Magento

Inchoo is a Silver-level Magento Solution Partner that already has 4 Magento Certified Developers on staff. In this post, Tomislav Bilić, Inchoo’s CEO, discusses Inchoo’s rapid growth, and shares his perspective on developer certification.

Tell us a little about your business, including how and why you became involved with Magento.

I had a passion for eCommerce solution development since 2003.

When I first noticed Magento back in 2007, the platform was still in its early beta phase, I knew it was going to be the next big thing in eCommerce. I founded Inchoo at the same time Magento released version 1.0. Inchoo’s growth has gone hand in hand with the growth of Magento itself.

What are the one or two key factors behind your success with Magento?

I would say having a great team and sharing knowledge are the keys. We’ve been focused on adding great talent to our team right from the start. Our current roster features developers who have been speakers at Magento conferences as authors of some of the most read articles on specific Magento topics

From day one we also started sharing our work with the rest of the community of Magento developers/enthusiasts.

We have grown to a total of 30 people. Most of us are in Croatia but we also have a branch in Serbia and an Operations Manager in Australia.

Why did you decide to have your developers take the Magento Developer Certification exam?

We were very happy to see the launch of Magento Developer Certification. We felt this would be a great opportunity for us to take our business to the next level. Our developers saw the certification process as the final confirmation of their hard work and all those hours devoted to mastering Magento.

Our CTO was the first to pass the exam. That motivated the rest of the team to start pursuing certification as well.

How many Magento Certified Developers do you current have onboard? How will having these certified developers help your business?

We currently have 4 Magento Certified Developers, and we’re not stopping – we have many more preparing for the exam.

We feel that having certified developers on board will help us land some of the enterprise-level projects with clients who might have concerns about working with a company from Croatia. We know that some people aren’t sure where Croatia is – we’re hoping to change, and fast.

What else would you like our readers to know about Inchoo?

We’ve had our fair share of Magento clients with scopes of work ranging from straightforward theme designs and implementations to highly custom integrations with 3rd party systems.

We are running a blog about Magento development which is, modesty aside, one of the most famous blogs about the platform amongst our fellow developers. We take pride in giving back to the community by sharing our daily work and code snippets via our blog.

Make sure to pay us a visit if your plans take you close to Croatia – everything is pretty close in our country, so no excuses – we Inchooers are waiting for you!

To find out more about how Inchoo can help you build a better eCommerce business with Magento, visit their listing page on our website.

Developers: find out how you can join the growing ranks of Magento Certified Developers:

OMG, The Jeans Store was founded to spread the cool simplicity of New York street style through jeans and apparel. After establishing 10 brick-and-mortar locations in the Big Apple, OMG decided to enter the online space to bring their one-of-a-kind aesthetic to shoppers well beyond the borders of The City.

It was essential to OMG that their new eCommerce store retain the look, feel, and sense of community found in their offline shops. To bring their vision to life, OMG chose web development firm Gorilla

Making full use of the Magento platform, Gorilla set about building a site that would embody the spirit of the stores. Working with stylized graphics, negative space, and high-res product images with zoom and multiple view capability, the developers created a user experience that completely captured OMG’s unique energy. And by embedding advanced Facebook functionality into the site, Gorilla made sure that OMG shoppers would stay connected.

OMG’s eCommerce store is every bit as appealing to the eye and easy to navigate as one of its New York establishments. Customers are spending more time on the site than ever before and sales have shot through the roof.

Thousands of companies – including many of the world’s biggest brands – are using Magento Enterprise to grow their online businesses. Wondering how Magento Enterprise can help your business?

Have a Magento success story you’d like to share? Contact success@magento.com.

I’d like to take this opportunity to express my sincere, deepest gratitude and appreciation to my good friend and business partner, Yoav Kutner, who is leaving Magento. Yoav co-founded Magento, led the development of our platform, and served as our CTO for the past 8 years. I know that whatever Yoav does next, it will be worth watching closely.

As our CTO, Yoav made countless innovations and decisions about the direction of our platform. Equally important has been his commitment and engagement with the community.  From the very beginning, Yoav understood the value of being “open”, and the value of creating opportunities for an ecosystem. That commitment to openness will continue to shape our organization and our platform for years to come.

We’re fortunate that Yoav attracted the very best technical people to Magento. They loved working with Yoav because he challenged them, led them, supported them, and made Magento such a great place to work.  We’re fortunate that Yoav helped build a team that can build on his vision and help Magento continue to prosper.

His presence will continue to be felt in our organization and our industry.  His ideas are woven into Magento’s DNA – our culture, our technology, and our community. I will miss him tremendously and will always value the things I learned from him.  I can still picture the early days of our working together, sitting back-to-back in the closet-sized room that was our office. What a journey this has been: growing Varien, creating Magento, scaling our business and becoming part of eBay.

Yoav, on behalf of the entire team, THANK YOU.  After 8 years of working virtually non-stop, I hope you will take some time to relax, recharge and enjoy some time off with your family. We will continue the work you started and make you proud.

Saying goodbye to Yoav, Magento style

We are excited to announce the release of Magento Community Preview Version CE 1.7.0.0-RC1.

Before you begin downloading this preview version of our latest Community software from our download page or via SVN, we need to stress that it’s likely unstable and that we DON’T recommend that you use it in any production environment just yet. (For more info about preview releases and the Community edition release process click here.)

Highlights of improvements and new features include:

• Different base prices for customer groups
• Automatic generation of multiple coupon codes for a single promotion
• Backup and Rollback functionality
• CAPTCHA functionality to reduce spam registrations
• First version of REST APIs with support for:
  
  
  • -Creation, retrieval, update and deletion operations for simple products
  • -Retrieval of a list of orders as well as specific order information
  • -Update and retrieval operations for catalog inventory
  • -Creation, retrieval, update and deletion operations with complete customer information and customer address information
  • -More information on the REST APIs will be published soon
• Updates and enhancements to the existing SOAP and XML-RPC APIs with introduction of new API calls
• VAT ID validation for B2B sales in Europe
• New price range layered navigation algorithm
• HTML5 based theme for mobile devices

And that’s just the beginning. Check out our full list of features and fixed issues on our release notes page. Or take the software for a test drive and see how it works first hand. Diff files are available here. If you find any issues, be sure to report them in the bugtracker.

Unless you’re one of those superhumans that starts the day with a tall glass of water, there’s a good bet you are aware of the single-serve coffee maker craze. The popularity of these one-cup-per-brew machines has exploded, and New Jersey-based retailer Shoffee is right at the forefront of the trend.

While Shoffee’s business model of selling single-serve coffee makers and accessories online was strong from the outset, its original eCommerce store was not. A custom eCommerce site built in HTML, the site required an outside developer for every change. Moreover, the back-end system was limited; reporting and analytics were nonexistent; and there was no way to support up-sell, cross-sell, or product recommendation features.

This all changed, however, once Shoffee executives saw a Magento demo. Before long, Magento Solution Partner Briteskies was rebuilding their eCommerce store on the Magento Enterprise platform. Briteskies also designed and implemented an iPhone and android optimized site for Shoffee.com, providing mobile customers with a seamless user experience.

The new site lets internal staff members make their own updates; is integrated with digital marketing, dynamic recommendations, and SEO functionality; and has sophisticated reporting and analytics. Because Shoffee no longer has to hire outside developers for every administrative update to the site, they can invest their savings into growing the business instead. And due to the site’s new customer focus, sales and brand loyalty have skyrocketed.

It feels just about as good as that first morning cup of Joe.

Thousands of companies – including many of the world’s biggest brands – are using Magento Enterprise to grow their online businesses. Wondering how Magento Enterprise can help your business?

Have a Magento success story you’d like to share? Contact success@magento.com.

Want to keep the momentum going after you attend Imagine 2012 this April and grow your network in Europe? We’ve got the perfect opportunity for you – Meet Magento Germany!

The sixth-annual eCommerce conference will be held at the Westin in Leipzig from May 21st to 22nd and offers a great opportunity to learn from Magento executives and some of the best and brightest minds in European eCommerce.

Agenda & Speakers

The two-day event comprises 25 sessions spanning a wide variety of topics that will interest merchants, agencies and developers alike, such as internationalization and mass customization. Visit the website for the full line-up of speakers and list of program topics.

After Show Party & Networking

Of course, all work and no play makes for a boring conference. So we’ll also provide ample opportunity for attendees to relax, unwind and build valuable new relationships at a networking party for 500 at the Moritzbastei.

Tickets & Registration

Tickets to Meet Magento Germany are selling fast and the rate is about to increase. Netresearch is offering € 10 off on two day tickets for anyone who is also registered for the 2012 Imagine eCommerce Conference (must supply valid Imagine registration onsite at Meet Magento). Use coupon code MM612IMA5 during registration to lock-in your discount. So purchase yours today to secure your spot and save on what promises to be an unforgettable eCommerce experience.

For more information on the event, registration and hotel options, please visit http://www.meet-magento.de

Meet Magento Germany 2012 is brought to you by Netresearch.

At Imagine we strive to deliver a unique and valued experience to our audience that is well beyond a “yet another technology business conference”.  Our Imagine Keynote speakers are leaders of their industry, and are focused on bringing our attendees, in our fast changing technology world, a fresh perspective to building their business, brands and success. They will lift our minds above the noise of our day to day retail / eCommerce businesses and challenge us to focus on things that matter most in our long term success such as culture, people, leadership, information and brand.

Tim Kring

The Art of Storytelling & The New Monetization Models of Hollywood

Tim Kring is an Emmy Award-Winning Television screenwriter and producer , best known for Heroes, Crossing Jordan, and his newest creation, Touch.

Tim has been recognized for his industry-leading creativity in multi-platform storytelling.  He uses a variety of media outlets to create a story, and as inspiration behind Conspiracy for Good, where he blends entertainment, technology and philanthropy to allow the audience to become part of the story to create positive, real-world change.

Alison Levine

Risks & Developing No-Nonsense Teams That Succeed In Times Of Uncertainty

Alison Levine is an explorer and risk-taker—she‘s traveled across the North and South Poles and has climbed peaks on every continent, not to mention she was captain of the first American women’s Everest expedition.

Alison applies her leadership skills she’s gained from her expeditions to her professional life as well.  While she is currently serving as an adjunct professor at West Point Military Academy, she served as deputy finance director for Arnold Schwarzenegger, and runs her own consulting firm, Daredevil Strategies, which specializes in organizational effectiveness, leadership development, and team dynamics.

Stephen Messer

Big Data is Worthless, It’s About Big Answers

Stephen Messer is Co-Founder and Vice Chairman of Collective [i], a cloud-based marketing analytics platform that automates the work associated with compiling and analyzing data and socializes knowledge throughout the organization.  Stephen is recognized as an authority on entrepreneurship and online marketing.

Prior to starting Collective [i], Stephen and his sister founded, built, and managed LinkShare Corporation until its sale in 2005 to Rakuten for $425M.

Jim FitzGibbon

Culture as a Competitive Advantage

“Culture as Competitive Advantage” is the focus of Jim FitzGibbon’s presentation to delegates of Magento’s Imagine E-Commerce Conference 2012.  Jim details how Four Seasons, the world’s leading luxury hotel company, advanced from humble beginnings to become a globally recognized brand, by instilling a strong and unifying company culture.  He highlights how selecting employees with common values creates a dedicated workforce, aloyal customer base and ultimately, a profitable business.  Jim’s unique storytelling ability not only brings Four Seasons’ experience to life, but provides other business leaders with practical tools and tips for success.

Take a look at the Imagine Keynote Speaker page for more information on the speakers.

April 11, 2012 I 10:00AM PST

Webinar: Best Practices for Landing Pages that Convert

Landing pages should be built to convert. The design of a landing page is extremely important as is monitoring a landing page’s effectiveness through proper analytical tools. Google Analytics offers a wide range of features and reporting options which, when used correctly, can reveal weak points in landing pages and also help to determine the right solutions to enhance your site's conversion rate. In our next webinar with Go Pro partner, QuartSoft, you'll learn all about landing pages and how to build them correctly. Here are the details of this presentation:

Date: April 11, 2012 10:00AM PST

Presenters: Makhniboroda Andrey, Chief Designer, QuartSoft, Anna Moseva, SEO Department Analyst, Promodo and Alyssa Gothelf, Online Marketing Manager, Magento

In this webinar, attendees will learn:

• The positive influence of professional design on landing page effectiveness
• 10 tips for the layout of a landing page
• Integrating Google Analytics
• Defining and tracking goals and conversions
• The top 10 most important metrics within Google Analytics

Register now