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We’ll be posting daily ‘behind the scenes’ mobile photos of our team as we push forward with the upcoming launch of Magento 1.0 (expected in the next few days, by March 31). If you have a Facebook account, join us in the Magento Facebook group.
A few samples are below:
The Designer's Guide to Magento has been prepared for you to learn and expand your knowledge of the structural, conceptual workings and methods of designing for Magento—It will basically teach you what you need to know to begin building a store of your own with Magento.
The documentation is largely sectioned into the following chapters and can be skipped through back and forth in order to quickly access only the information you need most. However, because each chapter acts as a prelude to the next, we advise you to follow along with the documentation in the order it was written:
The Designer's Guide to Magento can be found at www.magentocommerce.com/design_guide
We are excited to showcase the screenshot of the Magento demo-store homepage. This design will also be used as the first design package released with Magento. We are working nights to bring you Magento Beta1 (preview) in these next few days (and yes, it could be as late as the 31st, but certainly in August), and thought you might like a taste of how the front-end will appear in full color. Click on the image below to see a full-size version.
With the release of the Beta1, Preview version of Magento approaching in the next couple of weeks we present a sneak peek of the Magento Admin Panel.
Today we will take a look at creating a new category in the Magento Admin. Click on the picture to bring up a full size version.
The first thing to do is select the store where you would like to add the category from the stores dropdown menu. The default is for all stores managed by the admin panel, but you can elect to create the category in only one of the stores by selecting that store.
After that you will need to enter a name for the category which will appear on the sites selected. You can then select the location the category will be located in. The default is root, meaning the category will be a top-level category. If you select an existing category the new category will be created as a sub-category of the one you selected.
You can then enter a description, upload an image and enter meta information for the category.
After that it really gets interesting. If you would like customers to be taken to a landing page - instead of the standard product listing page - when they select the category, you can select a page from the Landing Page dropdown. This list will contain all the landing pages created in the Magento CMS. An example would be to create a Nike landing page and directing all customers to that landing page when they select the Nike category.
You then have 3 options for the look and feel of this category page. The default is Display Products Only, which will show the customer a grid list of the products. The second is display only Landing Page, which will display the landing page selected in the above dropdown, and the third is Display Landing Page and Products. This third option will place the content from the selected landing page above the grid list of products.
You then select whether the category is active on the site. Selecting no will hide the category on the site.
Finally you select whether the category page is an anchor. Anchors are used for the Layered Navigation in Magento.
If you set the category to be an Anchor the layered navigation (see this post for a look at the layered navigation) will display the sub-categories of this category in the layered navigation. The layered navigation then takes all the products underneath, including ones in the sub-categories, and displays all the filterable attributes of those products. If you do not set the category as an Anchor it will not display the filterable attributes in the layered navigation.
Here is a look at the layered navigation for the Apparel category which is set to be an anchor.
After that you can select products to populate the category from the Category Products tab and you have created a new category for your online store.
In many popular eCommerce solutions marketing features like coupons and tier pricing are expensive or difficult to integrate. Some Store Owners choose not to bother and miss out on valuable marketing features which can improve conversion rates. Magento is different. We believe that all store owners should have these features without costly integration struggles.
Magento includes a full set of marketing features out of the box. Varien's CTO Yoav Kutner says Magento's marketing tools are "second to none," but we'll let you decide. Included in the Beta 1 release are the following:
Tier Pricing: This feature rewards customers who purchase multiples of an item at a time. Buying one item might cost $10.25, while buying two or more will cost $9.25 each, three or more $8.25 each, etc. Store Owners set the prices and the limits, giving them complete control.
Coupons: We've also included a robust coupon tool, allowing Store Owners to create simple coupons for everything from rewarding long-time customers to promoting holiday specials.
Store Owners can define the following for a simple coupon:
With these tools, Store Owners can execute promotions like special gifts for repeat customers or a weekly coupon restricted to the first 20 customers to use it.
To create more complex promotions Magento includes a Rule-Based Pricing System managed through its Catalog. There are two areas a Store Owner can apply rules to: The Shopping Cart and the Catalog.
The Shopping Cart Price Rules are applied on the shopping cart page and act as coupons. Rules can be highly specific here, unlike in the simple coupon. For example, a Store Owner can create a shopping cart rule that gives 10% off any Cook Book (a subcategory of books, in this example), and also gives 50% off one Boston Red Sox coffee mug. The Store Owner can then limit the time for this promotion to a date range of July 14th-August 27th. Now the Store Owner assigns it the code "summerbaseball," and any customer who uses this code when checking out with cook books and a Red Sox coffee mug will receive the discount.
Catalog Price Rules are the tools used for storewide or category-wide promotions. Each valid product will receive the discount with no need for coupon codes. For example, a Store Owner wants to have a month-long sale in July and create a catalog rule called "July Sale" setting the date range to July 1st - July 31st. During this time, all products by manufacturer HP get 10% off. Also, all products of the "type" computer get 15% off. Since the store contains computers manufactured by HP, this can create an overlap. So, when creating the price rule, the Store Owner can choose to give computers built by HP either 10% or 15% off (by deciding which condition has precedence). The Store Owner could even add a third condition to "July Sale" that computers built by HP are 25% off.
Both the The Shopping Cart and Catalog rules can be applied to specific customer groups, making marketing even more flexible for Store Owners.
We can't wait to see how you use Magento's marketing capabilities when August rolls around. Let us know what you think in the comments.
The first thing a majority of your customers will do on your site is search for a product, and you want to make sure that you can give them the best search experience possible. We’re here to help. Magento’s search lets Store Owners get the most out of their search capabilities, and helps your Customers find exactly the item they’re searching for as quickly and easily as possible.
Magento will provide on-the-fly auto-completion of searches, giving suggested search terms and number of results directly below the search box. As a customer types printer, for example, the search box will fill in relevent searches with result totals, such as in the screenshot of Google Search below:
Magento also features advanced search, which allows Customers to search by Product Attributes defined by you, the Store Owner (for example: price range, manufacturer, category, etc). You’ll also have the ability to redirect certain search terms (to a custom landing page for advertising purposes, for example), and create synonyms for frequently misspelled words (typing “Mangeto” will automatically switch to “Magento,” for example), leaving complete control of the site’s search system in your hands.
This is only the beginning of where Magento can take your site’s search system. In the future, the search will allow for misspellings, alternate spellings, and plurals of search keywords, helping your customers find exactly what they want.
Stay tuned for next week when you get to meet us, the team behind Magento, in the new Magento Videos and a brand new Magento website! You won’t want to miss them!
Convenience for your customers should be a paramount priority for any eCommerce retailer. That's why Magento includes Multiple Ship-To functionality right out of the box, helping avoid the frustration that can occur when a customer is shopping for multiple people at one time. Instead of forcing them to place multiple transactions, they can quickly and easily ship to multiple addresses with one order. This can be especially useful around the holidays, when more and more people are doing their primary holiday shopping online.
Here's how it works:
It's just one less reason for your customers to leave your store frustrated, and one more reason for them to come back again and again.
Everywhere you look, social shopping seems to be exploding in the world of eCommerce. That’s why, in true Web 2.0 fashion, Magento will support the tagging of products in your online store. Tags, essentially one-word descriptors that act as keywords, can be assigned by logged-in users to any product in any category, helping your customers organize and remember the products they’ve seen as well as aiding you in adding to things like search engine keywords.
Under each product, the shopper will find a small button labeled “Add a Tag.” They can add as many of these as they wish, and are even able to view a “My Tags” page in their personal account. Others enjoying your store will be able to benefit from these taggers well, allowing them to click on the user-generated keywords and browse through all of the products that include that tag. Not only that, but the administrator has complete control of the keywords, which have to be submitted for review before being included in a product’s current tags. Once a word is approved, however, users can keep using it without it having to go through an administrator, saving you time and resources.
In short, it’s the implementation of social shopping made easy.
Customers value convenience above all else when shopping online, and focus on getting exactly what they want as fast as possible. Large companies like Circuit City or Wal-Mart help customers quickly compare attributes with product comparison tools, giving them a time-saving advantage over a similar medium-sized business whose customers are forced to manually compare. With Magento's Product Comparison feature, however, customers can quickly and easily compare products and their features, giving your site Fortune 500 functionality without the huge price tag.
You can simply define any of the product's attributes as "comparable" in your catalog. Then shoppers will be able to check a comparison box, adding and removing products at their leisure. Finally, when the consumers are ready to compare, they click "Compare Cart" to see an easy-to-read graph showing them exactly what product has the attributes they need. Not only that, but the user can print the comparison for later reference.
No more abandoned carts left by customers simply comparing features, and no more confusion about the availability of certain attributes with certain products in your store. It's all laid out for you and the consumer, making it easier than ever for customers to quickly complete a sale with a smile on their faces.
That’s right, the first preview of the Magento backend is now here. This screencast shows the functionality of the basic catalog management system, more of the system’s features will be revealed in future posts.
Cluttered screen?
Make your workspace more fluid with our customizable panels that can quickly and smoothly come and go at the touch of a button. Each of the panels can be tailored to your needs - simply drag them to your preferred size and you’ve got a workspace that works best for your needs.
Edit Your Catalog with Ease
We’ve made editing your catalog easier as well. You can re-sort your categories simply by dragging and dropping them into the order you want. You can even create sub-categories by dragging one category into another. It’s that simple.
Keeping Track of Your Product Data
Don’t like the default data grid columns and the way that your products are organized? No problem. Just click on a column title to choose which ones you’d like to see and remove. and drag them into the order that makes life easiest for you, whether you put product ID or price first. Use the same click method to sort your products by the data column you want, and move through the catalog at a lightning fast pace.
This is just the beginning. Keep your eyes open for more Magento first-looks and features in the coming weeks.
All the functionality in the world won't help if your site does not embody your brand and communicate your business through the site design. With template designs your site will appear to be the same as hundreds of others on the web, the only difference will be your logo in the corner.
So how does Magento allow you to maintain complete control over the design of your site? We developed Magento using an architecture (model-view-controller or MVC if you're interested) which keeps the design and the logic of the site separate.
What does this mean for you, the online business owner?
With Magento you will have total control over the look-and-feel of every page on your site.
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