The best Magento Extensions

Anyone selling goods on the internet needs an attractive, user-friendly online shop. The open source software Magento is especially popular with online retailers and small to medium-sized businesses. The application alone is already a stable and attractive e-commerce solution – but if you want to get the most out of Magento and adapt the software exactly to your own requirements, then you need to also focus on installing relevant Magento extensions.

Magento extensions are available free of charge for a variety of uses: improving usability, expanding payment functions or customising your online shop’s administration. In the meantime, Magento 2 has been released, which is a thoroughly revised version of the original program. Not all plugins have been modified to work with this newer version, many are still only compatible with the original. At the same time, there are other plugins that have been developed exclusively for the updated version. Therefore, we will explicitly highlight which versions of Magento the plugins we mention are suitable for.

Many new companies don’t yet have enough capital to invest heavily in expensive, premium expansions. Fortunately, there are some developers who follow Magento’s open source movement and make their Magento modules available free of charge to all users. Although paid extensions usually offer a larger range of functions as well as comprehensive support, if you are just starting out, then these Magento extensions will take you a long way.

A good blog with interesting, relevant content can assist your online shop tremendously. With a blog, you can publish search engine friendly texts online as well as offer your (potential) customers additional value in the articles, thus strengthening customer loyalty. With the Magento 2 plugin Better Blog, the manufacturer Mageplaza is offering you two distinct options. You can use it to create a visually appealing blog that supports your SEO efforts and helps promote customer engagement by offering comment functions. However, if you choose this Magento plugin, you get an editorial backend that is already very similar to a CMS like WordPress – including WYSIWYG editor.

Mageplaza are also behind the simply titled Magento Extension SEO. The plugins for Magento 2 do exactly what they claim: the plugin helps raise your online shop to the highest search result rankings on Google and other large search engines. To this end, SEO provides you with support in submitting the page to the major search engines and helps you avoid duplicate content in article descriptions. The Magento extension SEO is available free of charge and also as a paid extensions. If you want to avail of extra benefits, you can upgrade it for a small surcharge and unlock lots of extra features.

Not all retailers work with fixed prices or want to make product prices public. Individual prices or bulk purchase discounts can turn a sporadic customer into a regular one. However, negotiating the right price initially can be a frustrating problem.

Furthermore, if getting in touch with you is too tedious for the customer, they will quickly lose interest in buying the product. Therefore, it is a good idea to implement a practical form for the user to send price requests directly through your website. FME’s Request for Quote makes this possible. It allows you to integrate a corresponding form with the Magento extension and manage requests on the backend – this way you always have an overview.

As well as the actual price of the products, shipping costs also play a major role in e-commerce. However, these extra costs are not uniform, instead they vary depending on product size, type and weight as well as delivery region. With Advanced Shipping from Owebia, you have a Magento extension at your disposal which dynamically determines shipping costs according to your selected criteria. The plugin can consider weight, price and quantity, as well as the buyer’s location. This allows users to know directly how many additional costs they should expect when making purchases. You also have to option of using coupons: shipping costs can be eliminated for customers who choose to use a particular voucher.

If an e-commerce company has already grown and is generating a lot of turnover on its Magento online shop, then it is worth your while to invest in paid Magento plugins. You can use these extensions to add even more features to your Magento site.

Magento’s backend is very comfortable. However, those who work on their online shop daily often want more flexibility or more options to adapt their site. The Magento extension MageMob Admin from AppJetty is an app for your smartphone (iOS and Android) that makes the backend (i.e. organising) of your online shop available to you on your mobile device. Customise your dashboard to quickly access key features and manage your online store on the go, including customer management and sales analytics.

Some entrepreneurs provide products that require customers to order over and over again. Each time customers want to order their products again, they run the risk of losing the customer to the competition. The paid Magento 2 plugin Subscription and Recurring Payment can help sellers reduce this risk. This enhancement allows you to implement subscriptions. Different subscription models can be created as well as test phases for undecided customers. The Magento plugin even allows your customers to highlight a specific start date for a subscription.

As an online merchant, you want to make ordering on your online shop as easy as possible for your customers. This is because lengthy order and payment processes, which sometimes extend over several pages, can deter buyers and may result in an order not being carried out. The Magento extension One Step Checkout from Mageplaza simplifies the process. You can design the checkout page yourself, integrate different payment and shipping options and even offer gift options to your customers. The manufacturer promises 80% time savings compared to the usual ordering process without using the extension.

This Magento extension from AppJetty helps you and your customers find out the correct delivery date. Nobody likes waiting around, especially when you don’t know how long it will take. If customers already know during the order process how long it will take for their goods to arrive, their satisfaction will be palpable – especially if they have the option to choose their delivery date and time.  The Magento module Delivery Date Scheduler adds an option to the checkout. You can also use the extension to add a calendar – you decide which date format should be used.

The Magento extension Order Tracking from Land of Coder goes one step further: providing your customers with a tracking ID once they’ve placed their orders. With these IDs, customers can check their order’s status. Is the product still in your warehouse or already on its way to the buyer? Widget support allows you to place the item anywhere you choose in your online store.