So Magento is leading the way when it comes to choosing a stable platform for your new eCommerce website. And how. It is not only a more advanced platform that the older options like Zen Cart and osCommerce, it is constantly being upgraded with countless new features introduced every day. These features come in the form of free Magento extensions which can eliminate any room for discomfort for an online shopper. And that’s all you need to keep your visitors glued to your site.
Magento already comes well equipped with cool widgets which are integrated from start and come with your Magento download. Once installed, you can do wonders with your store. The priority remains to keep your visitors’ comfort as a priority. So you would want your store to be attractive, inviting, user friendly, provide important information right at the first glance, and simply offer a rich and engaging customer experience. All of this can be achieved with the use of the free plug ins. Right from the word go, you can start with choosing the right theme and design layout for your store, in keeping with the industry and your customer base in mind.
Regardless of the industry you cater to, be it clothing/ apparel, grocery stuff, medicine or even books, there are multiple themes to choose from, and there’s always one which will fit your store. Magento offers an extremely advanced catalogue management system with options to classify your products into varied and relevant categories. You could also make use of the ‘Product Sold’ Extension, to show off the products you have already sold from your store. This cool feature is a smart way to draw the attentions of the visitors browsing through the pages, telling them how others are buying from the store, and tempting them to do the same. Besides, you can actually display the figures of your online and offline sales.
Product Slider is one such free extension. From time to time, it becomes important for visitors who keep coming back to your site, to show them something new. Through this slider, you can showcase new products and services or talk about your new launches. It is eye-catching and is sure to offer something new to your site walkers. Eye to minute detail like allowing the users to compare several products with the Next Previous Extension enables them to stay on the same page while checking out different products without refreshing the page. Magento also allows a mouse over ‘zoom-in’ view of products which is a great tool.
Equally helpful is the Magento extension for a quick quote. For different eCommerce websites, it is very common for customers to query about a no-obligation quote. These are also your potential leads. Therefore, such an extension is sure to add value and give you key information about potential customers. The Quick Quote extension presents a list of questions to the customer that has been set by the administrator, and will return with valuable inputs. What’s amazing is you also have the option to send an auto-response to the client whenever he sends you a quote request. It shows that the site owner is prompt, active and is working on the clients’ quote.
The Contact Us extension is a step ahead. It enables the visitors to send feedback about your site/ products/ services in the quickest and easiest way. Besides, you have the Banners extension which is aimed at allowing the site owner to display banners with Flash front-end, thereby making your site attractive, while at the same time sharing important information about your eStore graphically to the viewers. You can display end of season sale or even spread news about an upcoming event organized to promote sales.
There are several other plug-ins which are equally helpful and make shopping experience for the end customers enjoyable. These include Advanced FAQ management, One Step Checkout, Additional Checkout Attributes, Out-Of-Stock Notification, Magento Integration with E-Bay, Google API integration etc.
All these Magento extensions are easy to install, manage, and customize with your Magento store. They help you offer your visitors a good time on the eStore. Yet your job is not as simplified with the plug-ins and extensions. Make the most of it as long as it remains open source!
