The 2012 Magento Imagine conference was held at the fittingly named iMagine Resort in Las Vegas. This annual event sees Magento partners, merchants and developers from all around the globe meeting up to network, attend lectures and share their knowledge with the Magento Community.

I have attended many Information Technology conferences and meet-ups in the past but never the Magento Imagine event, even though it’s a long way to travel, I was very impressed with what Magento had laid on, and not only that, to experience the spirit of the Magento Community in ‘real life’ was really inspiring.

Welcome to Vegas

My arrival in Las Vegas was greeted by Professor Brian Cox the English Particle Physicist (OK. so he wasn’t there to meet me, he just happened to be passing through U.S Immigration at the same time.), then followed a not so civilised meeting of an angry woman in a monster truck, who decided that my taxi driver needed to be disposed of.

Pre-Imagine Pool Party

An evening of ‘relaxing’ Vegas style allowed me to recover from the flight and the following afternoon the Magento community organised a pre- Imagine pool party (co-ordinated by @magentogirl  and @sherrierohde).  I found this event great to network and meet up with some of the people I had been communicating with for years, but have never met person.  Free drinks had been laid on by the community sponsors, however not many were required to get the conversation flowing in the 35 degree Vegas sunshine.

The following 3 days of keynotes, breakouts, networking and barcamps helped me get the most from this event, so I will summarise the highlights from the 3 days that followed in 4 separate blog posts, these are:

Related Posts

1. Announcements from Magento (Announcements concerning Magento and X.commerce
2. Keynote Speakers (The Highlights from the M Pavilion)
3. Breakout Sessions (Top lectures from the Magento community)
4. Industry Partner Highlights (New products or companies that I think are worth a closer look)

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Ad extensions in AdWords have been around for a couple of years now but it amazes me how many advertisers still don’t use them. Seeing as Google recently added conversion tracking to ad extensions, I thought it would be a good idea to take a fresh look at the different ad extensions currently available.

In a nutshell, ad extensions are a cool way of getting searchers to interact with your ad in many different ways at no extra cost. If a searcher clicks on an extension, the advertiser gets charged for the click in the usual way. You select these at campaign level so they will apply to all ad groups within a campaign.

All of these extensions require a bit of background work to set up which I will outline. The sitelinks menu can be accessed in the AdWords interface as shown below -

At the time of writing, the sitelinks available are as follows -

Location Extensions

This extensions allows the searcher to open out a panel with a map that includes an advertiser’s location. This is ideal for local businesses that have a physical location to which you would like to attract visitors. This is done dynamically and can include your business address, ad text and phone number.

Location targeting like this is ideal if you have one or more physical locations that you’d like to promote. For example, a searcher might be planning a visit to Oxford and wants to know if there are Italian Restaurants nearby.

These extensions will only appear as an option oif you have correctly configured your Google Places profile in your Google Account.

Call Extensions

This extension lets you include a clickable link with a phone number on it. This allows a searcher to call you directly from a mobile device. There is a lot more to call extensions and would probably warrant another blog post but these are the basics. You can choose to use a forwarding number that will allow Google to collect more detailed information about the origin of the call in including -

• Call start time
• Call end time
• Call status (missed or received)
• Caller area code
• Call type
• Campaign (if enabled using the Columns drop down)
• Ad group (if enabled using the Columns drop down)

There is an extra charge for using call forwarding.

Sitelinks Extensions

This allows you to display links to pages on your site underneath your ad as shown below.

Sitelinks are brilliant because they allow the advertiser to send searchers to other pages as well as the original landing page for the ad as in this example. They tend to only show on ads that have a high keyword quality score for the keyword that triggered it.

According to Google, on average, advertisers who use ad sitelinks have seen their ad clickthrough rates improve by 30%. You should be using this at the very least.

Product Extensions

This is my favourite. It allows the advertiser to display products from their Google Merchant Centre account feed complete with images, titles, and prices of your products in a plusbox under your ad. You can also display buyer ratings if your are using Google Product Search feeds. You need to have a valid, properly configured feed for this to work. You only get charged for the click if a user clicks on any content in the box and not for just opening the panel like this.

In my experience, the product extension tends to convert well when they actually display. I have one active campaign that has a 25% conversion rate from this extension alone.

Social Extensions

This extension allows the advertiser to show annotations or votes on your AdWords ads. These votes are generally interpreted as recommendations by other web users and are a powerful emotive technique. Plus 1 is enabled by default on all AdWords ads but the extension links it to your Google+ page. In other words, any Google plus one (+1) clicks will show on your Google plus page as well as your ads. It looks like this -

You can also see the star ratings from Google Product Search in this example.

AdWords extensions are an excellent way to add value to your campaigns. They also look good and draw a web users attention which is a great way to get the heads-up on your competitors. If you are not using ad extensions then you are missing out.

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I thought it might be useful to put together a beginners guide to using WordPress, we use it as a CMS (content management system) platform for some of our projects, and I’m often asked by others for a quick overview of the admin features, how to create blog posts and other content. I have split this guide into 4 parts, here are the areas I am going to cover:

Part 1 – Dashboard / Admin Menu

Part 2 – Posts, Pages, Media and Links

Part 3 – Widgets and Menus

Part 4 – Advanced settings and updates

The purpose of these guides is to get you up and running as quickly as possible, by the time you have finished reading all 4 parts I’d expect you to be a WordPress master.

On to part 1, parts 2 – 4 to follow shortly.

Part 1 – Dashboard / Admin Menu

WordPress is the most used CMS on the web with its host of fantastic features, easy to use admin area and ability to add advanced customisation in the form of plug-ins, it’s easy to see why it’s so popular.

But if you never used WordPress before, like all new platforms it can be a steep learning curve, however WordPress’ admin area is very intuitive and with a few pointers you’ll find your way around in no time.

Site Login

The first thing you need to know is where to login to the admin area, this is usually located at www.yoursitename.com/wp-admin unless stated differently by your developer. This is what the admin login looks like:Admin Dashboard

Once logged in you will be taken to the dashboard, this displays a snapshot overview of your WordPress platform. I have used the default WordPress dashboard to produce these notes, but the dashboard is a common area for developers to customise, so your dashboard may differ. ‘Right Now’ and ‘Recent Comments’ are probably the most used areas on the WordPress dashboard. ‘Right now’ is an overview of your WordPress system, displaying an overview of content  and discussions items, it also tells you the theme you are using and version of WordPress you are using.

Underneath this area you will find recent comments, displaying a list of recent comments for you to approve or un-approve. As a default unapproved recent comments will be listed in yellow for you to moderate. Simply hover over the comment and it will display the links you need to moderate.

Quick press is exactly what is says; creating a quick post without navigating to the post section, so if you in a rush and need to get some information on your site then I would use this section on the WordPress dashboard.

The recent drafts section will display when you have pages or posts that you don’t want to publish just yet to your main site, maybe it’s unfinished or needs someone to approve it. This nice addition to the WordPress dashboard provides you with an easy to navigate list of posts  for waiting to be published.

There are a few other areas in the dashboard however they are of little relevance.

Finding your way around Admin menu

Two things you need to know and very obvious to see is that there is a left had side menu and top toolbar.  I will take you through the top tool bar fist.Located at the very top of the page when logged in this will display in the admin area and the main site too, it’s basally a nice neat way of displaying more information and easy way to navigate to sections faster.

On the right hand side you should see your username and a little picture, hover over this and it will display a ‘logout’ button and an ‘edit my profile’ link.

The ‘new’ button is a quick and easy way to add content to your site, hover over this and it will list the areas you where you can create new content i.e. a blog post, if you click ‘post’ it will take you to an ‘adding new post’ section.

Speech bubble is simply the number of new comments you have, and this will take you to the comments section of the admin area.

The two arrows tells you how many new updates are available for your site, this will take you to the update area. It will list any updates available on the WordPress platform and any if plug-ins that you have installed have an update available, I will go more into updates area later on, in this 4 part series.

Located on the left of your screen you will see a list of menu items. The most important ones for editing content on your site will be the first five in the top block; these are ‘post, media, links, pages and comments’ and if your site has extra functionality with custom post types they will also display here.  So basically anything content wise you need to change/ add etc. will be located in this top section of the menu.

If you hover of these menu items a sub menu will be displayed with more links, for example ‘add new page, list all pages’ etc. I will be talking more about this in part 2.

The bottom area of the menu is more to do with configuration of your site and you probably won’t need to touch many areas in this menu. I will go through this in more depth in part 4 and show you what the each area does.

Conclusion

This is a basic insight for beginners to the WordPress admin areas to familiarise yourself with the layout, so you can easier become a WordPress wizard. In part 2 of this series I will take you through adding and editing pages of your WordPress site but for now, have fun with your WordPress site.

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Very early on in my career as an SEO specialist, I recognised the need for a standardised client questionnaire that would help me build up an overall picture of a business. This is the kind of data that should be formalised right at the start of any SEO project of any size. This is separate to any overall marketing strategy and is specifically aimed at search engine optimisation although there is some overlap of course.

Having worked on websites in many diverse markets ranging from architecture to large-scale e-commerce sites, it is imperative to nail this early on. There is simply no way that any SEO practitioner could profess to be an expert in every niche that they have ever worked in (mineral insulated thermocouples anyone?) so it is imperative to build up a picture as soon as possible.

Apart from a bit of minor tweaking, this questionnaire remains unchanged from the original and has served me well over the years. However, we do tend to adapt it on a per client basis if necessary.

1. Do you have a business Google account? If so, what is the login?

There are some people that will always say that you shouldn’t ask for a client’s logins – instead ask them to add you as a user in Google Analytics. This is fine if you just need to view analytics data. However, since we are a full service e-commerce company, we usually have to set up, optimise and configure XML feeds in Google Merchant Centre, Google Webmaster Tools or install/ troubleshoot conversion tracking in AdWords and so on.

Often times we will see conversion tracking incorrectly installed on clients sites or out of date tracking code producing inaccurate data so it’s easier just to have the original login available.

2. What is the purpose of your site and who is your target audience?

Pretty obvious this one. If we are building a client’s site for them we usually already have this data from the original web design proposal but it is good practice to include it on the SEO questionnaire.

3. What is your unique selling proposition (USP)?

What makes your products/services different or better than your competition? This can help give us an angle for any on and off page content and any calls to action. For example, do you offer free shipping, exclusive products or services, or have you been in the industry longer?

4. What geographical locations do you wish to target?

Are you targeting the UK, Republic of Ireland, Europe or any specific country or local region and language? Since geo-targeting has become massively important to search engines, this is a vital question. For example, is the client trying to target The Republic of Ireland with a .co.uk rather than .ie domain.

5. List the Web sites of up to 3 competitors in order of importance. In what way do they compete with you?

We use this data to get a feel for where the client’s site fits in the search neighbourhood (if at all). It also lets us compare link profiles to get a feel for how much work is required to outrank them.

6. Are there any other domains or live sites that you own or have administrative control over, or that you used to use instead of the current domain?

I worked on a site a few years ago and one of the first things I did was check for any duplicate content published elsewhere on the web. I discovered that the company had an identical site on another domain that they neglected to mention. The entire site was duplicated which caused a lot of unplanned work.

7. What have you done so far (if anything) on your site in terms of SEO?

Have you had a stab at it? Don’t be shy! Bought a few backlink here and there? Actually, this is very serious because I need to know if you have submitted any links to any dodgy sites in the past. Has the site ever suffered a penalty? Thankfully, most of the sites we build are new, clean and shiny out of the box so this is rarely a problem but there can be issues if we are using an older domain that may have ended up on a dodgy site at some point – intentionally or otherwise.  We generally use link profiling to spot issues in any case but it’s still a good idea to get this info from the client if possible.

Onsite SEO attempts, such as sitemap feeds, robots.txt and Meta and canonical tags are pretty easy to spot for better or worse.

8. What would you say are the most important words and phrases people in the market for your goods and/or services would search for?

What usually happens at this point is that the client will brainstorm. They might even use a keyword tool and end up with a massive list of keywords and phrases including plurals. From this list, we will map the best keywords to content based on our key-word research. This is pretty straight forward for brochure sites but is an art form for large e-commerce sites. This brings me onto question 9…

9. Please describe your business in 1 or 2 sentences.

This is a technique I use to get primary key-phrases from the client. These tend to be the homepage ‘Holy Grail’ key-phrases. These are the main niche keywords that tend to make a real difference in terms of revenue. They also tend to be the most competitive.

10. After a potential customer visits your site, what specifically do you want them to do? Please list conversions. For example – purchase, signup, contact us form etc.

The majority of our clients tend to be e-commerce orientated so the conversion is usually a combination of purchases, sign ups, and contact us forms. Some clients may have more specific requirements such as clicking on a button or viewing a specific page.

11. Are you using social media for business such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Google+? If so, what are your log in details?

There are areas where social media and SEO overlap but this is a blog post for another day! We also use software to track stats from each of these for reporting so we require access to set this up.

12. Do you have any other material that would help give us a more complete picture of your products and services e.g. brochures or newsletters etc.

One can get a really good feel for what a company is all about from their off-line print material. There can also be opportunities for content here. For example, does the company sponsor a sports team or event? Do they have links to any clubs etc?

13. Do you require sign-off for any on-site changes to copy, category heading or article content?

Most clients are happy to let us do whatever it takes to get where they need to be which is always preferable. Others like to sign everything off first which is fine but tends to slow things down to a grind – especially if you have a large e-commerce site.

A reasonable amount of time spent answering these questions can really help us get your SEO project off to a flying start.

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Updating Magento – Community Edition

Magento’s massive popularity (over 4 million downloads) and developer ecosystem means it’s constantly evolving, creating a very regular release pattern. These new releases contain either New features, Security updates or just simple irritating bug fixes. Whatever the contents keeping your Magento store up to date is something you should consider very seriously as a responsible E-Commerce store owner.
My post will explain the best method of upgrading your Magento store and I’ll show you what to do in case you have problems.

Firstly, before you do anything backup your stores file structure (Etc the public_html) directory and take a full SQL dump of your stores database.
-This is very important; many times upgrades fail and have to be recovered, if you don’t have this safety net you could be in big trouble!

I will now break the process down into Step by Step instructions. Please read them carefully before executing them onto your stores console.

The upgrade process is slightly different for the various versions. For instance you cannot upgrade from 1.4.1 to 1.6.2 directly. You need to do 2 upgrades, firstly 1.4.1. to 1.4.2 then 1.4.2 to 1.6.2 this is important, if you don’t do it this way then you will run into problems, with missing database constraints, missing tables, potentially destroying your store beyond repair!

Pre Upgrade Checklist
1. Backup Database
2. Backup public_html Directory or your equivalent.
3. Modify .htaccess file to this – This is important.
#Order allow,deny
#Allow from all
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from
4. Get a cup of tea and a chocolate biccy

Before doing anything, read the checklist and make sure you have followed it – Very Important!

Upgrading from versions lower than 1.4.2 (Not including 1.4.2)

DO NOT DO THIS IF YOUR STORE IS ON 1.4.2 OR HIGHER

1 ./pear upgrade -f magento-core/Mage_All_Latest-stable

Now you will probably see some errors here, just ignore them .. trust me, it will be ok.
This will have brought in all the relevant upgrade files required to move your store up to version 1.4.2, From here all you need to do is enter your stores web address in a browser and click enter, Don’t expect your site to load straight away, it will take 10 – 30 minutes on average to upgrade your store, while its upgrading the site will just be a white blank screen, but as long as you have followed the checklist nobody else will be able to get onto the site… once its done the store will load as normal only it will be on a new version. Now you will see a new file in your public_html called mage .. This will become clear in a minute.
If you get errors, reference the error section below:

If you can see your store .. Well Done! .. Now do the next part of the upgrade.

Upgrading from versions higher than 1.4.2 (Including 1.4.2)

DO NOT DO THIS IF YOUR STORE IS LESS THAN 1.4.2

1. chmod 550 ./mage
2. ./mage mage-setup .
3. ./mage config-set preferred_state stable

If you get the error: channel-add: Channel ‘community’ already exist .. Try this
php -f downloader/mage.php channel-delete community
./mage mage-setup
./mage config-set preferred_state stable
***********************************************************************************
5. ./mage sync
6. ./mage upgrade-all –force
7. ./mage install http://connect20.magentocommerce.com/community Mage_All_Latest –force

This will now bring your store up to the latest stable version of Magento. All you need to do is enter your stores web address in a browser and click enter, Don’t expect your site to load straight away, I have known this upgrade take up to 2 hours, so don’t worry if it’s taking ages.. it is still doing something! While its upgrading the site will just be a white blank screen, but as long as you have followed the checklist nobody else will be able to get onto the site… once its done the store will load as normal only it will be on a new version.

If you get errors, reference the error section below:

Help .. Ive done something wrong! (Error Help)
If you get any errors during the upgrade, you will need to investigate the issues and resolve them. Most upgrade errors will be about Duplicate Keys / Table Creation Problems, Sometimes you can just refresh the page after an error and it will carry on. If after refreshing you still get an error you will need to do something about it.

The best way to solve this is to

A) Turn off all Extensions
B) Clear Cache (Delete var from the sites root .. NOT THE SYSTEM VAR!)

Sometimes you can get extension compatibility issues, this is where you have an extension installed that works great with an older version of Magento but now you have a new version of the core that extension no longer functions correctly. This is very common and unless you are a developer or have a good understanding of Magentos framework you will struggle to fix these issues yourself.

If you are still at the point and you are not sure what to do, you will probably need to ask for some help. Most Magento errors are cryptic and not normally very helpful this is because they are mostly intended for developers rather than users.. Don’t worry, just keep reading!

We Can Help!

Fisheye Webdesign can help you upgrade your store and offer ongoing support and maintenance, as well as host your website. We are even happy to help resolve your module conflicts and compatibility problems to bring your store up to the latest version without any headaches for you to worry about.

You can enjoy the peace of mind that we will have experienced Magento developers working to upgrade your store. Contact us now to find out how we can help your store.

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Magento is the fastest growing e-commerce platform in the world. Currently there are 19 solution partners listed in the United Kingdom alone. Magento have also recently released training material online at http://training.magento.com which is available for free, I would highly recommend it. It’s great for people starting out with Magento or for people who have been working with it for a while.

In this short article I am going to look at caching data through Zend to increase the speed of Magento, this article is focused at the more advanced developer.

Caching Data Through Zend

Your in for a treat! Zend has a number of classes that give you the ability to cache data. These are great objects to use when you have intense processes within your code that are screaming out to be cached and you don’t necessarily want to use Magento’s methods of caching block output.

Here is the function that when returned gives you the ability to use the Zend_Cache object

function setup_cache($sFolder = 'data') {

	$sCacheFolder = Mage::getBaseDir('var') .DS. $sFolder;
	$frontendOptions = array(
	   'lifetime' => null,
	   'automatic_serialization' => true
	);
	$backendOptions = array(
	    'cache_dir' => $sCacheFolder
	);

	// Create cache dir
	if(!is_dir($sCacheFolder)) {
		mkdir($sCacheFolder);
	}

	$oCache = Zend_Cache::factory('Core', 'File', $frontendOptions, $backendOptions);
	return $oCache;

}

This is an example of how you can use the above function:

if(!($aData = $oCache->load($iCacheId))) {
	$aData = array('allsorts' => array('of' => 1, 'data' => 2));
	$oCache->save($aData);
}

Firefox Console Logging Through PHP

One of Zend’s wonderful resources is the firebug writer. This requires both Firephp and Firebug installed and enabled. I have written a function that you can use to log variables within firebug console.

function firelog($mLogThis = 'test', $sType = Zend_Log::WARN) {

	$oWriter 	= new Zend_Log_Writer_Firebug();
	$oLogger 	= new Zend_Log($oWriter);

	$oRequest  	= new Zend_Controller_Request_Http();
	$oResponse	= new Zend_Controller_Response_Http();
	$oChannel  	= Zend_Wildfire_Channel_HttpHeaders::getInstance();
	$oChannel->setRequest($oRequest);
	$oChannel->setResponse($oResponse);

	// Start output buffering
	ob_start();

	$oLogger->log($mLogThis, $sType);

	$oChannel->flush();
	$oResponse->sendHeaders();

}

Conclusion

I sometimes forget that Magento is built on this powerful framework. There is lots more that Zend Framework can achieve, and I look forward sharing them in the near future!

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In every website the main objective is to capture the users attention, while content is most definitely the most important thing, a little user integration with some fancy functionality can go a long way. It will impress the visitor making it a more memorable experience, and in the long run if a visitor is engaged with the website they will continually return to see what’s new.

jQuery is an excellent javascript tool that allows us to add animations and effects among other fancy functionality. A lot of websites have a featured area with content that slides in some form, which is a great technique for showing several pieces of content in a limited amount of space. The last thing we want is to clutter up the page and overwhelm the visitor, with some simple manipulation and jQuery we can work around this and engage the visitor.

There are hundreds of jQuery options available out there from slideshows to pop-ups the list is endless, in this article I will be discussing content sliders and an infinite scroll as featured on Facebook and Twitter.

jQuery Content Slider

Content sliders are great jQuery tools when your limited to a refined space yet want to pack in a lot of information. There are hundreds available but I have come across one in particular that works really well.

The circular content carousel which can be demonstrated here looks like a normal carousel until you hit the ‘more’ link at the bottom, this then shifts the items to the left and a content area slides out from underneath. This could house more information about the product such as a description, more images etc. This method is unobtrusive to the user and engages the visitor’s interest with the product, its a much nicer technique rather than sending them down the road to another link to another page.

jQuery Inifinte Scroll

You are probably all too familiar with the famous websites Facebook and Twitter. You will have noticed then that on the news feed’s if you scroll down the page it will continually scroll until you run out of news or tweets (which is normally never…) therefore sending you down a never ending page. This is what we call an infinite scroll, traditionally the user would have to click on a link for the next or previous page to visit newer or older post content. However a new trend has been evolved by popular sites whereby they will automatically load the next page content once the visitor has reached the bottom of the page. The results of this are beneficial and have proven to show an increase in time spent on a page by the visitor because the new content loads automatically. If you want a live preview of this next time you log-in on facebook or twitter scroll down the page.. and it will keep on going.

Conclusion

This article only demonstrates a small portion of what jQuery has to offer and how it can benefit both the visitor and the site owner but hopefuly it has given you an insight into what is possible.

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The importance of product pages and their design on an ecommerce site should never be underestimated. They are that final push, the last chance to convince your customer that the product they are looking at is the right one for them.

The first and most essential aspect of designing any product page is simplicity. A customer wants and assumes that the product page will be focussed on just the one main product. Allowing users to find items that might better suit their requirements through the use of recommended products is great and is always encouraged but it should never compromise the prominence of the selected item. The clarity, weighting and flow of product information is also integral to how a customer expects to experience a product page. By ensuring that the title is large and at the top, flowing into clear pricing information, stock levels, product options and then a very clear buy button means that all of the really important details are above the fold on most browser windows, regardless of size and resolution.

An example product page layout in Magento

A crisp and large product photo is also required in this area above the fold. By making sure that the image is always to a minimum of 800px square and preferably clipped out on a white background, you will not only display great quality images but be able to fully take advantage of the product zoom functionality Magento has to offer. It’s amazing how many ecommerce stores still use tiny images to demonstrate their products when in reality it’s the first thing most customers look for when navigating to a product page. Furthermore, why not upload more than one image of the product from different angles or perhaps displaying the item in use. Magento allows for a gallery of unlimited images, make the most of it.

An example product page image gallery in Magento

Another incredibly important thing to remember when designing a successful product page is don’t try and reinvent the wheel. As more and more users take their shopping online they expect a familiarity from all product pages. As an example take a look at some of your favourite online stores and some of the larger ecommerce sites, I can almost guarantee that they are laid out in a very similar manner. Now is not the time to show off wacky new design skills just to be creative, this can be done much more successfully in other areas of the site such as the homepage or overall site branding.

As important as it is to keep the product page clutter free and simple, it is also essential that you provide plenty of relevant information on the product so that the customer can make an informed decision as to whether a particular product is suitable for them. The trick to balancing this need for information with a clean design is known as ‘layering’. By utilising tabbed boxes you can ensure that all of the information the user could ever require is only one click away but doesn’t intimidate them on initial page load with an overload of facts and figures.

An example of layering product information within a tabbed panel

So, what if it doesn’t work out and the customer still requires more information or has simply decided that this product isn’t for them? Well don’t throw in the towel just yet! By always ensuring that the product page has a clear ‘ask a question’ button it not only gives the overall impression that you are a company who are there to help and support but also means the user has an easy way of sourcing the extra information required. In case the product really isn’t for them, make sure that you have selected some recommended similar products to display alongside your main product. Perhaps this particular item might not be exactly what they are looking for but if your product page isn’t a complete dead end then the customer has the option to carry on browsing for a product that is more relevant to them.

Always allow the customer to ask a question at product level

Make sure that the customer doesn't get stuck in a dead end by always adding related products

One final element of product page design that is worth considering to place below the fold is customer feedback or reviews. This is not always essential, especially for smaller stores or more boutique items but it is always worth keeping in mind as a good selection of reviews on an item can really help convert potential customers into sales. If you have decided that reviews are necessary on your store product page, one way of maximising their impact but without cluttering the design and flow of information is to place an average review score (usually as a star rating) at the top of the page alongside the product title. This can then be anchored to the bottom of the page displaying more detailed review information.

This article has only been a few brief notes of things to keep in mind when designing or putting together a product page design. There are of course many other factors that are going to affect your layout and no two ecommerce stores are the same. However there are some crucial things that they all have in common: The product page is all about the last step of turning potential interest into a sale, it’s about letting your product really stand out in a clear, simple and methodical manner and it’s about providing relevant and useful information to the customer.

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Fisheye’s new AJAX Cart Preview extension for Magento builds on the success of our first AJAX Cart extension. We’ve added some extra functionality and made some major improvements, in this post I’ll cover the new functionality, there is also a YouTube video below with a quick demo of the extension in action, I hope you’ll like what we’ve done.

Clicking add to cart anywhere on the site adds the items and options including quantities without redirecting you to the cart page. The cart preview displays with a slide down, up or fade in, all controlled in the admin area, with the items you just added. The extension uses magentos standard stock control system, so if an item is out of stock, the user will be displayed a message.

Key Features

• Removes the need for page reloads when adding items to the cart
• Cart preview displays products in cart, including thumbnails, qty and pricing
• Admin configuration allows modification of the modules behaviour including fade and slide effects
• Works at product, category and search result level
• Product options appear in colourbox if adding to cart from category
• Supports grouped, bundled and configurable products
• Multi-store and multi-language compatible

Here’s a video demonstration of the Magento AJAX cart preview in action and a tour of the admin area:

Rolling over the view my cart link will display the cart preview panel once again as shown below:

We have added the functionality that allows you to add products with options at category or search levels, by presenting the user with options in a colourbox, this will handle product options, configurable, bundled and grouped products.

We have also added a configuration page within the admin section of Magento. Here you can adjust appearance options, such as effect type, time delays etc.

And our advanced configuration area, gives developers some more options:

What we’ve improved:

• Strong integration into Magentos block architecture (Shared Checkout Blocks)
• Fully Customisable Administration Area
• Advanced Development to allow update to elements within the DOM on cart updates
• More efficient Ajax calls
• Generic options are used rather than module specific configurations to match the sites tax and cart setup

Our demo site has the AJAX Cart preview installed, so you can try it out, if you want access to the admin area to test out, please contact us for a demo.

Our demo site: magento.myfisheye.co.uk

The AJAX Cart preview is available from our store for £69.99 + VAT

fisheye-webdesign.co.uk/shop

You're reading Magento AJAX Cart Preview Extension Version 2 by Fisheye Web Design & Marketing originally posted on The Fisheye Web Design & Marketing Blog If you've enjoyed this post, please be sure to follow Fisheye on Twitter, href="https://www.facebook.com/fisheye.webdesign">Facebook, and href="https://plus.google.com/111701566947418711040">Google+!

An excellent opportunity to join a leading and well established web design company. We’re looking for a strong and confident PHP developer to work on our ecommerce and CMS projects.

You must be a confident programmer with great problem solving and debugging skills, be able to learn, work off your own back and be comfortable working alongside our designers to find the best solution for our clients.

As a successful PHP Developer you will have strong experience developing PHP5 and have a very good understanding of object oriented design principles, particularly MVC

Key Skills

• PHP5
• OOP programming
• Magento (6months+ experience)
• Linux server administration
• Command Line
• Apache Server
• MYSQL Server
• Debian and CentOS
• Bash Scripts
• MySQL
• JavaScript (Frameworks such as prototype and JQuery)
• Understanding of CSS + HTML (CSS3 + HTML5 is advantageous)
• Ability to have a laugh and enjoy working within a team

Non Essential but useful Skills

• Webmin
• WordPress
• X-Cart
• Cloud Networking Knowledge

Qualifications & Experience

You must have at least 1 year commercial experience and a relevant degree.
or 2 years commercial experience if you have no degree.
A Magneto qualification would also be very advantageous.

About Fisheye

We are a team (10) of top notch web designers, developers and marketers. We are a friendly and motivated team producing cutting edge work. Although our offices are based in the sleepy market town of Wem in Shropshire, we are at the forefront of the industry and have clients all over the U.K and Europe.

Hours

You will be working from our head office in Wem, between the hours of 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday

How to Apply

Please email your CV to jobs@fisheye-webdesign.co.uk or call 01939 233517 and ask for Dave, Closing date 15th Feb 2012

You're reading PHP Guru (Developer) Required by Fisheye Web Design & Marketing originally posted on The Fisheye Web Design & Marketing Blog If you've enjoyed this post, please be sure to follow Fisheye on Twitter, href="https://www.facebook.com/fisheye.webdesign">Facebook, and href="https://plus.google.com/111701566947418711040">Google+!