If you are planning to develop an eCommerce store for your business with the great power of usability and extensibility, undoubtedly Magento will be your first choice. Magento comes with full-fledged feature-rich options that can help you to run an eCommerce store of any size.
However, there are few sections of Magento that should be enhanced to get the maximum out of it. First and foremost you need to concentrate on your theme. The theme is the main attracting point of your business that can grab the first attention of your buyer. So you need to choose it wisely.
After the theme, the main concentrating sections are the users experience on the product searching, the shopping and the checkout process, the loading speed of your website and the SEO of your website.
As a developer, I always concentrate on these basic sections when developing a Magento website. Here in this article, I am writing my personal experience of developing one of my client’s Magento based website. The website I am talking about is https://www.nationalairwarehouse.com/. Here I will let you know my choice of Magento theme and extensions that helped me to reach the final goal to develop this website for my client.
1. Choice of Theme:
After researching on many themes I have recommended few themes to my client those can be most convenient to use along with Magento. The client chooses the Argento theme. This is really a great theme to use for its great features and compatibility. Also, the theme is very easy to use and enhance. To get a good idea, you can check and compare the actual demo of the theme along with my client website.
2. Enhancing the Magento Basic Search Feature:
To improve the search experience of the website the AJAX-driven search is the best option that can show the search result along with the typing of the search phase. This can improve the user experience effectively. To integrate the same feature in my client website I use the extension called Better Magento search. The extension is really good and easy to integrate.
3. Enhancing the Checkout Process:
Awesome Checkout is a wonderful extension to improve the default Magento one page checkout process that can improve the responsiveness and the ordering process of the form. I used this extension and it really makes my client happier.
4. Improving the SEO:
Although SEO is a vast subject for a website and you have to spend several hours and efforts to it, improving the onsite SEO should be considered in time of developing a website. I personally prefer to use (and I used in this website also) the SEO Suite Ultimate extension of Magento to improve the onsite SEO. It comes with a lot of features that can help to implement the basic SEO features like the implementation of META data, XML sitemap, and rich snippets. It also gives the options to set the indexing status of any page. It’s advanced reporting also helps to find the SEO problems of your website easily that can be fixed with few easy clicks.
5. Improving the Loading Speed:
The main glitch of a Magento that can make a developer worried is the loading speed. Although Magento comes with most of the best features that are suitable for an eCommerce website, it is a bit heavy in size and it can load very slowly if your server is not quite advanced. If you are running a large online shop the best option is to choose a good dedicated hosting or, at least, a good VPS. But using a cache-extension can also help to improve the loading speed a lot. I have used the Full Page Cache extension by Amasty. Although Magento comes with an inbuilt cache option, the Full Page Cache extension can improve the speed to up to 3 seconds more by caching the Magento configurations files that can load on each time of page refresh. So this extension can add a great value to your website.
6. Integrating a WordPress Blog:
Although integrating a blog is optional, it can make the promotion of your website a lot easier. Regular updates via a blog can surely improve the search engine visibility of your website that can improve the traffic. The best way to integrate WordPress blog in your Magento store is by using the extension called WordPress Integration by FishPig. Like the current website of my client, I always prefer to choose this easy-to-use extension to integrate a WordPress blog easily by using some simple steps.
Conclusion:
This is a personal experience of mine that I have gathered in the time of developing this particular website. The all above extensions are really great and compatible with each other. If you ask me I can say the above-mentioned extensions can be used in any Magento based websites to improve its basic features and usability to the next level. This can surely improve the user experience that is directly related to the sale.
If you are a Magento developer and have experience with some other good extensions and themes please share with us using the following comment box. Your input will really help our readers.
Web developer and SEO specialist with 20+ years of experience in open-source web development, digital marketing, and search engine optimization. He is also the moderator of this blog "RS Web Solutions (RSWEBSOLS)".
