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Top 10 Successful Businesses Using Magento
If you’ve been considering Magento but you’re not sure if it would be right for you, consider this: some of the largest and most successful companies in the world use Magento for their eCommerce websites. The proof is in the pudding; if this powerful software can work for these business giants, then it can probably work for you too. Let’s take a look at 10 of the most notable companies that trust Magento to get the job done:
1. Coca Cola
This ubiquitous beverage giant has long dominated the drink scene with its flagship product, Coca-Cola. However, it also owns hundreds of smaller brand names and product lines that are popular all over the world. They trust Magento with their eCommerce website because they know it will get the job done reliably and professionally.
2. Ford
Ford Motor Company is one of the largest and most successful automotive manufacturers in history. Of American-based companies, they rank at number 8 on the Fortune 500 list. They are the second largest automobile manufacturer in the United States and the fifth largest in the world. Ford knows Magento is a consistent and effective piece of software that they can count on.
3. Vizio
Vizio is one of the most trusted manufacturers of high-quality electronics in the world. Known for bringing all the features and specifications of a high-end television set into one affordable package, Vizio knows how important a good website can be. They use Magento because it won’t require them to sacrifice usability or professional quality in order to make the website they need.
4. Nike
Nike is the world’s leader in athletic footwear. They have built one of the most iconic brands on the globe through persistently keen marketing and innovative foresight. Nike uses Magento because of its capabilities to provide a fresh, functional interface that supports all of their new ideas.
5. Fox Connect
Fox Connect is a wildly successful eCommerce website for Fox Entertainment that allows users to search, sort, and purchase all of their favorite movies in one convenient location. Magento makes this experience simple and intuitive, so the interface will never get lost in translation.
6. Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble is one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, producing most widely recognized household brands. Magento allows them to keep their website organized and easy to use, so consumers don’t lose track of their needs and can find the information they are looking for.
7. Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems is the largest networking company in the world. They specialize in many technology niche markets through a variety of acquired software and hardware technologies. Cisco knows a thing or two about websites, and they choose Magento for their eCommerce site because they know how secure and user-friendly their website will be.
8. Olympus
Olympus is the world’s leader in optics and reprography technology manufacturing. They sell high-end medical, scientific, and industrial equipment as well as cameras for both professional and amateur photographers. Olympus has an eye for detail, and they use Magento for their eCommerce site because they can see how easy it is to maintain a sleek, modular, and modern page that catches the eye as well as the imagination.
9. Nestlé Nespresso
Nestlé’s Nespresso brings professional coffee capabilities into the comfort and convenience of your own home. To remain consistent with their image, Nespresso uses Magento to give their eCommerce interface an organized feel and a stylistic twist.
10. 3M
3M is a world leader in innovative manufacturing. They produce a wide variety of products and even technologies that have benefited communities around the world for over 100 years. 3M takes advantage of Magento’s capabilities to create a webpage that brings their ideas to life.
Why You Should Switch to Magento
Magento is quickly becoming the most popular CMS, and for good reason: with a more professional design, more intuitive interface, and a lot of really great features you can’t get anywhere else, Magento sticks out above the competition. It is their innovation and reliability that has piqued the interests of private investment firms around the world like Hillhouse, the Chinese wealth management company that recently put $250 million into Magento for expansion into Asia. As Magento continues to outpace the competition, they also continue to consistently provide excellent updates to their already-awesome software package.
But don’t just take Hillhouse’s word for it. Let’s review 5 of the biggest reasons why Magento is the best CMS platform around:
1. Magento is Open-Sourced
They say that the best things in life are free. While you’ll likely end up wanting to pay for Magento’s Enterprise Edition for full commercial support, you can actually use Magento’s Community Edition for free. And because it is open-sourced, you can legally edit the source code to create endless possibilities for your webpage.
2. Born for E-Commerce
While competitors like WordPress and Joomla started out as CMS platforms that were later adapted for e-commerce, Magento was built from the ground up to deliver the best e-commerce experience around. Magento’s intuitive interface is packed with incredibly useful features that will save you time, energy, and money. This means less configuring, and more doing.
3. Incredibly Modular
Because of its open-sourced nature, Magento is the natural choice for integrating third-party apps or extensions and fully customizing your website. When you use Magento, you can make sure it feels tailor-made to suit your needs.
4. User Friendly
Magento is the most user-friendly e-commerce platform on the market. The administrator user interface is as simple as can be, while maintaining complexity in options that will allow you to take adjustments as far as you want to. The clear and intuitive customer user interface comes loaded with great utilities and makes site navigation a breeze. When you choose Magento, you know your customers will be even happier than you are.
5. State of the Art Security
With a long list of native security countermeasures and easy-toggle options, you can rest assured that your Magento website will be safe from both malicious programs and hackers alike. From data encryption to IP whitelisting to two-step authentication, you can set up your Magento site to be locked tightly from intruders on day one. And because Magento, Inc. releases new security updates regularly to keep up with cutting-edge security threats, you know you’re in good hands.
8 Most Important Magento Security Tips
If you, like more and more successful businesses around the world, are using Magento as your e-commerce website solution, you’ll want to stay on the cutting edge of online security to keep your business safe. In order to help you achieve this, we’ve put together a small list of the 8 most important tips and tricks for improving the safety and security of your Magento e-commerce website.
1. Stay updated to the newest version
Magento releases updates quite often, and they will patch you up with the latest security fixes and countermeasures. The developers do a very good job of watching for new holes in Magento’s security and fixing them promptly. By staying updated to the newest version of Magento, you can be sure that you’re getting the best security they can offer.
2. Implement two-step authentication
Unfortunately, a secure password does not always do the trick when it comes to keeping your website secure. Because of the various ways in which malicious software can compromise your login info, it is a very good idea to use two-factor authentication. There are many Magento extensions to do this (like Rubion), and this will drastically improve your security. It’s much harder for a hacker to use your login info if they don’t also have access to your phone, for example.
3. Utilize a custom admin path
Because the default admin path is the same for all Magento users, using the default admin path makes it easier for hackers to attempt to force your system by guessing passwords. It is therefore highly recommended to change your admin path. In order to do this, simply locate ‘/app/etc/local.xml’, then find the line ’<![CDATA[admin]]>’, then replace “admin” with a different word that will be harder to guess.
4. Never save your login info
This does not just go for Magento, but really any service you use online. Never save your account usernames or passwords locally on your computer. This makes it much too easy for a hacker or virus to find your info and use your account. Instead, try to memorize them or write them down on a physical note that you keep somewhere safe but accessible.
5. Keep your login info unique
For the sake of convenience, people often recycle the same usernames and passwords for multiple online services. This compromises security in a big way, because as soon as one service gets hacked the hacker now has access to multiple accounts. For something as important as your Magento login, use a unique username and password to avoid this disaster.
6. Use an encrypted connection
All you have to do to implement data encryption in Magento is to go to the system configuration menu and check the box that says “Use Secure URLs”. This will make sure that your data is encrypted and cannot be easily decoded if it is intercepted by a malicious program or individual. This is a necessary step for making sure your Magento website is in compliance with PCI data security standards for online transactions.
7. Use complex login info
If you’re worried about your login info being guessed or cracked, try using a very complex username and password. If you are able to write it on a sticky note, you can be sure not to forget it. Make both of them at least 15 characters long and use a combination of both uppercase and lowercase letters, as well as numbers and special characters. This will make them nearly impossible to guess, and make your infor very hard to crack.
8. Restrict admin access with whitelisting
One of the best things you can do for the security of your Magento page is to implement whitelisting to restrict admin access only to approved IP addresses. There are a couple of ways to do this, like through ‘.htaccess’ but most people prefer to use the Apache directive LocationMatch:
<code> <LocationMatch "admin"> Change ‘admin’ to your custom admin path.
Order Deny,Allow Deny from All Allow from 10.10.10.0/24 Change this to the subnet or IP address you want to allow.
</LocationMatch> </code>
Why Magento Scored $250 Million from China
Hillhouse Capital, one of China’s largest investment firms, decided in early January to invest $250 million into the California-based Magento Commerce. According to the Financial Times, this puts their estimated value to $700 million; that’s more than a 50% increase.
Who’s Who?
If you are unfamiliar with Hillhouse Capital, here’s what you need to know: it was founded in 2005 by Zhang Lei with $20 million in seed capital from the Yale Endowment. They currently manage over $20 billion, and they normally like to keep a very low profile. That is what makes this investment such an interesting play.
You may know that Magento was originally developed by Varien, Inc. in 2008. It was eventually sold to eBay, which eventually spun off the company. Since then, it has been increasingly successful as a competitor to software like WordPress and Joomla, and has been steadily growing every year. Magento boats some pretty big clients, from Ford to Coca Cola to Nike.
But why this and why now?
Shifting Economy This staggering move was explained by Mark Lavelle, Magento’s current CEO, to be for global expansion of sales and marketing operations (namely in Asia). This will allow them to dip into the increasingly large pools of consumer spending there.
China, while having a long-standing reputation in the United States as being a producer economy, has been rapidly shifting. As Chinese companies continue to expand and outsource production to nearby countries while China builds its middle class, consumer spending in China has been on a sharp increase. Many business-wise investors are looking more and more to China and Southeast Asia for opportunities to grow their wealth and build the budding economies there.
This impromptu infusion of funding says a lot about what types of markets we can expect to see spiking in China and its surrounding nations. With the infrastructural investments we have been seeing by the Chinese government as of late, it looks unmistakably like the impressively fast construction of a functional middle class to support and create new industries that will further solidify China as an economic powerhouse in the world market.
New Kiyoh reviews release by Interactivated
Today we released the new version of the KiyOh reviews plugin for:
- Magento 1 (all releases) - Magento 2.0 and 2.1 - Prestashop 1.7 - Woocommerce (all releases)About the KiyOh reviews module
With the newest release of the official Kiyoh reviews plugin you get a complete solution for integrating the most used review network of The Netherlands into your webstore. Gaining popularity rapidly internationally. A full overview of the capabilities of the latest plugin:- Multistore support
- Easy widget implementation
- Automatic microdata integration enables showing the stars and your avarge score in the Google search results
- Support for the Kiyoh.nl network for your Dutch language stores
- Support for the aKiyoh.com network for your international stores
- Language selection for emails that are send for your international stores
- Support for working with customer groups (exclude certain groups)
- A-synchronised checkout process which avoids any interuption of the checkout in case of a problem on the network
- Send reviews after certain order status events, after shipment or after invoice has been generated for any order
- Possibility to configure a delay in days after which the review invite email should be send
- Possibility to configure reminder emails from your Kiyoh account
Also see www.kiyoh.nl for more information.
Magento vs. PrestaShop comparison
While choosing the right eCommerce platform, it’s important to look at the best choices on the market. A good look at Magento vs. PrestaShop will help you get closer to the right choice. After comparing the two, you will have a better idea of which one fits your needs the best. So here we are introducing our comparison of Magento and PrestaShop.
A short Magento and PrestaShop story
Since both of these are open-source programs, they can be customized in many different ways. PrestaShop gives you tons of features, makes site management easy, provides SEO benefits, gives users analytics and reporting and so much more. Over 125,000 online stores use PrestaShop, which makes finding help with the program easy.
Magento is, however, known as the leader in eCommerce shopping cart solutions. They provide a huge variety of features, tools and customization. Magento provides better SEO benefits than any other shopping cart on the market with targeted promotion and merchandising. They also allow for multiple payment and shipping option. Many large businesses trust their shopping cart needs to Magento.
What Do You Get With Magento?
Magento provides lots of opportunities, and is a complete solution with open source e-commerce with all kinds of flexibility. You are the one to manage this e-commerce solution, and you can change the look, content, and how it functions. Path set Magento makes it easy to use it for search engine optimization, and you can even use it as a tool for catalog management.
With plenty of experience behind this program, since it was founded in 2001, you will not struggle to find answers to their questions. A recent partnership with eBay makes the system even more powerful and adds more to the community of developers.
Magento provides users with all types of modules, functions and extensions. Many of them praised the technical sport, and some even called him the best in the business. It is suitable for professional online shops and works great for anyone who is trying to run a fully online or partially online business.
What Do You Get With PrestaShop?
PrestaShop is another open source e-commerce solution with many features. You can use a basic set-up for free, but you will need to purchase templates, themes and modules, if you want the most out of this system. It was launched in 2007 and targeted small and medium-sized businesses looking to get an online presence.
PrestaShop is available in 40 languages, but only supports entirely in English and French. They do not offer formal support, but you can find lots of developers and users on the forum PrestaShop. You do not have to meet many requirements to use the program, except for PHP 5.2, MySQL 5 and Linux, UNIX, or Windows operating system.
Comparing Magento vs. Prestashop
Choosing between PrestaShop is not so easy against Magento. They are both large e-commerce solutions. PrestaShop target small and medium-sized businesses, while Magento serves medium and large businesses. If you take your business on the Internet for the first time or when changing from other e-commerce solutions, both of these programs provide an excellent solution. If you are technologically challenged, and you plan to do the work yourself, PrestaShop is the best choice. However, if you are aware of the technology and web design, you will find Magento is better suited. Customizing easier with PrestaShop shopping cart, but you do not get the same control as you do with Magento.
A large company with a team of experts will be easier to use for all their Magento shopping cart needs. However, small businesses, or those unable to hire someone to handle it for them to find a more affordable version of PrestaShop.
Looking at the Numbers
PrestaShop was released in August 2007, while Magento was originally created in 2001, Magento has 15 versions, while the PrestaShop has only seven. Nevertheless, PrestaShop provides more than 25,000 plug-ins and extensions, while Magento provides only 1,500 plugins and extensions. Both have about the same number of online stores with the help of software and have large clients such as Nike AU & UK for Magento and FAB Shoes for PrestaShop.
Magento PrestaShop kills in Twitter world, with three times as many followers. Nevertheless, PrestaShop is more than three times the number of Facebook likes Magento. The monthly cost of service PrestaShop is about half of Magento, Magento but looking for more on Google, than PrestaShop. PrestaShop is a simple to install and configure. Nevertheless, Magento SEO offers more advantages and more options in general.
▪ PrestaShop easier to install than Magento
▪ Magento has more features out of the box than PrestaShop
▪ PrestaShop has lower system requirements
▪ Magento has no problems with compatibility, making PrestaShop
▪ It is easier to customize PrestaShop
▪ Magento provides additional user features and options
▪ Magento comes with a technical support team, and a large community of developers, while the PrestaShop only provides a forum for support
▪ PrestaShop much smaller Magento
▪ better search capabilities in PrestaShop
▪ Magento offers more for the user than PrestaShop
▪ Magento SEO has features not found in any other e-commerce solutions
The Overall Picture
After looking at the comparison of some of the larger offerings and the Magento PrestaShop, it is easy to see that they meet the different types of online stores. PrestaShop is not as popular as the Magento, but it has become increasingly popular over the past few years. This is a new market compared with Magento and PrestaShop many experts believe will become a major competitor in the next couple of years. Deciding between PrestaShop is not so easy against Magento. They are both large e-commerce solutions. PrestaShop target small and medium-sized businesses, while Magento serves medium and large businesses. If you take your business on the Internet for the first time or when changing from other e-commerce solutions, both of these programs provide an excellent solution.
If you are technologically challenged, and you plan to do the work yourself, PrestaShop is the best choice. However, if you are aware of the technology and web design, you will find Magento is better suited. Customizing easier with PrestaShop shopping cart, but you do not get the same control as you do with Magento.
A large company with a team of experts will be easier to use for all their Magento shopping cart needs. However, small businesses, or those unable to hire someone to handle it for them to find a more affordable version of PrestaShop.
Our big team of 25 experts can help you with both: Magento and PrestaShop.
What is new in Magento 2.1
Convenient tools, developed through extensive usability testing make the process quick and efficient. In addition, the new timeline on the dashboard provides a visual appearance of all the planned upgrades, so your team can easily coordinate the campaign in order to maximize the return on sales.
Enterprise Edition 2.1 takes the worry out of the planned upgrades. Now you can view your site changes from the point of view of the store and share links to content made with other team members to do the review and approvals much easier.
What else you can do is to preview the changes in checkout in order to confirm all promotions are as expected. Updates are automatically published and removed at the scheduled time, so you can "set it and forget it".
Enterprise Edition 2.1 features PayPal system improvements that optimize your checkout experience, and increase sales. PayPal Checkout context increases the conversion rate by 69 basis points by allowing customers to pay with PayPal, without leaving your website.
Securely store credit card information stored with PayPal credit card means the most frequent purchases: Customers prefer to check out quickly, without entering their credit card information.
PCI Compliance is also easier with the Enterprise Edition 2.1. New fields enable Braintree to securely collect payment information directly from your website, so that you can qualify for the simplest level of PCI compliance.
However, since only individual fields are replaced by Braintree, you stay firmly in control of your checkout experience and conversion rates.
Enterprise Edition 2.1 comes fully loaded with a flexible search, cutting edge site search technology that turns shoppers into buyers. This search engine supports 33 languages out of the box and allows you set "stop words", the search for synonyms, as well attribute weighting to deliver the most relevant search results.
It is also designed to handle large directories and can easily scale to support enterprises and fast growing vendors. Configuring Elasticsearch is easy, so you can start seeing results immediately.
Advances to the Magento Admin to make you work more effectively. All-new search feature allows an administrator to quickly find the customer and order information. Search Synonyms radically easier to install on multiple sites. And, redesigned forms to simplify and accelerate the process of creating new products, content and search.
More interesting facts about Magento platform
Magento includes such publications as Magento Community and Magento Enterprise. While Magento Community Edition is free, Magento Enterprise is paid. In Magento Enterprise and Magento CE there is the same basic code, but the Enterprise version provides additional functionality and support. Also there was another release, Magento Go, which has been on the market prior to late 2016.
Magento e-commerce is the most comprehensive open source e-commerce solution on the market and can successfully cope with the competition from such well-known and equally capable ecommerce platforms, such as Oracle ATG, Hybris and IBM WebCommerce. It also was able to win an increased interest to the profile of Forrester and Gartner in a very short period of time.
Magento was acquired by eBay and at the "Imagine" Magento conference in 2014 where it was announced that Magento 2 will come on the market soon. Of which we have seen the stable release in 2016.
According to the most recent surveys of the market, the Magento (with a share of 26%) remains the most popular platform for the fourth year on the e-commerce market. This indicates the increasing success of Magento users. Also Magento is the leader in the category of top online webstores.
As Magento is a flexible platform, it is very capable for a product’s configuration, payment options and smart delivery integrations. It is convenient for the seller to manage the store with ease, changing its appearance, content and functionality of the interface intuitive administration.
The huge number of Magento developers significantly reduces outsourcing costs for the creation of your online store. We here at Interactivated are very skilled and experienced in Magento! If you have any questions feel free to ask us, we are always ready to help you.
Since Magento exists on the market, more than 5000 extensions have appeared. These extensions are very useful for owners of webstores in making their stores more customized and relevant for their businesses.
Magento has been designed to take advantage of multiple servers configuration in a cluster environment so that it can work on any number of web servers. So it became quite easy to handle a large number of requests at the same time. Also, the performance of your store can be significantly increased by the growth of the number of nodes.
Interesting facts about Magento!
1.
Magento includes such publications as Magento Community and Magento Enterprise. While Magento Community Edition is free, Magento Enterprise is paid. In Magento Enterprise and Magento CE there is the same basic code, but the Enterprise version provides additional functionality and support. Also there was another release, Magento Go, which has been on the market prior to late 2016.
2.
Magento e-commerce is the most comprehensive open source e-commerce solution on the market and can successfully cope with the competition from such well-known and equally capable ecommerce platforms, such as Oracle ATG, Hybris and IBM WebCommerce. It also was able to win an increased interest to the profile of Forrester and Gartner in a very short period of time.
3.
Magento was acquired by eBay and at the "Imagine" Magento conference in 2014 where it was announced that Magento 2 will come on the market soon. Of which we have seen the stable release in 2016.
4.
According to the most recent surveys of the market, the Magento (with a share of 26%) remains the most popular platform for the fourth year on the e-commerce market. This indicates the increasing success of Magento users. Also Magento is the leader in the category of top online webstores.
5.
As Magento is a flexible platform, it is very capable for a product’s configuration, payment options and smart delivery integrations. It is convenient for the seller to manage the store with ease, changing its appearance, content and functionality of the interface intuitive administration.
6.
The huge number of Magento developers significantly reduces outsourcing costs for the creation of your online store. We here at Interactivated are very skilled and experienced in Magento! If you have any questions feel free to ask us, we are always ready to help you.
7.
Since Magento exists on the market, more than 5000 extensions have appeared. These extensions are very useful for owners of webstores in making their stores more customized and relevant for their businesses.
8.
Magento has been designed to take advantage of multiple servers configuration in a cluster environment so that it can work on any number of web servers. So it became quite easy to handle a large number of requests at the same time. Also, the performance of your store can be significantly increased by the growth of the number of nodes.
HHVM - First of our New generation Magento server is now online!
You can now test yourself for the worlds best performance we worked on for quit some time now.
Keep in mind that this demo is hosted from Ireland and performance also depends on the distance it has to cover to your device. See www.peperzaden.nl Loading times are being measured between 40 and 90 ms from Amsterdam. (Cloud instance location Ireland). Loading times closer to Ireland will be even lower With the newest Amazon AWS it is now also possible to host your cloud instance from Frankfurt, offering even faster pageloads for customers in The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France and other Western European countries.
Read more about our performance stacks for Magento
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