Magento covers a vast range of use - starting from a basic standard shop and ending with a highly specific custom solution [and] offers a vast number of possibilities and options ... a milestone in the history of online shops.
Stephan Schöll - Unic Internet Solutions
Can you tell us a bit about Wander and Unic?
Wander AG develops, produces and merchandises high-value food products under its well-recognized brand name and is known for unique food and drink experiences for everyday life. Probably the best known brands are the chocolate drink Ovomaltine and the sports drink Isostar.
Unic (a Magento Platinum Partner) designs, develops and operates integrated Internet Solutions that boost our clients' success. With more than 110 employees in our offices in Berne and Zurich, Unic is one of Switzerland's leading providers of professional internet services with vast expertise in the fields of E-Commerce, Online Marketing and Enterprise Content Management.
Wander and Unic have been in a partnership for 10 years now in different Internet-related areas: web content management, e-mail marketing, web analytics e-commerce, and hosting.
Why did you choose Magento for the project?
We were asking ourselves the following questions. Does it make sense to extend an over-grown, proprietary shop-system (which is based on active server pages) with the further time and incredibly high effort to do so? Or would it be better to start from the beginning using a new, future-oriented shop system. Furthermore, the former shop administration interface was not quite user friendly. Finally, we could win our client with the new solution, by showing the benefits of using Magento and in pointing out the opportunity to cut down costs.
One of the client's requirements was to recreate the existing front-end in an unchanged way. Nonetheless, both parties agreed to take the chance to implement some of the details in a newly fashioned manner and to not maintain old structures which bring no benefit to the new solution.
What technologies are currently implemented / integrated in the frontend and behind-the-scenes?
Smoothly linked with the Wander Web Content Management System
Fulfillment partner (3rd party) has direct access to the Magento Admin Area
Currently running on a virtualized LAMP server after having a few issues on the initially preferred Windows environment during the development phase (Version 1.0).
What other solutions did you consider/evaluate?
In the past we have been implementing shop projects focusing on Product Information Management based on "hybris". Smaller projects were realized using solutions like xt:Commerce or TYPO3 module. For this case we also did a broad evaluation with almost every well-known open source shop system. For flexible e-shops in the low end and middle price segment, the mentioned tools were barely an option for us. Because the user had a clear view of how the solution should look like, we decided to use Magento as a flexible base system even if some functionality and features could not be used "out of the box" and had to be developed specifically for the client's needs (thanks to Varien for your support!).
What are your future plans with the site?
The past shown that a marketing-oriented shop has to cope with changes constantly. The Wander shop is a intensively used marketing instrument. Therefore, the implemented shop solutions needs to react on requirements changes in a quick and flexible manner. Examples are Wanders specific wishes in the areas of promotions and discounts. We are curious and confident on how we can support Wander in their marketing in the future.
Any recommendations for people evaluating Magento?
Magento covers a vast range of use - starting from a basic standard shop and ending with a highly specific custom solution. Concerning its client segments it can support start-ups and small companies as well medium companies. The most central aspect is of course the shop itself. As soon as there is an integration into an ERP or product information management system required, I doubt whether setting up or building these connections really fit into a start-up budget. In my opinion, the strength of Magento lies mainly in the medium price segment even if this solution currently springs up like mushrooms.
On a technical level Magento is very demanding for the developers involved. On the one hand the relatively steep learning curve together with the currently rather sparse documentation must be taken into account specially when planning the first few projects. On the other hand we discovered that the stony path developers have to take is seamed with numerous highlights and positive surprises. Magento not only for your marketing department, but also for your technicians is a milestone in the history of online shops.
Any final words of wisdom?
Magento isn't just an "out of the box" shop system. Magento offers a vast number of possibilities and options. It's basically not just "here it is, use it". Thus it is key to talk about and define the perfect setup for the individual customer case. During the realization we benefited enormously from a intense preliminary conception phase.
I wish that the clear (software) design and the exciting flexibility of Magento may be preserved. There are enough (open source) shop solutions - well established and in the market for a long time already - which have fossilized and are not extensible or even updateable anymore. May this fate stay far from Magento.
Compared with other systems on the market it was found that Magento is better architected and uses state of the art technology as well, while also providing a great set of functionality.
Alexis Orssich, Technical Director - Time Out Communications Ltd
Can you tell us a bit about your company?
Time Out is the leading authority on the world's best cities. For 40 years, through magazines, guides and websites, our incomparable team of local experts have been providing up-to-date information and critically sharp commentary on the arts, culture and urban life.
Why did you choose Magento for the project?
We wanted to use an open-source shopping cart system. Compared with other systems on the market it was found that Magento is better architected and uses state of the art technology as well, while also providing a great set of functionality. Or to phrase it a bit more radically, no other open-source shopping system really seemed to do it for us.
What technologies are currently implemented / integrated in the frontend and behind-the-scenes?
Magento is running at Time Out on Apache, PHP 5 with XCache as opcode cacher and MySQL version 5 as database engine. The application is deployed on one database server as well as on multiple Web/App servers. Slight modifications had to be made to Magento in order to be able to run it on a multi-server environment. Frontend wise we are using standard technology at the moment, our planned re-design of the shop might go a bit further there.
Would you recommend enterprise companies use Magento?
Magento can be recommended, the functionality is in many areas great (and just the way you wish it to be). The project was in some respects (documentation, etc.) in a quite early stage while we were implementing it and we therefore needed quite some time and also a bit of Indiana Jones attitude to use it. However, the project is progressing quickly and many things recently released are things we would have loved to have half a year ago already. All in all Magento can certainly be recommended for enterprise companies, if the evaluation takes into account that the project is only just maturing and still changing quite frequently. We believe that Magento will be the number one open-source shopping cart system used in the not too far future. If a company is looking into open source, Magento is the way to go.
What are your future plans with Magento?
We would like to use more and more the excellent sales promotion functionality of Magento. In the future an integraton into other parts of the websites are likely by using the API (share users, etc.).
Any recommendations for people evaluating Magento?
Magento comes with great, and in some areas superb, functionality. It is very well architected and the roadmap looks very promising too. Just do not underestimate the time needed to implement Magento. If you are not following the very standard implementation it does consume time. Magento is a serious shopping cart solution and not just a shopping cart script which can be thoughtlessly 'quick and dirty' changed. If you bear this in mind and are a bit of a pioneer, go for it!
Currently we are running three websites using Magento. It is a dream in this aspect. I only have to support and maintain one code base and I'm able to run multiple websites! ...The ecommerce features of Magento have helped us increase our average order value by 20% since we launched and our customers are more satisfied with the ability they have to manage their orders and their account
- Signing Time
Can you tell us a bit about your company?
Signing Time is a labor of love, born out of the desire for one mother to create a community that could communicate with her deaf daughter. Two Little Hands Productions, co-founded by sisters Rachel Coleman and Emilie Brown, is the company that produces and distributes the Signing Time product line.
Our award-winning Signing Time DVDs will help chidren, parents, educators and professionals learn basic American Sign Language (ASL) vocabulary words. Signing Time truly makes learning sign language easy, entertaining and fun for children of all ages and abilities. The format of Signing Time includes an adult (Rachel Coleman, co-creator) to model each sign, supported by footage of Alex and Leah (real kids, cousins in real life, Leah is deaf and Alex can hear, and Leah is Rachel's daughter), as well as footage of children and families demonstrating each sign in the proper context. Two to four thematic songs are sprinkled throughout each volume to help bring together all ASL vocabulary words that are taught.
Below are the criteria that we used in our matrix to help us decide on Magento. Magento fulfilled all these requirements.
Open Source software
Needs to be an ecommerce system that an easy backend user interface that is non threatening and non-technical in nature for our sales, and support staff to use
Needs to be scaleable. We are a small ecommerce company with projected growth in the future. We wanted a system that we could easily use now yet could grow with us into the future.
Need to be able to plug in third party applications with relative ease. Examples are accounting, reporting, 3rd party shipping, CRM.
Needs to have strong ecommerce abilities. Examples include ability to run complex marketing promotions and rules, ability to do related products, wishlists, reviews
Needs to have a user friendly checkout - one page checkout preferred
Needs to be SEO friendly for organic rankings
Needs to have some way to manage content or plugin in a system for managing content (CMS pages and static blocks fullfilled this need)
Needs to have the ability to manage mulitple websites from a single system
Needs to have the ability to manage both wholesale and retail pricing and websites.
Needs to be easy to tweak and change code and low ongoing cost maintenance. Perferred PHP over ASP or JAVA
What technologies are currently implemented / integrated in the frontend and behind-the-scenes?
Testimonials Module on the Front end/and back end
3rd party shipping integration where we export orders to 3rd party shipper and they import tracking numbers and shipping data when shipped. 100% automated and changes the status of orders and sends the customer an email
Added Google adwords tracking
Added custom statuses for orders to help manage 3rd party shipping
Would you recommend enterprise companies use Magento?
Yes. I like that the data layer, design layer, and programming layer are very well defined and independent which helps the system be scaleable and have low cost of maintenance.
What are your future plans with Magento?
We anticipate using Magento well into the future, hopefully forever as long as it continues to grow with the online ecommerce market and develop out new features that come into the future.
Currently we are running three websites using Magento. It is a dream in this aspect. I only have to support and maintain one code base and I'm able to run multiple websites! It saves me time (although the learning curve is a little steep - long term it is worth it)
What other solutions did you consider and/or evaluate?
We evaluated staying with CRE LOADED, a version of os commerce, and OFBIZ - the apache open for business project.
Any recommendations for people evaluating Magento?
I highly recommend Magento. Before choosing Magento our company tried implementing another open source ERP system. After months of work and frustration we scraped the entire project as a lose and started looking for a better solution. We found Magento and although it was very new we felt it would be a great fit for moving our company from OS commerce. After only two months of development and testing we launched and went live with our new website and backend systems. We were able to accomplish our goal for a third of the budget the other open source system was costing and do it in a third of the time. The end result in my opinion is a better system for our needs.
The ecommerce features of Magento have helped us increase our average order value by 20% since we launched and our customers are more satisfied with the ability they have to manage their orders and their account.
At the Paris eCommerce Conference this week, we had the pleasure of speaking with Smile, a Magento Gold Partner and the leading open source consultancy in France. Smile presented a session on open source eCommerce evaluating a number of solutions which drew a big crowd. Long story short, Magento took the top honors and came out as the standout product. Following this session, Daniel Broche, CEO of Discounteo.com (one of the largest eCommerce sites in France) and SQLI, a Magento platinum partner, presented a session that explored Discounteo.com's decision to use Magento for their next generation eCommerce site (expected to launch in Nov. 2008).
Short Interview with Smile (English)
Yoram Elalouf (Varien) and Frédéric de Gombert (Smile)
Short Interview with Smile (French)
Yoram Elalouf (Varien) and Frédéric de Gombert (Smile)
We also took a few minutes to speak with none other then Magento's French Commmunity Moderator, Sebastian L. (AKA SeL). SeL has been an instrumental part of the community and we are truly grateful for his efforts.
We've searched far and wide and can safely say Magento is the best shopping cart on the internet. It really is the next generation of ecommerce.
Myke Armstrong, NerdyShirts.com
Can you tell us a bit about your company?
Our site, NerdyShirts.com is an online T-shirt company. We carry some of the most awesome shirts in the world. Recently we've been experiencing some growth. To handle this, we needed a new shopping cart and a good web hosting company. We found Magento, which we believe to be the next generation of ecommerce and we found CrucialWebHost.com, a hosting company whose business model is developed around Magento. They have been a major help along the way. Magento runs quickly on their servers and they know Magento quite well. We've had a great experience with them.
What technologies are currently implemented / integrated in the frontend and behind-the-scenes?
We are using the basic Magento features and have added some custom features including a real time graphical stock chart in the front end, a rate of sale/reorder script in the backend and an out of stock notifier, which notifies customers when a shirt they want comes back in stock.
Why did you choose Magento for the project?
We've searched far and wide and can safely say Magento is the best shopping cart on the internet. It really is the next generation of ecommerce. Oh, it's also free.
Do you have other projects that you work on using Magento?
We are currently devoting all our time to NerdyShirts but of course are always throwing ideas back and forth about other ecommerce ventures.
Would you recommend enterprise companies use Magento?
Magento is quite scalable with some essential enterprise features built in.
What are your future plans with Magento?
We had been watching Magento since it was first announced. We started using the first stable version and now are along for the ride. We look forward to seeing Magento develop and continue to grow.
What other solutions did you consider and/or evaluate?
We've tried and used many shopping carts, Magento stands above them.
Any recommendations for people evaluating Magento?
You know, there is a search box at the top of the Magento admin section. In this you can search for anything: a product, an order, a customers name, etc... Results are displayed in real time. This feature alone has saved us hours of time. I think people should know about this.
Any final words of wisdom?
Shopping carts and web hosting is important, but don't forget about customer support.
Our team had definitely done its due diligence when analyzing other products that were both based on a fee model and open source. We wanted a product that we know had a good community behind it, a robust feature set, and was scalable. After comparing and contrasting we chose Magento!
Joe Rowett, Managing Director
Tell us a bit about Man Junk and your company
Man Junk was founded in 2007. Just a few days ago we launched our website and first product an intimate body wash for men. In the last 1.5 years we went through 30 formulations to come up with the best natural solution that could aid all the problems associated with men's intimate hygiene. Unlike any other product Man Junk is addressing a growing demand in the personal care sector, an estimated $12 billion dollar market.
Why did you choose Magento for the project?
Our team had definitely done its due diligence when analyzing other products that were both based on a fee model and open source. We wanted a product that we know had a good community behind it, a robust feature set, and was scalable. After comparing and contrasting we chose Magento!
What technologies are currently implemented / integrated in the frontend and behind-the-scenes?
Well since everyone on our team comes from a technology background we take "technologies" very seriously. As you figured out we are running the core Magento product built on a LAMP stack. We are also running another open source solution for our advertising and affiliate needs, OpenX. It was decided to also integrate the Google Website Optimizer for multi-variate and A/B testing on our front-pages.
What other solutions did you consider and/or evaluate?
We considered and analyzed a number of solutions such as OSCommerce, Cube Cart, Zen Cart, but narrowed them to just a couple including Foxycart for its web2.0 look and feel and LiteCommerce because of its ease of integration which we have done before. Honestly none of the other solutions made us feel comfortable in the long term except for Magento.
What are your future plans with Magento?
We had removed a lot of features of Magento to speed launch, but we plan to re-skin the whole Magento solution and utilize the entire application in the next 6 months as we scale our business.
Any recommendations for people evaluating Magento?
As we said above, Magento is a very robust solution for an ecommerce integration. We can't say it's been an easy task to implement, so we would recommend going with one of their preferred partners for configuration and professional services. But to say the least you're not going to find another enterprise ecommerce application with an ever so important thriving community.
Any final words of wisdom?
Check out Man Junk's site and the Magento integration and tell us what you think! We love feedback .... oh and thank you Magento for creating a fantastic product!
We were convinced by Magento’s easy and user-friendly backend, by its flexibility concerning design and its built-in SEO features ... All in all, Magento surpassed our expectations.”
Liaison Dangereuse
Tell us about Liaison Dangereuse and Phoenix Medien
Liaison Dangereuse is an online shop for classy lingerie, jewelry and boudoir accessories. We started in May 2007 with a Joomla shop, not understanding anything about web-technologies and search engines, just following a recommendation. Our goal was to offer designer brands outside the mass-market that are still difficult to find in Germany.
Our business grew well, mainly because we received a lot of PR from the fashion and lifestyle press. So we opened up a real boutique in Hamburg in February, 2008. With Google however, we did not get very lucky.
Phoenix Medien is Magento Silver Partner and provides professional services for the new eCommerce platform in Germany and Austria.
What technologies are currently implemented / integrated in the frontend and behind-the-scenes?
Since Magento comes out of the box with numerous great features we only required minor changes to setup all our attributes and products. On top of this Phoenix Medien build a dynamic search assistant called "Ask Loulou" which helps our customers to easily find convenient products in the shop.
Furthermore we integrated a new WorldPay module for credit payment which can freely be downloaded on Magento Connect.
Regarding hosting, we decided to choose Phoenix Medien’s optimized Magento Cluster solution so that the new Magento shop is now actually faster than our shop ever was before.
Why did you choose Magento for the project?
We soon realized that if we want to improve our Google ranking and maintain a stable positioning, we would need a shop technology which is much more search engine friendly. Our choice was between xt:Commerce and Magento. 50% of our advisers were skeptical and recommended a more tried and tested software like XTC.
The main concerns regarding Magento were about the speed of the shop, technical bugs and the adequacy for the European market with its specific legal requirements. The other half just raved about Magento. We were finally convinced by Magento’s easy and user-friendly backend, by its flexibility concerning design and its built-in SEO features. A dream, within only a week, we reached 5 new Google Top 3 positions.
All in all, Magento surpassed our expectations.
What are your future plans with Magento?
We want to further improve our Google ranking, expand to include new brands and categories and offer an English version of the shop to cater to the US customers and rest of Europe. With Magento’s flexibility will surely reach our goals in no time and make ordering easier for customers in- and outside Germany.
Any recommendations for people evaluating Magento?
When we started with Magento in May we made a lot of mistakes in creating products and attributes. After we added several hundred products we got stuck and asked Phoenix Medien for help. They explained us how to setup attribute sets and how to share that information between different product categories which now is the basis for our great search assistant.
If you are considering using Magento and don’t know were to start ask a local Magento Partner – it really saves a lot of time.
We were very impressed with the opportunities Magento offers and how well designed it is. Furthermore, our happy client is confirmation of a good system and good work.”
Rainer Weber, clicforward – Büro für Kommunikation und Design
Can you tell us a bit about gmund and your company?
Our client, Büttenpapierfabrik Gmund is a traditional manufacturer of fine paper for almost 180 years. The paper mill offers a wide product range of currently more than 30,000 different papers in several colors, weights and sizes. The company is based near the beautiful Lake Tegernsee in the Bavarian Alps. clicforward is a Design and Internet Agency based in Ingolstadt/Germany with a commitment to high quality work.
What technologies are currently implemented / integrated in the frontend and behind-the-scenes?
First we started with the frontend and built a complete new theme from the ground up which is totally different from the default theme. In the shop we wanted to place the complete product presentation on one site so we integrated some AJAX functions to load the product details on the product list page.
Together with Magento Silver Partner Phoenix Medien we built an import module to automate the product maintenance of more than 4,000 products and built a distributor query with backend functionality. For the payment settlement we choose PAYONE and built together with Phoenix Medien a module for the transactions. This Module is available on the Magento Connect Site. Lastly, we modified the shop for the German market.
Why did you choose Magento for the project?
The requirements from our client related to design, usability and functionality where ambitious so we searched for a system with big flexibility and a lot of built in functions. Just before we started to evaluate some systems, Varien released version 1.0 of Magento. We were very impressed from the design of the demo store and the backend. The system seemed to be very thoughtful and offered a lot of cool and useful functions.
What other solutions did you consider and/or evaluate?
After a couple of unsatisfying inquiries we evaluated between xt.Commerce and a self made solution build on our own CMS-System. We were convinced by the backend, the built-in functionality and the idea to try something new and high potential.
What are your future plans with Magento?
The site shall be expanded and a second shop with boutique products and a different design should be integrated in the future. Furthermore we think about a small community and localization for 5 further countries.
Any recommendations for people evaluating Magento?
Understanding the Architecture of the System is one of the keys for a successful project. Try it and learn.
Any final words of wisdom?
Varien has set a new standard in the world of e-commerce which will be push forward through the fast growing community and the Magento Connect. We look forward to running more projects with Magento.
