Will Magento mobile rock the App store?

For a while now, Magento has been working on what they are referring to as Magento mobile. In short, it is an extension by means of which Magento store owners can create native iPhone apps (more platforms to be added in the future) that enable their customers to browse their store(s). Last week I joined a webinar to have a look at a live presentation of this extension and I had a look at the extension and its source code today. And – I just cannot help it – thought I’d added my two cents.

It looks like the new era of mobile commerce: Just install the new Magento mobile extension into your store – it is said to work in recent versions of the Community Edition (1.3+), the Professional Edition (1.6+) and the Enterprise Edition (1.8+) -, pay the one-time setup fee of USD 799,00 as well as the yearly maintenance fee of USD 699,00 and have the Magento system build your own custom-designed iPhone app. Rather than spending a sizeable part of your budget on custom app development, you do the customisations yourself and in no time have an app users can use to browse the store and purchase store items. (More information and screenshots of the interface in action can be found in the Webinar recap.)

Native vs. web-based apps

There are more than 225,000 native apps on the Apple App Store right now, downloads have surpassed the 5 billion figure. With more than 100 million devices sold these apps can run on, they surely provide a ton of opportunity. Those apps have access to the entire hardware, ie. the respective APIs of the devices they run on, e.g. camera, gyrometer, GPS etc. Also, they can create push messages to the user, which is quite handy in case of apps such as Facebook and Twitter. Interface designers can get creative and invent all kinds of new uses, as for example the range of new games shows.
In order to create such a native app, developers need to make use of the SDK provided by Apple, obtain a developer’s license and start coding their applications using Objective-C and the Cocoa Interface builder. Afterwards, they need to follow a set of guidelines in order to get those apps into the App Store.

Web-based apps, on the other hand, don’t require this procedure. In effect, they are specially crafted websites which are accessed via the Safari web browser. Using the HTML5 standard, interface developers can create their code in such a way that they make a nice application in the mobile browser window. This means that, rather than seeing a minified version of the website in question – which is the standard – the mobile device renders this website differently, making it perfect for use with the iPhone or the iPad. A good example of those web-based apps is the mobile version of Facebook, which makes it possible to use the website properly even on a small screen such as the iPhone’s. (For more information on web-based vs. native apps, see Apps vs. Web by Craig Hockenberry.

Magento’s app generator

Having had a glimpse at the source code of Magento mobile it seems that it mainly does two things: First of all it provides the necessary interface for letting shop owners customise their own app and send its specifications to Magento Inc. They will have some sort of process in place that turns those specifications into a native app and place them into the App store. Secondly, it generates a sort of additional XML layer that feeds the app and provides all the necessary catalog data.

The second part of this extension, in my view, is the goodie because it provides XML-structured information regarding the shop frontend, which is the source for the native app’s more lightweight checkout process. However, the native app itself, which is the first part of this extension, seems questionable. Given that every Magento store owner could have one or more apps for his store(s), this would eventually lead to a flood of new apps that would only slightly differ regarding a few layout parameters. In other words, the code base for all those apps waiting to be submitted to the App store would be quite similar, which is something I think Apple wouldn’t approve of at all in the long run.

But even if a good amount of those apps made it through the approval process, I find it hard to imagine that potential customers would download all those apps. It might be that there are some larger and well-known brands whose fans will embrace such a possibility, but this is an exception to the rule. For a native app to be successful it needs to provide some added value for those who install it. But other than browsing the product catalog and checking out the respective products, those new Magento apps will add nothing new.

Far better suited for this kind of shopping experience are web-based apps. Why not provide a streamlined XML interface and let frontend developers come up with a great mobile version? The iPhone theme, which was published in 2008 already was a step into the right direction, and I think in the long term store owners are better off concentrating on universal, platform-independent web apps than native apps for each and every platform.

5 amazing tips for designing a mobile shopping app

In the era of mobile commerce, it is important to spend a considerable amount of time on the design components of your mobile shopping app. A great app idea will not stand-alone in the app market and be successful; however, a great idea combined with a great design will. 

What an app looks like is the first aspect people notice about it – even before they download it, and certainly before they test it out and see how it functions. That initial visual impression affects the entire user experience and will likely determine the ultimate success of an app.

So in this articles, I will present 5 amazing tips to design apps in order to satisfy clients and keep users coming back:

1. Pixel Perfect Design

In an app, every detail matters. A good design makes every pixel count. For example, this desktop icon for the app DuoLingo does a great job of making their white seem brighter by adding the tiny white “reflection” on the icon’s eye.

Experienced app designers say: Don’t skimp on details because of the small size. The small size is a reason to pay even more attention. Create mock-ups of desktop icons on a desktop to see if they stand out.

2. Typography

Choose every font with great care and consideration for a great user experience. Take your time and figure out the perfect separations between titles, subtitles and content with bold, italic, and colors. And most importantly – sizes.

Experienced app designers say: Your clients may choose the font, but it’s up to you to make it look great. Impress your clients by providing a few different samples, featuring different leading and kerning/tracking. Sometimes when text “doesn’t look right” it’s not the font itself, rather it’s the manipulation of the font. Since you have less space in an app, tiny adjustments can make a huge difference.

3. A mobile shopping app is not a website

Mobile shopping app UI/UX has to be with the right approach, using mobile elements and gestures. There are standard sizes for clickable buttons and generally acceptable ways of doing things.

Experienced app designers say: You don’t need to rewrite the way of making apps. Reproducing the way an iPhone or Android works naturally makes apps easier to use. Users are accustomed in interacting with apps like calendar, phone, browsers, and e-mail. Using the standard features is perfectly fine and preferable in many cases. Check out Apple’s UI or Android’s UI for specific examples.

4. Design for different platforms

Remember that iPhone experience is different than Android, not just in look, but also function.

Experienced app designers say: Improve your marketability and skills by learning Android design principles and iOS design principles.

5. Navigation

How to navigate should be easy to understand from within the app. Take examples from Apple and Google in how to do your navigation. Navigating an app can be aesthetically pleasing, but not at the expense of functionality and intuitiveness.

Experienced app designers say: If you’re new to designing for apps, go for a personalized version of generally accepted navigation principles. Navigation is one of the most important features of an app and is not a place to try unconventional methods.

With the above app design tips, you can create a beautiful one and raise your customes’ experience.

Related: Magento Mobile Apps, Mobile App Builder

How a 20 year old brick-and-mortar store in Brooklyn goes mobile

his is the second post in our column “SimiCart around your corner” which features the case study of how SimiCart has performed in different parts of the world. In this article, let’s meet Mr. Roman, Director of Ecommerce from McDonald Paper Restaurant Supplies (McDonald Paper) from USA.

Something about McDonald Paper Restaurant Supplies
Founded in 1994, McDonal Paper is a wholesale brick –and- mortar B2B supplier with a facility and 20,000 SF E&S Showroom located in Sunset Park area of Brooklyn on 50th Street & 1st Avenue, mainly selling to other local businesses like small restaurants and other food service establishments – locally and in Tri-State Area. McDonald Paper’s mission is to provide the customers with premium quality products at value driven prices. It did not have any online salesor even a website until early 2014, when Roman joined the company.

Q: Hi Roman, thank you very much for accepting our interview invitation. We are excited to hear your story. Could you please introduce a little about yourself?

A: Hello! Thank you for providing the opportunity for an interview! First I’d like to introduce myself, my name is Roman Bondarenko and I am working as Director of E-commerce in a New York-based company, McDonald Paper & Restaurant Supplies.

Q: I see that McDonald Paper website is in the beta version. Building an Ecommerce system for such a big company cannot be an easy task. How has it been so far?

A: Yes, building the whole E-commerce system from scratch for a company with 20000+ SKU’s was definitely a challenging task. We started building an online store with Magento platformand now it’s fully operational. We are just filling it up with content and products.

Q: As the Director of e-Commerce of the company, how do you envision the online shopping and mobile shopping in the future? And how would you prepare for McDonald Paper to catch up the trend?

A: Frankly speaking, I think that the future of sales will be dominated by online and mobile shopping! Retail and brick-and-mortar stores like will have to integrate deeply into online sales in order to survive. There are 2 main reasons for that:

• The world is developing and new technologies come into life, and this, in turn, increases the competition between market players. Those who fail to catch up the trend will eventually go out of business.
• People nowadays have such an intense pace of life that they have little free time. As a result, they need to take advantage of of online shopping benefits..

As for McDonald Paper, the company probably faced increasing competition from online stores that are selling restaurant supplies, and we felt the need in establishing our own presence in E-commerce world. Certainly it’s a step forward into the right direction, though it could have been done a few years earlier.

Anyway, I’m confident that we will manage to catch-up and integrate into online shopping properly. Our web-store is up and running, we started doing decent sales on Amazon and E-bay, and of-course launched our mobile apps, which we anticipate to become popular with restaurant owners, who are always on-the-go and need to order supplies fast.

Q: So how did you get to know SimiCart? And why did you choose it among other providers in the market?

A: When we researched the mobile app market for Magento, there were not too many options really. We are running Magento community edition, so we needed to find a decent third-party company to build the app for us. The final decision was between SimiCart and another company which had a price tag that was 3 times higher. I’ve also read some good reviews about SimiCart’scustomer support team, which is the most important part besides the price point. So that’s how we settled upon working with you guys.

Q: Which difficulties did you encounter while working with SimiCart? How did you manage to solve them?

A: At the beginning we encountered problems setting up payments to work correctly with Authorize.net and especially Paypal, as there is tight integration with both Magento and payment merchants’ API. But the hardest part was to set everything up correctly and publish the app to both marketplaces (Apple and Google).The customer support of SimiCart worked very hard on helping me in a timely manner. I’d like to mention David, who was very responsible.

Q: Since USA is a high demanding market, did you have to configure or customize anything of SimiCart to meet the market’s requirement?

A: Actually at this point we just want a basic tool for customers to place orders from the mobile phone, no extra bells and whistles. The functionality offered by the app out of the box is decent. Especially we liked how fast and easy to navigate.

Personally, mobile app should be simple and easy to use, especially for E-commerce stores, this helps customers to concentrate on the most important part – making the actual purchase, instead of trying to figure out how to use the fancy-looking thing.

Q: Overall features of SimiCart, which one do you like the most?

A: I’d say – ease of use and performance. We even had to upgrade our server that hosts Magento website, in order to match the app’s performance. I can’t say too much about the features as there is a still lot of work going on with our web-store. But I estimate that the most useful features would be PUSH-notifications and STORE-locator (At the time of the interview, McDonald Paper  is on the way to integrate Store Locator to their mobile app)

Q: And if you can add or change one feature in SimiCart, which will you choose?

A: Maybe a little more design options, being able to customize more?.

Q: How do you promote the app to your customers to encourage them to download and install it?

A: The first step was pretty simple – we just added a notification when accessing our website from mobile devices. Also we placed a few buttons at the footer – linking to Apple Store and Google Play. The next step is to promote the app by placing QR-codes on prints and offering our clients as we do a lot of printing, like flyers and digests with new products or specials.

Related: Magento Mobile Apps, Mobile App Builder

Native App vs. Responsive Website – which one is better choice?

E-commerce is now suffering from the conquest of mobile commerce. Apparently, customers no longer stick to their PCs or laptops but turn to their smart phones or tablets. This shift forced the store owners to come up with new ideas to catch this trend.  Responsive website or mobile store app, that is the most common confusion of store owners. Here is some information you should consider before making choices.

What are differences between mobile store apps and responsive websites?

Nearly 90% of you cannot realize what is mobile store app and responsive design website based on their looks which are quite similar on handheld mobile devices.  However, in depth, they are totally different.

Mobile website can be understood as web pages designed for mobile devices, not only for large screen (PC screen). It also consists of browser-based HTML pages that are linked together and accessed over the Internet.

Mobile applications, differently, are not web pages designed for mobile devices. Exactly, they are mobile software which can be downloaded and installed on smart phones or tablets. Since they are not responsive web page, these apps cannot be opened on mobile browser. Instead, they run on mobile operating systems like iOS, Android, Windows Phone …  and their interface is mobile optimized.

Confusing between two? Let’s see their Pros and Cons:

	Native app	Mobile Website
Pros	- Faster access from mobile screen. – Optimized for mobile devices with more interactive user interface- Allow easy access to the phone’s features such as the address book, camera… – Enhance user experience : looks, feels, browsing…- Engage more customers and keep longer and more frequent user interaction time -Increase customer return rate, conversion rate. – Safer because it is reviewed and approved by application store administrators.-Lag less when user browse, scroll.- Take advantage of mobile features like locating and personalizing.	- Responsive designed for mobile devices – Reach people from search engines- No limitation on platforms.- Not need to be approved by application store.- No need to download or install. – Takes small data storage.
Cons	- Cannot run on browsers and reach people from search engines.- Require developing for each platform.- Need to be approved to appear on application stores.- Need to be downloaded and installed.- Take a more storage on mobile devices.	- Slower access from browser- Limited access to the phone’s capabilities- Limited user experience- Limited user interaction time – Less convenience to browse

“…85% of respondents  preferred a mobile app than a mobile website.”

This number was revealed by Compuware in 2013 when they carried out a survey of 3,500 consumers. This number speaks louder than any evidence.  Although mobile website is considered to be more important, mobile apps seem to be more preferable from customers’ perpective. Therefore, it is quite necessary to have a mobile store app on your own.

If you are worried about the cost and time to get an app like that, SimiCart can help you out. It’s the easiest way to build a Magento mobile apps for your online store at only $299 one time only.

Source: SimiCart Blog

What is m-commerce?

What is m-commerce?

Though the phrase mobile commerce was originally coined in 1997, still many people are searching for this question. So let me give you the shortest M-commerce definition:

M-commerce (mobile commerce) is the buying and selling of goods and servicesthrough wireless handheld devices.

• Wireless handheld device: the emerging technology behind m-commerce is based on the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). Handheld devices that can be used wireless are: cellular telephone, personal digital assistants (PDAs), tablet, phablet, etc…
• Goods and Services applicable so far: Mobile Money Transfer, Mobile ATM, Mobile ticketing, Mobile vouchers, coupons and loyalty cards, Content purchase and delivery, Location-based services, Information services, Mobile Banking, Mobile brokerage, Auctions, Mobile browsing, Mobile purchase, In-application mobile phone payments, Mobile marketing and advertising.

Mobile purchase receives most attentions since it’s growing rapidly. As many as 46% of UK consumers now use mobile device as their primary tool in purchase decision making. With more than 75 percent of mobile shoppers making a purchase or planning to do so in the near future, mobile is clearly an important part of the purchase cycle (1).
To catch up with this trend, Store owners should use responsive theme or mobile site themeor mobile app or all of them. Each one has pros and cons that you may refer this post

M-commerce history fun fact

Mobile commerce services were first delivered in 1997, when the first two Coca Cola vending machines that were installed in the Helsinki area in Finland accepted payment via SMS text messages.

Related: Magento Mobile Apps, Mobile App Builder

4 key metrics need tracking to boost up sales with

The secret of sales growth is to know what key indicator that matters the most, and how to improve them. However, not many entrepreneurs and business owners know exactly what important sales metrics are to boost up their revenue.

In fact, there are four metrics that business owner should track on an ongoing basis:

1. Total sales by time period

It allows you to keep up with the latest overall result of their business on a calendar basis. Bytracking sales by time period, you know exactly how well your shop or company is performing at present, within particular weeks, months, quarters or years.  And then you can make adjustment to your plan if it does not meet your expectations.

2. Sales by product or service

It is the second important indicators to keep in mind. This tells you exactly what’s selling and what’s not. Armed with this statistics, you might find it easier to make decision on investment and development. On one hand, any drops in the sales of certain products might prove that they need to be improved or replaced. On the other hand, the rise in a product’s sales can help you forecast customers’ demand to make sure that it is necessary to maintain the appropriate inventory levels.

3. Sales by lead source

Some businessman or women went into troubles since they could not figure out why their investment in sales failed to convert into sales growth. The simple answer is to find the “lead sources” that produce the most sales, and to stop wasting money on ones that don’t. Moreover, your lead generation can be optimized if this metric is often tracked. These are the reasons why this metric is so important.

4. New vs. returning customer sales

A healthy business has an ongoing supply of both:  new customers and old customers returning to buy more of your company’s offerings. This metric reveals what percentage of your sales is coming from new customers versus returning ones. Thanks to it, you will know if your marketing tactics, such as emailing your customers, is working or not and what type of customers you need to pay attention to.

These above metrics only help you to achieve sales target and improve current conditions if you track them usually. However, your time is always limited and you might not stick to PCs or laptops all the time. Consequently, to keep track of these above sales indicators, you can resort to some mobile sales tracking applications like SimiTracking (download it for free atwww.magestore.com/magento-simi-mobile-sales-tracking-extension.html). Not only provides the mobile way to get access to important sales statistics but it also offers the detailed reports on your business performance whenever and wherever you want. In another word, you might get sales reports about your stores at anytime while away on the vacation.

Related: Magento Mobile Apps, Mobile App Builder

Magento Installation

Some web hosts provide professional Magento installation as paid or free additional service to their magento hostingpackage, or have Auto-Installers in their Control Panels. If your web hosts does not provide any of these options, or you want to install Magento manually in order to customize its settings, please read the following short manual.

• To install Magento you will have to download the latest stable Magento version from the official Magento website. You can download the full installation file package from magentocommerce.com/download . It usually comes as a zip file, so you will have to unzip it first, or upload it and unzip it on the server.
• You can upload the files via FTP to your hosting account. You can choose between the public_html folder and a sub folder, if you do not wish Magento to appear directly on your home page.
• When the package is uploaded, you will have to extract it if you haven’t done that yet, and change its file permissions (set to 755) according to the requirements listed on magentocommerce.com
• You need to create a new MySql database and new user for your future store. To do that, login to the Control Panel of your hosting account and use the MySQL databases management tool.
• Attach the user and the database together.
• Run the Magento Install Wizard. You will have to point your browser to the URL of your website – your home page or the folder you have chosen to install Magento in. Follow the instructions of the wizard.

• Fill out your database connection information – data base name, user name and password.

• Setup your administrator user. Choose an encryption key, or leave this field blank – Magento will generate it for you. Be sure to write it down, since you will need it for password encryption and other operations later on.
• That’s it! You are done.

Related: Magento Mobile Apps, Mobile Apps Builder

What is Magento?

Magento is a very powerful and fast growing ecommerce script, created by Varien. It is an open-source platform using Zend PHP and MySQL databases. Magento offers great flexibility through its modular architecture, is completely scalable and has a wide range of control options that its users appreciate.

Magento features

Here are some of the features we like the best:

• Magento is very powerful and yet intuitive when it comes to presenting your products. You can easily create your products catalog and manage it. You can add more than one images for the same product, review the product and allow creating of wish lists. It allows catalog and product browsing, product filtering and product comparison. You can easily add new products, do batch product update, manage your inventory, easily manage orders and shipments, and integrate different payment methods.
• Magento has some great options when it comes to customer service. With Magento you grant your customers the option to create user accounts, track their shopping history, contact you through custom forms, you can also choose different languages and currencies, to fit the needs of your customers.
• You can easily integrate Magento into your Google Analytics account and use all its options to analyze the customer behavior on your website and optimize it for better results. You can also use the advanced SEO options of Magento to optimize your website search engine positioning, so it can be found easier by your customers.
• Magento also allows you to use many marketing promo tools – organize price promotions, use coupon codes. There are many websites out there offering beautiful Magento themes for free or paid, so you can create your unique looking online store with ease.
• And if this is not enough, there are over 1.700 extensions for additional functionalities you can install via the Magento-Connect interface.

Magento Demo and Showcase

If you want to see Magento in action, just visit the Magento demo and Magento showcase stores. Browse around and build your own opinion.

Related: Magento Mobile Apps, Mobile App Builders