We have mentioned data and content a few times now on our blog, this is not to be repetitive but to highlight how important these areas are for an eCommerce website.  It is easy to underestimate how much work is required from both the solution partner and the client so it is best to highlight these upfront to aid the project process.

Once the data and content requirements have been highlighted in workshops and meetings, a good starting place is to review your organisations data and content that will be populating the eCommerce website. Not only will this improve the process of the implementation and content population, but will also improve the end user experience by ensuring the correct data is displayed in the appropriate places on the store front. As Barry mentioned in his blog post “eCommerce and ERP systems integration – why is it so important?”

“By focussing on these fundamentals, businesses will quickly be able to identify gaps between their current state and their future eCommerce objectives.  Typically this will show that there is a significant amount of work on behalf of the business covering the following areas: Product data enrichment / product data integration”

Other significant areas to review and gather are:

• Is there any out of date data that can be removed or revised?
• Assign your data to attribute sets and have data against relevant attributes
• Define which attributes are required to display on the store front
• Prepare as much content as possible to speed up the content population after development is complete so that there is content for UAT
• Will you be integrating an ERP system with Magento? See Barry’s blog post on the importance of ERP system integration
• Consider which payment gateway will be used, there are extensions to many of the large payment gateways for Magento

These are just some of the main areas to consider, plan and start when at the early stages of an eCommerce project, however this list is endless and as workshops progress, there may well be more areas that arise for you to research and perhaps create content for.

At Crimsonwing, we like a challenge. That’s why when Magento launched their certification program for Solution Partners, we seized it as the perfect opportunity to launch a company-wide effort to get all of our Magento developers certified. This has taken some time and commitment, but we are delighted to see that a large number of our Magento developers have already successfully passed their certification exams, propelling us to 13 certified developers, and counting!

Indeed, we believe that this is also part of our role, as a partner, to support Magento and the measures they take to ensure that their product is delivered and implemented by experts able to meet quality standards and best practice methodologies. Along with the knowledge and talent necessary to understand and fulfil our customer’s requirements, we are also strongly committed to providing exceptional customer satisfaction.

With this in mind, we have made it a priority, and a success while we were at it, to turn our team of talented Magento developers into the largest team of Magento certified developers of all Partners headquartered in Europe. We have so far a pool of 13 Magento certified developers accredited with the Magento Developer Plus Certification, and are waiting for many more to be added in the coming months.
For our developers, these certifications also represent the opportunity to be part of a strong and united team of Magento experts, working together in the successful community they’ve helped to create. This has also been a good opportunity for them to deepen their knowledge of the platform thanks to the quality of the material made available by Magento, Peter Bartolo, developer at Crimsonwing, explains that the videos for instance “present an unprecedented in depth analysis of Magento core functionalities. The knowledge gained from the certification can be applied in our day to day tasks.”
As a result, by successfully achieving their certified status and thanks to their strong dedication and will to learn, our team has made our Magento practice one of the largest worldwide. Stefan Bailey, one of our developers also says “This will not only improve our knowledge, but our standing in the Magento community.”

Furthermore, such level of knowledge and know-how is ensuring that Crimsonwing’s customers are happy and satisfied with not only the final delivery but throughout the entire project. Kimmylee Azzopardi, developer at Crimsonwing adds: “I believe that the most pleasant part of working with Magento is when making our client so happy they can feel comfortable to say ‘Yes, this is what we needed’". Being an open source solution, Magento is one of the most flexible and customisable platforms on the market, thus offering the possibility to create online stores tailored exactly to any business requirement and need. For us at Crimsonwing, it is essential to ensure that all our projects are successfully delivered by a team of experts whose skills have been tried and tested – and certified. For Sandra Bonici, one of our developers: “Preparing for certification has given me the opportunity to broaden my overall knowledge of Magento and I feel more confident in the improved quality and efficiency of extending the Magento platform.” Thanks to such high quality standards, our customers can take great reassurance and confidence in our capabilities.

Some time ago, I was browsing through a popular eCommerce clothing store and this cool set of jeans caught my attention. I am usually quite sceptical about purchasing certain clothing items online as I am concerned about the size and their fit. However, this time I noticed that the product had various reviews stating that the item fitted perfectly and that customers who had already purchased them would suggest a larger size than what one would usually wear. So there I was ordering these jeans and waiting patiently for them to arrive. When they did arrive, they fitted perfectly and I was more than pleased to write reviews for this item and other items I had purchased!

Imagine if a sales person had to write such valuable product information for each and every item in store. I am sure the process would be both time consuming and impractical. However, by providing the online review feature, a company will not need to invest all that much effort in producing valuable content that might help your customers make a purchase decision.

The idea behind ratings and reviews is to encourage your existing customers to provide valuable content that may help potential buyers to make a purchase decision, and to provide unique product content that may also drive Search Engine traffic.

Why should an eCommerce site have Moderated Reviews?

• Reviews add valuable content for your website and will help users to grow confidence in your store.
• Reviews can help to build a community directly on your own site.
• They allow your customers to create that precious fresh and unique content that could help to optimise your website’s search engine optimisation, and thus increase traffic to your site.
• Valuable reviews can help your customers make an online purchase decision and thus increase conversion rates.
• Reviews save time and reduce the workload on your own customer services personnel. Ratings and reviews allow shoppers to do the writing for you!

Let's have a look at the moderated Ratings and Reviews in Magento:

One of the main features provided in Magento Out of the Box is that of moderated ratings and reviews. In order to be able to see the star ratings when reviewing a product on the product detail page, you need to do the following configuration:

1. Go to Catalog --> Reviews and Rating --> Manage Ratings. Click on each entry on this page, and modify the Rating Visibility.

Figure 1: Managing Ratings

2. One can also create different rating types for the website. This can be done by clicking on the ‘Add New Rating’ button in the Manage Ratings screen and setting a name and label for each rating. In the Rating Visibility section you will be able to specify the ‘website’ or band in which this rating will be visible.

Figure 2: Creating a Rating

This means that when a customer decides to write a review he will be able to vote for that particular rating as can be seen below;

Figure 3: Writing a Review on Front end

Please note that Reviews are moderated in the Magento backend. The rating and review moderation feature is ideal to reduce spam comments from being posted in your site. Moreover, your administrator can make sure that the posted review is related to a specific product and that the language and wording used are appropriate. In order for a review to be published, the administrator will have to go to Magento backend ‘Catalog’ -->' Reviews and Ratings' --> 'Customer Reviews' --> 'Pending Reviews' and approve the reviews. The administrator user is also able to modify the review before publishing it. You should be careful when modifying reviews, too many positive reviews could make your comments seem unrealistic and biased.

In Magento, it is also possible to disable or enable reviews for non-members of the website. To do so go to ‘System’ --> ‘Configuration’ --> ‘Catalog’ --> ‘Product Reviews’.

Author: Theresia Azzopardi, Business Analyst at Crimsonwing

The ever popular Pinterest is on the rise, not only in the USA but it is now becoming more prevalent in other countries too. It currently "drives more web traffic to other sites than Google+ , LinkedIn, and YouTube combined” (Goodson, S, “The Rise and Rise of Pinterest and Our Love of Digital Curation”, 2012), to the site and it has “12 million + unique monthly visits” (Oakcreektail.com, “The New Pinomenon: The Rise of Pinterest” 2012).  In the UK I think we are only just scratching the surface with it and we will start to use it more as Pinterest continues to grow.

If you don’t know what Pinterest is - they describe themselves as the following:

“Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes” (Pinterest.com, 2012)

For those of us who once would have kept a scrap book of all our favourite cuttings from magazines and other findings, Pinterest is the online version. Unsurprisingly, after reading the description, its main users are women. “68% of Pinterest users are women according to Internet tracking firm ComScore” (Ortuaty, Barbara, “Pinterest Use Is On The Rise: Here’s everything you need to know about the internets new darling”, 2012) Men now have their own version of Pinterest called manteresting, which you can find at http://manteresting.com/ . Manteresting allows men to use a ‘nail it’ tool to ‘nail’ items to their boards instead of pinning.

 Pinterest and eCommerce?

Pinterest has now launched ‘Pinterest for Business’, which suggests it is going the same route as Facebook with ads and tools. In the future there could be more paid tools like we see on Facebook, which would increase brand awareness further. It will be interesting to see how Pinterest for business grows and develops. Will they learn anything from the Facebook business route?

Pinterests visual aesthetics quickly engages the user with your brand, by creating a pin board for your business, displaying a selection of your products and ‘re-pinning’ other relevant products that promote your brand personality, what you stand for and what you are about.

The graph above from “Pinterest Dominating Social Media in eCommerce” by Ryan Neil, shows that 43% of Pinterest users use it to associate with retails or brands with which they identify with, whilst 67% of users like to use it to keep up with the latest trends. It is clear from the chart how these differ with Facebook and how users look to Pinterest to engage with brands. (Neal, R. “Pinterest Dominating Social Media in eCommerce” 2012)

By following the Pinterest etiquette of re-pinning, building themes and categories of relevant products, allows the Pinterest community to increase whilst creating a huge potential for cross-marketing. There are several steps that can be taken to cross-market your business online with Pinterest such as:

• Adding the Pinterest social networking icon to your product detail pages can heighten awareness of your products and your brand online
• Increase in traffic - as users share on Pinterest others will view the product information, which can increase traffic to your website
• Think about adding Pinterest to your social media strategy – tell users on other social networks about your presence on Pinterest
• Engage with others on Pinterest by creating or partaking in discussions
• Email campaigns – highlight your Pinterest presence on your email campaigns

What makes Pinterest so popular to both individuals and businesses is partly down to how we like to collect and view beautiful things. By pinning our favourite picture or products to our pin boards we are telling the world a bit about ourselves. Pinterest appeals not only because of the visual impact the site has, but because it fits in with our busy modern lifestyles where we can quickly glance at something we like visually and tell our friends about the things we like.

Paul Sheehy from Folk Digital gave an interesting presentation at Magento Live UK 2012 on the power of storytelling through digital. Your customers, followers and friends are much more interested in your story, which is what gives you and your brand a face and personality, making it easier to associate and connect. The guys from Folk are using social media, and Pinterest in particular, for their clients’ campaigns and digital strategies. Paul explains how to best utilise all the different platforms available to merchants and users alike in the recorded edition of his presentation which will be available online soon.

Sources

1. Goodson, Scott, 15/2/2012. The Rise and Rise of Pinterest and our love of digital curation http://www.forbes.com/sites/marketshare/2012/02/15/the-rise-and-rise-of-Pinterest-and-our-love-of-digital-curation/.
2. Neal, Ryan, 22/10/2012. http://www.gurubloggers.com/Pinterest-dominating-social-media-in-ecommerce/
3. Oakcreektrail.com - The Rise of Pinterest http://oakcreektrail.com/news/Pinterest-tips-market-business/
4. Ortuaty, Barbara, 3/12/12. Pinterest Use Is On The Rise: Here’s everything you need to know about the internets new darling http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/12/Pinterest-use_n_1339687.html

Standing ovations for Gary Forman and Dido look a likes made for a comical start and end to Magento Live UK 2012 in Central London. The opening speeches were a mixture of case studies and facts and figures about us in the UK and the always fun comparisons between languages. We were informed that we have 25 million smartphones in the UK and a population of 63 million people. However, there were 2 people not included in that number at the event who did not have smartphones.

It was fascinating to learn about how new technologies in stores and mobile in particular are changing the way we shop. With 95% of all purchases worldwide being influenced by the web in one way or another – mainly by looking up items on the phone while you’re in a store or seeing it on other media – it’s becoming pretty clear that we all need to find ways to utilise this shift in behaviour in order to make the most of it for ourselves and our customers. John Lunn from PayPal informed us on the new PayPal Check In app, which is revolutionising the technologies used in stores and how customers purchase products in store and online.

Roy Rubin made some very interesting points about Magento’s commitment to quality and focus on how to best serve their customers. There’ll be a number of changes coming over the next months, which will be interesting to keep an eye out for. At Crimsonwing we’re very much welcoming the certification program that was introduced a few months back and we’re in the process of getting all our developers certified - good luck to the guys who are sitting their exams tomorrow (not that they’d need luck though)!

The event consisted of 2 tracks, a business track and a technology track, each filled with interesting talks from ebay to Zenya.com. It was interesting to hear from other partners about their case studies and their methodologies, as well as catching up with those we have not seen since last year’s Meet Magento event.

The final keynote from Roy Rubin and the new Head of Product Management at X.commerce - Jimmy Duvall was a Q&A. Jimmy talked about Magento 2, although there was no mention of a release date yet for Magento 2, whilst Roy stressed it is important that they have the best possible solution before release.

With Magento Live UK 2012 having been the first event in this format, the whole community can look forward to a number of exciting events over the next months and years. And if you’re lucky enough to go to one of them, make sure you don’t miss the legendary after party!

Thanks to everyone at Magento and all the other chaps we met for a truly great day and after party!

Sometimes your customers are in the process of checking out and somehow they get distracted, they start having doubts or stumble upon another website with cheaper products. They leave the site and abandon their carts. A website with superior online experience has inbuilt features that facilitate customers' buying process and help them to ultimately make a purchase decision.

This article is the third of a series of three, in which I will outline some tips and hints that can help significantly lower shopping cart abandonment rates. Checkout the first article of this series for tips on how to decrease your shopping cart abandonment rate by optimising your shopping cart and checkout pages and the second article to gather information on how you can maximise your online catalogue to reduce shopping cart abandonment.

Monitor and continuously improve your online experience

1. Monitor cart abandonment – Identify the types of clients that abandon your carts and the products that are being abandoned. Major eCommerce sites such as Magento offer such reports out of the box. You will then be able to modify product detail pages or offer promotions on products that are being abandoned. You will also be able to target customers and remind them of their abandoned carts.
2. Send reminder emails – Most online sellers forget that around 41% of customers abandon their shopping carts because they are unprepared to make an online purchase decision (Forrester, 2011). This means that those sales are not necessarily lost. Online printer Vistaprint make frequent use of reminder emails for customers that abandon their shopping carts. They provide coupon codes and customer specific promotions that encourage customers to make an online purchase decision. 

There are different ways one can remind their customers to return to their abandoned carts:

• Send reminder emails with a list of products in their cart. One may also offer coupon codes or percentage discounts. Vistaprint do this quite often and make good use of sending reminder emails and cross sell products in email newsletters.(Please refer to the image above)
• “Save for later” or “Wishlist” features that do not allow the cart to expire or leave it up to the customers to save the items in their own wishlists. For instance on Amazon one can create multiple wishlists, jot down notes and share the wishlist with your friends. Magento eCommerce solution also provides a wishlist feature out of the box and allows customers to share their wishlist items and write notes against each item.

3. Send “customer satisfaction emails” and ask for feedback. Such emails can encourage repeated purchases and act as a reminder for possible future purchases.

4. Cart value vs. Cart abandonment Rate

A research carried out by SeeWhy, a customer conversion management company, on a sample size of 350 558 consumers showed that cart abandonment spikes when cart total is low and when shipping charges are close to the cart total. It also spikes near the 100 price mark. A possible reason can be due to the “triple digit” mark. A price of EUR 100 may be perceived substantially more expensive then a price of EUR 99. The hint here is to provide discount or free shipping discounts based on the 99 threshold instead of basing the promotion on the rounded three digit figure.

5. Google Analytics funnels can also help you to identify the pages where customers tend to abandon your site. If they abandon your cart when on a product detail page, it could be that you are not offering enough product information or your price is not competitive. On the other hand, if they abandon their cart in the shopping cart page, you may need to refer to the hints provided in the 'Optimise your shopping cart and checkout page' article and shopping cart abandonment map. Testing different website banners or page layout can also help you to identify customer behaviour and optimise your online catalogue .

Online businesses need to learn how to optimise their website and provide features that help and encourage customers to make an online purchase decision. In order to increase a website’s conversion rate, businesses need to focus on providing a superior online experience by engaging customers. Continuously monitoring of shopping cart abondonment will help you to identify weaknesses in your eCommerce site and cater for such limitations as soon as they occur, or even before that.

If you have any questions, feedback or suggestions for future articles please do not hesitate to contact me on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Author: Theresia Azzopardi, Business Analyst

Shopping cart abandonment remains a major eCommerce concern. A website with superior online experience has inbuilt features that facilitate customers' buying process and help them to ultimately make a purchase decision. This article is the second of a series of three, in which I will outline some tips and hints that can help significantly lower shopping cart abandonment rates. Checkout the first article of this series for tips on how to decrease your shopping cart abandonment rate by optimising your shopping cart and checkout pages.

Optimise your online catalogue 

1) Use reviews and testimonials – Customers love to hear other customersˈfeedback.

Hint: Feature strong testimonials in the shopping basket and checkout pages. These can serve as the final incentive for customers to checkout.  

2) Prevent errors in your site- It is important to have someone monitoring your site for checkout or other errors. In 2011, customer experience management specialist Tealeaf conducted a research which estimated a loss of 44 billion in potential revenue due to minor website mistakes.

3) Be upfront on stock availability- it is important to provide stock information in the product detail pages. If a product is available on backorder, the customer should also be informed of it directly in the product detail page.

4) Provide all the necessary product information in the product details section. Including product specifications, size guides in case of clothing items and provide valuable tools that will help the customers make a purchase decision. Also make sure that you have high-quality product images and 360 degrees views of products if required. For instance, global online fashion retailer Asos uses videos of catwalks, whilst the GAP provides a colour and size swatch feature. Each time a customer clicks on his desired colour the product image changes according to the chosen colour.

 5) Make sure that the products put in the cart are visible at all times. Various opensource eCommerce solutions such as Magento have a mini cart feature that allows customers to view their cart via a dropdown menu, rather than having to navigate to a separate page.

Keep a look out on the blog next week for the third and last part of this series of article on ways to reduce your shopping cart abandonment rates!

If you have any questions, feedback or suggestions for future articles please do not hesitate to contact me on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Author: Theresia Azzopardi, Business Analyst

Today’s online shoppers are savvy. They shop around and compare prices and online shopping experiences. From the initial product cost to delivery cost, everything is factored in the final online shopping decision. Sometimes your customers are in the process of checking out and somehow they get distracted, they start having doubts or stumble upon another website with cheaper products. The result is that they leave the site and thus abandon their carts.

In Magento Enterprise 1.11, Magento released an RMA (Returns Management Authorisation) system to enable customers and customer service representatives (CSRs) to manage returns. Customers can access and process a return on the store front in their account area and CSRs can manage, process and authorise returns in the admin console.

Customers Request Returns

Customers can request returns from their My Account – My Orders area via a newly added button – ‘Return’ in the top right of an order.

Figure 1 - RMA on Frontend

The customer can choose which item on the order to return, the quantity, how they would wish to resolve the issue, with either an exchange, a refund, or store credit. They then select the condition of their purchase and leave a comment if necessary.

Figure 2 - RMA form

Administrators managing returns

Administrators can choose to accept or decline returns, set resolutions i.e. refund, exchange, store credit and change the authorised quantities, for example the customer may want to return 3 items, but the administrator may only authorise the return of 2 items.

On authorisation of a return, tracking can be configured so that customers can send back their parcels and track them to ensure customer services have received the item and vice versa.  "The RMA feature allows the merchant to tie the process to their own shippers and shipping policies and to also designate a third party logistics center for returns if necessary." (magentocommerce.com blog entry - http://tinyurl.com/9f2rmjn)

Figure 3 - RMA Items

Figure 4 - RMA Status

Figure 5 - RMA Tracking

Once the item(s) have been received the CSR can process the credit memo, refund the customer and return the item to stock if required.

Once again, Crimsonwing was happy to be one of the exhibitors at eCommerce Expo 2012! We always feel it is crucial to attend such industry events no matter whether you're exhibiting or visiting. If you're interested in eCommerce and online retailing, then eCommerce Expo 2012 was the place to be this week! Considering the current economic climate, the 2012 show has brought particularly interesting responses to the following questions: who wants to invest in eCommerce, and how?

eCommerce professionals came in big numbers this year, looking for the next big trends within the eCommerce world, which we can expect to see more of during the coming year. Predominantly, this year confirmed the growing impact of social media and SEO on all eCommerce activities. Integrating SEO and Social Media into your business strategy of your company doesn't seem to be optional anymore - it should always be at the core of all your activities as this enables you to have a fully social approach.

Open-source, SEO friendly platforms like Magento for instance have also been experiencing a constant growth for the past few years. The architecture of such platforms, as well as their content management functionalities make them SEO friendly from the moment they are installed. It is therefore no surprise that many businesses which didn't have SEO integrated within their online strategy are progressively leaving their rigid platforms for the benefits of more flexible and scalable ones.

Furthermore, in the ever expanding competitive business environment of eCommerce, it is very evident amongst professionals that no compromise will be made on the quality of the services they enlist. Going hand in hand with this, the support and engagement offered by implementation partners during the development of a project, as well as after its completion, is now a decision-making element in the selection of a partner.

The eCommerce Expo 2012 also attracted many young entrepreneurs and startups, who came to find out more about the opportunities of eBusiness, eager to get quality advice and to find the perfect partners for their projects.

All in all, the success of this year's eCommerce Expo is a practical demonstration of the hard facts and figures being proven right: the eCommerce industry is growing steadily and attracting more and more investors as well as young professionals.