Magento

Tickets for MagentoLive Australia are selling quickly and the Early Bird tickets are almost sold out! This is going to be a great local event to:

• Meet Key Magento Executives and Industry Leaders
• Connect with eCommerce Experts
• Get Insider Ideas and Information

Call for Speaker Submissions

Are you an eCommerce leader or expert who would like to speak at MagentoLive? Submit your topic here.

Learn More

Over the course of our experience, we've found there are generally two types of merchants: those who understand the importance of design and those who will. Site design—which encompasses visual design, user experience, and even content—helps to implicitly and explicitly establish customer trust. It helps define your brand and differentiate it from the competition, and there's no shortage of that. To help merchants get the most out of their Magento Enterprise Edition investment, we've put together a list of some key areas for you to consider when building or upgrading your eCommerce channel.

Custom Interface Design

One of our favorite aspects of Magento Enterprise Edition is the complete control the platform offers in terms of customizing the look and feel of a site. When it comes to the visual look and user interface, the sky's the limit, and this is a major advantage of the platform. Sure, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of prepackaged themes available, but your business and brand are unique. Every aspect of your site design should reflect that. The key is to "conform the website to the content, rather than conforming the content to a predetermined layout," says Bryan Herhold, Front-End Team Lead and certified Magento Developer at Gorilla Group. Take advantage of the flexibility that Magento Enterprise Edition affords, and make your eCommerce channel truly yours.

Design for the Experience

Conversion is the primary goal of any eCommerce business, but there’s more than one way to get there. For instance, a multi-channel retailer competing primarily on price and service may be most concerned with design that gets customers to add products to their cart and through checkout as quickly as possible. Whereas, a brand manufacturer may need design that places more importance on demonstrating their product’s quality, or building community and brand loyalty, in order to meet their customer’s needs and expectations. Finding the right place within this spectrum of experiences influences both primary conversion events (sales) and secondary events (signups, shares, reviews, in-store visits, etc.). Read entire article…

About the Author: Combining award-winning website design, development, strategy, post-launch managed services and hosting, Gorilla delivers innovative ecommerce solutions to B2B and direct-to-consumer brands across industries. A Magento Gold Solution partner headquartered in Chicago, Gorilla has unmatched expertise creating unique, functional shopping experiences that connect brands with their customers, producing better ROI through the digital channel. That’s why Gorilla is a Smarter Species of Commerce. www.gorillagroup.com

eCommerce Forums are coming to a city near you!

Attend one of these informative eCommerce events and learn about Magento Enterprise and how to attract more customers, improve customer loyalty, increase average order value, maximize online revenue and much, much more.

Click on the calendar date to register for an event!

	Indianapolis, IN Stephen Kidwell, eCommerce Practice Director of Precision Dialogue, will highlight how you can optimize your site to meet the demands of the connected customer through responsive design, SEO tactics, usability best practices, social media optimization and more. You’ll also learn why Buy Our Bottles chose Magento as their eCommerce platform of choice.
	Los Angeles, CA A team of technical, creative and other eCommerce experts from Magento, EYEMAGINE, Zerolag, Kiosked, Listrak, and Avalara are coming together for a dynamic evening of discussions and networking, focused on innovative eCommerce design with Magento Enterprise.
	Kansas City, MO eCommerce experts from Magento and partners Classy Llama, Channel Advisor and Nexcess will cover how to define the “core” of your business, use data and intuition to guide a cohesive online strategy, and understand the “Natural Order” of eCommerce.
	New York, NY Magento and our partners Pod1 and Listrak will give practical advice on creating a seamless, engaging, and exciting experience for your customers that tells your story. You will also learn what other merchants are doing to build a loyal customer base.

Space at these events is reserved for merchants and their eCommerce decision makers. There is no charge, but you must register to attend.

Magento Certification can help you:

• Prove your advanced knowledge of Magento Enterprise Edition
• Stand out to hiring managers
• Make more money!

Get Certified Now!

For a limited time, we are offering a $25.00 eBay gift card to anyone who passes a Magento Certification Exam by June 31, 2013.*

*Limited to one per customer. No cash value. Candidate must receive a passing score on the M70-101, M70-201 or M70-301 exam to qualify. Candidate is responsible for the testing fee and any related taxes. Offer expires June 31, 2013.

Join MagentoLive in Australia!

MagentoLive events are part of our ongoing efforts to provide members of the Magento ecosystem with more opportunities to connect locally. We’re kicking this year’s events off with MagentoLive Australia, and we hope you can join us!

Location

The Sydney Sofitel

This modern, five-star hotel is located at in the heart of the central business district, and it is walking distance to many of Sydney’s major icons and world famous attractions. The MagentoLive Australia conference area will have a spacious layout over one main level to increase networking opportunities and easily transition between the sessions, exhibit and catering areas.

Pricing

Available Now After Early Bird Sold Out – June 11 June 12 – July 9 After July 10

Limited Early Bird Rate Advanced Rate Standard Rate Last Minute Rate

$95 $115 $125 $145

More Information

Call for Speaker Submissions • Become a Sponsor • Take a Magento Certification Exam • Past MagentoLive videos

Hope to see you in Sydney!

Magento U's On-Demand course "Fundamentals of Magento Development" is a great way to learn development and implementation best-practices on your own schedule. But should you also take the instructor-led version? Absolutely! But…why? What are the benefits of taking the course in person?

To answer that question, we went out and spoke to to some Magento U graduates. Adam Ring, Technical Project Manager at Temple & Webster says, “The Magento U Fundamentals instructor-led course was ideal for Temple & Webster because it allowed us to interact directly with an expert Magento Evangelist. They were able to answer our most complex Magento questions. The Fundamentals course is appropriately in-depth which has helped us enormously by providing us with much greater context to our understanding of the Magento platform. Highly recommended for those serious about the getting the best out of Magento.”

Ben Marks, an experienced Magento U instructor, also gave us his perspective in this new video–check it out!

For more information on Magento U and our upcoming courses, check out the Magento U site.

Big Data is one of the most over-used and over-hyped terms these days, and it’s getting to a point where people seem to replace “data” with “Big Data” altogether. With so much hype and interest in Big Data, it’s hard to ignore it. And yet, when we speak to small-to-mid-sized online retailers, they struggle to understand what Big Data is and whether it can really help a business that isn’t quite so big.

There are two popular definitions of Big Data:

Gartner defines Big Data as, “High volume, high velocity, and/or high variety information assets that require new forms of processing to enable enhanced decision making, insight discovery and process optimization."

Forrester on the other hand, uses a more business-friendly definition: “Big Data is the frontier of a firm’s ability to store, process, and access (SPA) all the data it needs to operate effectively, make decisions, reduce risks, and serve customers.”

Take the “Big” out of it, and it comes down to understanding how to use all data to meet customer needs and grow your business.

There are three key concepts of a data-driven approach:

1. Results Oriented Execution: This means that you are looking to drive a business outcome, such as growing your revenues by 10%. Before you launch any strategy, you should know what results you want. This will help you understand what data you should be tracking and analyzing, and how it reflects on your strategy’s effectiveness.

2. Data Driven Decision Making: This means that you are looking to reduce the trial and error that comes with making decisions on gut-feel and anecdotal information. Instead, you are looking to move to making informed decisions using data.

3. Focus on Actionable Data: This means that you are looking to focus on data that helps you make the decisions you need to achieve the results you aspire.

When viewed in this light, it becomes a lot easier to avoid getting distracted from the hype of Big Data, and instead focus on deriving the maximum value from all data you have access to.

There are a number of ways to get started here. One helpful approach is recognizing that there are different types of data. A useful segmentation is along the depth and breadth of the data available:

• Micro, or “narrow” data, refers to deep transactional, customer or segmentation data.

• Macro, or “broad” data, refers to shallow and wide data such as market data, indices, market trends and more.

Both Micro and Macro data are Big Data, and Magento merchants of all sizes can glean actionable insights from both.

Micro data can reveal greater insights about differences in customer behavior on your store. For example, identifying key segments such as first time buyers, loyal customers, most valuable customers, and measuring their purchase behavior and contribution to revenue, can reveal valuable differences in customer behavior. Armed with these insights, merchants can target segments with appropriate offers and messages. Similarly, conducting A/B testing can provide merchants with insights on messages and strategies that work with their customer base.

Macro data can help add context to your online store performance. For example, comparing sales growth for your store with relevant category trends can help identify opportunities for performance improvement. Similarly, profiling transacting customers along demographic attributes can help merchants identify dominant personas and target their keyword-spend accordingly.

Magento Connect offers a number of extensions that specialize in analyzing both “micro” and “macro” data. Check out Lexity, RJ Metrics, Terapeak (Analytics); AddShoppers (Social Analytics); Windsor Circle, Bronto, Springbot (Segmentation and Targeting); Optimizely (A/B Testing); and Fanplayr (Offers).

These are just a handful of specialized extensions found on the Magento Connect marketplace that offer unique insights with clever analysis of data. With access to the right insights, Magento merchants can start taking advantage of Big Data to compete more effectively.

Author:
Abhi Rele
Principal Product Manager, Magento Big Data and Analytics

We welcome your inputs and feedback. You can reach me at abrele@ebay.com or via Twitter (@abhirele)

Related Links: “Hidden Gems: Using Data Driven Insights to Grow Revenue”, panel discussion at Imagine 2013 in Las Vegas, April 8-10, 2013

Based on interviews with five Magento merchants who migrated from other eCommerce solutions, Forrester Consulting created a composite merchant with $40m in annual online sales and analyzed the main costs, revenue lift, and ROI attributable to the Magento platform.

The study concludes, “Overall, we found that Magento Enterprise Edition provided the interviewed merchants with a stable, scalable, flexible platform that contributed to their incremental online revenue growth.”

Total Economic Impact

“Magento Enterprise Edition Enables A Scalable eCommerce Platform That Drives Businesses’ Growth”

For a hypothetical composite merchant with $40 million in online sales that operates both brick-and-mortar stores as well as its eCommerce website, the study found that with the Magento Enterprise Edition Commerce platform the composite merchant experienced the three-year risk-adjusted costs and benefits shown in the below table:*

Revenue Uplift

“The composite merchant experiences an average revenue uplift of 17.3%. Of this, 20% is attributed directly to the Magento platform. We note that the interviewed merchants attributed between 10% and 80% of their revenue uplift to the Magento platform. For the interviewed merchants, revenue uplift was driven by more frequent marketing activities, sales events, and site optimization, which are enabled by Magento’s features and scalability.”*

To read the full commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting, The Total Economic Impact of the Magento Enterprise Edition eCommerce Platform, please go to: magento.com/tei

* Forrester Consulting – The Total Economic Impact Of The Magento Enterprise eCommerce Platform – p. 2.