and Redis-based caches optimized for tag flushing. As a result, you get a faster add-to-cart process, checkout, and product savings. The extension costs $149 and you can check its review here: Extendware Cache Backends / Faster Checkout Magento Extension⁴⁷.

Indexing

Improved Indexing is another extension by Extendware aimed at improving the performance of your Magento store. The module increases the speed of the administrative back end. It reduces all slowdowns that occur when saving products or categories. As a result, you can perform the same amount of work faster. The price of Improved Indexing is $139. You can check the extension here: Extendware Improved Indexing Magento Extension Review⁴⁸.

The Most Reliable Community Advice

By monitoring different forums, I’ve highlighted the following important steps:

1. To increase the speed of Magento checkout, disable the Mage_Rss module, since it forces a “cache clean” four times during a checkout process slowing down your website.

2. If you aren’t using downloadable products, turn off Mage_Downloadable. This will help to increase the checkout speed, as well as reduce the time necessary for cart actions when there are multiple items in a cart.

3. Set your indexes to manual and disable cache tag storage. Both changes provide a huge impact on performance as they prevent Magento from flushing out caches and re-indexing for each order. Unfortunately, these actions can make your content stale.

4. Perform some profiling and wire up xhprof/xhgui.

Disable Some Core Extensions

The following are some of the core extensions that need to be disabled.

• Mage_Adminnotification

• Mage_Authorizenet

• Mage_Bundle (if it is not used on your website)

• Mage_Downloadable

• Mage_GiftMessage

• Phoenix_Moneybookers

• Mage_Paygate (along with disabled Mage_Paypal, Mage_PaypalUk, and Mage_Authorizenet)

• Mage_Poll

• Mage_Rating (if it is not used on your website)

• Mage_Rss

• Mage_Sendfriend

• Mage_Tag (if it is not used on your website)

• Mage_Weee (along with disabled Mage_XmlConnect)

You can turn off more core extensions, depending on your project, but these are the ones that should be disabled most often. Just make sure that you don’t break the stability of your Magento.

Always clean the cache and do full end-to-end store testing after disabling to make sure that everything works well and there are no errors.

Dedicated Magento Multi-Servers/Clusters

Magento Enterprise Clusters by Nexcess offers the highest possible performance. All solutions utilize the latest security and performance enhancements. Each cluster is individually built, optimized, and customized for Magento, and all of them include access to Nexcess’ CDN. A basic solution is Two-Node Cluster, both a web application server and a database server. With this solution, you can split your Magento store load into two independent servers. In addition, you will get such features as extra firewalling and staging environments. Two-Node Cluster starts from $1,499 per month.

Similar to Nexcess is Rackspace. It hosts more Magento sites than any other competitor. The company provides simple and powerful templates for self-service management. Other advantages of Rackspace include flexible architecture options, end-to-end support, and exceptional customer experience.

Mgt-commerce also offers Enterprise-class performance solutions for Magento and provides first-rate hosting services. By choosing this option, you get additional time for managing your business, since Mgt-commerce offers four types of multi-server environments optimized for blazing speed. The basic solution starts at $249 .

And don’t forget to look at Dedicated Magento Cluster by Byte. It also aims at enhancing the performance of your website. The basic solution costs $1,800 per month.

How to Scale Magento in a Multi-Hosting Environment

In this tutorial on severalnines, the author shows how to cluster Magento, Nginx, and MySQL on multiple servers. The article is full of useful tips, demonstrative visual materials, and examples. There are also articles on Stack Exchange that show how to scale Magento in a multi-hosting environment. I recommend that you pay attention to a post by Valentine Okafor. It describes the process of moving a Magento database to a different server .

Now your Magento store has an incredible performance range but it is still insecure. Hackers can steal vital data from your website, turn off the ecommerce store, and even digitally rob your customers. Next, I explain how to avoid these problems by turning your Magento store into a fortress.

1. Start with the Basics

2. Make the Most out of the Magento Template

3. The Curse of Duplicate Content

Your Magento store has a lot of duplicate content . Due to layered navigation and sorting options, every product can be available on up to four pages. You should get rid of copied content; search engines must spider it without indexing.

4. Dealing with Layered Navigation

Layered navigation is one of the biggest optimization nightmares because it is the core reason for duplicate content. Therefore, I’ve decided to make a separate section related to this problem.

Google Analytics Magento Integration

Google Analytics is one of your major analytics tools. This freemium service provides the ability to track big data related to the traffic of your ecommerce website. You can easily review online campaigns and see what happens on your online store in real time. With the help of the following Magento extensions, you will be able to integrate Google Analytics with your ecommerce website and enhance default abilities of the platform. See our blog post Magento Integration with Google Analytics and other Services⁶².

Google Analytics+ adds new features and advanced capabilities to the default module. The extension supports Universal Analytics and dynamic remarketing tags; helps improve conversions; tracks checkout process and AdWords conversions; and filters reports by different customers. Furthermore, you will be able to track data in a secondary profile and combine several sites in one account with this extension. The module is free.

Download the Google Analytics+ Magento Extension.

With the Google Universal Analytics by Aromicon module, you can also enhance your ecommerce store with Google Universal Analytics. The extension offers ecommerce tracking as well, so you don’t have to spend time on its manual implementation. In addition, you will get funnel tracking for checkout. Google Universal Analytics by Aromicon is compatible with Magento CE 1.4+ and Magento EE 1.10+. The module adds an appropriate script to the head or before the body end. You can download it free of charge.

Download Google Universal Analytics Magento Extension

Also see the Extendware Google Analytics Dashboard⁶³. It helps you integrate the Google Analytics dashboard into the Magento back end.

If the methods described are not enough for you, read the following guidelines. The following five steps show how to implement all the ecommerce capabilities built into Google AdWords.

Google Webmasters Magento Integration

With Google_Webmasters , you will get all the necessary data and a set of tools for making your Magento store Google-friendly. If you rely on traffic from this search engine (and I know that you do), the Google Webmasters integration is inevitable. Next, I will show you two ways of Google Sitemap Magento Implementation.

Creare HTML Sitemap for SEO

With the help of this extension, you will be able to replace a default Magento paginated sitemap with an SEO-friendly one that lists all the categories of your ecommerce website in a cascading style. The Creare HTML Sitemap for SEO Magento module lists all CMS pages, as well as a few static pages. Thus, the categories in your online store are indexed correctly. In addition, you get an XML checker. To check the new sitemap, go to the following URL: yoursite.com/sitemap.

Download Creare HTML Sitemap for SEO

Also, take a look at the MageWorx Sitemap Suite⁶⁴ and the Amasty SEO Toolkit⁶⁵.

Google AdWords Magento Integration

Next, I explain the benefits of Magento integration with AdWords and show how to connect both systems together.

Google AdWords management and conversion tracking shows the effectiveness of ad clicks. If your Magento website is connected to AdWords, you can easily get data about website purchases, app downloads, phone calls, newsletter sign-up, and other conversions. Invest in your ecommerce store wisely and optimize your campaigns according to business goals with the aid of AdWords. You can easily integrate your Magento store using the LUKA Google AdWords Conversion Tracking Magento extension.

The LUKA Google AdWords Conversion Tracking Magento extension simplifies integration with AdWords. You just have to install the module to enable Google AdWords Conversion Tracking on your Magento website. Check the source code of LUKA Google AdWords Conversion Tracking on GitHub here. Note that the module is absolutely free. Download LUKA Google AdWords Conversion Tracking Magento Extension .

Google Merchant Center Magento Integration

Google Merchant Center is a service, designed to help you with store and product information integration into Google Shopping. In order to work with the Google Merchant Center, you have to use your Google account or create a new one. Every Google account can be associated with only one Google Merchant Center account, but you can add extra users to your Google Base. At this stage, there are also two other conditions. Initially, you have to configure your account and choose your location and then agree to the Terms of Service.

Having set up your account and verified your website URL, you have to submit your product data. Before uploading any data files into Google Merchant Center, it is necessary to create and register your data feed—a file that includes attributes that define your products in a special way. The data feed is built like a classic RSS feed, but it also includes specific XML tags. Of course, you can perform all the actions manually, but there are numerous Magento extensions designed to simplify your interaction with Google Merchant Center; for example, Simple Google Shopping.

This module is established for exporting a well-structured and valid data feed from your Magento store to a Google Merchant account. Simple Google Shopping is highly configurable, easy to use, and provides support for several stores, VAT rates, and currencies. Get Simple Google Shopping Magento Extension.

The Google Shopping Feed extension is recommended by Google reps. Using this module you will be able to create a feed according to Google’s full specification. The main goal of the extension is to get as close as possible to a perfect data feed without maintaining it after the module’s installation. Download Google Shopping Feed Magento Extension.

By using the Magento Product Feed Generator, you have the ability to create product feeds for Google, eBay, and GetPrice. The extension supports CSV, XML, TXT, and other formats. With its aid, you can also get product details right from your admin. Get Magento Product Feed Generator Extension.

Using the Product Feed by Amasty Magento extension, you are able to generate a product feed in a short period of time (not more than few minutes). And it will take a day or two to put your products on high-traffic shopping platforms. Moreover, Product Feed by Amasty provides the opportunity to create an unlimited number of product feeds and separate them for all of your Magento store views. The extension works with Shopping.com, Google.com, Getprice.com, Myshopping.com, Shopmania.com, Nextag.com, and Amazon.com. Purchase Product Feed by Amasty.

The Product Feed Creator/Shopping Feeds module is a feed generator that allows you to create custom data feeds and then submit them to various product search engines. Product Feed Creator generates feeds for Google Product Search, Amazon, Shopping.com, Yahoo! Store, Channel Advisor, and dozens of other services. You can create feeds for your customers as well. This feature is useful for dropshipping and wholesale businesses. Get the extension.

For the More Curious

If these checklists are not enough for you, see this blog post. That Magento Pre-Launch Checklist includes some additional advice.