Cue Blocks created an infograph resembling a shoots and ladder like board game, which is a 91 point e-commerce checklist, or as they call it the “Holy Grail of Ecommerce Optimization”

A hot new trend in the E-marketplace is the establishment of a physical presence in the real world, also called Omni Shopping. E-tailers from Etsy to Tesco have been hopping on the bandwagon trying to get their products out to the rest of the population that doesn’t shop exclusively at their computer. How does your online store meet this Magento omni shopping reality?

One of the most obvious ways to reach this demographic is to open storefronts. Advances in technology have rendered inventory space at the physical locations obsolete which helps keep the rents on space low and the consumer turnaround high.

A more innovative idea involves the use of interactive posters or as they are known in the e-business world, “shopping walls”. These posters are plastered to walls in high traffic pedestrian areas and allow consumers to shop using augmented reality and their cellphones. By launching the appropriate app and pointing their phones at the products they are interested in, shoppers can purchase everything they want just by stopping at one of these “walls”.

Kinetic is also getting in on the action. The X-box device uses innovative software which can recognize people in a physical space and translate their actions on to a digital world. Keytree has used this technology to create a virtual store in people’s living rooms. An almost Star-Treckian vibe is induced in this groundbreaking take on online shopping. Shoppers can physically grab virtual items and place them in their cart as they “walk” around this virtual space.

Hara Partners is keeping a close watch on these consumer experiences and will be implementing the most successful technologies in the near future. Keep up with our blog and see where we take things for our customers, it’s going to be quite a trip!

Monetate posted this beautiful infograph on marketing data and identifying actionable data. The post covers:

• Marketing data usage
• Types of data collected
• Marketing budgets, data and ROI
• The biggest obstacles to using data
• Keys to mastering actionable data

Enjoy!

Last week Hara Partners helped Suno – a fashion label based in New York with Kenyan roots – to enter the online marketplace with a more competitive edge. We worked with a design firm to implement Magento design and hosting for front and backend functionality of Sunony.com.

Suno started in 2009 and since then has expanded production to 4 countries on 3 continents. This global scope is the reason Suno needed a stylish and functional online store which can handle inventory and orders from a variety of sources accurately and efficiently. Magento was the ideal platform due to its ability to handle a near unlimited amount of traffic. Suno chose Hara Partners for our expertise and track record of great Magento design and hosting capabilities.

Besides our usual technical Magento integration and hosting we had our talented coders to set up the Suno fashion blog. Drawing upon our extensive Magento design experience we implemented an elegant and easy to use video feature into the website. This feature makes it easy for Suno to post product videos directly into the details section of each products page. Basically that means that when you shop at Sunony.com you don’t just read about the products, you see them in action!

If your business can benefit from fantastic and innovative back to front end Magento design and hosting visit harapartners.com.

Hara Partners is no stranger to web redesign. Our clients often ask us to help update their online storefront in addition to providing the backend Magento technology. In this spirit we have redesigned Crumbs.com for Crumbs Bake Shop. We even created and incorporated the Magento Flavor Picker to help Crumbs customers feel like they are shopping in a real physical bakery.

We cleaned up the overall design and rebranded Crumbs.com with a contemporary look and feel, meeting the needs of the growing cupcake giant. Form and function go hand-in-hand with the redesigned Flavor Picker, which provides the most seamless shopping experience of its kind. Hara Partners also provided the product photography to complete the look. Building on these gorgeous images we integrated the Magento Flavor Picker, a beautiful and easy way to shop for cupcakes.

The new layout and clutter-free interface is designed to emphasize the delectable guilty pleasures without distraction. The Magento Flavor Picker and high quality photography are in line with the highest quality ingredients and standards representing Crumbs.

Share your feedback with us and visit www.crumbs.com at the risk of side-stepping your diet.

Hara Partners is launching a partnership with Addrexx, an address lookup and verification service. Using the Magento Addrexx address lookup module allows merchants to leverage one of the largest databases available for address and names to significantly improve conversion.

Addrexx boasts one of the largest first and last name databases from all over the world. Once Addrexx is integrated with your Magento store it will automatically open in a new window when you click on the name or address field. Then Addrexx queries it’s database to help you complete the entry without typing everything out by hand. At the same time it verifies the name and address to make sure that it actually exists. After the information is entered Addrexx automatically sends it back to your Magento database. Addrexx is used in a variety of industries, from businesses and law enforcement agencies to universities and even the medical field.

Hara Partners provides an advanced integration unique to the market, beating comparable products in speed and data quality. After we perform the Magento Addrexx integration with your system you will save countless hours when entering and verifying names and addresses.

If you’re looking to shorten your checkout process through auto-completion of customer data and at the same time increase data accuracy, contact us to schedule a demo.

A lot of companies come to us with buggy or non-responsive websites because they know we’re in the business of sorting out Magento woes. Our Magento Health Check is a powerful first step in rectifying these frustrating situations—it combines automated site analysis with attention from our dedicated Magento developers to formulate the best plan of attack. That said, many entrepreneurs are wary of over-committing or taking irreversible steps in the site audit process. Put another way, they want to see what they’re getting themselves into before taking action. If you feel this way, check out these Magento Health Check screenshots of the results package we send out to our clients. You’ll see performance graphs, detailed technical documentation, and a breakdown of site health by category.

Magento Health Check Sample Images

We’re more than happy to answer any questions you have. We’re confident that we can help you find the Magento solution that works for your business. Contact us today!

Hara Partners redesigned and launched the Magento online store for the cupcake giant Crumbs Bake Shop incorporating our trademark Magento Flavor Picker. Hara’s accomplished creative team worked hand in hand with Crumbs and the fantastic synergy resulted in a beautiful overhaul of the customer experience.

Drawing upon our extensive background work with previous clients we were able to take the site from concept to execution within a matter of weeks. Teaming up with Crumbs we arranged negotiations with photographers and conducted photo-shoots to showcase the beautiful intricate cupcakes down to the last crumbs. We even designed a 6-pack product selector tool from the ground up called the Magento Flavor Picker to make it easier to satisfy that sweet-tooth!

In addition to a site overhaul we worked with third party vendors to maintain brand synergy between Crumb’s clients and customers from the front and back end. The new investors and career pages are now more intuitive and easy to navigate. By seamlessly integrating the Lyris email system with Magento, facilitating a Magento Periship integration, and implementing the Magento Flavor Picker we have made it much easier for Crumbs to operate in the highly competitive cupcake industry.

If your business can benefit from a site overhaul as well as these great integration visit harapartners.com to see how we can help!

1. DISABLE UNNECESSARY MODULES

Turn off any module that you’re not using like Mage_Wishlist, Mage_Newsletter, Mage_Poll, Mage_Rating and Mage_Tag.

System>Configuration>Advanced.

2. BASE URLS

The repetitive part of every URL on your site – when you move the site, if they aren’t updated all your URLs will refer back to the staging site.

System>Configuration>Web

3. FAVICON

A minor point, but one that often gets overlooked.

/skin/frontend/default/default/favicon.icodirectory.

4. HTML HEAD

Important to change the title and set the meta description and keywords for SEO.

System>Configuration>General>Design>HTML Head.

5. PLACEHOLDER IMAGES

Images which are shown when a product does not have its own image, upload yours.

System>Configuration>Catalog>Catalog>Product Image Placeholders.

6. CONTACT INFORMATION

Ensure all the store information and email addresses are set correctly.

System>Configuration>General and System>Configuration>Store Email Addresses.

7. TRANSACTIONAL EMAILS

Transactional emails use a different logo to the default one. Make sure that the image that you want to use is saved in your theme directory as logo_email.gif.

8. ACCOUNT CONFIRMATION EMAIL MODIFICATION

The Magento default is to send the account confirmation email with plain text passwords. I recommend replacing the password in the confirmation email with some holding text e.g. “********” to ensure security.

9. CHANGE ADMIN URL

You will see “admin” defined as the frontname for the admin router. Change this, and then delete the cache before visiting your new admin url.

app/etx/local.xml file.

10. INVOICE AND PACKING SLIP DESIGN

Here, you will need to upload your logo and add contact information to your invoices.

System>Configuration>Sales>Invoice and packing slip design

11. TAX SETTINGS AND SHIPPING ORIGIN

System>Configuration>Sales>Tax OR

Sales>Tax.

12. 4xx AND 5xx PAGES (e.g. 404 PAGE)

Often this task falls through the cracks that appear while going live.

404 page – CMS>>Pages>404 Not Found 1>Content

500 page – /report/skin/default/index.phtml

13. CLEAR TEST DATA

Remove all products, orders and customers that were created during development.

14. PRODUCT INVENTORY

Make sure that when your products were imported stock was taken into account.

15. MINIFY JAVASCRIPT

Magento stores can be heavy in JavaScript, but you can keep the load times down by flushing all of your JavaScript files into one.

System>Configuration>Developer>JavaScript Settings.

16. MINIFY THE CSS  (flush the css to 1 file)

Use a CSS compressor. Keep two versions of the css, one in readable form, the other minified.

17. MAINTENANCE.FLAG

To display a holding page while going live or doing maintenance

System>Configuration>General>Maintenance Mode

18. INDEX MANAGEMENT

Make sure to re-index after making any catalogue changes.

System>Index Management>Reindex Data

19. CACHING

Re-enable and refresh the cache once you’ve finished development.

20. SYSTEM COMPILATION

Compile your Magento site to keep load times down.

System>Tools>Compilation.

21. GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Set up a Google Analytics account, then link it to your website.

System>Configuration>Sales>Google API>Google Analytics.

22. GOOGLE SITEMAP

Integral to SEO optimization.

Catalog>Google Sitemap.

23. SHIPPING METHODS

If you are using a fixed product or cart fee then make sure it is set. If you are going down the cart weight route then you should confirm that the logic is correct and that all products have accurate weights attached to them.

24. PAYMENT GATEWAYS

Double check that your payment gateway is ready to jump from testing to live.

25. SSL CERTIFICATE

Many payment gateways will not allow you to take the system live until you have one.

26. TURN ON THE CRONS

Configure schedulers to automatically update those scripts that require it.

System>Configuration>Advanced>System and modify the Cron.php file in the root of your Magento installation.

27. LOG CLEANING

Enable log-cleaning (I recommend daily cleanings) to reduce bloat.

System>Configuration>Advanced>System>Log cleaning

28. DATABASE BACKUP AND RESTORATION STRATEGY

There are too many backup options available to narrow it down, but pick one and know how to use it to avoid apocalyptic scenarios.

29. SPEEDTEST

Again, almost unlimited options are available: use one! Don’t take broadband speeds for granted.

30. BE PREPARED

Even after you’ve gone live be ready to encounter bugs and hang-ups. Keep a git repository so you can make changes offline and push them live only once they are perfect.