10 Awesome Magento Customization Tips

Magento is a flexible and extensible e-commerce platform that allow customers to optimize as well as customize their sites. It is a leading platform having more than 14000 stores which run either as magento enterprise, professional, go or magento community editions.

Conversion oriented interface of magento platform helps businesses to grow and helps to manage online stores better. Magento installation and configuration is easier but when it comes to customization it is rather difficult.

Here are the ten awesome magento customization tips:

1.Debugging Magento Store Layout

Magento provides powerful logging method in the controller. Enabling debug mode is easier and one just has to follow the code.

Magento

2.Contact Form on Magento CMS Page

Contact form is given great importance for any e-commerce site. Contact form is the primary means of getting in touch with customers. Hence every magento store owner needs it working in the store. For better navigation, it is better to create a contact form using CMS page.

Read also:Why Choose Magento For Your Responsive Site?

3.Display category Name on Product Detail Pages
Magento store owners always keep product category name on the product detail page. This will be useful information to customers as they get details of where they are and what they are buying. There is certain codes that can be added to show product category name wherever you want within your layout.

4.If users are not logged in, hide product prices

One has to edit the following file for hiding product prices or to display tired pricing to logged in customers:

app/design/frontend/default/default/template/catalog/product/view/tierprices.phtml.

If the requirements are little complex we can use Magento Hide Prices, which is a comprehensive extension to hide price of products, add to cart button, disabling cart, displaying call for prices, or displaying inquiry forms etc

5.Remove credit card information from transactional emails

Magento store owners would never want to show their credit card information openly in transactional e-mails. Sending such information is highly insecure. One can remove displaying credit card information from transactional e-mails following the method:

Editapp/design/frontend/default/your_theme/template/payment/info/cc.phtml file

6.Add language pack

Magento is used as a multi-lingual store by all major brands. It is pretty easier to create a new store in Magento. There are several steps that should be followed to create a multi-lingual store in Magento.

7.Adding social media on Product Detail Pages

It is a good way to promote brand using social media. The like button in social medias like facebook, twitter, google+ etc can be helpful in the promotion of brands. Grab attention with social media.

Recommended read:What’s New and Cool in Magento 2?

8.Hide Empty Cart

It is futile to display cart in the sidebar if there is nothing in cart. Follow the steps to hide empty cart from sidebar:

Editapp/design/frontend/default//template/checkout/cart/sidebar.phtml file

9.Add custom comment box

Each product in the cart has option, add custom comment. While ordering, customers can enquire Instructions, requirements or specifications of the product in the comment box.

10. Custom Add to Cart button on CMS pages

Selling products via customized landing pages is not new; Marketers can do all sorts of efforts and thus can create pages to bring customers. With the CMS pages, customers can add certain products in the cart.Inorder to add products one have to follow certain codes and procedures.

Better Business for Better Future

All these ten tips can help in the customization of magento. It can be a difficult task for beginners involving magento front end customization.

Good Customization can be an added advantage to every ecommerce site especially a popular e-commerce site like magento.

Things to Consider While Planning a Magento Store

 

Magento is an ecommerce platform trusted all over the world. It helps you to drive more traffic to your site.

Throughout the past few years, Magento has grown tremendously in the internet due to its functionalities, dynamic attributes and user-friendly nature. Various ecommerce websites are choosing Magento platform to give their e – store a refreshing and a new look. Being the most popular platform for its high-performance and flexibility, Magento is a fantastic choice for all kinds of ecommerce websites that are selling a variety of products.

Magento

This article will discuss about the essential things that make good ecommerce possible and gives you suggestion on what you should pay attention to when planning a Magento online store.

Some of the general tips that you must know:

  1. Mention who all will be in this planning process and their roles.
  2. You should involve in some of the legal and financial matters which are unavoidable in the online business.
  3. Go through some articles of the ecommerce website development to know about the development process. It will help you to know what to expect when planning an online store.
  4. Before contacting a Magento development company, prepare the project concept.
  5. Project will not get implemented devoid of your commitment.

Recommended Read: 6 Major Companies That Provide Magento Extensions

STRATEGY AND GENERAL MATTERS

-Define your target market and audience

This is something which you need to consider while planning a Magento online store. If you don’t know about your target market and audience, then your chance of creating a successful online store will reduce. Knowing who will buy your services and products can influence your website structure and design.

-Select the edition of Magento platform

It is essential for you to know about the Magento edition you are going to use. There are two versions – Enterprise and. Community. According to the size of your business, the amount of products you plan to use in the store and other required functionalities, define the edition that meets your needs.

DESIGN

Design plays a vital role in the online field. Having a professionally designed website will make your site more attractive and user-friendly.

There are two design options for your Magento store:

  • A ready-made design theme
  • Creating custom design

A ready-made design theme

Using a ready design theme helps you to create a good looking Magento Online Store and expel the need of custom design. Presently there are hundreds of ready design themes accessible on the market such as Template Monster and Theme Forest. The disadvantage of using such themes is that there might be lots of other stores using the same theme. That would be a slight negative for established brands. They are ideal choices for small and medium enterprises though.

Creating custom design

A custom design will be unique for your website. For this you should look at several online stores and select what you find appealing. It could be navigation, color, layout or any other thing. Being built by you ground up, functionalities and design can be according to what you desire, without the limitations of a theme.

PRODUCTS

There are 6 types of products in the Magento context. They are as follows:

Simple– This is a simple product in Magento that you can ship as it doesn’t have any options like size or color.

Configurable– This product is used when our products have various choices related to it such as size, color etc.

Downloadable– It is used for online software items and it does not allow for the selection of a shipping method as there’s nothing to ship.

Virtual– It is used for a virtual item like insurance, an extra product guarantee, a reservation, etc.

Bundle– This product allows client to build their own product from the several options. Each item in the bundle is a separate, standalone product.

Grouped– This is a set of simple products. For Ex: If you want to sell a camera+ camera lens, then each of those is simple product; but if you group them together, it is called grouped product.

Read Also: 8 Reasons Magento is the Best Choice for eCommerce 

PAYMENTS AND SHIPPING

These are the essential things required while planning a Magento online store. We should get familiar with the payment and shipping options accessible in Magento and should select which option is good for our online business.

Payment methods:    

  • PayPal
  • Credit card
  • Bank transfer
  • Cash on delivery
  • Purchase order
  • net

Shipping methods:

  • Flat rate
  • Free shipping
  • Table rates
  • Online rates

MARKETING AND PROMOTIONS

This is another area where Magento is best. You should plan what marketing and promotion method you need to use when selling to increase your sales. You can add lots of features through extension also.

The best thing about this platform is that it comes with a complete selection of ecommerce modules that can be easily personalized as per your company requirements. When you select for other platforms, they need lots of money to customize and for shopping cart options. Therefore, it is beneficial for you to go with Magento platform.