Want To Pull In Clients For Your Magento Website? Time to Think Upon These Extensions

Can you name any three eCommerce marketplaces across the globe? Well, that’s quite easy- Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and Alibaba featuring a vast inventory after all, here you may find many suppliers, vendors, and sellers from across the world doing business. And maybe that’s the reason why they are known as the multi-vendor marketplaces. Now tell me on what basis I mean on which platform to be precise are these eCommerce sites built?

Owing to its impressive popularity, Magento is riding a wave of online marketing expansion by helping retailers around the world quickly plan, build, and optimize their online channel with minimal efforts. And with noticeable experience, Magento’s latest versions are seen covering all the business needs such as promotions, shipping, merchandising, and payments. According to several sources, Magento shares a collective 20% market share of all e-commerce websites, I must say it is a pretty decent number to boast about. Introduced in 2015, Magento 2 has compelled experts to speculate that this percentage will rise further.

Let’s know more about Magento 2

There is no denying in the fact that Magento 1 has often been praised for its versatility, but when it comes to Magento 2, it seems that the platform has taken a different tone than its ancestor. Which also means that now, all of you – Magento users are spoiled for choice.

In Magento 1 there were certain loopholes like slow loading speed and a lack of key administrative tools, etc. but with Magento 2 things turned out like it has become a better platform overall than its previous version. The new feature allows the platform to compete with other well-known platforms such as Woocommerce and Shopify. For starters, one can never expect a new platform to run faster by 20% on an average, but here possibilities are endless as full-page caching is now built into the platform. In addition to this, Magento 2 also has the capability to handle many catalogue pages pretty well without slowing down. The perks do not end here! You have almost three thousand available Magento extensions available to extend the functionality of an online store. However, the more extensions that appear on the marketplace, the more cumbersome it becomes to understand which of them will suit the needs of a particular e-commerce business.

So, how to choose the most ideal one for your needs?

#1 Define the purpose?

To narrow things down for you, you need to clearly understand and list the features you want to integrate into your online store. For example, do you wish to integrate your store with the Amazon and eBay marketplaces and end by promoting your online store, reaching more customers and increasing sales? Try answering yourself why one should install that extension. By this, you will be able to effectively identify a certain advanced functionality you need for your Magento store. Also, there are times when you have figured out some specific need, but you might encounter more than one extension that provides the capability that you need.

Let’s say, for example, some of your clients may request for a powerful search bar to be implemented on their website. This often applies to clients that have a long list of products to be sold on their store, for example, car parts dealers. In such a scenario, make sure you look for extensions that can boost searches as well as extensions that can help pages load faster.

#2 Relevant source: Where to get them from?

Like I said before, you will come across a plethora of extensions that provide the same set of functionalities so in such cases, how do you know which provider to get the extension from? Down below, I would like to mention certain factors to take into account when looking for a trusted Magento extension provider:

• Read online reviews: If you believe in the concept that reviews require to be lengthy, then you are simply mistaken because they don’t have to be lengthy as long as they are effective. The reviews you come across must make you feel more confident about using that particular extension.
• Discuss with fellow users- With the dawn of the internet, places like forums, discussion threads seem to have evolved like never before. For example, Reddit and Magento Twitter community are often free from vendor spam. In addition to this, you will be able to get useful opinions from existing users or other Magento experts.
• Keep an eye on the updates- It is very important to make sure that the extension is improved continuously. Also, know whether Magento developers are proactive at releasing necessary bug fixes, better versions, or newly added features or not. You might be shocked to learn that some extensions, once released, are no longer cared for. But that’s certainly not the case here. Although many Magento 2.0 extensions are relatively new, you can compare the update frequency for a provider’s earlier products to spot a trend.

#3 Try and Test

Almost every extension will have a demo version available so make sure you download it and test it. In case you are able to test front end and back end aspect of the demo, that’s even better. Apart from this, make sure that the extension is easy to set up, runs smoothly, and live up to your expectations.

One must always keep in mind that no such extension on earth will be ideal for each and every store, so you have to go one step further and think about making small tweaks and trims to convert it into an extension that truly ticks all the boxes. This is applicable with extensions that use the frontend. So you have to communicate with the vendor about certain extra functionalities that you need and discuss the price of your “modified” product. Also at the same time do not forget that the cost of paid updates will need to be factored in too.

The Best Out-of-the-Box Magento Extensions to Take into Account

1. Algolia Instant Search
2. M2E
3. Aheadworks Module Layered Navigation
4. MailChimp
5. Slider Revolution Responsive Magento Extension
6. Magento 2 SEO Extension by Mageplaza
7. Wyomind Cron Schedule

Author Bio

Shira Gray is working as a Business Development Executive at Magento Development Company –  eTatvaSoft.com. She writes about emerging technologies. Being a tech geek, she keeps a close watch over the industry focusing on the latest technology news and gadgets.