Monthly Archives: May 2012

Magento Facebook Connect Extension Available Now!

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In a continued effort to release more individual extensions from the Ultimento family, Commative is proud to announce the release of our Magento Facebook Connect Extension.

This Magento extension allows your customers to log in and connect to your store simply by logging in with their Facebook information. Everything is automatically tied in through the usual Magento log in options so your site stays clean and sleek. Customers will save the time of filling out all of their personal information and you’ll be tapping into the power of the largest social network on Earth.

You no longer need to sign up for all of Ultimento to get the benefits of Facebook Connect. We’re running a sale on the extension now so hurry now for the price and remember you have the benefit of our 30 day return policy and free year of product support.

The Commative Team

 

The Importance of Reviews

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There are a lot of questions you find yourself asking when shopping online and they range wildly depending on what you’re looking for. Will it taste good? Is it reliable? Does it do what I want? Can I return it? It can be extremely difficult to differentiate products and find the right one.

Ecommerce companies were at the forefront of this problem when they first introduced the concept of customer reviews. What better way to find out if a product is worthwhile than hearing about it from someone who already has one? Sure, no two people are the same and motivations vary from person to person, but if you get enough reviews you can start to infer the quality of the product. The theory makes sense, but it was never really tested, until now.

Harvard Business School has just released a report that for the first time compares expert evaluations of products to the reviews written about them. Starting with books on Amazon they’ve proven a strong correlation between what customers say and how things really are. It’s sound evidence to support the trustworthiness of reviews and a clear reminder of how important they are for your sites.

Be proactive about reviews! Make them prominent. Show the quality of the products you sell. We believe customers rely heavily on reviews and are proud to say that Commative’s Ultimento is among the top 5 best reviewed paid extensions on all of MagentoConnect. When you sell quality products and let your customers know they’re good, you’ll find you sell more.

The Commative Team

Staying Safe

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It takes a lot of hard work to run a successful ecommerce website. Customer service, product catalogs, accounting, technology, the list goes on and on. Don’t let that work go to waste though by someone hacking into your Magento site because you didn’t take basic security measures to protect yourself.

If you think its too hard, it’s not. A few simple steps can help keep your site and your data safe…

  1. Change your Magento Admin Panel URL – By default you’ll log in to the back-end of your site by going to www.yoursite.com/admin. It’s not going to be hard for someone to guess that path so change it. Find your local.xml file and look for a line that reads “<frontName><![CDATA[admin]]></frontName>”. Change the admin part to whatever you want your new address to be. Then clear your cache manually by deleting all the files on your server in var/cache/ directory.
  2. Make your Magento Admin Panel URL secure – You should already be using a SSL certificate on your site to make transactions safe and to give your customers peace of mind. You can make Magento use that same security measure when you log in to your site so that your password is encrypted. Just navigate to System > Configuration > Web > Secure > Use Secure URLs in Admin and select “Yes”.
  3. Use a unique password! – Don’t use the same password for every site you need to log in to. If your password is compromised in one place it will be compromised everywhere.
  4. Make your password at least a little difficult to hack – You don’t want someone guessing your password or using a simple tool to run through every word in the dictionary. Through in some capitalization. Try a few numbers. Mix things up.

While there are a lot of things you can do to better protect yourself, thankfully they’re all pretty easy. Go out, make a few quick changes, and sleep better knowing your site is safe.

The Commative Team

Chrome Beats Out Internet Explorer

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It’s been a long time coming, but if StatCounter’s data is to be believed, Google’s Chrome browser has beaten out Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as the most widely used browser on the Internet. No other browser has been able to give IE a run for it’s money since Firefox came close in 2004.

Many designers and developers will tell you that IE’s dominance has forced a number of undesirable conventions in web page design, but innovations on Chrome’s behalf have helped introduce a slew of new features that have been adopted by all the major browsers. Now that Chrome is pulling ahead we’ll hopefully see even more from Google’s sleek browser.

So when you go to test your website make sure you don’t stop after IE 9 and 8 and 7. Check all your layouts and features in Chrome as well and you’ll be sure you’re reaching the widest audience possible.

The Commative Team

Two new Magento Extensions from Commative: Optimized Check-Out and Newsletter Subscription

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After our successful release of Ultimento 3, the Commative team recently launched two new extensions to meet the demand from our customers:

- The Magento Optimized Check-Out extension is a unique extension to greatly improve the cart conversion of your online store. The entire process is in one easy-to-use interface on a simple expandable page. It eliminates confusion and ensure one of the quickest check-out processes on the Magento platform. Read more about our check-out process and the proven methodology here.

- The Magento Newsletter Subscription extension substantially improves your store’s subscription rates by adding is a part of the check-out process in one simple click. Any serious online retailer knows the importance of getting their customers’ email addresses to constantly communicate and interact with them. This extensions quickly helps you build up the email address database for future communication.

Stay tuned for new extensions and themes!

 

Get Your Affiliates Right Here!

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With the launch of Commative.com and the new Ultimento 3.0 Magento Template we thought it was about time to release our new affiliate program! Along with Ultimento, Commative offers a collection of exciting Magento extensions and templates and you can make money simply by linking to our site.

When you create a new affiliate account with us we’ll review your credentials and add you to our network. You’ll then get a login to access our site where you can download our banners, see our payment terms and get contact information so you can ask us any questions you have.

We’ll be adding more products to the site over time so the potential earnings will only increase. Also, if you have any requests for different sized banners just let us know and we’ll build out what you need.

So go out and spread the word about quality Magento products while you make some cash at the same time.

The Commative Team

Magento 1.7 is Out and it Works with Ultimento 3

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Magento 1.7 has been out for a week now and we have to say we’re impressed. Announced at Magento’s Imagine conference, 1.7 is the biggest Magento release in 9 months and includes a bevy of new features and fixes. Some of the highlights include…

  • Coupon Codes – Now you can have these auto-generated; very helpful when you’re dealing with large numbers of personalized codes.
  • Layered Pricing Navigation – Improved left navigation bar gives you more flexibility on breaking up your products by price.
  • CAPTCHA Support – Those annoying boxes where you have to type in the letters before you can click “continue”? Now you get to use them to cut down on spam.
  • Base Pricing by Customer Group – Use different product prices for different customer groups, great for B2B applications.
  • Backup and Rollback Functionality – This is HUGE! Few things are more important than protecting your store’s data.
  • REST API – Great if you’re building integrations between your site and other services
  • Over 200 Bug Fixes – A massive collection of updates to address numerous annoyances.

The minute we heard about the final release we got to working on our own products and are happy to confirm that Ultimento 3 is fully compatible with Magento 1.7.

Whether you’re just trying out Magento or looking to upgrade the store you already have, Magento 1.7 is worth checking out.

The Commative Team