Compile LESS to CSS

Magento 2 utilizes the LESS preprocessor to simplify theming. This makes theme customization intuitive and promotes the writing of reusable and maintainable CSS codes through features like variables, mixins, and inline imports.

From standpoint of a frontend developer, LESS compilation (aka CSS preprocessing) is one of the most important part of M2’s static content deployment that you work most of the time on your Magento 2 custom projects.

To help you understand the context of this subject, this post will explain in brief about the LESS preprocessor for Magento 2, three types of LESS compilation. It also walks you through steps to compile LESS in server-side compilation mode for customizing your theme styles. Continue reading

Fixing URL Rewrites issue

Sept 9, 2020 Update: Adding an additional common URL rewrite problem which you may encounter after data migration and how to fix it.

You might be familiar with the option to add URL Rewrites in both Magento 1 and Magento 2, which is also referred to Search Engine Friendly URLs. Sometimes URL Rewrite issues arise when migrating data from Magento 1 to Magento 2. This guide will help you in troubleshooting when you encounter such issues.

What is URL Rewrite?

URL rewrites make it possible to make your existing Magento store URLs more ‘search engine friendly” and also easier for visitors to read.

Within Magento, the system URL looks similar:

  • For a Product URL: /catalog/product/view/id/10
  • For a Category URL: /catalog/category/view/id/11

The ‘catalog’ segment refers to the Catalog module of the Magento core, followed by other segments indicate that a product with ID 10 or a category ID 11 should be displayed on the page. No matter how often the URL changes, these ID remains the same.
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Customer Journey

Once upon a time, when e-commerce was just nothing more than a startup idea for businesses, getting customers to click the right buttons and making the purchase was as easy as 1-2-3. All you had to do was launch an e-commerce website and zap! You’ve got the sales that you needed. You had a market that was hungry for stuff, and you were only too willing to feed their shopping appetite.

But of course, that was once upon a time. Somewhere along the way, the story has taken a 90-degree shift, and now businesses are scrambling online to catch up with where the happy customer online has left the usual marketing trail.

As time went on, it became more and more challenging for you to win your market over and to get them to be your buyers. The e-commerce landscape evolved. Businesses identical to yours began popping up—one after another. But it was not just about the fiercer competition. It was also about how the average consumer could now have better access to information, and with only a few taps and swipes at that!

With the ‘buyer’s journey’ (as marketers often call it) shifting into something non-linear, e-commerce began to take a whole new perspective. The shift in the ‘buyer’s journey’ continues to pose a challenge even to the most experienced online seller. So if you’re having a tough time targeting the right people at the right time, then rest assured that you’re not alone. And you’re not a hopeless case!

To find out how your business can best deal with the challenge, let’s first have a look at the buyer’s journey and understand what actually takes place before you make or lose a sale.

Buyer's eCommerce Journey

A deeper understanding of your buyer’s Ecommerce Journey

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A rocking cart-page

Ahh! The cart page! This is basically the page that rocks your items straight to check-out. But just as the saying goes, do not count the chickens before the eggs have hatched. Think of this: your cart-page is the incubator where premature sales are waiting for approval. So how can you make sure that your eggs, I mean, your items, rather, can come out of the checkout process successfully? Just like an incubator, make sure your cart page is irresistibly hot that your visitors cannot say “no” to purchase! Here’s a list of pointers for you to consider:

A rocking cart-page

Create a Rocking Cart-page that Secures Your Conversion!

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5 Ways to Boost Magento Holiday Sales

Just a few months more and it’s finally going to be the season that you are waiting for: the holidays (Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving, Christmas or New year)! And with the holiday season fast approaching, it is important that you prepare NOW for when your target market would be most likely keen to spend on your products!

Read on for five ways you could boost your Magento holiday sales.

5 Ways to Boost Your Magento Holiday Sales

5 Ways to Boost Your Magento Holiday Sales

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Pop-up

Ever tried visiting a site and finding yourself face to face with those boxes that pop out on your screen while you’re having fun surfing through a page? Chances are that you have. These pop-ups, as they are called, are becoming increasingly common. Online shops and blogs are good examples of sites that employ this marketing strategy. In fact, even the least trafficked of those sites use pop-ups!

But have you wondered why pop-ups remain a popular marketing technique despite the fact that many seem uninterested in anything but finding that little ‘x’ button to close each one that pops out?

Well, the answer can only be one thing—pop-ups, when done right, do the work!

How to Make Winning Pop-Ups

Of course, the key words here are ‘done right’, and that is exactly what you’re reading this article for. We’re here to let you in on the secret to making winning pop-ups and getting more bucks roll in for your Magento store. We’re here to walk you through the steps to creating the kind of pop-up that your website’s visitors would not want to close; the kind of pop-up that would have them giving you their email addresses. Continue reading

5 powerful e-mail marketing strategies

Email marketing is among the most effective tools you can have as an ecommerce business owner. Really, this is one of your strongest aces in customer relations and product promotion. With its cost efficiency and an added benefit of building rapport to your customers, email marketing is definitely something you should consider to foster a life-time long relations with your clients.

However, before jumping straight to your keyboard and sending e-mails to your website visitors, there are several things to consider in designing an effective email marketing approach:

1. Adopt different campaign series

a. Welcome series

Take the opportunity to hook your visitors up the moment they sign up on your website. Offer welcome discounts for their first purchase. This doesn’t only boost your conversions but also foster a good relationship with your new customers. Consider this an effective advertisement for your website while giving your clients a good first impression on your brand. Continue reading

Upsell vs Cross Sell

“Would you like fries with that?” The existence of this very question for decades proves that shoppers are not at all that stiff with expenditures for added value. The fact of the matter is that a decisive customer is a rare phenomenon in the real world and much more so in e-commerce. A study conducted on customer behaviours reveals that shoppers are more vulnerable in cashless purchasing transactions. With online payment as a major factor, once a customer is set for an item purchase, the seller bears the biggest opportunity of maximizing sales.

To make the most out of this trend, cross selling and upselling techniques, when used properly, may work as a charm for both your Magento store and your customers. You may have heard of these strategies. A basic knowledge of this marketing combo can do much mutual benefit for your company, your customers, and of course, your ROI. Continue reading

AB Testing Thumbnail

Getting this far in the online market means you must have mastered at least the basics of online marketing strategies to boost your conversions. You have heard about, and most probably tried, most of these strategies yourself. So now, let’s talk about one of the famous tools for conversion optimization – A/B testing.

A/B testing, as the name implies, is a mechanism used to create more than one version on a page with the purpose of knowing which approach appeals more to your Magento visitor and ultimately yields higher sales. Now allow us to take these strategies further than knowing how to use them by learning when and what we should be using them for. In this article, let us begin with this widely used A/B testing method. Continue reading

Effective landing page part 2

Knowing the difference between a landing page and homepage designs and when to use them can take the success of your Magento store to the next level. In here lies the effectivity of your company promotion and increasing conversions. To get you started, let us begin with a detailed and neutral comparison between these two important pages:

1. Two different types of visitors

Landing page

Visitors who end up here usually do not intend to get to your page. Often, these people do not even know you. However, they found something online that linked back to this page. The most common scenario before arriving in your landing page is that they might have been searching for items or services and you might just be what they need.

Homepage

Your homepage visitors, on the other hand, probably know you already. Most likely, they got to your page by intention, typing your web page address on their search bar. Whether through word-of-the-mouth advertising or they came across your company name from other sources, their common ground is that they have heard about you and what you do. Continue reading