DEV Community: Paul Nicklen

Top-5 Magento Quote Modules

Paul Nicklen — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 11:17:51 +0000

It often happens that businesses do not display the prices on the site due to various reasons. Instead, users can request a quote and get accurate information about pricing.

Such an approach is more personalized and helps users get the latest information about pricing. In addition, it also offers customers a chance to negotiate the price or get a discount, which adds to the user experience and overall satisfaction with the store.

Magento is one of the most popular and comprehensive e-commerce platforms out there. Though RFQ (Request For Quote) feature does not come with the default Magento settings, there are many free and paid RFQ extensions available in the Magento Marketplace. Below we have collected the top-5 modules that will help your store sell more and create a better experience for your shoppers.

Request for Quote by FMExtensions

Price: free

This is one of the most popular and used RFQ extensions for Magento. It automates the quote request process and helps companies better manage the process by timely providing the shoppers with up-to-date information.

For the merchants, the extension sends notifications any time a request for the quote is made. It also helps browse the requests faster and better and manage their status efficiently.

For the clients, the extension offers a form to fill instead of manual form creation. This significantly saves the users’ time and speeds up the whole process. As well, the users receive notifications when the admin receives the quote or changes its status.

Main features:

Enable the RFQ form on the site,
RFQ Manager,
Form fields validation,
Notifications for merchants and users,
The option of document upload for the customers.

Compatible with: Magento 2

Request for Quotation by Cart2Quote

Price: $445

The company claims that over 12 000 online shops use its module for a quote request. The extension indeed is more complex than a simple add of RFQ on the site. In addition to automated RFQ process, it also provides follow-up to the clients, document attachments, and much more.

When users add products to the “quote cart” the module can then convert the “quote cart” to the “shopping cart” for faster and easier checkout. As well, the extension allows converting the quotes to orders, which is another useful feature.

As for the merchants, they can create customized proposals and send them to the users in a matter of minutes. The extension is also highly customizable: merchants can decide where to place the RFQ button and how to display it in order to maximize the users’ engagement and leverage conversions.

Main features:

Automated RFQ process,
Proposal creation in Magento backend,
Quote conversion,
Built-in templates,
Ajax add to quote

Compatible with: Magento 1 and Magento 2

Request for Quote by Zestard Technologies

Price: $59 (+ $15 for installation upon request)

Another good RFQ extension that is available in the marketplace. Similar to the one above, this extension also automates the whole RFQ service, sends notifications to both the clients and merchants, and is especially handy for the custom-made products like jewellery or hardware products.

The extension is aimed at optimizing the process of filing in the request form and processing it, improves the communication between the client and the store, and serves as a valuable add-on.

Main features:

Enable and disable the RFQ form on the site,
An option of requesting a quote for the products in the cart,
An automatic email with RFQ details for both the admin and the user,
RFQ status management,
Detailed form for RFQ

Compatible with: Magento 1

Customer Quotation by Land of Coder

Price: $169

Customer Quotation is an advanced RFQ extension that helps merchants around the world save time and money with this automated and efficient tool.

The extension has it all: automated RFQ process, easy management of quoted products and their prices. With the help of the extension, merchants can offer excellent customer experience and always keep their customers updated about the specific prices. For the shoppers, in turn, the extension offers an easy way to get detailed information about the product and encourages them to complete the transaction.

Main features:

Ajax add to quote,
Live price editor,
Built-in CRM,
An option to configure the RFQ placement,
The option of adding tax for quote

Compatible with: Magento 2

Request a Quote by Amasty

Price: $300 (+additional services in case of Community Edition)
The company boasts its extension to help increase the repeat purchases by 3 times and bring 50% rise in AOV. The extension has all the necessary features to automate the RFQ process and help the customers make a purchase.

The extension is highly customizable and helps the merchants adapt to the users’ requests. It contributes to customer loyalty increase, provides insight into the customer demands and preferences, and eases the whole negotiation process.

Main features:

Option to request a quote for an unlimited number of products,
Easy quote management,
The option of quote conversion,
Regular reports about new quotes,
Option to create quotes from any store page.

Compatible with: Magento 2

Conclusion

Quote request is a valuable feature for those stores that wish to negotiate on prices and disclose them until the request. Proper management of quote requests can provide merchants not only with valuable customer data (i.e. email and personal details) but also serve as a source of information about the shopping habits of the customers that can be used in the future marketing efforts for revenue generation.

As well remember that it’s better to consult expert Magento developers to help you seamlessly integrate the module and make sure it’s 100% compatible with your store and will bring you value. If you choose to integrate the module on your own, this may lead to store malfunction and will harm your sales.

Magento 2 experts provide 5 reasons you need to audit your Magento store for security ASAP

Paul Nicklen — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 10:14:12 +0000

Cybersecurity is a big deal.

Hackers have advanced technologies at their disposal and the frequency of cyber-attacks is growing. According to Accenture, the average cost of a malware attack on a company is $2.4 million - sounds convincing enough to invest in enhanced site security.

The e-commerce industry should pay double attention to the preventative measures against cyber-attacks as it deals with personal customer data and payment information. So the best option is to conduct the security audit to make sure your e-commerce store is as safe as a house.

The most common attack forms

Before listing down the reasons why a website may call for an audit, let’s have a look at the most common forms of attacks.

Malware infection: includes worms, viruses, Trojan horses, spyware. The malware is extremely dangerous as it may delete all the data, steal it, or infect the users.
DDoS: a Distributed Denial of Service attack directs an overwhelming amount of automated traffic to your site and brings it down, resulting in a big loss of visitors.
Injection: a form of attack when a hacker tricks your system and makes it do something wrong, like giving away the customers’ information.
Brute force: with the use of a special application, hackers find the passwords to access your system and do whatever they want with your system.
XSS: the cross-site scripting allows hackers to steal users from the site, which leads to massive sales loss.

These are not all forms of cyber-attacks that hackers use. With technology advancement, attacks get more sophisticated and are harder to track and prevent. Regular security audits help timely identify and fix any security flaw that your site may have.

Reasons why your store needs an audit right now

An average e-commerce store handles an overwhelming number of transactions on the daily basis – and all of them involve customer’s sensitive data and payment information.

Below you will see the key reasons why store owners need to consider a security audit if they want to keep the store safe and their customers protected:

Eliminate vulnerabilities in the third-party code
Magento is loved by the e-commerce entrepreneurs for its vast customization options. The integration of third-party services expands the functionality significantly but may come at a high price if the third-party code is vulnerable and has breaches.

Thus, the audit of the third-party extensions and plugins is a must if you want to 100% secure your store.

Prevent any suspicious activity
Even the smallest thing can lead to big troubles. It is essential to closely inspect both Magento and server logs to identify any suspicious activity and detect its source.

Ensure PCI DSS compliance
Numerous studies carried out by Magento 2 experts show that shoppers trust some payment services more than others. This serves as a reason almost all e-commerce stores place payment and security pages on the site to provoke a sense of trust and reliability among the customers.

But in order to accept and process payments, your store has to comply with the PCI DSS, which stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. The security audit double-checks whether your store complies with the regulatory requirements and if your payment gateways are safe for data processing and storing.

Ensure the quality of the store performance on mobile devices
Considering the rising popularity of mobile within the e-commerce industry, store owners have to pay double attention to mobile security.

There are Mobile PCI standards to comply with and there are many aspects of mobile security to keep in mind. A security audit will help you check if your mobile store is equally secured as the desktop one.

Moderate the role-based risks
Magento allows advanced role distribution for the users. However, the roles and responsibilities have to be monitored to prevent unwanted user management and data leak.

By conducting the audit, you will be able to assess the role-based risks and develop a strategy to mitigate them.

Conclusion

The e-commerce store security is a critical issue that requires site owners to be proactive rather than reactive in order to keep the business up and running.

Even if you think your store is 100% secure, it won’t harm to conduct a security audit by Magento 2 experts. At least, you will get useful recommendations for the future, and at most you will get a hacker-proof website that will store the data securely.