From Black Friday to Christmas Eve is one of the busiest shopping periods of the year, especially for online retailers. A recent story in the San Jose Mercury News reports that “more holiday shoppers [are buying] later and online.” Sales on Cyber Monday were up 17.5% from last year, and the coming weeks leading up to Christmas are expected to produce a record breaking surge in online sales as well. Is your Magento store in the best position to capitalize?
If you aren’t sure, consulting with Magento developers who stay abreast of the latest, greatest applications for the platform could be well worth the time and money. By optimizing their stores with Magento apps that are designed to help rope in more dollars, many Magento customers are planning to make financial haul this holiday. By working with the Magento developers at Coalition Technologies to implement the right apps for your store, there’s no reason you can’t join them.
Apps You Should Know About
New Magento apps hit the market all the time, and some aren’t worth a second look, as they complicate the buying process, make store management more complex, or resemble a capability that Magento already offers. However, there are also apps that skillfully take advantage of business opportunities and generate dynamic results. Below are four apps that could help you retool your Magento store for the holidays and close out the year with a bang.
Temando Logistical App
A 2011 Stress Free Shopping Campaign Effectiveness Survey found that “48% of online shoppers abandoned purchases at the checkout due to the delivery options offered.” Temando is a comprehensive delivery management platform that uses top-notch logistical solutions to offer dynamic delivery options. The closer it gets to Christmas, the more you’ll benefit from having the Temando application linked to your store, as it will help you capture late purchases.
Bronto Abandoned Shopping Cart App
Bronto has an email marketing app that addresses the abandoned shopping cart phenomenon. With Bronto’s shopping cart app attached to your store, you can send email alerts to customers who abandon their carts. The idea is to tempt shoppers to return and complete the purchase, often with the aid of a promotion. Bronto claims to help businesses recover 70% of abandoned shopping carts. That could be a lot of extra money in your business’ Christmas stocking.
OneStepCheckout App
Magento developers have long known that the fewer steps the checkout process involves, the more likely customers are to purchase something. The OneStepCheckout app is specifically designed to truncate the payment process for Magento stores, and truncate it does. The original six-step process for making a Magento-powered purchase is reduced to just one step. OneStepCheckout reports that their app can increase the sales by up to 60%.
Yotpo Ratings and Reviews App
The 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer found that 75% of consumers trust what they hear about a business from their peers, but only 17 percent “trust a great deal” what a business says about itself. The Yotpo ratings and reviews app lets you capitalize on this phenomenon by encouraging customers to leave ratings and reviews and providing them with a way to share the information via social media. Once shared, the information helps generate traffic to your Magento store.
Contact Us Today
Magento is a complex ecommerce platform whose ability to generate results is partially based on the applications a store features. Between now and Christmas, the applications above will play a pivotal role in helping Magento customers capitalize on holiday online sales trends. To find out if these applications would be a good fit for your store, contact the Magento developers at Coalition Technologies at (888) 993-7639, or click here to use our contact form.
