You might think it's a bit preemptive to start planning for the Holidays now, but it's almost too late already.  Think about it this way: if you want to make a bunch of changes to your e-commerce website such as an upgrade, a new design, or any new features you need a significant amount of time to get it done.  You'll need to define the project, gather proposals from various service providers, go through contract negotiation, and then have the work completed.  A fully custom design, implementation and customization can take a couple months, so don't delay any further and start thinking about the holiday season and how you're going to prepare for it. 

Also you need to plan out your MARKETING! The last thing that you want to do is stay up all night on November, 23 trying to write email copy and change your AdWords ads to holiday specific text.  Start planning now, and you'll definitely have a more profitable season with much less stress. 

So that's the overview about why, but let's go over the direction as well as the specific things you can do to make your holiday season more successful.  We'll go over checklists, specific ideas and tactics to make your store ready for the 2010 holidays.

Design Changes
You might want to change some of the main site graphics to seasonal, relevant images.  If you have pictures of people within the design, make sure they're wearing coats, and you can throw some snowflakes in the header to make it feel like winter.

Sales
Of course you're going to have a holiday sale.  But which works better, 10% off your order over $X or Free Shipping?  Start testing now! Something as simple as the wording of a deal can effect your conversion rate drastically.

Gift Wrapping
You can offer gift wrapping as an upsell during checkout.  If you're going to offer this option though, it's important to plan ahead and get this process worked out within your current procedures.

Delivery Schedules / Deadlines
You can create a sense of urgency if you put the proper messaging on your site.  For instance, "Order before December 20th for Guaranteed Arrival before Christmas!" This short message, repeated throughout the website, could be the push that someone needs to get through the checkout.

Updated Returns Policy
When it comes to gifts, one of the main concerns that people have when buying online is possibly having to return the item.  They might be afraid that the clothing won't fit properly or the item will arrive defective.  Make sure that your return policy is easy to find and easy to understand.

Add Video to Product Descriptions
One of the main reasons that customers abandon product pages is because they didn't get a good enough "look" at the product.  If you have a short video of someone reviewing the item or simply demonstrating it, it builds confidence with the potential customer and differentiates you from your competitors.  Anything that you can do that will get someone to push "Add To Cart" is crucial.

Beef Up Customer Support
Make sure that you have enough staff to take calls, answer questions, and train them to sell!  You should have multiple ways for visitors to contact you online via toll-free number, email, chat, twitter or even fax.  It can't hurt to have the pathways to contact you because if someone wants to call you, they are very close to purchasing.  On the other hand, you also want to have support for current/past customers because that is what sparks people to talk about their experiences.  Think about how Zappos.com because so popular from having incredible customer service.

New Banner Ads
If you advertise with Banner Ads, you should start brainstorming some new designs.  Also start thinking of new places to advertise, and new media buying strategies that can drive tons of traffic to your site. 

New Adwords  (PPC) Keywords / Ads
Don't wait until the last minute to add new keywords into your campaigns that are seasonally specific.  Also, try testing out new Ad Copy that has holiday style to it. Add in a coupon code, mention a shipping deadline or another offer. 

Gift Categories / Gift Guide
Organized your items into gift categories by person or price (Great Gifts for Mom, Dad, etc…). If you give visitors useful search options and filters, it lets them find what they want faster; speed is key during the holidays.

Affiliate Relations
If you have an affiliate program, get them excited about promoting your products.  Show them landing pages, new items and sales that they can promote before they start.  This allows super-affiliates to get banners made, plan media buys, start new PPC campaigns and test them out before it's too late. 

New Products
Do some research and figure out what types of products in your industry are going to be the popular items of the season.  If you're going to stock these items, remember there's significant work to do each time (ordering inventory, storage, photos, description, etc…).  So start the research soon so you're prepared to launch them in the Fall.

Shipping Deals
Shipping is the #1 type of sale that you can offer your visitors.  Having free shipping makes the ordering process seem more realistic and it makes the price seem more feasible (since there's no addition involved).  Another great tactic is to have Free Shipping on orders above $X.  You'll get a higher average order and happier clients.

Social Media
Start building your following now! Starting a Social Media campaign in November would be a waste of time; however if you have 5000 followers (on twitter for instance) by then you can turn it into a traffic generator, a communication/ support platform and more.  Also remember, 200 happy, engaged followers is much better than 10,000 random people. Get your following organically and you'll be much better off.

Cart Abandonment Recapture
You can automate the recapturing of an abandoned cart by sending an email to the user with the previous cart contents. 

Gift Receipts & Gift Messages
Have checkout options to add a note or gift receipt to the order.  This way, there's proof of purchase but the price isn't in the box.  It works especially well when offering gifts that are sent directly to the recipient.

Backup Server / Increased Bandwidth
If you're doing media buys and adding a huge budget to your AdWords account you might want to upgrade your web server to make sure that your site doesn't go down during periods of high traffic.

These are just a few of the things you can do to prepare your site for the holidays and increase your conversion rate. If you want a full report with over 50 site optimizations that you can use any time, holidays or not, opt in below and we'll send it right over!

Send me the sales optimization eBook!

First Name:

Email:

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When you first dive into Twitter, it can be daunting to say the least. It's tough to figure out where to begin, and it really doesn't do much until you
configure everything (by following, being followed and interacting.). Here’s a list we put together of some of the top Magento Authorities on Twitter, so you can stay in touch with the community and know all the news about the system.

Also, you can follow this list here http://twitter.com/RedstageMagento/magento-authority!

If you have any others to add to the list, leave them in the comments below!

	royrubin05 Roy Rubin
	inchoo Magento Developers | Osijek, Croatia
	YoavMagento Yoav Kutner Magento
	magento_connect Magento Connect
	magentofeeds MagentoFeeds
	magentopodcast MG-Podcast-Team | Aachen, Bayreuth
	hashMagento #magento Following
	ask_magento Reported to be inactive. Follow with Caution! Thanks Jeff!
	magento_uk Magento UK | London, UK

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on ecommerce
• 5 Reasons Why Retailers Should Add Ecommerce to Facebook | Kyle …

• Related Blogs on Magento

Recently, Magento released a new version of their powerful e-commerce system called Magento Professional. This version has few extra features including, Gift Certificates/Cards (Physical and Virtual), Customer Store Credits, Strong Data Encryption (including PA-DSS compliance), and A Reward Points System. They basically added a ton of marketing muscle to the already-powerful system along with PCI compliance.

Their description of the new offering is:

“Magento Professional is an eCommerce platform for businesses who want to enter the world of eCommerce without the complications and long implementation cycle associated with developing a solution with Magento Community open source code. Designed for businesses who are working with a qualified Magento Solution Partner, Magento Professional has been thoroughly tested and warranted, and includes revenue-generating features not found in Magento Community.

Magento Solution Partners are able to produce Web stores that meet their clients’ unique business needs, with a clear and easy upgrade path to Magento Enterprise.”

And the cost for these features: $2,995.

Gift Certificates/Cards (Physical and Virtual)

Customers can buy physical or virtual gift certificates to your website. This is a huge feature for the holiday season, as gift cards have become very popular in the past. I know from experience! In the past 3 years I’ve gotten 3 Virtual Amazon Gift Certificates. It’s easy for a customer to use your website to buy a gift certificate and give it to a family member or friend for their Birthday or other Holiday.

Customer Store Credits

Store credit is great to manage product returns without actually having to process the monetary refund. It saves time during your back office processes as well as keeps your customer’s money in your account. The customer can use that credit at any time to buy something else on your site.

Here’s a video showing the Gift Cards and Store Credits Feature:

Reward Points System

A rewards system is a great way to entice repeat customers. It’s a known fact in marketing that it’s up to 10x easier (and less expensive) to get a customer to buy a 2nd time than it is to get them to buy the first time. A direct rewards system can make repeat customers even more likely to come back.

(you can get tons of tips like this in the quick guide in the top of the right column! Just opt in to the Newsletter!)

Strong Data Encryption

The PA-DSS requirement is coming up on July 1!

Read more about the Magento Professional Edition here.

If you want to know more about Magento Professional, please call us at 1-888-335-2747!

A couple weeks ago, we had a post about Free Magento Themes which was a big hit. There are some amazing Magento Themes out there at no cost, but there are thousands of beautiful themes that you can grab for a low cost as well.

Using a template for your e-commerce site can work, it won’t work as well as if you have a Custom Magento E-Commerce Brand design. However, when you’re starting out you can use a modified template to get used to Magento and get started with your e-commerce business.

We went through and found a bunch of sites that have TONS of Magento themes. Here are some of our favorite Theme sites and top template from each.

http://www.silverthemes.com

Silver Themes has some extremely clean and crisp designs. Their themes run as low as $125.00 and up to $150.00, and based on certain features it can run higher. The link to their demo store to preview the themes doesn’t seem to be working though. It links to a fresh install of Magento.

Aside from that, these templates are very nice. One of my favorites is the Megastore Theme.

This theme has a very simple, minimalist design that would be easy to adapt to most businesses that are selling a variety of products.

Here’s a link to the Megastore Theme page.

Most of the Silverthemes Themes are layed out the same, with top & left navigation, 3 main feature banners in the center and a basic layout.

There is one that stands out called Sigyn Pro which is a much darker and grungy theme. Very cool.

Here’s a link to the Sigyn Theme.

Take a look a their other themes, at Silverthemes.com.

http://www.templatemonster.com

Link to Magento Themes Page

TemplateMonster has the largest selection of themes we found. They have 150 different Magento Templates ranging from $160 to $250 for the regular price, or $1100 to $7500 for the unique price. The unique price, when purchased, pulls the template off the site so it therefore becomes “unique”.

TemplateMonster’s themes are all fairly different. They cover dozens of industries and product types, color schemes and layouts. A bunch of them rely on high quality stock photography to really come alive, which makes them a bit less “out of the box” than a simpler theme. Basically, you’ll need to customize those graphics to fit your business before using the theme for your store. Overall, with the selection they have, you should find something to start with. I’ll show you a few examples below.

I like the look of this theme. The vibrant colors and the real “Home Depot” feel make it work for a store selling power tools. However, when you’re looking through and choosing a template, remember that anything that is a graphic and has anything specific in it will have to be redesigned. In this template, the “Free Shipping” graphic and 4 featured products will have to change if you don’t offer free shipping at that price level or have those products at those prices as well.

Take a look at the Tool Store page, and the Tool Store Demo. This template as of now goes for: Regular Price: $180 / Buyout Price: $5400

This furniture store template has a great color scheme and layout. I particularly like the effects and details used in the graphics. Again, be aware that these images are just examples and will most likely have to be customized to suit your products and offers. These are more generic than the Tool Store theme above but unless you’re selling very similar items, this is another example of a template that looks good, but is not “out-of-the-box”. It’s a great start though if you have a medium to high end furniture store.

Check out the Furniture Store Page, and Live Demo. This theme now goes for Regular Price: $180 / Buyout Price: $5400

This theme for a Men’s Fashion store is very slick and expensive looking. A lot of the look of this template relies on the product photos, so make sure you’re ready for that. However, the overall look and feel, and colors are a great start for an upscale online clothing store.

Take a look at the Men’s Store page, and Live Demo. This theme now goes for: Regular Price: $180 / Buyout Price: $2800

The “Woman’s Store” theme looks great, with bright colors and a more generic design. Since TemplateMonster gives you the Photoshop files you can easily customize these graphics which are mostly text to suit your needs.

Check out the Women’s Store page and Live Demo. This theme goes for: Regular Price: $250 / Buyout Price: $7500

I really like this theme! Regardless of what you’re selling, this is a cool design that uses excellent colors and transparency
to display your products in a really high quality way. The catalog page is laid out very nicely. One critique… change the product page font color to something a bit lighter and more legible. Otherwise, great theme!

Check out the Sneakers Theme page, and Live Demo. This theme goes for: Regular Price: $250 / Buyout Price: $3200

Last one from TemplateMonster. I like the design effects on the background and right column graphics on this theme. I hope that TM gives you the fonts you need to change those graphics since they look great but will need an update. This is a very fun and inviting theme!

Take a look at the T-Shirts Theme page and Live Demo. This theme goes for: Regular Price: $180 / Buyout Price: $2650

http://www.hellothemes.com

HelloThemes Magento Themes

HelloThemes has a great portfolio of Magento themes. Most of them look like they are for electronics stores but a couple are for clothing/fashion sites. Here’s a snapshot of their portfolio. You can even get all of their themes for $300, which is a good deal. Check it out.

Nice, Clean Design. Some social media elements on the homepage make it a bit more modern. The content slider at the top will need to be filled with product / sale features. Overall, the theme is nice, and generic enough to display nearly any product line.

Demo | Info

Dark theme, very cool. The effect on the background graphic brings it all together. Also, using CSS text-shadow on the right column filter titles as well as the category title adds a cool look to the catalog page.

Demo | Info

The “HelloGlam” template looks like a t-shirt store from the thumbnail but seems to have been repurposed to be a lingerie store (in the demo). In reality, it would work for any woman’s apparel store as the design is clean and very girly.

Demo | Info

ThemeForest.net

Link to ThemeForest Magento Themes

ThemeForest has 46 Magento Templates that are in teh $60 – $10 range. Take a look at the different styles and layouts they offer on their site. Since it seems that there are submissions from various template designers and developers the themes vary quite a bit.

The yarn theme has some cool graphic effects in the header and offers a great way to display artistic, organic or “green” items.

Take a look at the demo or get more info here.

The Antiqua theme is another one that has a nice graphic feel to it, epecially the lined paper drop down menus and neat textures throughout the template. Very cool for anything handmade!

Demo | Info

These were the themes that really stuck out but there are hundreds more that are excellent as well. If there’s a site that we missed that has a bunch of themes or a particular one that you like, post it below in the comments! Thanks for reading!

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on 13 Featured Magento Themes Reviewed and Links

Changing a Magento site’s favicon is one of the most frequently overlooked tasks.  But it’s just as important as customizing the logo, implementing a unique theme, and changing email templates.  Best of all, it’s the easiest thing to do.  Once you have your favicon, it’s just a matter of uploading it to the right locations.

Where do I upload my favicon?

Traditionally, we used to be able to place the favicon in the web root and it would automatically be picked up by the browser.  With Magento however, this “default web root” convention is overridden by new paths, as defined by two <link> tags in the document <head>.  We can discover what those new paths are by simply looking at the page source.

Look for:

<link rel="icon" href="…" type="image/x-icon" />
and <link rel="shortcut icon" href="…" type="image/x-icon" />

These (look at the href) are where you should upload the favicon.

How come I can’t see my favicon?

There are a few reasons why, even after uploading your favicon to the aforementioned locations, you still see the default Magento favicon.

• Servers may cache favicons – If you’re running an Apache web server, try reversing these “Cache Your Favicon to Speed Up Your Site” steps.
• Browsers may cache favicons – Try viewing your site using a browser that hasn’t yet visited the site.  If it works in a different browser, but not your original one, then you have a browser-cache issue. Since the process of clearing favicon cache varies from browser to browser, check out “Clear the Browser Cache to Display Your Favicon”.

Magento, with its wide support for multiple payment gateways, makes it easier than ever to accept customer payments. There are a plethora of payment gateways out there, and today we’re going to show you just how easy it is to set up Authorize.net. Authorize.net acts as an intermediary between your Magento store and the vast payment processing networks.

The Process:

• Gather Account-Specific Authorize.net Data
• Enter this Data into Magento
• Enable the Payment Module

I. Gather Account-Specific Authorize.net Data

Once you have an account with Authorize.net, you’ll need to obtain values for these fields:

• API Login ID
• Transaction key
• Merchant’s Email (this you should already have)

To find these, follow these steps (source):

1. Log in to your Merchant Interface at https://account.authorize.net
2. Click Settings in the main left side menu.
3. Click API Login ID and Transaction Key.
4. Under Create New Transaction Key, enter your Secret Answer.
5. Click Submit.

II. Enter this Data into Magento

Log in to your Magento Admin Panel.  Then, using the horizontal navigation at the top, navigate to System > and click Configuration.  Once that page loads, look for and click on “Payment Methods”, found in the left-column under the “Sales” category.  When the page loads, expand the “Authorize.net” area in the main-column by clicking on it.

Add the relevant Authorize.net values from the previous step, and set the various settings to your liking (e.g. which credit cards to accept, whether or not to require CVV validation, etc.)

Authorize.net Settings

III. Enable the Payment Module

While still in the “Authorize.net” area of System > Configuration, change the “Enabled” dropdown (first setting) to “Yes“.

Enable the Authorize.net Payment Module

Finally, click the “Save Config” buton found at the top-right hand side of the screen.

Adding a video to a product greatly enhances the online shopping experience. The out-of-the-box Magento package doesn’t support video. This How-To shows just how to do that. We’ll be able to either (1) drop in HTML embed code from sites like YouTube, or (2) use an FLV file that we provide.

This article assumes you have the jQuery Javascript library installed and have “jQuery.noConflict()”‘ set up.  If you don’t have jQuery.noConflict(), then simply replace instances of “jQuery” with “$”.  If you don’t have this library, download jQuery here.

Here’s the sequence of steps we’re going to take:

1. Create a product attribute for the video code
2. Assign the newly created attribute to an attribute set
3. Modify the template files
4. Obtain and upload a copy of the free JWPlayer
5. Add video to a product using HTML embed code or using an FLV file

1. Create a product attribute for the video code.

Log in to your Magento Admin Panel. Navigate to Catalog > Attributes > Manage Attributes. Click on the “Add New Attribute” button found close to the top-right hand corner of the screen. The first tab that’s open is the *Properties* tab. You are presented with lots of textboxes and dropdowns. Here’s what to fill them in with (you can also view this screenshot):

Attribute Properties

- Attribute Code: video
- Scope: Global
- Catalog Input Type of Store Owner: Text Area
- Default Value: [leave blank]
- Unique Value: No
- Values Required: No
- Input Validation for Store Owner: None
- Apply To: All Product Types

Frontend Properties

- Use in quick search: No
- Use in advanced search: No
- Comparable on Front-end: No
- Use in Layered Navigation: No
- Use in Search Results Layered Navigation: No
- Use for Price Rule Conditions: No
- Position: 0
- Allow HTML-tags on Front-end: Yes
- Visible on Product View Page on Front-end: No
- Used in product listing: No
- Used for sorting in product listing: No

Then navigate to the *Manage Label / Options* tab. You only have to fill in the “Admin” value, and for this use “Video“. This can be changed later if you need to.

Click the “Save Attribute” button to save the attribute.

2. Assign the newly created attribute to an attribute set (likely Default)

While still in the Admin Panel, navigate to Catalog > Attributes > Manage Attribute Sets. From the right-hand column, labeled “Unassigned Attributes”, drag our new video attribute to the “General” group found in the middle column.

Click “Save Attribute Set” button to save the attribute set.

3. Modify the template files

You’ll need to use a text-editor and FTP client.

3a. video.phtml

Create a file with these contents:

<?php
$_product = $this->getProduct();
?>
<?php if( $video = $_product->getVideo() ){ ?>
<h2>Product Video</h2>
<div class="products">
<?php if( file_exists( getcwd() .'/skin/frontend/[your-package]/[your-theme]/videos/'. $video ) ){ ?>
<div id="mediaspace">&nbsp;</div>
<script>
jQuery( document ).ready( function(){
jQuery.getScript( '<?php echo $this->getSkinUrl('videos/mediaplayer/swfobject.js'); ?>', function(){
var so = new SWFObject('/skin/frontend/[your-package]/[your-theme]/videos/mediaplayer/player.swf','ply','470','320','9','#ffffff');
so.addParam('allowfullscreen','true');
so.addParam('allowscriptaccess','always');
so.addParam('wmode','opaque');
so.addVariable('file','<?php echo Mage::getBaseUrl(); ?>/skin/frontend/[your-package]/[your-theme]/videos/<?php echo $video; ?>');
so.write('mediaspace');
} );
} );
</script>
<?php } else { ?>
<?php echo $video; ?>
<?php } ?>
</div>
<?php } ?>

And save the file as /app/design/frontend/[your-package]/[your-theme]/template/catalog/product/view/video.phtml

3b. catalog.xml

Open up /app/design/frontend/[your-package]/[your-theme]/layout/catalog.xml and add this line:

<block type="catalog/product_view" name="product_video" as="product_video" template="catalog/product/view/video.phtml"/>

as a child anywhere inside this node:

<block type="catalog/product_view" name="product.info" template="catalog/product/view.phtml">

… and save the file.

3c. catalog/product/view.phtml

Open up /app/design/frontend/[your-package]/[your-theme]/catalog/product/view.phtml and add this line:

<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('product_video'); ?>

wherever you want the video to appear on the page. Save the file.

4. Obtain and upload a copy of the free JWPlayer

Download the player from: http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/

After you download the ZIP file, extract and upload the files using an FTP client to: /skin/frontend/[your-package]/[your-theme]/videos/*

With the FTP client, rename the “mediaplayer-viral” folder to “mediaplayer”

5. Add video to a product

In the Magento Admin Panel, navigate to Catalog > Manage Products and click on the product you’d like to add video to. You should see a textarea labeled “Video”.

5a. Use HTML embed code

In the “Video” textarea, simply drop in the HTML code you’ve received (such as from YouTube) and click “Save” to save the product.

5b. OR use an FLV file

- Upload your FLV file to /skin/frontend/[your-package]/[your-theme]/videos/

- In the “Video” textarea, specify the filename of the FLV you’ve just uploaded.

Repeat Step 5 for all of the products you want to add video to.

Congratulations, you’ve added video to your products.

* This method is tested and working for Magento v 1.3.2.4

You are locked out of your Magento site’s Admin Panel.  You’ve tried every username/password combination you know and have searched your entire computer (inside and out) for a file or sticky note to no avail.  Don’t worry, all is not lost — that is, assuming you have access and permission to browse and modify the database.

Access to the database is typically done through:

• phpMyAdmin – a 3rd party utility that usually comes packaged with hosting accounts (whether dedicated, shared, cloud, etc.)
• SSH – a command-line interface

Let’s say for example we’ve lost the password for the account with username: testadmin.

Using phpMyAdmin

1. In the left-hand column, click on the table called “admin_user“.

2. Click the “Browse” tab found at the top (horizontal) menu.

3. Locate the account you wish to modify (testuser in this example), and click on the “Edit” icon (to the left of “Delete” and looks like a pencil)

4. Locate the “password” row.  Select “MD5” from the dropdown menu and type in the new password.

5. Scroll to the bottom and click “Go” — and you should be all set!

Using SSH

1. Log in to the mysql> prompt using:

mysql -u [dbUsername] -p[dbPassword] -h[dbHost] [databaseName]

For more information on this, see: Accessing MySQL via SSH

2. You should now see that your command prompt now looks like:

mysql>

3. Enter the command:

UPDATE admin_user SET password = MD5('OurNewPassword') WHERE username = 'testuser';

4. Hit Enter on your keyboard and you are done.

One of the earliest conversion lessons that I was ever taught was to add eye-contact and humanization to a website to build trust. Over the years, these trust building tactics have been seen all over the place with huge 1-800 numbers and of course, the standard customer service girl.

Here’s an example:

Well, one of the best ways to build trust is to add a live help function to the site. This shows customers that there actually are living, breathing people behind the site and it’s not just code, text and pictures that transact their credit cards. It gives them a sense of reliability that will boost their likelihood to purchase significantly.

The MagentoLiveModule made by Fabrice Beck, will help you achieve just that! Without needing a 3rd party application with monthly fees etc… you can use this module to chat with customers who have questions about your products or policies.

Most people won’t go searching for a shipping policy but they will chat for 30 seconds and get an answer they want. -This builds conversion. And conversion is the name of the game!

Here’s a link to the module on MagentoConnect:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/extension/808/livechat

There you can see that the module has excellent reviews and up to date support, so you won’t be abandoned by the original developer. It’s an excellent addition to any Magento site!

We can help if you need too! You can click here to get Magento Support or call 1-888-335-2747. Or visit out Magento site for more information.