Magento

We’re pleased to announce the latest Magento releases: Magento Enterprise 1.12 and Community 1.7. The recent enhancements to our powerful eCommerce offerings help merchants provide a more personalized shopping experience for their customers.

Benefits include easier order placement, mobile optimization and multiple wish lists. These enhancements give merchants greater potential to boost consumer engagement, increase conversions and transaction size, and foster brand loyalty.

All merchants, including those running B2B businesses, can take advantage of improved customer segmentation and ordering capabilities. While those operating in Europe can use our new features to stay compliant with EU regulations.

Of course, our latest releases have lots in store for developers too, including a new API, and backup and rollback systems.

Read on to learn about the key features in our new releases and how they can benefit you.

	Mobile HTML5 Quickly and easily create a storefront optimized for mobile devices so customers can shop even when they’re on the go. This mobile interface uses HTML5 technology and supports iPhone, Android and Mobile Opera browsers. It includes out-of-the-box features such as: Device-specific media capabilities for audio and video User-friendly search and results display Clean display of product detail pages Pinch, multi-touch and scaling images Easy swipe between product images Zoom capabilities Cross-sell and up-sell capabilities Drag-and-drop of products to the shopping cart
	Visitor Segmentation Tap into a whole new customer segment – unknown site visitors. Whether they’re new visitors or returning customers who have not logged in, you’ll now be able to identify and target them with special promotions to convert browsers into buyers.
	Expanded Rule-based Product Relations Our rule-based product-relations functionality allows merchants to target specific customer segments with product recommendations. Pinpoint specific customers with up-sells, cross-sells and related products to create a more relevant shopping experience.
	Auto-generation of Coupon Codes Generate a set of unique coupon codes for each promotion you run and export the list of codes for offline distribution, email, newsletters and more. Easily manage and monitor coupon usage and generate detailed reports.
	Multiple Wish Lists Customers can save products to multiple wish lists and copy or move items from list to list. They can make their wish lists public so they’re searchable by anyone. And merchants can review them to learn about their customers’ wants and needs.
	Layered Navigation Pricing Enhancement We’ve introduced a new set of algorithms for price-layered navigation that provides much greater flexibility. Now you can display a range of prices that is based on having a similar number of products within each range, giving you better control of your customers’ search results, and helping your customers find what they’re looking for faster.
	Customer Group Pricing One price doesn’t always fit all. This tool allows you to create different price points for different customer groups, such as wholesalers and retailers. You can determine both base price and tiered price levels.
	Add to Cart by SKU Streamline the ordering process, especially for B2B customers, by enabling them to enter a list of SKUs without having to go into product pages. This simplifies large orders, recurring orders and ordering based on offline catalogs.
	REST APIs Support The new Magento REST API uses three-legged OAuth 1.0a protocol to allow applications to safely access Magento services. What this means for you? You can manage customers, customer addresses, sales orders, inventories and products using HTTP verbs (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE). Data requests and responses can be in XML or JSON format. This initial version of the REST API supports the following functions: Create/Retrieve/Update/Delete a simple product Retrieve a list of orders and specific order information Update/Retrieve catalog inventory Create/Retrieve/Update/Delete complete customer information
	European Union VAT-ID Validation This feature facilitates the tax collection process for online businesses in the EU and greatly simplifies international B2B transactions by automatically applying the correct tax rules. Taxes can be calculated and charged according to VAT customer groups, based on customer shipping or billing addresses and VAT IDs.
	EU Cookie Restriction Our response to the recent EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive? A new cookie notification feature that simplifies the compliance process. Once enabled, a message at the top of the storefront informs site visitors about the cookie policy and prompts them to accept or decline.
	CMS Page Hierarchy Enhancements Managing your CMS hierarchy tree just got easier. Now you can add CMS pages to the navigation menu without custom development. You can also create, copy or delete different CMS hierarchy trees for each website and store view individually or en masse..
	Backup and Rollback Manage and schedule a variety of backup operations with the option to rollback the changes to reverse any modifications. This feature is particularly useful when testing new modules or customizations, or when upgrading to a new version of Magento. You can review specific customizations and their impact on the new code. (We do not recommend using this feature in your production environment.) Three types of backup are supported: System Backup Database Backup Database and Media Backup
	Payment Bridge 1.1 Updates Magento Secure Payment Bridge, our PA-DSS certified payment application, adds multiple new payment methods. In addition to our existing supported gateways – PayPal, Authorize.net and Payflow Pro – we are introducing support for the following new gateways: Psi Gate RBS Worldpay Database and Media Backup Braintree First Data Card Gate Plus DIBS eWay Direct Ogone Directlink Paybox Payone Sage Pay CCAvenue Supported by services provided by Braintree or Authorize.net, customers can also securely save their credit card information for future transactions in a “My Credit Cards” section in “My Account.” And with support from Kount, you can integrate fraud-screening services with your payment methods (requires separate agreement with Kount).
	CAPTCHA Now you can enable CAPTCHA functionality on your site to help prevent automated software from attempting fake logins. This auto-generated test ensures that the login is being attempted by a person and can be enabled in both the admin and customer login areas.

Ready to take your business to the next level? Contact us and we’ll help you get started.

If you’re already a Magento Enterprise customer, you can immediately access the new 1.12 release in the My Account section. And developers can access the new Community edition by clicking here.

We hope you enjoy these new features and look forward to helping you achieve greater eCommerce success.

Imagine eCommerce 2012 is officially off to a great start! Merchants, developers, partners and all members of the Magento ecosystem swarmed the M Resort today in Las Vegas, all eager and excited to see what we have in store over the next few days.

Today’s pre-event activities started off strong with Developer Certification and the Magento Technology Partner Program. While the partner event was taking place, we also held the Developer BarCamp & Networking Event up on the 16th floor of the hotel. BarCamp was a unique opportunity for developers to learn about various technical Magento topics in 25 minute, rapid fire presentations. There were more than 40 presentations in total, with 300+ attendees. A few of the most popular topics included ‘Magento 2, View Layer Evolution’, ‘Magento 2, Converting Your Code’ and ‘X.commerce Fabric and Sandbox’. These presentations were run by members of the Magento and X.commerce technical teams as well as various developers from the community. The night continued with an exclusive partner reception followed by an opening night networking event outside at the pool.

Tomorrow’s activities start bright and early with the general sessions and keynotes kicking off at 9:00am. Breakout sessions for the technology and business tracks start at 11:00am and for the partner track, sessions will begin at 11:50am. After lunch we have more breakout sessions as well as general sessions & keynotes starting at 4:00pm with some intriguing topics including ‘Big Data is Worthless, It’s About Big Answers’ given by Stephen Messer and ‘The Art of Storytelling & The New Monetization Models of Hollywood’ with Tim Kring. If you’re here with us, you won’t want to miss these presentations! Also, tag #MagentoImagine on Twitter or Instagram and your pictures will show up on our very fun Twitter Wall!

If you’re following the event from home, be sure to stay tuned to our LIVE page. This page will give you a nice play by play of what is going on at the event including the most up to date Twitter feed, pics from our Twitter Wall and the most recent blog posts.

Pre-event activities for the 2012 Imagine eCommerce conference have officially begun in sunny Las Vegas! Excitement is in the air as 1,300 attendees are mingling, meeting up with their friends and colleagues while soaking it all in. From Spain to Vietnam to Latvia, we have friends coming from all over the world, from 45 countries. The conference hotel, the M Resort, has been taken over and occupied by all things orange; it's now internally known as the "Magento Resort." Partners, developers and merchants together at last - it's like a big family reunion!

You can feel the excitement – from the staff working on the keynote prep, to the people walking around the hotel, or lounging and chatting by the pool and even Bob Schwartz, who has declared himself the concierge of the event, is working hard on his Elvis presentation.

So stay tuned and glued into all things Imagine! You can check us out on the Imagine eCommerce Conference Blog, and on Twitter by following @magentoimagine and hashtag #magentoimagine. You can also see live pictures of the event, generated in real-time by our attendees, at wall.imagineecommerce.com.………..

It's such a great feeling to be here, and It's gonna be fun AND memorable!!

1,300 Magento merchants, developers and solutions partners have gathered from around the world at the fabulous M Resort in sunny (and very hot) Las Vegas, NV for the Imagine 2012 conference.

Attendees are looking forward to three days of great content, incredible networking, and a whole lot of fun. Today’s event kicked-off developer BarCamp – a series of rapid-fire presentations on Magento and X.commerce, with all content driven by attendees. BarCamp is being held in the resort’s beautiful LUX bar on the 16th floor with fantastic views of the Las Vegas strip.

Tonight’s event features a welcome reception at the "Daydream pool."

If you want to follow the conference from home, we have some exciting ways to keep you engaged. In addition to the Imagine eCommerce Conference Blog, you can also follow along on Twitter by following @magentoimagine and hashtag #magentoimagine. You can also see live pictures of the event, generated in real-time by attendees, at wall.imagineecommerce.com.

We are pleased to let you know that the final course in the series, Managing Your Magento Store - Part 3: Operations, is now available in the On-Demand, Video format. In this new one hour course, you are introduced to topics such as order management, fulfillment and customer service.

If you haven’t already taken advantage of the first two parts of our three part series on the Magento Admin panel to help optimize the management of your store, now is your chance to get the series in its entirety for Free for a limited time.

Important Note: During the registration process, please enter the same student email address as you currently use when logging into your Magento Account to access the courses. This will ensure that your courses are consolidated in the same account.

May 3, 2012 I 10:00AM PDT

Webinar: How to Use Email Marketing More Effectively

Email marketing improves traffic to your Magento Go store and helps to increase sales from your existing customer base. But more importantly, it builds and maintains long-term relationships with your customers, which are essential to any successful business. With proper subjects and relevant messages, email marketing can effectively support your marketing efforts with little to no budget. In our next webinar with Go Pro partner, aheadWorks, you'll learn how to use email marketing to grow your business. Here are the details of this presentation:

Date: May 3, 2012 10:00AM PDT

Presenters: Anastasia Harlamova, Senior Marketing Manager, aheadWorks and Alyssa Gothelf, Online Marketing Manager, Magento

In this webinar, attendees will learn:

• Best practices for subject lines
• Setting up the "From" and "Reply To" fields
• 10 tips for improving the open rate of your next newsletter
• How to avoid spam filters

Register now

Dan and Dave have a built a business and a community around magic. Their online store serves as an interactive lifestyle hub for magicians worldwide, not only offering instructional media and accessories, but a place where magic enthusiasts can share and learn the tricks of the trade.

But their marvelous site didn’t just happen by magic. In fact, Dan and Dave had been constantly frustrated by the limitations of their original eCommerce site—so much so that they decided to build the new one from scratch.

They began by brainstorming with Magento Solution Partner, Digital Operative, who recommended Magento as the perfect platform for their ambitious plans. Magento offered the reliability and scalability to make their frustrations disappear, along with the flexibility to implement their ideas for expansion. Digital Operative gave Dan and Dave functionality they wanted by integrating a number of third-party applications with their Magento site. The creation of a "streaming" Magento product type to allow Dan and Dave to sell online videos, tiered pricing, a reward points system and a sliding carousel for product photos and trailers on each product page to put what’s important in front of the customer all help contribute to what makes the new site an interactive, user-friendly shopping experience.

Rich with interactivity, innovative functions, and informative design, Dan and Dave have seen dramatic results across the board. They are much happier with a site that, as they say, “just works,” yet has state-of-the-art eCommerce features contributing to the growth of their business. At the same time, the new magic site offers a user-friendly place to spark the enthusiasm of a flourishing community of amateur and professional magicians.

Visit dananddave.com for a touch of Magento magic.

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.

April 11, 2012 I 10:00AM PDT

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 PDT

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