5 Tips to make the Most from Store Layout with Magento Extensions

Welcome back Magento lovers,

For our Magento Blog this week, Ecommerce Tips section is all about Magento Page Layout! How to optimize it, what Magento extensions should be used (especially some are free Magento extensions) and more! The advices explained in this article should be considered as guidelines that need to be followed from the beginning of store’s design and through development phase. They are based on the experiences of the shoppers, shop owners and developers.

1. HOME PAGE

Moderate the number of products shown – you should show featured products, selected products, new arrivals in an eye-catching way. Using a slideshow is a good way to save your site’s space and get customers go deep inside the store.

Recommendation: Magento Banner slider extension, Magento Feature Product extension (both of them are free extensions)

Effective categorization – Be succinct as much as possible with only top-level categories presented. Smart product classification help reduce “Thinking time” of customers and easily navigate them to buying decision

Recommendation: Magento Featured Category extension (free Magento extension)

Attractive menu - create professional magento navigation Menu easily without technical knowledge. Your customers can view and access products and categories just by hovering over the menu.

Recommendation: Magento Mega Menu (Paid magento extension)

E-commerce website homepage layout

2. SMART SEARCH

Adding a search bar near the head of your page makes it easier to use, search and gives the shoppers more control when they know specifically what they are looking for. It is crucial that the search box stays visible all the time on the site for several reasons. Unless you have a secret reason for hiding the search box, always iterate this feature as much as possible and advanced search in the sidebar for those who know exactly what their looking for.

Recommendation: Magento Product Instant Search extension (free Magento extension)

E-commerce store Search bar layout

3. THE PRODUCT PAGE

Good description of a product is the first impression lead to conversion, so make that one a success. You’d better tip it to everyone’s favor with shopper’s purchase of exactly the right product and you making that sale on the spot.

It’s said “A picture is worth a thousand words”! Image is everything so try to put enough valuable images of the product as you can. Besides there are some additional recommendations you should follow that can be easily overlooked during the site planning:

• Price – Make it clearly visible, don’t try to “minimize” it visually
• Add to Cart button – Make it as clear as possible : big, bright and very visible but of course, don’t overdo it. This one should be used instead of the “Add to Wish list” button because it doesn’t stay in the way of user’s purchasing decision.
• Payment – Provide as many payment options necessary: Paypal, Google Checkout, all major Credit Cards, money orders etc. Magento has lots of payment gateways built-in for that so use them as many you need.
• Sharing – Allow the users to send this product to the ones that can actually buy it. You can try Magento Social Recommend extension to allow your clients to get discount by sharing the purchased product on their Facebook page.

Product page layout

Highly recommended for the product page would be of course “Recommended products”. Hey, I like it when the salesperson does his job and finds something interesting for me. Do you? Magento has that built-in also as “Related products” placed cunningly in the sidebar and sits patiently there while you examine the product and decide in the next second to look what your “Online salesman” believes is related to that product.

4. THE CHECKOUT PAGE

Keep it short and simple

Since we started this journey through Magento store process, we’ve come a long way and now it’s only fair that this checkout business feels fast, secure and with my shipping options presented well and understandable. This is where Magento One step checkout extension comes in, built with that in mind and ready for action, so use it.

one step checkout layout

5. FACEBOOK CONNECT

Don’t require registration before the purchase except if it is “really” necessary for some reason. Rather provide some new and now widely acceptable ways of connecting through social networks’ account. This provides comfort, ease of use and friendly approach for the shopper and by default relieves her/him of those tedious tasks of reentering the same data again, registering for a new account etc. Yes, it is good as it sounds and you should get on that train right now, try Magento facebook login for start.

Facebook login layout

Besides Facebook, Magento developers have invented many tools to make login easier and faster by integrating other social networks such as twitter, LinkedIn, Google etc. This is possible when you use Magento Social Login extension on your site.

social login layout

Well far from it, please leave your comments about your views, as a shop owner or a shopper, and it will definitely help everyone’s shopping experience. See you next time in Magestore Magento Blog !

How to add Product Images To Your magento Navigation Menu

How to add Product Images To Your magento Navigation Menu? Recently, we had a request to add product images to the navigation menu for a client. We found a pretty neat solution which maintains itself well and can be seen in action here. This feature is asked by many magento users, so we decide to write a tutorial on this.

As standard, Magento comes with a navigation menu which pulls in all of your categories and subcategories. The issue with this is that changing it means editing the Magento core files fairly extensively which as you may or not have experienced, can often lead to issues when upgrading.

We initially started by pulling in the all the ‘active’ categories and subcategories inapp/design/frontend/yourtheme/yoursubtheme/template/catalog/category/list.phtml.

1. <?php $_helper = Mage::helper(‘catalog/category’) ?>
2. <?php $_categories = $_helper->getStoreCategories() ?>
3. <?php $currentCategory = Mage::registry(‘current_category’) ?>
4. <?php if (count($_categories) > 0): ?>
5.     <ul id=“nav”>
6.         <?php foreach($_categories as $_category): ?>
7.             <li>
8.                 <a href=”<?php echo $_helper->getCategoryUrl($_category) ?>“>
9.                        <span>
10.                     <?php echo $_category->getName() ?>
11.                     </span>
12.                 </a>
13.                 <?php $_category = Mage::getModel(‘catalog/category’)->load($_category->getId()) ?>
14.                 <?php $_subcategories = $_category->getChildrenCategories() ?>
15.                 <?php if (count($_subcategories) > 0): ?>
16.                     <ul class=“sub”>
17.                         <?php foreach($_subcategories as $_subcategory):
19.                         $products = Mage::getResourceModel(‘catalog/product_collection’)->addCategoryFilter($_subcategory)->addAttributeToSelect(‘small_image’);
20.                         $products->getSelect()->order(new Zend_Db_Expr(‘RAND()’))->limit(1);
21.                         $products->load();?>
22.                             <li>
23.                                 <a href=”<?php echo $_helper->getCategoryUrl($_subcategory) ?>“>
24.                                     <span>
25.                                         <?php echo $_subcategory->getName() ?>
26.                                     </span>
27.                                     <?php foreach($products as $product) { ?>
28.                                     <img src=”<?php echo $this->helper(‘catalog/image’)->init($product, ‘small_image’)->resize(150, 150); ?>“ width=”150″ height=”150″ alt=”<?php echo $_subcategory->getName() ?>“ />
29.                                     <?php break; } ?>
30.                                 </a>
31.                             </li>
32.                         <?php endforeach; ?>
33.                     </ul>
34.                 <?php endif; ?>
35.             </li>
36.         <?php endforeach; ?>
37.     </ul>
38. <?php endif; ?>

So at this point, we have all the categories and subcategories of magento with images on the sub-cats. The script takes a random image from each category and then takes that products image. How about a bit of style then? Ok, so we only want to see the image of the sub-category that we’re hovering over right? This style snippet should soon sort that out:

1. #nav ul li a img { display:none; position:absolute; right:30px; top:0px; }

1. var $j = jQuery.noConflict();
2. $j(document).ready(function(){
3. $j(‘#nav .sub li’).each(function() {
4. $j(‘a’, this).hover(function() {
5. $j(‘img’, this).fadeIn();
6. }, function() {
7. $j(‘img’, this).fadeOut();
8. });
9. });
10. });

Done! You should have a fully working navigation menu with product images.

You may also try this Magento Mega Menu extension to generate a professional looking Magento Navigation Menu

http://www.magestore.com/magento-mega-menu-extension.html

Magento – Adding CMS Pages To The Main Navigation

This article will guide you how to add CMS Pages To The Main Navigation

Magento is NOT WordPress

So recently I have had to dive into learning how to theme Magento. Which is good, because I have always wanted to learn, and while I tried in the past, I just never had the time. You know how it is. Work is providing this opportunity, and I want to share something of my findings with you. One thing in particular, because it is such a pain in the ass. First though, let me start by saying that Magento is NOT WordPress. Obviously, right? I thought though, that some things would be similar. One issue was adding a CMS Page to the Main Navigation. One would think that this would be easy enough to do, but it is not. It is actually extremely frustrating if you have no idea how to do it. For all that Magento is, what it is not is an easy to use content management system. It is a store, which sounds stupid because everyone knows that, but while it does that well, it does some things poorly. If you have had trouble, like me, and searched for the answer, you came across some pages that didn’t explain how to do what you are asking, or gave links to extensions to Magento to do it for you. Here is the quickest way possible to add a cms page to the main navigation.

There has to be an easier way, right?

Sadly, there is not. What I am about to go through is exactly how Magento tells you to do it. IF by any chance, ANYONE…and I do mean anyone has a better method, please for the love of everything that is good, comment on this post explaining how. We would all greatly appreciate and benifit from your knowledge. I am not going to include images, because it is mostly obvious on what to click. If you have questions though, please let me know.

First, I will assume that you have a few CMS Pages created, like About Us, Contact Us, or something like that. Remember we are talking about an info page, not a catagory or product. Follow the below steps exactly. I am using Magento version 1.7.0.2 in case anyone is wondering.

In the Admin Panel:

1. Click on CMS>Pages in the main menu. In the table below you will see a column called URL Key. Find the page you want in the main nav, and write down that key.
2. Click on Catalog>Manage Categories
3. Click on the Root folder in the left sidebar, and then click the Add Subcategory button
4. In the panel that shows up on the write, fill in the Name (which will be the name of the link displayed)
5. Scroll down, and make sure that Is Active, and Include in Navigation Menu are set to Yes
6. For URL Key, if you wrote Customer Serivce in the above Name input, then write: customer-service
7. Click the Save Category button
8. Click on Catalog>URL Rewrite Management in the main menu at the top
9. In the Request Path box, type first word of the category you just created (such as: customer, or about), and click the Search button
10. The page you are looking for will then populate the table…write down the path in the Target Path column for that page (example: catalog/category/view/id/40)
11. Click on that row
12. On the Redirect dropdown, change it to Permanent (301)
13. Click the Save button
14. Click the Add URL Rerwite button on the top right
15. Click the Create URL Rewrite drop down and choose Custom
16. In the ID Path text field, type the URL key you wrote in step 6
17. In the Request Path input, type in path you wrote in step 10
18. In the Target Path input, type in the key you wrote from step 1
19. Redirect dropdown should be set to Permanent (301)
20. Click the Save button

If you then refresh your store page, you should now see your page in the main navigation.

Magento, are you serious?

If you got through half of that without saying “What the F*#@?” Then you are of a different mind than me. I am used to WordPress’ easy to use navigation system. THIS is by far the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen in adding a page to a CMS navigation. I find it hard to believe, and I am not the only one after reading some comments on other pages. How can such a powerful piece of software suck so greatly at such a simple thing? Why is there not an easier method? Simply checking “Add to Navigation” should suffice. I am not a programmer, or a Magento pro, but come one, don’t make this more complicated than it has to be. Why are there so many steps? I was extremely frustrated in trying to figure this simple thing out, and the one place I found that wrote the directions out was written very poorly, to the point where I was unsure what exactly it was telling me to do.

I will be very happy if this post helps just one person from going through the anger and swearing that I went through.

You can buy Magento Mega Menu at http://magentomenu.com/

How to add Page Links to magento Navigation Bar

Good day everyone! As you may know, the navigation in the header of a Magento Go store usually lists the top-level categories from the catalog. This article explains how to include links to CMS pages in the top navigation.

Step 1: Create a Subcategory

To add page links to the top navigation:

1. From the Admin panel, select Catalog > Manage Categories.
2. On the Categories Management page, click Add Subcategory. Then, do the following:
   1. Enter a Name for the link.
   2. Scroll down to the bottom of the form, and set Is Active to “Yes.”
   3. Set Include in Navigation Menu to “Yes.”
   4. In the URL Key field, type the name of your page link in lowercase letters with hyphens instead of spaces. (For example, About Our Company becomes about-our-company.)
3. In the upper-right, click the Save Category button.

Step 2: Create a Redirect

1. From the Admin panel, select Catalog > URL Rewrite Management.
2. In the text box at the top of the Request Path column, type the URL key for the subcategory, and click Search. When the the subcategory appears, click to open the record.
   
3. To save the Target Path value, do one of the following:
   • Copy the Target Path to the clipboard.
   • Write down the Target Path.
4. Set Redirect to “Permanent (301),” and click Save.
5. In the upper-right corner of the URL Rewrite Management page, click the Add URL Rewrite button, and do the following:
   1. In the Create URL Rewrite list, select Custom. A form appears in the lower part of the page.
   2. In the ID Path text field, type the URL key of the page link in lowercase, using hyphens instead of spaces. (For example, about-our-company.)
   3. In the Request Path, either paste or type the Target Path value that you previously recorded.
   4. In the Target Path field, type the URL for the page link.
   5. Set Redirect to “Permanent (301).”
6. Click Save.

To confirm the change, visit the Home page of your store, and click the link to verify that it goes to the correct page.

Buy Magento Mega Menu at http://magentomenu.com/