DEV Community: Tigren

The Best Address Autocomplete For Magento 2

Tigren — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 11:09:02 +0000

On July 20th, 2018, Tigren released its new extension: Address Autocomplete for Magento 2. This extension was developed with the purpose of enhancing the current Magento 2 checkout process. More specifically, it allows the customers to complete the required Shipping fields quickly with the autocomplete function. Instead of typing all of the address fields (street, city, province/state, subdistrict, zip/postal code) in turn, now the users just need to select one of these fields then the remaining will be auto-filled instantly.

Moreover, one of the biggest advantages of this Address Autocomplete for Magento 2 extension (over other similar Google Address Autocomplete extensions) is that it doesn't depend on Google API. The admins can actively manage and update the address database (input and output). As a result, they don't need to update the module too often according to API changes and pay Google for using its API on a monthly basis.

Feature Highlights:

Applying the autocomplete function on both Checkout page and Address Book
Being able to choose between 2 suggestion types: Autocomplete and Dropdown
Adding the Subdistrict field into the Shipping section to get more accurate addresses
Moving the billing address from Step 2 on the checkout (Review & Payment) to Step 1 (under Shipping address) to improve the customer experience
Actively importing address data into Magento 2 database without using Google API

Notes: If you select the Dropdown suggestion type, the workflow is quite different. In particular, the shoppers must select their Country, State/ Province, City, and Subdistrict in order, and then the Zip/Postal code will be auto-filled. It's also worth noting that, after the State/ Province is selected, the City list will be narrowed down immediately to options related to that State/ Province. (The process is repeated for the City and the Subdistrict). Although the flow of Dropdown suggestion differs from the Autocomplete type, both of them are immensely useful to cut down the checkout time.

View Magento 2 Address Autocomplete extension's demos and download it here.

The Best Magento 2 Event Calendar Extension

Tigren — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 10:46:14 +0000

The Magento 2 Event Calendar Extension provides merchants a tool to create and manage events at ease in their e-commerce stores. This is a perfect tool not only to inform the store visitors about upcoming events but also to offer them the most convenient way to register or buy the event tickets.

Feature Highlights:

Displaying all upcoming events of the store in a nice calendar or under grid mode
Selling event tickets as easily as selling a virtual product
Allowing the customers to see previous, current and upcoming events
Allowing the shoppers to register for free events or purchase event tickets for paid events
Displaying all event information on the event details page (similar to product page)

View demos and download the extension here.

Simple Guide To Install SUPEE-10752 With & Without SSH

Tigren — Fri, 06 Jul 2018 06:51:58 +0000

On June 27, 2018, Magento released several new versions, including SUPEE 10752 to patch earlier Magento 1.x versions, Magento 2.2.5, Magento Open Source and Commerce 2.1.14, Magento Open Source 1.9.3.9, and Magento Commerce 1.14.3.9. These releases provide lots of security enhancements that help close remote code execution, cross-site scripting, and cross-site request forgery. No confirmed attacks related to these issues have occurred to date. However, certain vulnerabilities can potentially be exploited to access customer information or take over administrator sessions, so Magento highly recommends its users to upgrade soon.

In this Magento tutorial, we will show you how to install the latest Magento SUPEE-10572 by two methods: with or without SSH, step-by-step.

Source: How To Install SUPEE 10752 With and Without SSH?

Magento 2.2.5: 150+ Bug Fixes & Enhancements [27/06/18]

Tigren — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 11:00:10 +0000

Magento 2.2.5's Essential Updates

Closing stored XSS, SQL injection, and cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities.
Tackling the deployment issues of multi-website after upgrading your site to Magento 2.2.4 by applying the same config throughout store views by default.
Boosting the performance of data index process by nearly 15%.
Raising performance of core bundled extensions.
Enhancing core code of Magento.
Improving checkout process by allowing customers to register a new account on Order Confirmation page
Updating product sorting function to sort all items based on actual price before sale.
Adding new features related to Magento shipping: carrier selection for returns, batch shipments, collection points
Augmenting performance of catalog search result page by over 30%

[Read Full]

Magento 2.2.5's Noticeable Bug Fixes

Impossible to run a cron job many times
Easily discarding any option of bundle product
Getting rid of bundle products when applying coupons
Running simultaneously catalog search full-text indexer and catalog product indexer
Appling new data format (dd/mm/yyyy) for saving products using a locale
Showing image of selected option for the configurable product on the wishlist
Filtering recent order according to stores on "My account" page correctly
Capturing accurate PayPal Payflow Pro credentials in multi-store
Hide out-of-stock option of configurable products in search results
Flushing cache for common search results to cut down their response time
Improving swatch function by using JavaScript mixins regardless of browsers
Easily navigating from default store's catalog page to that of different stores
Adding accurate tax amount in Order Total section (on Order Summary
Displaying both prices included/ excluded tax on the checkout page
Allowing customers to create Vertex invoice refund once the order is canceled
Handling some minor issues related to Amazon Pay, Vertex, and dotmailer

DOWNLOAD MAGENTO 2.2.5 NOW

How To Migrate Extension from Magento 1 to 2?

Tigren — Fri, 15 Jun 2018 11:30:47 +0000

Compared to Magento 1, Magento 2 can bring about better design, functionality, and user experience; that's the reason why most of Magento store owners are planning for their upgrade now. In the Magento migration process, we will have to migrate theme, code, data, and extensions. In this post, I will give you facts and useful advice to migrate extension from Magento 1 to 2. Let's get started!

Related Articles:

2 Facts About Magento 2 Extension Migration

#1. We can't move your current Magento 1 extensions to Magento 2 store

Many people misunderstand that we can migrate extension from Magento 1 to 2 just by moving all of their existing modules and plugins to the new site. Unfortunately, it's absolutely wrong!

In fact, your Magento 1 extensions will become useless when being transfer to Magento 2 websites due to incompatible code. As a result, we can't continue using those plugins anymore but replacing them all with new ones for Magento 2. By this way, we can maintain the "functions" but not the "modules".

In short, Magento migration extension means finding new modules for Magento 2 that offer the same functions as the current Magento 1 extensions.

#2. It's costly to covert Magento 1 extension to Magento 2

If your store has just a few extensions, it won't take a lot of time and money to migrate them to the new store. However, if you possess a large online business whose performance depends greatly on the third-party extensions, it might be a big trouble. Assumed that your store has up to 50 Magento 1 modules, in order to upgrade to Magento 2, you must discard all of them, and buy up to 50 new Magento 2 extensions and pay up to $5,000 for that.

In addition, if you don't know how to install Magento 2 extensions, it's better to hire a reliable Magento developer/ agency for help, which raises your cost obviously. The more modules and plugins you want to have on the new site, the greater amount of money you have to pay for the installation service ($50-$70 per each extension on average).

Remember that the extension migration from Magento 1 to 2 is just a part of the process and there are more costs that you need to concern.

5 Steps to Migrate Extension From Magento 1 to 2 Without Any Problems

As I have mentioned, in order to migrate extension from Magento 1 to 2, you must take an effort to find new ones as well as to spend quite a lot of money to acquire these modules. Apart from that, there are some tips and advice to make your Magento extension migration process more effectively.

1. Review all Magento 1 extensions on your site

To begin with, I don't suggest you rush into buying new Magento 2 extensions since it might waste your money. From my experience, there might be several modules on the current Magento 1 store that are not really necessary or even disabled without removing from the site. Therefore, it's essential to review the role of each extension and decide whether to migrate it from Magento 1 to 2.

2. Make a list of essential modules you want to keep

After making a thorough audit of Magento extensions on the site, you should create a clear list of essential and useless ones as well as distinguish between the ready-made modules and custom ones. This list will facilitate your process of seeking new extensions afterward.

3. Find and Buy new extensions for Magento 2

It's time to start looking for the Magento 2 extensions with the aim of replacing all of the necessary ones on your list (on the second step). A tip is that if you have to buy plenty of modules, you should consider getting most of them from only one prestigious Magento module provider. By this way, you can contact them to ask for a discount or free installation to save your cost.

4. Install Magento 2 extensions on the new store

After acquiring new modules and plugins, you need to install them on your new store on your own or using the installation service from the extension provider. Moreover, if you outsource your Magento migration project for a Magento development company, they will take care of the installation tasks for you.

5. Test and Solve conflicts after Magento 2 extensions installation

Conflict among the third-party extensions on the one site is unavoidable. Sometimes, it would be a mess after installing too many Magento 2 extensions from different providers at the same time. Hence, you have better install your extensions one by one, and check if there is any issue after setting up each of them. Then, once you complete configuring all of the plugins, check your site comprehensively to make sure everything run as it should be.

Conclusion

In order to migrate extension from Magento 1 to 2, it would take your time, money and effort. You should take my advice to conduct your Magento 2 extension migration process more effectively and efficiently.

By the way, if you don't have the technical background, working with a reliable Magento agency is a better choice. They can help you to implement Magento migration from A to Z while guaranteeing the quality of your project. Especially, if you cooperate with an offshore Magento development company, the cost for Magento 2 upgrade is affordable (from $2,000-$5,000 on average). Click here to get free quotation and consultation for your migration project.

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After Magento 2 Migration, What Will We Get?

Tigren — Tue, 12 Jun 2018 09:58:17 +0000

Do you know that one out of four e-commerce businesses now is using Magento? In recent years, Magento has become one of the most prevalent e-commerce platforms with more than 250,000 stores worldwide. In addition, the majority of these e-shops are Magento based or planning for Magento migration from 1 to 2. Although Magento 1 has already been a great platform with a wide range of amazing features, Magento 2 can bring about more than that. If you are in a divided mind as to migrate to Magento 2 or not, this blog post will help you to make a decision easier by showing what you will get after implementing Magento 2 migration. After that, you can figure out whether Magento 2 upgrade's worth your effort or not. Let's get started!

[Read Full Article]

1. Explicit Performance Boost

In comparison to Magento 1, Magento 2 delivers a significantly surpassing performance. Specifically, most of the Magento 2 stores have 50% faster page load speed across different pages than Magento 1 ones. In addition, the websites developed on Magento 2 can provide much faster checkout, handle more orders and page views at the same time, and so on. In order to make it this far, Magento 2 has to combine the following features:

Allow Full-page cache: Due to the full-page cache function, all pages in Magento 2 websites are able to load rapidly within 1-2 seconds while it takes up to 10 seconds for loading without caching. Moreover, the full-page cache provides an ability of handling multiple Catalog pages simultaneously with optimal speed.
Include Vanish cache: Varnish cache is another valuable built-in web app accelerator, which plays an important role in decreasing the response time and network bandwidth utilization on correlative requests.
Support PHP's latest versions: Magento 2 supports the latest versions of PHP (5.x - 7.x), which offer a lot of enhancements for boosting web speed.
Decrease JavaScript: In Magento 2, the amount of JavaScript is minimized in order to decline redundant browser’s operations as the result.
Optimize images: Magento 2 allows us to compress and optimize all images directly on the server by using the built-in tools at ease.
Apply MySql's latest version: Magento 2 utilizes the latest version of MySql with the aim of enhancing the query, re-indexing and caching process.

2. Convenient Admin Interface

After conducting Magento migration from 1 to 2, you will achieve an advanced, clean and user-friendly admin interface. Here are some benefits of managing your store on Magento 2 admin interface:

Easy-to-use: Compared to Magento 1 admin panel, this new interface looks modern and easier to use even when you don't have a technical background. From the new color palette to the intelligent structure, all make it more convenient to navigate and manage the store intuitively.

Customizable: A special thing about Magento 2 admin interface is that it allows us to select which type of information will/ won't be shown in order to access needed information quickly. For example, in the Products management page, you can be able to select different product data to be displayed (ID, type, price, status, thumbnail, SKU,...) by marking on the Columns check box.

Responsive: Another useful feature of this admin panel is that it's optimized for various screen sizes. Owing to that, the store owners can easily manage their store by using any devices from the desktop, laptop to smartphone. Especially, when being on a business trip, they can still monitor the store operation at ease on their tablets.
Faster: On the Magento 2 backend, we can easily and rapidly create, import, edit product or customers information in bulk.

Overal, Magento 2 admin panel is optimized for both developers and merchants to manage the website effectively.

3. Responsive and Mobile-friendly Website Design

Nowadays, people have a tendency to go online shopping using a variety of devices, especially on their mobile phones. Therefore, it's crucial to optimize the website design to make it present nicely across the devices. Fortunately, Magento 2 storefront is responsive and mobile-friendly by default. As a result, both mobile and desktop users can enjoy a user-friendly and engaging store appearance as well as fast page load speed.

4. Rich User Experience

Bringing about a better experience for the shoppers would make a great contribution to boost sales and improve the conversion rates on your Magento store. Due to Magento migration from 1 to 2, your user experience would be enhanced noticeably:

Fast and user-friendly checkout: The checkout is one of the most outstanding functions of Magento 2. It is a smooth and easy 2-step process, helping the customers to complete their orders as soon as possible. Consequently, the time for checkout in Magento 2 stores is minimized, leading to a remarkable decrease in cart abandonment rate while raising the sale conversions.

Moreover, Magento 2 offers the "Guest checkout" function so that non-registered purchasers can still place their orders easily and create a new account after checkout if they want. Furthermore, for registered users, they just need to enter their email address on the checkout page, then their saved information (name, shipping and billing addresses, phone number) will be filled automatically.

Personalized content: In your migrated Magento 2 website, you will be able to track users' behaviors, their favorite items and search history. Based on that valuable information, the store owners can offer more proper products and services, and hold appropriate promotion campaigns for their different customer groups. Hence, the buyers might feel being more respected and be more loyal to the store.
Persistent shopping cart: This is an interesting of Magento 2 e-commerce store. Once the buyers log in their account, all of the information related to their viewed products, product comparison, wishlist and especially shopping cart will remain for the next visit(s). As a result, the shoppers don't need to search again for their favorite items on the last time visit but continuing their shopping instantly.
Convenient search and layered navigation: For any e-commerce websites, the search and navigation menu is crucial since it opens a door for the customers to discover a wide range of products. In Magento 2, the useful search function allows the users to look for the favorite items fast and efficiently. Moreover, the layered navigation gives the buyers an ability to filter products and get relevant results with ease.
Rich-content product page: Magento 2's product page is very informative with videos, images with zoom and swatches, ratings and reviews,...

5. Multiple Payment Methods

It's true to say that Magento 2 platform has one of the best payment systems with multiple popular payment gateways:

PayPal
Braintree
Amazon Pay
Klarna Payments
Authorize.net

With this wide range of choices, the customers can complete their payment quickly and securely. Besides, Magento 2 Enterprise Edition also is integrated with CyberSource and WorldPay to make sure that all transactions are conducted with the highest safety.
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Conclusion

Although Magento migration from 1 to 2 might take your time and money, it's worth your effort. After implementing the upgrade, you will get the highest website performance, modern and convenient admin interface, responsive and mobile-friendly design, improved customer experience and various secure payment methods. By the way, if you are looking for a reliable Magento development company to migrate your site to Magento 2, Tigren is one of the best choices. With more than 5 years of experience in Magento e-commerce development, we are confident to help you conduct Magento migration smoothly and with an affordable cost. Contact us now to get a Free and Fast quotation for your project.

Magento 2 Migration After 30 days: Is it possible?

Tigren — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 07:38:59 +0000

It's no doubt to say that there are a lot of reasons to migrate Magento 1 to Magento 2, especially when Magento has released the latest amazing version - Magento 2.2.4. Compared to Magento 1, Magento 2 definitely brings about both better design and performance.If we come back to a few years ago, not many people dare to upgrade to Magento 2 owing to its instability. There are plenty of bugs in the very first version of Magento 2. But now, there is a different story when Magento seems to put all of its effort to innovate, improve and enhance Magento 2 functionality.

Besides, you should consider moving from Magento 1 to Magento 2 as soon as possible since Magento might stop providing support for its "first child" in the near future. Find more information here.

Apart from that, Magento 2 migration is a complicated process that requires your time, money and effort. For Magento developers, they probably know how complicated it is; therefore this blog post is not for them but Magento store owners, who are going to migrate Magento 1 to Magento 2. In other words, in today post, we will show Magento merchants how to conduct Magento migration smoothly, step-by-step and in the optimal period of time.

Important Things To Know Before Magento 2 Migration

Many people think that the process of migrating Magento 1 to Magento 2 is similar to updating to the latest version of Magento 1.

However, it's absolutely wrong!

To be more specific, Magento migration means you will have to build a new website on Magento 2 from the scratch but migrate data from the old site.

You can't continue using your current Magento 1 themes, extensions and code. We will go into details in the next parts. Now, let's go deep into the Magento 2 migration process!

30 DAYS TO MIGRATE MAGENTO 1 TO MAGENTO 2...

From our experience, it would take 4-5 weeks (approximately 30 working days) for completing the Magento migration process on average. However, if your site requires a lot of custom functions and theme customization with a huge amount of data to migrate, the time for the upgrade would be greater. Let's see what would be involved in the migration:

7 Days: Review the old site and prepare for the upcoming migration <Preparation>

5 Days: Theme migration

5 Days: Data migration

3 Days: Extension migration

5 Days: Custom code

2 Days: Set up and configure the new site <Configuration>

3 Days: Test, fix bugs and go live! <Testing>

1. Preparation

Before starting your Magento migration process, please take a look at existing Magento 1 store and decide which are your "truly needs" and needs moving to the new site. For instance, although your website might contain a huge database asset, what you need to migrate include products, categories, customers, and orders. Also, in terms of the extensions, just keep what you think is necessary and remove the redundant ones.

After that, it's highly recommended to make a thorough backup for your Magento 1 website, keeping all of the files, folders, and the database to handle the bad situations.

Furthermore, we suggest you use the same hosting server for both of your Magento 1 and 2 stores (optional).

2. Theme Migration

As we have mentioned before, it is impossible to move the theme and templates from Magento 1 to Magento 2 new site. There are several solutions for that:

1st solution: Buying a ready-made theme for Magento 2 to apply for your new website. There are hundreds of available attractive designs for you to choose on the Magento marketplace or well-known theme markets like Themeforest, TemplateMonster, VenusTheme,...

Pros: You will have a lot of choices for your new website design, save your time for theme design and coding as well as save your budget significantly. While it costs you from $100-200 to get a well-designed Magento 2 responsive theme, you have to pay up to ten times of that to get a unique design for your store.

Cons: Other Magento e-commerce stores can also buy the theme and have the same storefront appearance with yours. To handle this issue, you might customize the theme to match your brand image. The cost for theme customization will depend greatly on which extent you want to customize and which Magento developer/ designer you cooperate with.

2nd solution: Finding and utilizing a Magento 2 theme for free download. In the last blog post, we have made a list of 100+ useful free Magento responsive theme and templates that you should take a look for reference.

Pros: The obvious advantage of this solution is that you have to invest $0.00 to achieve the new look.

Cons: Compared to the first solution, the number of Magento themes to be chosen is just a quarter or even much less. Moreover, there is no guarantee for the quality of those free themes and templates. Most of their functions are very limited. Therefore, you should check it carefully before applying to the new site.

3rd solution: Creating a new website design from the scratch. For this option, you can hire either a Magento agency or just a website designer having experience in Magento to make a design as your requirements.

Pros: Acquiring a unique website design that fulfills all of your needs and requirements.

Cons: You have to invest a lot of money to deploy this solution. Also, it can take 1-2 months to complete the design both on the PSD and frontend programming.

4th solution: Cloning your Magento 1 store. If you still keep the store design (under PSD file), you can consider cloning it create the same look for your Magento 2 store.

Pros: Maintaining the current Magento website design that is familiar with all of your shoppers.

Cons: The time for website clone depends on how complex your current design is. However, cloning a website, in general, will also take a noticeable amount of time (at least 1 month on average). Additionally, what you can get finally is a design that is similar (70-80%) to the old one but not the same (100%).

5th solution: Cloning any website that you are interested in and creating the similar look for your new Magento 2 website.

Pros: Creating a new Magento 2 website design that is similar to your favorite one and also bringing the freshness to your buyers.

Cons: Like the 4th solution, this method will take your time and cost.

What is the best solution for Magento theme migration?

In spite of introducing many solutions for you to tackling the Magento theme migration issue, we just highly recommend the 1st solution. Overall, utilizing a ready-made Magento 2 theme will take the least amount of time (for seeking the proper theme), money (for possessing the theme) and effort (for installing and customizing it). Most of our customers now are going for this option.

Besides, the total time for deploying the theme on your new Magento 2 website (including installation, configuration, and minor customization) would be from 4-5 days on average.

3. Data Migration

Magento data migration is the process of transferring all of your data including products, categories, customers, orders, testimonials, reviews,… to the new Magento 2 site. It is true to say that this is the most pivotal stage in the Magento 2 upgrade process, asking you to have strong knowledge and experience to conduct the migration. Otherwise, a small mistake can lead to serious data loss without recovery.

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15 Effective Ways To Optimize Search Bar For Ecommerce Website

Tigren — Tue, 29 May 2018 10:37:15 +0000

There is an effective way to enhance both customer experience and conversion rate on the ecommerce website, which is optimizing the search bar functionality. Overall, a good search bar will help the store visitors to get what they need fast and exactly among tons of products on the site. Although site search is a basic feature, many ecommerce stores don't know how to make it work effectively. In this post, we will show you some common mistakes when creating an ecommerce search bar as well as 15 valuable tips to optimize your site search function.

1. Auto-complete Feature is a Must

Most of the ecommerce websites now embrace the Auto-complete in their search bar function. The essential purpose of including this feature is to assist the customers in their searching and purchasing process.

How does it work?

When the buyers type something in the search field, thanks to the Auto-complete tool, it will instantly predict and display a list of suggestions based on the typed information.

Why does it benefit the searchers?

They can find what they are looking for much faster.
They can move directly to the product page once clicking on a suggested result.
They don't need to remember the whole search terms with difficult spellings.
They can easily create a query even when they are not good at English.

How does it benefit the ecommerce store owner?

It was proven that the Auto-completion feature plays a big role in enhancing the conversion rates of the store. The buyers assisted by useful product suggestions are 6 times more willing to convert than the others.

2. Take Advantage of “No search result”

Assumed that you were a buyer, would you like the feeling of going to an online store, searching for something and getting nothing? Obviously, you would feel a little annoying for wasting your time, right?

Furthermore, if the website just returns an almost empty page with the disappointed text "No results", most of the customers will immediately leave the site and continue their searching on other similar stores.

The truth is that when the customers search for something that is not available on your ecommerce website, there is no way to satisfy them with that item. But... you can turn their attention to other interesting current products in your store. What we mean is that why don't you suggest them some similar items that are close to their search terms or even draw their attention to your best sellers. There are many situations that the shoppers are appealed to the recommended stuff and forget their first purpose when accessing the store.

3. Allow Search by Synonyms

In some cases, your ecommerce website still shows the "No results" page even when you DO provide the search items in your store. Why? The reason is that the customers don't type the EXACT words as the name of your products and services but SYNONYMS. For example, the buyers are searching for "cell phones" which are named as "mobile phones" in your store.

What is the solution?

Firstly, you should consider developing a custom function that can analyze the customers' search terms and suggest the items with the same meaning. Secondly, you should write a short message to the viewers, for example: "Sorry, we cannot find any results for "cell phones", did you mean "mobile phone" and then display your suggested products.

4. Accept Multilingual Search

For the large ecommerce stores that serve the customers from all over the world, it's a taboo to allow searching in English language only. In contrast, by offering the multilingual search, these stores will be able to gratify their great number of customers worldwide.

5. Show the Right Search Bar on the Right Places

This one of the most pivotal things when it comes to an effective search bar on the ecommerce websites. Here are two things you need to concern most:

Make the search bar visible on most of the pages

Almost all of the ecommerce websites provide a wide range of products (5,000-10,000 items on average). Owing to that, the customers often look for the search bar in the first place when visiting a site to find their favorite item. This means that you need to make your search bar approachable as much as possible - from any categories pages, homepages,... in your site.

The perfect position on a page: Top-Center

As we have mentioned, for many customers, the search bar comes to their minds whenever visiting an ecommerce store. Therefore, your job is to show the search bar in the most eye-catching position on your web page. Don't let them look for your search bar, even just a few seconds.

From many surveys, the most effective position to place the search bar on the ecommerce websites is the Top-Center. It should be as noticeable as the company logo and the main menu. The second suggested position is the right-hand side of the page.

Remember that the placement of your search bar will decide its frequency of usage on your e-websites.

6. Don't Forget the Search Buttons

Many ecommerce websites make light of the search button; however, it still an important component of the search bar. You should include a specific word on it such as "SEARCH", "FIND" and "GO" (highly recommended) or a magnifying lens symbol (non-verbal symbol for search) on it.

Many sites try to make them different by using other symbols, for example: arrow, favicon, binocular,... but it's unnecessary.

Furthermore, you should both add the button to the search bar and allow the searchers to press the "Enter" key to start their search.

7. Offer Rich-info Results on the Suggestion Box

Include product ratings and reviews: By showing the high rate of the product and the number of product review on the Auto-complete box, you will increase the rate of clicking on the suggested result significantly.
Show product price: Displaying the price of each product might help the customers instantly figure out which item is (not) what they want - on their budget.
Show Add-to-cart button: If a customer already been familiar with a certain ecommerce store, he/she would majorly use the search function to find his/her frequently purchased items rather than the new ones. Therefore, it would be a great idea to enable the add-to-cart feature on the suggestion box to allow the searcher buy the items right away.

8. Display the Search Field, Not an Icon/ Link Only

One of the most common errors of designing the search bar on the ecommerce stores is showing only one search button. Then, the searchers must click on that button expand the search field.

The primary purpose of using this style is to narrow down the area of the search bar and have more space in the header. There are plenty of sites following the clean and minimalistic style and going for this solution. Nevertheless, from our point of view, it's a very bad idea for an ecommerce website.

In some worse cases, the store owners just set a link on the top menu to go to the search page, which as a result takes more time of the shoppers for searching on your site as well as decrease their satisfaction.

9. Create Outstanding Search Bar

...[Read More]

Top 7 Pitfalls of Magento 2 Migration - And How to Avoid Them

Tigren — Thu, 17 May 2018 07:00:05 +0000

Rumor has it that Magento will stop supporting Magento 1 at the end of 2018, which leads to a significant increase in the demand for Magento 2 migration. Moreover, since Magento has released continuous updates for Magento 2 version with incredible improvements and enhancements recently (the latest version is Magento 2.2.4), the motivation to migrate Magento 1 to Magento 2 has become stronger than ever.

Here are some noticeable benefits of Magento 2 migration:

Improved checkout: Magento 2 checkout process allows one-page checkout with fewer steps and less information required in order to cut the checkout time and minimize the cart abandonment rate.
Better admin interface: The new admin panel is easy-to-use even for the store owners who have none technical and programming knowledge. It is optimized for various screen sizes and improved with flat design, more convenient product creation and management workflow, and handy column reorder, etc.
Mobile-friendly: As opposed to Magento 1, Magento 2 was designed to be responsive regardless of the device merchants and customers use, from desktops, laptops, tablets to mobile phone. As a result, it would help your store to enhance the mobile's conversion rates.
Fast page speed: Magento 2 is able to process nearly 40% more orders per hours, deliver instant server response time for catalog browsing and offers over 50% faster load time for checkout.
Enhanced Search: In Magento 2, we can configure and customize ElasticSearch at ease so as to improve not only the search quality but also the speed of entire store.
Separated database: While the developers, the admins, and the customers have to utilize the same database in Magento 1 and often confront the database overload, Magento 2 provides independent databases including product data, checkout, and orders.

Although we all know the importance and benefits of Magento 2 migration, it is easier said than done. Migrating to Magento 2 is a strenuous work, taking a lot of time, money and effort. In addition, there are several latent risks that you would have to face when upgrading your site. Therefore, in this article, we will show you Top 7 pitfalls of Magento migration process as well as how to handle all of them. Let's figure out now!

The 1st Snag: Losing important database assets

Magento data migration is the most pivotal as well as a risky stage in the transfer process. If you don’t have enough technical knowledge and experience, you might face some potential drawbacks from data disorder to severe data loss. For a large e-commerce store, losing database assets, especially the customer and product information, might affect the store operation seriously. In addition, disordered data can turn your product descriptions, meta titles/ tags/ descriptions, and other page content into a jumble.

We cannot migrate Magento 1 to Magento 2 without transferring data, so what is the solution? From our experience, it’s highly recommended to make a comprehensive backup of your current Magento store via the external hard drive, cloud storage or Zip Drive. By this way, you can mitigate the risks of losing databases and be ready for the upcoming migration.

The 2nd Snag: Slowing the current Magento 1 website speed down

During the Magento 2 migration process, you still can run the current Magento website as usual. However, the website speed might be influenced negatively, which might cause inconvenience for your purchasers as a consequence.

There are three simple solutions for this problem. Firstly, you should review the whole current site and try to optimize it as much as possible. Owing to that, although the migration will slow your web speed down, it would not trigger considerable uncomfortableness for the users. Secondly, you should consider the right time for the upgrade, avoiding the holidays or seasonal sales. Thirdly, why don’t you notify the visitors of your migration? Tell them that you are building a much greater website to achieve their ultimate satisfaction and ask their pardon for any inconvenience.

The 3rd Snag: Affecting SEO and rankings seriously

Here are some common problems that most of the stores might confront when migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2: changed URLs for products, categories, CMS pages on the new platform, duplicate content due to improper canonical URLs, new structure of pages, a high number of broken internal links, and so on. All of these issues can contribute to decreasing your rankings in the SERPs.

To deal with that, we want to suggest some possible solutions. Firstly, you should use your webmaster tool to figure out all existing 404 error pages in the new site and fix them by using proper 301 redirections. Secondly, all of the canonical URLs must be handled properly for product sorting, layer navigation, and pagination in order to avoid duplicate content. Thirdly, it's recommended to format all internal links according to rules of Magento 2. Finally, don't forget to implement a comprehensive site audit after your Magento 2 migration.

The 4th Snag: Too much database to migrate

As mentioned before, Magento data migration is quite a risky process since it's easy to lose important database assets. Moreover, for large e-commerce stores, this is a strenuous task since their store contains a huge database (including customers, products, sales data and other elements) to migrate.

When it comes to the customer migration, you need to make sure that registered users can easily log in to the new site by using their previous account. For some reasons that it's impossible to do that, you need to provide a convenient way for the purchasers to reset their passwords.

In terms of the order migration, you need to transfer all orders in such a way that there is no missing record of any order in the customer dashboard. In addition, it's advisable to migrate your blog content or other CMS pages to Magento 2 so your SEO rankings and number of traffics can be maintained.

Another suggestion is that you don't need to migrate "everything", just select what are truly necessary for your new store. Apart from that, if you find it too hard to do the migration yourself, consider hiring a prestigious Magento development company for help. Most of the Magento migration service will include:

Evaluating the operational functionalities and limitations of your current Magento store
Checking all third-party integrations such as payment gateways, ERP,...
Consulting front-end design and implementing the new theme
Migrating all database assets and custom codes
Installing, configuring new Magento 2 extensions and solving possible conflicts
Configuration the new site (email templates, tax, language,...)
Optimizing Magento 2 performance & SEO
Performing thorough testing of new Magento 2 store
Providing post-launch maintenance and support services

The 5th Snag: Replacing and discarding all of Magento 1 extensions & themes

Many people misunderstand that Magento 2 migration is similar to usual Magento updates. Actually, this is not just an "update" since we need to build almost everything from the scratch. Especially, you will no longer use your current themes or your (long) list of Magento 1 extensions. First, there are 2 popular options for Magento theme migration, which are buying a new ready-to-use theme for Magento 2 and customizing it or creating a totally new design based on the old one if you want. Second, you have to replace all of your current Magento extensions with the similar ones but for Magento 2. Actually, there is no solution for this problem and you have to accept it.

The 6th Snag: Spending a lot of money

As you know, we have to re-buy all of the themes as well as the extensions for Magento 2 store. While a new ready-made theme will cost you $100-250 on average, the fee for new website design is much greater (up to $1,000-2,000). Therefore, most of the store owners will go for the first option.

Besides, if your Magento store performance majorly depends on the modules and plugins, you need to prepare a large budget to acquire the new extensions. Unfortunately, most of the Magento 2 extensions are more expensive than that of Magento 1 ($100-300 on average).

Furthermore, if you turn to a Magento agency to help to migrate your store to Magento 2, the total cost for Magento migration service would be high, especially when you work with a firm in the US, UK or Australia. In case you have a small to medium budget, outsourcing your project to a Magento agency in Asia might be an ideal option. In general, you will have to pay $3,000-5,000 for a Magento migration project when partnering with an offshore Magento development company while the Magento migration cost would be doubled or even more for having your work done by the US, UK firm.

The 7th Snag: Taking at least 1-3 months for Magento migration process

The whole Magento 2 migration process might take at least 1 month to complete. Even when the Magento migration company will do everything "from beginning to end" for you, it's crucial for you to follow the whole process and supervise their work. The solution for this issue is similar to the one for the 2nd snag: you should implement Magento migration in low sale seasons.

Conclusion

In order to make your Magento 2 migration process efficient and seamless, you will have to put a lot of time, money and effort. There are some unavoidable issues that we can just find the most appropriate solution to deal with them. Because of Magento migration complexion, it's recommended to hire a reliable Magento development company who has the strong expertise to help you move to Magento 2 without bottlenecks, ensure a smooth transfer, minimal downtime and no data loss.