Magento extensions have the potential to completely reshape your eCommerce business.
Of the active eCommerce platforms live in 2020, over 250,000 of them were powered by Magento – accounting for 12% of all existing eCommerce websites. As eCommerce grows in popularity, customer check-out rates now depend on stable, trustworthy sites that boast multifunctionality and ease of use.
According to the Census Bureau, the 2020 total for eCommerce sales surpassed $791.7 billion, a 32.4 percent increase from 2019. This means that more and more customers are flocking to the internet in droves for their purchasing needs. This also means that businesses need to focus on updating and monitoring their website’s functionality and accessibility accordingly.
And the easiest way to augment your Magento site’s functionality and performance to drastically improve your customers’ eCommerce experience? Extensions.
In a nutshell, Magento extensions help you extend the functionality of your eCommerce website and make it easier for visitors to engage with your brand and its offerings. When searching for the best Magento extensions, be sure to read our best practices below.
An overview of Magento Marketplace
Magento is an open-source platform, meaning that it is more complex and code-heavy than most other eCommerce platforms.
Since 2018, Magento has been run and owned by Adobe, which implemented a vetted, high-quality Marketplace that offers resources to help Magento-powered retailers take their digital stores further. You should start researching extensions here.
Online retailers now have the ability to completely customize their website’s look and feel, and can rely on Magento extensions to take this design to the next level.
However, with over 3,000 verified extensions available on the Magento Marketplace – the most extensions of any eCommerce platform – it’s no wonder why retailers have such a difficult time narrowing down their choices.
We’re here to amend that decision fatigue and help you decide and implement what extensions you or your developer should consider.
What extensions does Magento offer?
When you visit the Magento Marketplace to do research for your eCommerce site, you’ll come across extensions options for the following:
- Accounting & Finance
- Content & Customizations
- Customer Support
- Marketing
- Payments & Security
- Reporting & Analytics
- Sales
- Shipping & Fulfillment
- Site Optimization
When it comes to narrowing down extensions that improve the user experience, we recommend using the following filters:
- Editions
- Partner Types
- Price
- Ratings
- Versions
What are some benefits of using Magento extensions?
Improved perception of your online business
Customers are skeptical – and understandably so.
As technology advances, so does the risk of fraud. Plenty of customers have reported paying for products or services and never receiving them, or dealing with identity theft. Not to mention, hackers can access and spread your personal information, especially in the event of a breach.
Magento extensions for payment security and accuracy are tools that prevent shoppers from abandoning their carts by providing quick payment options like PayPal, Apple Pay, and more.
Enhance your website and promote sales
With Magento extensions – especially those designed for Magento 2 – your eCommerce business will enjoy an overall better performance, increasing brand desirability and boosting conversion rates.
In fact, eCommerce store owners can enjoy extensions that showcase customer research and shopping insights, and they can even target and retarget these users – all to draw them back to their eCommerce site.
With customer insights comes a more understanding approach to online customers. Online retailers can better structure the design of their online store by tapping into customers’ human nature and inducing FOMO, or fear of missing out.
Expand your website’s reach
If your eCommerce site is operating on Magento’s global platform, congrats! You now have access to an extensive customer base. Are you taking advantage of it, though?
Language barriers exist, and online shoppers who are unable to decipher the language used across your website – especially when it comes to products and services – will likely abandon their cart.
Language translator extensions not only help mend this barrier – they can even add layers of nuance that help connect with users across various parts of the world.
Manage order tracking and delivery
As your eCommerce site grows in popularity and becomes more well-established, expect an influx of orders to come through. Your priority, in this case, will be to ensure that your products get delivered to the consumer in a timely manner.
This pain point impacts eCommerce businesses as much as human error does, and delivery date scheduling extensions can help prevent this. Not doing so can be a recipe for disaster, and can destroy your business – and we don’t want that.
Delivery and tracking extensions for Magento can improve the customer experience by allowing them to select the specific delivery date and order intervals (i.e. autoship). This bypasses customers’ urge to manually track their order or make endless calls and emails about the status of their delivery.
Save money and time
Whether you’re self-installing or working alongside a certified Magento developer, these extensions definitely hold a time-saving benefit.
Rather than learning to code or spending countless hours researching, developing your own extension, and troubleshooting, Magento extensions allow you to seamlessly customize your eCommerce site.
All you or your Magento development team have to do is follow the installation instructions.
Why is it important to choose the right extensions?
There are over 3,000 available extensions in the Magento Marketplace alone. However, this doesn’t include extensions available on third-party developers’ websites.
While a large number of Magento Marketplace extensions are quality-assured and rigorously monitored, extensions that are available on these third-party websites are not. Researching the extension’s developer, how frequently updates are implemented, and most importantly, reading user reviews, will all help prevent making unnecessary purchases for your business.
If your site still runs Magento 1 or higher, Magento 2 extensions will likely not be compatible with your site.
Below are some helpful tips for choosing the right Magento extension.
Tips for choosing the right Magento extensions
Consider your business needs
To find the best Magento extensions for your website, you must first consider what your store truly needs.
Do you need a faster checkout process to reduce cart abandonment? Are you falling behind on inventory or facing language barriers with your products? Do you need to cut developmental costs?
Asking yourself these valuable questions will help you narrow down the extensions you need, allowing you to avoid unnecessary purchases.
Research the extension’s developer
Magento extensions come from places far and wide. Because of the increased risk of malware – which can put a damper on your online store’s performance and cause a rift in user experience – we recommend downloading your extensions from the Magento Marketplace or a trusted third-party developer.
Make sure the extensions are constantly updated
Be sure to check out EXTDN or the Magento Marketplace for a list of reputable, Magento-certified developers whose extensions are tested and trustworthy.
Reviews and more reviews
Even if you research and land on reputable extensions that you want to move forward with, it’s equally as important to conduct thorough user research and understand how these extensions and their developers impacted other eCommerce retailers.
Make sure the extensions will function and move your business forward the way you’ve intended. There are a plethora of misleading extensions that actually bring little benefit to eCommerce sites – an unethical, yet sadly common cash grab – so putting on those reading caps and staying smart about extension capabilities is a strong step.
Go for that free trial
What if you paid good money for an extension that didn’t even provide your site with the benefits you expected? This is all-too-common, but luckily, most trusted, third-party extension developers offer free trials.
If you can’t find the free trial on the Magento Marketplace, be sure to visit the third-party developer’s website, read up on their free trial, and test it out for yourself.
Magento Extensions at Pineapple Development
When you partner with our Magento-certified experts, sifting through countless extension options will be a thing of the past.
In fact, we’ll work together to customize your business and make constant improvements – because things change, including businesses and people.
We believe your online store should be easy to use, and that your user experience should be flawless. You can read some success stories here.
Connect with us and learn how our eCommerce development solutions can work for you.