What's new with Ultimento Magento themes & extensions
Ultimento entirely revamps the eCommerce platform to be fast and optimized for SEO and conversions
Beware Buyer Browser Bias
February 21, 2012
To be successful online you have to make sure that your sites work on all the major browsers. Your site may look great in one browser, but be disjointed and broken in another. You should always test any changes or site modifications across different browsers before you upgrade your live site.
There are countless browsers out there, but you should always ensure you’re covering the basics; Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari. It’s also not just about the brand of browser, but the version as well. Chrome and Firefox have many versions, but they’re designed to be upgraded automatically so you’ll find most people using them are using the latest release.
Internet Explorer is another matter entirely. While Internet Explorer is the most popular browser in the market, you’ll find customers still widely use versions 6, 7, 8, and 9. Microsoft plans to introduce automatic updates to Internet Explorer soon, but in the meantime, check your site against older versions as each can interpret the same page dramatically differently.
With all these options, how do you know where to focus your browser testing energy? As much as anyone will tell you this browser or that browser is most important, each site’s customers are different. Go look at the last few months of your traffic browser history in Google Analytics or Omniture or whatever you use to track visitors and see for yourself. The answer may surprise you.
In fact, we looked at two different customer accounts; one that sells software and another that sells power tools. Look at how different the browser concentration was between these two sites…
| Browser | Software | Power Tools |
| Internet Explorer 9 | 20% | 4% |
| Internet Explorer 8 | 35% | 5% |
| Internet Explorer 7 | 7% | 1% |
| Internet Explorer 6 | <1% | <1% |
| Firefox | 16% | 42% |
| Chrome | 8% | 31% |
| Safari | 5% | 14% |
However your customer base is structured, these four browsers generally cover over 95% of the market. Being compatible across these browsers will ensure your site is widely viewable.
So keep up the testing and keep your sites looking sharp.
The Commative Team
This week on Twitter – highlights
February 17, 2012
- Ultimento has over 150 reviews on Magento Connect. Last review: Ultimento is the best theme I have used so far… #
- New live Ultimento case study: http://t.co/CeyRRlk8 #
Rich Snippets
If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me what a Rich Snippet was… I’d be broke. It may not be the most common term, but Rich Snippets are quickly becoming one of the most important factors in determining how your site comes up in Google, Bing, and Yahoo search results.
Rich Snippets operate just like HTML tags, but they’re specialized to highlight the select kinds of information that customers want to know about and search engines want to categorize by. If you have a site for a restaurant you’d want to put tags around menu items. If you were a musician you’d tag song titles and track times. If you happen to have a Magento site selling products, well then you’re going to want tags around products, reviews, prices, etc.
Google has a great guide on Product Snippets that you should check out to get an idea of where you should start putting tags on your site, and the sooner the better. If you follow the Google Insider Search Blog you’ll see they’ve even highlighted changes to search that are beginning to make Rich Snippets more important in results.
Commative thinks Rich Snippets are only going to become more critical to the future of search. We’re working hard to incorporate these tags in to our products and the next version of Ultimento is sure to have the feature built in.
Keep your eyes open for snippets!
The Commative Team
This week on Twitter – highlights
February 10, 2012
- Checked out? Not until you read this: http://t.co/IYFoPy8J #
- Q4 e-commerce sales up 14% according to comScore –> http://t.co/mtcE4K7M #
- How to boost SEO ranking with Google Search Plus Your World: http://t.co/uzfvxsu8 #
- Why Pinterest is important to you! http://t.co/mtcE4K7M #
- Review #142 Tried it and "still loving it"… "great support and quick respond time" -> http://t.co/oh81OKhw #
Ultimento’s Optimized Magento Check-Out Extension
February 9, 2012
Magento checkout extensions are always very popular. Once you have peaked the interest of your customer and they have selected the product they want, you do not want to lose them because of a cumbersome checkout process!
The problem is that many Magento checkout extensions are potentially harmful to conversion rates and checkout usability. Several Magento checkout extensions we’ve seen out there are very bad in terms of load speed, conversions, and stability.
Others just make it too complicated: You should only have one step for the check-out but make it easy to use!
Don’t combine checkout steps into a single crowded step
We have no idea why so many checkout extensions we see combine the checkout steps into a crowded 3-column design and promote this as if it’s a positive thing.
Here’s a screenshot taken from one such extension to illustrate the point:
Even the savviest shopper can get confused with such a layout! Not to mention most internet shoppers are eager to complete their purchase quickly and move on. Which fields are you supposed to fill out first? Why are there so many options everywhere? It’s really overwhelming – especially if you’re just buying a shirt or a pair of shoes! It doesn’t get much worse in terms of usability and conversions in our opinion!
Don’t overwrite Magento’s functionality
Many extensions also completely overwrite Magento’s checkout functionality which is a big no no in terms of ability to safely upgade, stability and security.
What that means is that you’ll run into countless issues and problems with new Magento versions and other 3rd party extensions (such as payment methods, shipping methods, etc) down the road.
Don’t weigh down your checkout page
In addition these extensions add their own style files, template files, and layout files to the checkout page which will affect load speed and page performance, resulting in slowing down one of the most important page of an online store!
Don’t trust anything but numbers
If you’re trying out a Magento checkout extension, you should make sure to test conversion rates with A/B testing (you can use Google Website Optimizer for that if you want a free and quick implementation). One company did test conversion rates and saw a huge decrease in conversion rates when compared to the original Magento checkout process! We don’t find the result surprising at all.
Look for an alternative
You can stick with the native Magento checkout functionality and that’s fine. Except for one thing: The very first step is very confusing to users. We don’t believe you should ask customers to think about anything but paying for your product when they reach the check-out stage:
Fortunately this first step is seamlessly removed with Ultimento’s fully integrated Magento theme with an Optimized Checkout Extension. The benefit is that the check-out extension does not affect any of the checkout functionality and all the possible scenarios you could want to include.
If you want users to sign up for your newsletter at checkout we have enabled that through the newsletter check-box with a bunch of possible scenarios you can configure in the admin.
The Commative Team
Sales Are Good!
February 7, 2012
comScore just released retail spending data for the fourth quarter of 2011 and the numbers are impressive. Sales came in at $49.7 billion for an increase of 14 percent year-over-year. Total e-commerce for 2011 reached an astonishing $161.5 billion! Despite the dreary performance of the economy over the last few years, this quarter represents the ninth consecutive year-over-year period of growth in e-commerce sales.
The online space has continued to grow as more and more consumers have shifted their spending online to take advantage of better choice, more information, simplicity of transaction and the convenience of home delivery. Speaking of shipping, during the holiday season a record 52% of transactions included free shipping, a rapidly growing trend and key offering for online retailers.
With so many customers continuing to move online, Commative knows how important it is to differentiate your site from the crowd. Make sure you spruce up your store with the right graphics and promotions. Add the important content that will help convert orders and improve your placement on Google and Bing. Most importantly, stay connected with your customers and always look for ways to keep them engaged.
Keep up the good work!
The Commative Team
Google’s Search Plus Your World and SEO
Search and social media is becoming ever more intermingled in the world of Google and Bing as they incorporate them into their algorithms and search results. Anyone looking for search engine optimization needs to now seriously consider social media. Bing incorporates Facebook data into its search results and Google has recently gone even further with the introduction of Search Plus Your World. Google’s latest step is seen in two ways: First, it has a completely different visual effect which is cool and new. But more importantly for retailers, it has completely changed the way you receive search results with much more personalized suggestions.
A user’s Google+ activity is specific to the people they know and their willingness to join Google+, and their desire to share certain things on Google+ (this is where we come in). This doesn’t mean that Search Plus Your World is not relevant to SEO – quite the opposite. Here are a few things you can do to be on the forefront of this trend:
- If you don’t already have a Google+ business page, set one up.
- Regularly share content with Google+ such as images, links to the online catalog, status updates etc.
- And most importantly: Build your network. One way to do this is to look out for the upcoming release of Ultimento 3 where you can add a Google+ button to your website that links to your Google+ page. This is in addition to the +1 button on product pages which we have already enabled. And don’t forget that once people add your page to their circles, add them back.
And on that note, don’t forget to add us to your circles!
The Commative Team
What is Pinterest?
February 6, 2012
Ever heard of Pinterest? This once little known site for sharing products and pictures that people love has exploded! We at Commative hadn’t even heard of the site until a certain significant other used it to create a Christmas shopping list.
The site works on the idea that users can “pin” pictures of the things they like online and provide links back to where they found those items. Then their friends can see what they like, share their own items, and quickly get to the product pages of the items they want to buy. Needless to say, this is clearly a powerful product for anyone running an e-commerce site.
Even more important than the promise of another “social” avenue for increasing e-commerce is actual proof. According to a recent study on the growth of Pinterest, the site is now driving more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn, combined!
We’ve already done a few custom integrations of the Pinterest “pin” button on customer sites and you can bet that Ultimento 3 is going to have the feature included. The web is always growing fast with new sites and new ways of increasing sales and we promise we’ll always be on the cutting edge so that our customers have the best sites possible.
Happy Selling!
The Commative Team
This week on Twitter – highlights
February 3, 2012
- Congrats to Magento for the big milestone achievement: http://t.co/eAiOTE7Q #
- 140 reviews … Ultimento is one of the Top 10 most reviewed themes on Magento Connect! Thanks for all the positive comments! #
- Great example of Ultimento customization and integration w/ other extensions: http://t.co/soPRMidQ #
