3 Plugins to get More Out of Your Magento Site

We’re always on the lookout for ways to improve websites whether that be from a technical or design standpoint. One of the highest growth areas online at the moment is eCommerce stores. So we thought we’d help out the online store owners out there using Magento by giving some insights into what we think are three of the best plugins out there at the moment which can help get more out of your website.

Now firstly these are not all free plugins as we don’t believe free is always best and we like to say “Sometimes you can’t afford NOT to pay for the right tool for the job”.

Here we go!

1. Full Page Cache

The Full Page Cache extension is a must for Magento sites. While online stores are fantastic, one of the big drawbacks and problem areas for owners is site speed. Particularly for stores with a lot of content (products, images etc), site speed can be very negatively affected and can in turn lose you sales (customers HATE waiting around for a website or page to load!).

Not only will the Full Page Cache extension speed up page load time, but it also reduces the load on the server, improves website ranking (through reducing site load time), and in turn, helps increase sales conversions. Now this plugin does cost a few hundred bucks however if it lowers your server costs by 25% and gets you 1 extra sale a month, it should pay for itself in a few months. Full page cache means less CPU usage which means a smaller server can handle your growing traffic! This is a top plugin for Magento stores that can directly (and positively) affect your website ranking and conversions.

See it here

2. Optimizely

Optimizely is probably one of the widest-known and most used tools for A/B Testing elements and personalization of your website. This is the official Magento / Optimizely extension which allows Magento users to track important metrics as well as run targeting tests and track revenue.

A/B Testing along with personalization and tracking is so important these days as no one can tell you. If you make your website a certain way you will make more sales. The truth is every industry is different, every site is different, and every brand is different and unless you track, test and refine you’ll always be behind. Test your theories that a red button makes more sales than green, test your theories that “Get Started” receives more clicks in a Call To Action than “Begin Now” and have proof that you do or do not need to make website changes you’d be surprised how visitors engage with your site.

When it comes to testing and optimizing your Magento store this is a must-have plugin.

See it here

3. Stripe Payments

There are quite a few different payment gateways out there. Our preferred gateway for accepting online payments is Stripe. The reason for this is it’s a developer’s dream, it takes us about 50% of the time to completely set up Stripe than it does any other gateway (even PayPal) it really just works! Their costs are completely transparent and their support is amazing. From a developer’s perspective as well as a business owner’s: it’s easy.

This Stripe plugin basically sets your site up to accept direct credit card payments through your Magento store. It accepts all the major credit cards, debit, gift and pre-paid cards, as well as supporting hundreds of currencies (making it a good choice for international e-commerce stores as well as local ones).

See it here

And there you have it, the three top plugins we recommend at the moment for any Magento store!

Need some advice on how to get more traffic, conversions or just ways to improve your Magento site? Contact us for a chat today!