Magento

At the Magento's Imagine eCommerce Conference we love to celebrate eCommerce innovation! Now we want to give inventive Magento users a chance to win a free trip to Imagine 2013 in Las Vegas!

The third annual Magento Imagine Challenge is back and revamped for this year's conference! We loved the passion that our community showed for Magento in the previous challenges, but we wanted to try something new. So, this time around were giving you the opportunity to not just show off your passion for Magento, but to show off your passion for the work you do on Magento!

How to Enter:

After completing the entry form on the website, submit a screen shot of a Magento store showcasing valuable functionality. Post it to one of the following categories along with a short description of what makes this site successful or innovative.

*We recommend including results that help illustrate why your site should be voted one of the best. Examples include increases in conversion rates, average order value and page views.*

Site Design
Look & feel
User experience

Promotion
Sales promotions
Marketing campaigns

Customization
Custom functions
Innovative ways of extending the Magento Platform

The Community will choose their favorites in each category and crown the grand prize winner with the "People's Choice Award."

All voters will also be entered into a drawing to win Magento hoodies, so support your peers by voting.

Must be 18 years of age and a fan of the Magento Ecosystem fan page on Facebook to enter. Entries must be Magneto stores and contestants must be the merchant or have approval from the merchant to qualify. Submissions of mature content, nudity or illegal products will not be approved.

A post today on TheVARGuy.com, and dives into the current success and continued growth of the Magento solution partner program.

Magento (formerly known as Varien), the company behind an open source ecommerce platform aptly named Magento, relaunched their Solution Partner Program in April 2009. And in last year’s Open Source 50 report, Magento was listed in the “Best of the Rest” section based on limited information and feedback from solution partners about the partner program. Fast forward to the present, and the company is showing some partner momentum. Magento’s story offers some important lessons for other open source partner programs. Here’s why....

Read the full post to gain further insight into the factors that have made the Magento Solution Partner Program a success and how Magento “has taken key steps to drive a sustainable open source business model.”

The leading German eCommerce blog and news site Exciting Commerce has named Magento its Exciting Star of the eCommerce industry for the year 2009, stating Magento’s flexibility, modularity and strength as an integrated platform solution behind the decision to select Magento.

Magento is changing the world of shopping systems in a manner, that until recently, hardly anyone thought possible.

The article includes many links to great videos and interviews which were taken at various stages throughout 2009 and uses them to highlight the point that Magento, being the world’s fastest growing eCommerce platform, while already widely accepted and adopted, still has tremendous potential to continue to innovate in many areas which aren’t even on other eCommerce vendors maps.  Magento will continue to be disruptive while gaining greater market share and continues to be driven by the same sharp management team that have been able to make Magento realize rapid growth within the industry.

In 2009, Magento has achieved, as evidenced by the number of installations, a critical mass, and Magento is expected, in the coming years, to be one of the driving forces in e-commerce.

Click here for the complete Exciting Commerce article.

Internet Retailer, in a recent article asks whether or not you’re Open for Business? The article focuses on some of the key benefits of using an Open Source eCommerce platform, focusing on Magento, such as great Return on Investment (ROI) and a quick time to market and how to weigh those considerations when it comes to your unique situation.

Open source software offers low cost and all the flexibility a tech-savvy e-retailer could want.

The article continues to talk about how action sports retailer Zumiez was able to, in a very short span of time, transform their online channel into a true marketing vehicle, using Magento.

Click here to read the whole Open for Business? article.

Recently, Internet Retailer mentioned Magento in a success story about AllAmericanDirect.com.  Traditionally focused on the satellite TV market, AllAmericanDirect was looking to build on a new platform which would let it differentiate itself from competitors, handle the increasing traffic and also expand it’s product offerings.

The site quotes Shawn Schwegman, former CIO of Overstock, and now with AllAmericanDirect, talking about future plans.  He mentions there are:

plans to offer about 500,000 products across multiple consumer product categories within a year.

and

This year, [AllAmericanDirect] has expanded its consumer electronics category and begun to introduce additional product categories, starting with home and garden products. [AllAmericanDirect] plans to offer Halloween-related products this fall and apparel and jewelry products later this year, followed next year by books, movies and video games.

The article also mentions how Magento was quickly and cost effectively deployed to help AllAmericanDirect grow their online retailing business without missing a beat.

Magento was featured on the cover of the August issue of TIDigital Magazine, one of Brazil’s newest and coolest web development magazines.  TIDigital gives readers a close look at the web development world with articles, interviews, news, reports and much more.

The article received such overwhelming response that TIDigital is now facilitating a two-day Magento course, for up to 50 people, in Rio de Janeiro!

...a class with 50 students, which will last two days. If you’re interested in learning to build online stores with Magento, currently considered the most complete and powerful open source platform for e-commerce solutions, leave your e-mail to get in touch and learn more.

Magento was recently highlighted on Emerce.nl, one of the top eCommerce and IT news sites in Holland.  They give some background as to how Magento is rapidly rising in popularity in The Netherlands for both new eCommerce deployments and as a replacement for existing systems by both merchants and developers.  What’s more interesting is their mention of how in the past year alone, jobs for developers familiar with Magento have been booming, coming off the charts.  Citing an ODesk.com study they article says that:

“In recent years, the demand for programmers with Magento experience has grown by a factor of 13x”

Seems like Magento’s power and flexibility is giving both merchants and developers something to talk about--a true eCommerce platform for growth!

Jochen Krisch, Director of eCommerce at Optaros and author of the German blog Exciting Commerce mentioned Magento in his recent column in the latest issue of InternetWorld Business Magazine (German Links).

He talks about the maturing of online eCommerce shops and how Open Source solutions, specifically, Magento, can provide big wins over other proprietary solutions.

“If a dealer such as Globetrotter, one of the pioneers in the German e-commerce and one of the major online retailers decides to terminate its completely in-house developed software shop by 2010 and to switch to the Open Source of Magento switch, then that decision is well calculated.”