Jul07

Cross-Sells and Upsells Explained

We often get asked the difference between a cross-sell and an upsell in Magento. Linda Bustos of Get Elastic posted an excellent article explaining the difference. This is well worth a read.

As a footnote, Magento also supports “Related Products” in addition to cross-sells and upsells. They are typically cross-sells however they can be positioned on the product page as opposed to the cart page. In most of our sites we omit this feature, as we feel you can sometimes go overboard with cross-selling which detracts from overall usability. However on some occasions cross-sells on a product page may be beneficial, or even preferential to having them on the cart page.

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Jul01

Internet Explorer 8: A Better Browser

In an aim to increase the number of Internet Explorer 8 users, Microsoft have released 4 online videos highlighting the benefits of their latest browser release.

Featuring Dean Cain, the videos use acronyms to explain the benefits of IE8 such as F.O.M.S, which stands for ‘fear of missing something’ and is talking about IE8′s web-slices. With a tongue in cheek approach it is another attempt to show Microsoft the brand in a different light, appealing to a younger, hipper audience of which it could be said that Apple currently dominates.

In particular one of the video’s released highlights the new ‘private browsing’ feature of IE8 which temporarily stops your browser from recording your online activities. If you think that the ‘private browsing’ feature will only be used for one thing – then so do Microsoft, as the video is extremely honest about how the feature can and most likely will be used.

The video campaign is also tied in with the official IE8 website – Browser For The Better. For every copy of IE8 downloaded between August 8, Microsoft will donate eight meals to Feeding America, a domestic hunger-relief charity.

Have a look at two of the videos from the campaign below.

Posted in Web Standards
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Apr28

Should your business be taking advantage of social media sites?

The answer is YES.

According to a survey carried out by American company Cone “93 percent of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media, while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its consumers via social media. In fact, 56 percent of users feel both a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.”

Whilst social media sites have been around for quite some time now, it’s only recently businesses have started to see what benefits they hold. Initially seen as a fad, social media sites are evolving and showing no signs of going away.  How can a business make good use of this though?

By combining these new ‘low cost’ media channels with your existing marketing you have what is an extremely effective and powerful way of communicating directly to your customers.

People are communicating online now more than ever and somewhere on the net your customers will be talking about your business, so providing a channel in which you can join in the conversation could prove invaluable. Give your customers a place where they can communicate with you and they will.

Online marketing gives you the chance to listen to your customers, build better customer relationships, promote your products and services and reach out to new customers. Used effectively the benefits are huge.

Facebook and Twitter can be used as fantastic free marketing tools to promote your company. Using these sites as a communication tool can give you instant feedback for your business, that if required can be acted upon almost immediately. Obviously there is a danger that if your customer service isn’t up to scratch then the feedback may not be what you are looking for. However this feedback may be what saves your business from not being here in 12 months time.

Which sites should you be using though? There are a lot of them out there and it can be a tad confusing.

Facebook

Facebook being arguably the biggest is a definite.  By simply setting up a group for your business you can then post regular updates, videos of your products and services, listen to customer feedback, and send newsletters for free to your entire group. You could effectively cut down on the costs of email newsletters you may be sending using other paid for services.

Forward thinking technology giants Apple have made great use of Facebook, creating a page informing their 1,343,978 ‘fan’s’ of a range of new topics from latest itunes releases to holidays offers. Importantly though they give their fans the option to ask questions and obtain answers relating to any Apple concerns.

Twitter

Twitter on the other hand gives you the option to release snippets of information about new products, services, exciting changes in your business or whatever you feel the need to inform your customers of.  It works best by releasing bite size chunks of information regularly, which could be an excellent way of marketing a teaser campaign for new product releases.

British Airways have adopted Twitter as a way to inform their customers of a range of different topics such as special deals, important information about Terminal 5 and from one twitter post just to wish everyone a happy St. Georges Day.  Having just adopted Twitter recently British Airways currently have 1696 followers. That’s 1696 customers they can market to costing them absolutely nothing at all.

Youtube

Youtube pretty much dominates the market online for video uploading and has undeniably had a massive impact in quite a short space of time. Acquiring a Youtube channel would give your business a platform to engage with your customers using video.

Myspace

At the other end of the spectrum there is Myspace. Possibly not a site that corporate companies would want to use, but for new and edgy, youthful businesses Myspace is a fantastic channel in which to promote your company to a large audience.

Posted in Ecommerce, Tips and Advice
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Apr02

Firefox 3 tops IE7 in Europe

Firefox 3 has overtaken Internet Explorer 7 as the most popular web browser in Europe. According to stats published by StatCounter Firefox 3 currently accounts for 35.09% of web browser share in Europe. Internet Explorer 7 comes in second at 34.51% with Internet Explorer 6 lagging way behind in third place at 11.92%.

This is a staggering statistic – for as long as anyone can remember Internet Explorer has always dominated the browser market with a fairly hefty lead. While Internet Explorer as a browser on the whole (across all its versions) is still more popular than Firefox, these statistics show that the gap is narrowing quite dramatically. In Europe at least…

What does this mean? Well, it could mean that Eurpoean web consumers are becoming more web savvy, care more about security and speed and have simply opted to use a superior web browser. The knock on effect of this is much better support for web standards on the whole, making our lives as web desginers much easier. It also means less pressure to support hideously out-dated browsers such as Internet Explorer 6. I love it when a plan starts to come together!

If you haven’t already joined the revolution get involved at www.mozilla.com/firefox!

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Mar17

5 Essential Magento Extensions

NOTE: this post has been updated for 2011. Please see 5 (More) Essential Magento Extensions

One of the great things about Magento is the range of exciting extentions being developed by the online community. We’ve selected our top 5 esssential Magento extensions that no Magento store should be without! In no particular order… here we go!

Delete Orders

As mentioned in a previous post, the fact you cannot delete orders in Magento is somewhat frustrating. However Boutik Circus have produced an excellent extension that allows you to quickly and easilly delete cancelled orders. Magic!

Fontis WYSIWYG Editor

Another subject we touched on in a previous post, the fact that Magento doesn’t come with a WYSIWYG editor as standard. This extension will allow you to use either TinyMCE or FCKeditor, however the image upload functionality will only work with FCK.

Textile Formatting

For those who are festidious when it comes to having clean code, this extension uses Textile formatting instead of a WYSIWYG editor. This is great if clients don’t need the ability to upload images – but if they do you’ll need to use FCKeditor.

Yoast MetaRobots

This handly little extension is great for refining your site for better search engine performance. It allows you to quickly add robots tags to prevent indexing of login pages, search results and other non-content pages. You can also add your own custom robots tags to CMS and product pages.

Gift Certificates / Virtual Cards

We haven’t had a chance to test this extension much, but it certainly looks impressive. It allows for customers to purchase and use gift certificates in your Magento store. A very extensive module that seems to be very popular in the community. We’d be keen to hear peoples experiences with this extension.

If you’ve found an essential Magento extension why not let us know by leaving a comment!

Posted in Magento
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