More and more companies nowadays are using the Internet to advertise and sell their products. This comes as no surprise, especially since the World Wide Web offers unparalleled reach and convenience for both store owners and their customers. With the sheer number of e-commerce sites, however, online business owners must ensure that their websites are optimized to enhance the shopping experience.

There are numerous site features that must be enhanced to make shopping much more enjoyable for customers and increase conversions for companies. These include search engine optimization, site design and layout, navigation, social network integration, and product presentation. Thankfully, there are numerous Magento extensions available to help Magento store owners address these issues. Listed below are some of the most popular extensions for Magento that can be used to improve a business website:

Navigation Pro: Site navigation is of utmost importance for online shoppers, and the easier it is to browse a store and find a product, the longer a customer will use the site. This extension from Magento allows businesses to design site navigation easily and includes multiple options for presenting web pages. You can choose among vertical or horizontal menus, which can be drop-down, static or folding in nature. Products can also be grouped into different categories, with each category page coming with its own design.

Products Highlight: Business owners may need to highlight a few products on their landing pages, especially those that are new or on sale. With this Magento extension, products can be easily filtered according to price, category and other attributes. Businesses can also easily present most viewed and bestselling products using this program.

Social Suit: A large percentage of Internet users are active social media users, so it’s important for businesses to provide a way to connect with customers using these platforms. Magento’s Social Suit makes it easy to integrate social media functions into a business website. With this extension, customers can easily share their wishlist with friends (who may in turn make the purchase from the store), post reviews, like products and add comments regarding a specific product. Having a strong social media presence is a great way for companies to advertise their products and services as it is inexpensive yet very effective.

Fire Checkout 2: A company’s success doesn’t rely solely on the number of customers that visit their store or the amount of time a buyer browses products — whether a customer actually makes a purchase is of greater significance. As such, it’s important to make the checkout process as hassle-free as possible. Magento’s Fire Checkout 2 offers customization options that can help create a simple yet effective checkout process. Features include flexible layout, geolocation support, and support for multiple options for delivery and payment methods.

For many shoppers, the invention of the Internet and online shopping is a boon. On one hand, they can make informed choices on the products they are eyeing to purchase. This means they can find products that give the best value for their hard-earned money. Additionally, there are websites that give definitive reviews of products available both offline and online as well as those that validate the legitimacy of online merchants. On the other hand, shoppers can also purchase products without leaving the comfort of their own home. They can easily pay for their purchases through the use of their credit cards or through PayPal. All they have to do is add the item they wish to purchase to the online shopping cart, pay for it, and the product will be delivered straight to their doorstep.

Similarly, online shopping is beneficial to merchants. For those with a traditional brick-and-mortar store, having an online shop is a perfect opportunity to expand their reach. To start-ups, this is an opportunity to enter the market without having to worry about the monthly overhead costs associated with maintaining a traditional store. Additionally, they have a variety of online tools and helpful software like the Magento Help Desk to help them promote their business and provide top-notch support to their customers.

Just as a quality product can establish a business's reputation, unresponsive customer service can easily destroy that hard-earned reputation. But just about any small business owner will tell you that a smaller enterprise has to contend with limited resources, including manpower. It comes as no surprise that some staff members of a small venture perform multiple tasks, including answering queries from potential customers as well as resolving issues raised by buyers. This can take a serious toll on your operations, particularly if the time of your staff is drained because they have to engage your customers instead of performing other essential tasks.

Luckily, you can automate this essential task with software available in the market — like the Magento Help Desk. By using such software, you can accept tickets through emails, through a customer form or through your own customer account page. And you can do this 24/7. This software also features the linking of tickets with customer orders so that issues can be resolved promptly and much more conveniently.

Your staff will also appreciate the automation process because instead of answering the same questions over and over again (rather than attending to more pressing matters), you can use a quick answer tool and a knowledge base management tool to help answer common questions that prospective customers ask. Additionally, inactive tickets are swept to the sidelines while more important issues are brought to the forefront to be immediately resolved by your staff.

Businesses are not just about offering a product selling it. It is also about building a relationship between a company and its customers. And this relationship starts by providing top-notch customer support.

Consumer behavior changes as new technologies are introduced. Your buyers are no longer spending hours on end in your store, looking for that one item they need. Moreover, your business isn’t limited to its physical location. As the World Wide Web takes over just about everything people do — from communication to shopping — your business has found it necessary to maintain its Web presence. Neglecting it, or worst, disregarding it, could be detrimental to your survival in a competitive market.

A great new trend has recently been added to the Web ecosystem, and that is mobile commerce, also known as m-commerce. Your shoppers have shifted from desktop shopping to mobile shopping, which in essence is actually great news because it creates vast opportunities for your business. This could mean having the ability to reach out to your buyers or clients, wherever they are and no matter what they’re doing. This could mean that your shoppers can make quick purchases. This could mean instantly informing your buyers of upcoming in-store events, coupons, or seasonal sales. Of course, all these will also mean having the sufficient system to carry out such goals. And this is where Magento mobile solutions come in.

Magento is a recognized e-commerce platform. It enables small- to large-scale online stores to provide a seamless shopping experience and manage the business efficiently and effectively. The functionality and potential for marketing opportunities is further expanded when you use modules that work well with Magento. With 63 percent of smartphone users using m-commerce to make their purchases (comScore), your business should be looking at a mobile solution designed with Magento in mind.

A mobile solution for Magento can optimize your website to work for smartphones, making it easier for your shoppers to search a product, browse through your stock, place an order, and do check out. Some businesses that still haven't caught up with m-commerce to this day may find their shoppers clicking away to other sites because their websites aren’t viewable on the small screens of mobile phones and even tablets. A lost opportunity is a loss in sales. When your online store loses enough traffic in a single day, it could create a huge dent in your quarterly profit goals.

Your consumers are on the move, and they are looking to shop and do business with stores that allow them the convenience of m-commerce. From searching and making price comparisons to buying products on the fly, from availing of special coupons to browsing for and sending gifts, make the whole shopping experience as simple and appealing as buying in-store. Look into mobile solutions for your Magento store today.

Neat Star Premium Theme is new revolutionary Magento template with improved SEO compatibility and additional premium features. It's based on 1 column home page layout with image slider and additional products blocks on main page. This template can be used for any store that need clean and modernt look with improved SEO compatibility and user interface. JavaScript slider on front page is easy to use and also SEO friendly.
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Neat Star Premium Magento Theme features

• Fluid layout.
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• Improved HTML structure for better SEO performance (right usage of heading tags and other SEO important tags).
• Added nofollow attribute for non SEO links (layered navigation, categories listing, shopping cart links and product compare links).
• Built with CSS sprites
• 2-1-3 columns layout for better SEO performance.
• Image slider on main page.
• Floating toolbar with shopping cart, customer and social links.
• Newsletter subscribe block on main page.
• Custom powerfull widget with new, bestsellers, special offer and on sale products on main page.
• Separate featured products block on main page.
• Improved product listing toolbar on categories listing page.
• Design based on 960 grid system.

There are many different techniques that can be used by a web-based business to increase conversions among potential customers and hopefully create a loyal following for the brand. For instance, the company’s e-commerce website can be optimized to appear on top of search engine results pages. This step will help increase awareness about the site and direct more search engine users to it, some of whom may eventually make a purchase. In addition to optimizing an e-commerce site for search engines, another way to enhance an online company’s success is by improving navigation and making it easier for site users to get the information they need. Basic shop functions, such as adding and removing items to the shopping cart, can also be made easier as simple one-click features are more likely to encourage continued use of the site.

However, all these features can only bring the customer as far as the checkout page — site optimization, improved navigation and simplified functions will not guarantee that a customer will actually make a purchase. Instead, the nature of your checkout web forms is the crucial factor that will determine whether a customer will actually make a purchase from your site or not. And since the true measure of success for any company is the amount of revenue that they can generate within a given amount of time, it’s particularly important to make the checkout process as appealing to customers as possible.

Business owners must keep in mind that the appeal of an online shop’s checkout process rests primarily on the simplicity of its design. As such, a complicated checkout process that requires numerous clicks and forms to be filled will most likely lead a customer to abandon their shopping cart. On the other hand, a clean-looking, one page checkout page with simplified functions is sure to encourage a customer to complete the transaction.

But how can business owners integrate such features into their e-commerce websites easily? Not all entrepreneurs may have experience in website creation and programming, and modifying the checkout page to include all these functions may be complicated without professional help. Thankfully, there are easy-to-use module for Magento that can help business owners create a more effective checkout page. With our module a checkout form can be simplified to fit only a single page, while also providing ways for customers to remove or add more items to their cart easily. Other important features, such as options for delivery dates, payment and shipping, can also be easily modified using easy-to use config settings. With these programs, magento store owners can create the perfect checkout page — and guarantee increased sales and more profits in the future.