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Harles Mägi, CEO of Multon met Ben Marks, the first and most known Magento evangelist and asked about new stuff going on at Magento HQ.

Ben was all about the future of Magento ecosystem and he emphasized that Magento has always been about open source, sharing and nurturing its developer ecosystem that’s behind its long term success. The news is that there is now a new organization The Magento Association, which has been created to advance and empower the global community and commerce ecosystem through collaboration, education and thought leadership. So his message was that The Magento Association is there for everyone connected to Magento platform to become a member. There is value for developers, agencies, design companies, solution partners but also merchants and end users of Magento platform.

Joining is free of charge till end of 2019 and here is the link to the registration form. 

What will you get – lots of training and tips on how to put your Magento into best use, events and conferences for discounted price, and a chance to know first what happens in the ecommerce world. More info in the The Magento Association page.

Ben emphasized that Magento aims to retain its strong influence in the business, and the core has always been the Magento developer ecosystem. The agencies and companies connecting the developers are the ones that understand the merchant requirements, local region, crossborder concerns, they make ecommerce to make sense. It’s important to maintain the culture, and the open source ethos – learn from each other and pay it forward.

Can you imagine that there are 14 trillion transaction done on Magento platform and counting? This is a huge responsibility and tremendous power for Magento. Ben Marks said that any website that is not his friend and makes it hard for him to do what he wants, he is out as there is so much choice. He gave a few secret tips, talk to Harles to find out what are the game changers of future e-commerce:)

Multon is in line with the collaborative spirit of Magento, we are there to deliver the experiences our customers and your customers expect. And of course we are a member of The Magento Association!

Everyday many people visit your shop, look around for a bit and leave without buying. It’s mostly not because you don’t have what they are looking for, but because you have made it difficult to find what they want. So how to make it easy for people to navigate to the products they are looking for and go through to the check-out and leave as happy customers?

There are many books about it, there is a lot of research that has gone into that topic and you can spend a lot of money and make it very complicated and not achieve good results. Or you can use common sense and our experience. We at Multon have seen with our customers, that in the end it boils down to very simple basic rules that need to be followed.

• Eliminate everything that does not need to be there. Simple navigation is the best.

• Use simple and uncluttered design, more images and less words

• Use visual pointers in systematic way (color, symbols), to direct customers focus to the call to action element.

• Have only relevant content on your home page (offers that are applicable, products that you want to sell, images that reflect your products)

• Don’t try to squeeze every category and subcategory on your home page.

• Have high quality images of your products.

• Make your navigation menu prominent with contrasting colors.

• Use cross referencing to add same products into multiple categories. Someone looking for a lamp may look under Lighting, Accessories, or Living Room.

• Keep category navigation clutter free and have a lot of “air” between items

• Large product photos and zooming are your main tools to create a close to physical shopping experience. Some of our clients have increased their shops conversions by over 200% just by having bigger, high resolution product images.

• Make the check-out process easy and fast – don’t ask for the same info you already have or don’t absolutely need. Make it logical and show progress during the process. Don’t slow them down or scare off by offering to join the newsletter or fill-in a form to become a loyal member. That’s not worth taking the risk of losing them.

All in all what we are trying to say is that your website should not only look appealing but should do what its made for. That doesn’t mean the shop shouldn’t look beautiful too. But that we will discuss in one of our next blog posts.

We would like to provide clarity around changes in the ecommerce software support of Magento 1 by Magento. Even though the official support will end, that doesn't mean Magento e-shops will disappear right away. But it means its time to start thinking about a transit.

We totally understand that many of our Magento 1 clients need additional time to make the transition to newer versions of Magento. Magento software support policies ensure that all customers will have the time and confidence to upgrade when it is right for their business. So no need to panic, but lets discuss and make a plan together.

Here is the official announcement of Joe Ayyoub, Director of Support Opperations, Magento (6 September 2018) For Magento Commerce 1 (formerly known as Enterprise Edition):

For Magento Commerce 1, we are providing software support through June 2020. Depending on your version, software support may include both quality fixes and security patches. Please review our Magento Software Lifecycle Policy to see how your version of Magento Commerce 1 is supported.

For Magento Open Source 1 (formerly known as Community Edition):

For Magento Open Source 1, we are providing software security patches through June 2020 to ensure those sites remain secure and compliant. Please visit our Legal Terms page and review our Magento Open Source Software Maintenance Policy to see which versions of Magento Open Source 1 continue to receive software security maintenance.

Please note: Magento software support and/or security maintenance apply only to Magento software and does not apply to third-party extensions or customizations. Maintenance of extensions, customization or other modifications to the Magento codebase, including compliance with security and privacy standards (PCI, SOC, ISO, etc.), are the express responsibility of the merchant. While we’re committed to supporting the success of all merchants, the time to upgrade to Magento Commerce 2 is now. Magento Commerce 2 delivers superior cloud-hosted performance at scale, freedom from IT bottlenecks with creating, scheduling, and launching compelling content, and true business intelligence capabilities. Plus Magento’s unmatched flexibility enables our global community of partners and developers to deliver virtually any commerce experience in record time and at a superior total cost of ownership. As a result, we’re seeing tremendous community and market momentum for Magento 2 as a whole, now with more than 2,000 available extensions, new capabilities launching quarterly (version 2.3 is on the horizon), and over 8,000 new quarterly Magento 2 site launches on top of 30,000 existing Magento 2 sites. We encourage all Magento Commerce 1 customers to reach out to their Customer Success Managers or development partners to start their upgrade planning as soon as possible.