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• Run an @ecommerce site? Don’t combine your checkout steps into a single crowded step! http://t.co/tZprdQq #

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As someone who’s been working in the Magento eCommerce market pretty much since its inception (with the intention to stick with it for the long term), I’ve been particularly attentive to the development of Magento – both as a platform, a community, and a market.

I wrote a few articles on the question of the acquisition by Ebay and since I’ve recently been asked if I had further thoughts on the topic I decided to share them here.

If you’re in the Ecommerce business and there’s just one post you’re going to read today – make it this one!

Magento’s growth and the connection with eBay

Ebay first acquired 49% of Magento back over a year and a half ago. The exponential growth of the Magento market jumped to new levels after the initial investment from Ebay and is now going even stronger since the acquisition a few months ago (we see that in traffic, market demand, and sales).

The market is booming with an ever wider audience, more traction, etc… My take on this is that this market will continue to grow and that companies who are able to position themselves in a privileged position (such as our Magento Network with its reputation and history) will greatly benefit from the integration with Ebay’s various projects under X.Commerce.

The future of Magento as a stand alone platform

It’s been clear for over a year and a half that Ebay was going to purchase Magento eventually (after acquiring 49% of it) as part of Ebay’s efforts to dominate the Ecommerce space. It’s also clear that Magento will remain a stand alone solution while at the same time being at the core of other offerings such as X.commerce, MagentoGo, etc.

There are hundreds of thousands of merchants who use Magento – and that number is growing steadily every day. Ebay’s strategy is to appeal to all possible audiences by offering different products, starting with Ebay itself for tiny merchants, hosted solutions such as MagentoGo for small businesses, Magento Community edition for small to large businesses, and Magento Professional and Enterprise editions as well as CGI Commerce (which was also recently acquired by Magento) to very large merchants. It seems that all of the above will be under the X.Commerce banner. Ebay also owns Paypal.

To me, Magento will continue to thrive as of in itself – much like Paypal, Ebay, or CGI Commerce will continue to thrive independently. After all, no one would throw away a booming market that’s fully branded, extremely profitable, and has millions of users (hundreds of thousands of active merchants). All of these components will continue as stand alone solutions that are also integrated into the X.Commerce vision.

In addition, since the first investment by Ebay Magento has made tremendous efforts to make the platform’s new features more and more stable in terms of compatibility with previous releases. And that trend has been very beneficial (basically since Magento 1.4). That means that merchants will continue to have a clear and simple upgrade paths when Magento continues to evolve with the upcoming versions, without affecting 3rd party products and store customization.

Magento’s growth continues

Take a look at the Google Trends graph for Magento vs Ecommerce (note the recent growth since May which emphasizes the added traction that Ebay brings to the platform):

Another interesting point is that there seems to be a recent growing trend of companies chosing to enter the Magento market. Here’s for example a recent press release on a business acquiring a small niche Magento extension shop: http://www.pr.com/press-release/340285.

If your business is in the Ecommerce space, I hope this gets you thinking .

Related articles mentioned in this post:

• Now is the time to invest in Magento
• Magento – eBay: the saga continues
• Our Magento network’s traffic and sale data

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Whenever possible, your preferred communication method should be email, chat, or social media. No phone calls, no meetings. In other words, use “passive” communication methods.

You see, when you’re on a phone call or meet with people, everyone involved is “stuck”. You can’t take your time to reply, think about what you want to say properly, do some research, or prioritize.

A phone call or meeting interrupts your work flow, disturbs your focus, and puts you in a position where you have less control over your time and resources.

You can choose to get off your email while you’re working, ignore chat windows, etc… When using passive communication methods you can prioritize and decide what requires your attention more urgently and what doesn’t matter as much.

Passive communication methods are more respectful of people’s time and priorities. They’re also usually much more efficient – people tend to be more concise, precise, and effective when they have to write things down.

You can also keep track of your conversations and exchanges and refer back to them down the road.

Of course don’t apply this to your personal life .

Some related posts in this Productivity Tips series:

• Focus on the next step
• Work when you’re productive

Magento checkout extensions have been pretty popular for a long time. For Ecommerce owners the idea of increasing sales just by making the checkout process smoother is a very appealing one.

The problem is that most checkout extensions are actually harmful to conversion rates and checkout usability.

All Magento checkout extensions I’ve seen out there are very bad in terms of load speed, conversions, and stability.

Don’t combine checkout steps into a single crowded step

First of all I have no idea why but all checkout extensions I’ve ever seen combine the checkout steps into a crowded 3-column design and promote this as if it’s a positive thing.

Here’s a screenshot taken from one such extension to illustrate what I mean:

Even the savviest users get confused with such a layout! Not to mention most internet shoppers eager to complete their purchase quickly and move on. I mean – which fields are you supposed to fill out first? Why are there so many options everywhere? It’s really overwhelming – especially if you’re just buying a shirt or a pair of shoes!

There are a ton of checkout extensions but somehow they all combine all checkout steps into one crowded page with 3 columns. It doesn’t get any worse in terms of usability and conversions!

Don’t overwrite Magento’s functionality

These extensions also completely overwrite Magento’s checkout functionality which is a big no no in terms of upgade-ability, stability and security.

What that means is that you’ll run into countless issues and problems with new Magento verions, and other 3rd party extensions (such as payment methods, shipping methods, etc).

Don’t weigh down your checkout page

In  addition these extensions add their own style files, template files, and layout files to the checkout page which will affect  load speed and page performance – actually slowing down the most important page of an online store!

Don’t trust anything but numbers

If you’re trying out a Magento checkout extension, you should make sure to test conversion rates with A/B testing (you can use Google Website Optimizer for that if you want a free and quick implementation). One company did test conversion rates and saw a huge decrease in conversion rates when compared to the original Magento checkout process!

Well, that’s expected to anyone with any sense of design and usability.

Look for an alternative

You can stick with the native Magento checkout functionality and that’s fine. Except for the very first step which is very confusing to users:

Fortunately this first step can be easily and seamlessly removed with the Optimized Checkout Extension without affecting any of the checkout functionality and all its possible scenarios.

If you want users to sign up for your newsletter at checkout you can incorporate this very simple extension which adds a newsletter check-box with a bunch of possible scenarios you can configure in the admin.

Links mentioned in this post:

• Google Website Optimizer
• A/B Testing the One Step Checkout Magento Extension
• Magento Conversion Rate Optimization – Cart and Checkout
• Optimized Checkout Extension
• Newsletter Checkout Extension
  

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For the past few years, our main of focus has been on our Ecommerce line of products which consists of Ultimento, Magentist, and Magento Expert.

All 3 sites provide products and services for the popular Magento Ecommerce platform and I thought it’d be interested to share some of our traffic and sales data and the trend they show over the past 7 months.

30,000 unique monthly visitors across the sites + continued growth:

Big monthly income across the network + continued growth:

Though July is often considered a “low season” month for most businesses, our traffic and profit data continue to show the same steep growth. With the recent release of Ultimento 2.0 the future is looking brighter than ever and profits are continuing to rise steeply.

This data reinforces what I wrote recently about Magento’s growth (since the acquisition by eBay) . Also take a look at the Google Trends graph for Magento vs Ecommerce (note the recent growth since May):

I hope someone finds these interesting!

Related posts:

• There’s never been a better time to invest in Magento
• Magento + eBay – the saga continues