If you are running an online business or planning to have one in the future then, guaranteed, you will surely need a reliable hosting service. When it comes to hosting, there are multiple hosting services available:

• Cloud Hosting
• Virtual Private Server
• Shared Hosting and more...

A large number of eCommerce businesses rely on cloud hosting because it bypasses the limitations of traditional hosting, and ensures superior performance and reliability. On top of that, it becomes more significant when you prefer a Managed cloud hosting in terms of optimized server response time and easy manageable access.

Cloudways is the platform that offers complete Managed Hosting for Magento, which makes you worry-free to deal with all the hosting operations.

Sound interesting? Then, why not take a quick tour of Cloudways - Managed Magento Hosting Provider.

Simply, get yourself registered with Cloudways and let the magic begin.

Now, it’s time to look at how Cloudways helps Magento store owners and developers to manage and optimize their web store(s).

Performance
When it comes to online stores, don’t compromise on the performance. Let’s have a look at what Cloudways - managed Magento hosting is offering to boost your web store speed and performance.

Dedicated Server
Cloudways maximize the Magento server and application performance by providing a dedicated server. Each server has dedicated IP and stays the same if you change the size of the server, where, this feature isn’t available with shared hosting services.

Built-in Cache
Want to know the reason how Cloudways manages the server speed and performance?
Thunderstack!

Cloudways Thnderstack is a robust hosting stack that makes the store speed 100% faster without any hassle. This stack is the combination of Apache, Memcached, MySQL, and other components.

Use its power to create an awesome web app.

You can find these components under the Server Management section > Manage Services.

Supports Latest Version of PHP
Ensure that your Magento server is supporting the latest version of PHP by clicking on the Setting & Package > under Advanced option.

Support Redis
Cloudways platform does take care of the database performance by enabling Redis. It uses to cache the data that a web server needs and reduces the server response time. Memcached is also another option which Cloudways supports; however, Redis offers a few more data structures such as string, hash, linked list in memory.

Auto-healing
Relax! Because Cloudways platform is capable enough to deal with all the ambiguities related to the server. For example, if the Apache gets down due to the huge number of requests, then it will automatically restart it so the website performance doesn’t get affected.

Security

Running an online business without managing the major security factors will bring your business down. Here’s how Cloudways deals with security concerns:

IP Whitelist
The major reason to build this feature is to secure the server login. In case, if any suspicious activity occurs (failed login attempt) for a number of times then, that IP will block and no SFTP/SSH connections will be accepted for the next 24 hours.

1-Click SSL Certificate
Whenever the users visit your website, you as a store owner should ensure secure user-engagement and transactions. That’s the reason Cloudways offers a 1-click free SSL certificate installation facility for that you have to fill a specified requirement given below.

You can find this feature under the Application Management section.

Two-Factor Authentication
It’s an extra security layer that protects your Cloudways account. In case, if your username and password get stolen, still intruders won’t be able to reach your platform due to the Two-Factor Authentication security bearer.

you can find this option within the account settings.

Dedicated Firewall
All the Magento hosting servers on Cloudways protected by an OS-level firewall. It helps to fight with the malware and other malicious attacks.

Regular Security Updates
Cloudways performs regular OS patches and firmware upgrades on each Magento server. So that your server always remains secure and protected from vulnerabilities.

Expert Support
Cloudways support team is always keen to deliver tremendous support for their valuable customers.

Active 24/7 Live Chat
Support guys are always active at Cloudways any time of the year to delight the customers to their fullest. You just have to type the query and rest will be taken care of by the support team.

Community
Cloudways community plays an effective role where experts share their skills and experiences which helps to build better tech-community.

Automated Backups
Take a backup of all the necessary files so that you can easily retrieve previous versions of the store at any time. By leveraging this feature you can take a backup of application and server so you won’t suffer from any data loss. It offers two options one is: scheduled your backup and second is take a backup now.

Integrations and Add-on

Let’s take your managed Magento hosting platform to the next level by integrating some useful add-on(s).

SMTP Add-on

This addon offers you an easy and reliable way to configure an external SMTP service to deliver email from the servers. You can choose two options: including, Elastic Email, for which you have to pay and second your own SMTP account. Find this feature under the server management section and it will be the last tab.

Cloudways API
Cloudways gives an opportunity to control the platform by building your solutions. You can manage, develop and integrate your server and applications by using the RESTful API.

CloudwaysBot
CloudwaysBot keeps you updated by sending real-time updates on different selected channels such as Slack, API, HipChat.

Collaboration & Workflow

Managing a team is a herculean task. But not with Cloudways. It has a great workflow and team collaboration tool which lets the things done in just a few clicks. Moreover, you can add a team member along with the restrictions.

Git Integration
With Cloudways you can easily get updated code deployed on the live servers as changes occur in the remote repositories. This feature is available under the application management section. Besides, you can also analyze the git deployment history to keep on monitoring the latest changes.

SSH and SFTP Access
SSH and SFTP are two approaches that let you communicate with the server in a secure way. With these tools, you can access servers, update files and make necessary changes to your Magento application.

Server Transfer
Switch the ownership of the server to the client or any other party by using the 1-click hosting feature. Go to the Server Management, click the floating button at the bottom right of the screen and click on Transfer Server.

Pricing Plan

Cloudways is the ultimate managed hosting platform and with that, it offers the most convenient and reasonable method to pay your invoices. You just have to pay for the resources you have utilized. Besides, you don’t have to pay for the SSL certificate, run multiple applications for no cost, enjoy free migration and much more.

Below is the pricing table for DigitalOcean.

Wrapping Up

While searching for the best Magento 2 hosting platform, you might come to know about this statement that:

“Your hosting can make or break your eCommerce website”

There are several Magento hosting providers, but not all of them will fulfill your requirements and support your online store. Some may lack customer support, while some will have an incomplete feature, and some will cost a lot.

On the other hand, Cloudways offers a reliable and affordable cloud hosting solution for Magento stores. With its ‘Pay As You Go’ payment model, you can pay for the services that you want to avail easily.

Happy Hosting!

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Everyone who is going to run an online business faces the challenge of choosing an engine for the online store. On the one hand, a wide range of platforms simplifies the choice, but on the other, it is much more difficult to choose the one that will be 100% suitable for your particular store.

In this article, we will talk about the benefits of creating an online store on the Magento CMS - one of the most popular CMS platforms for ecommerce. With the help of this engine, one can create huge online stores with different additional functionality. CMS Magento is made in PHP and MySQL and has an open source code, which means that it can be modified any time you need and be adapted to its own needs.

Magento is a very flexible platform. It is quite simple to work with, especially when it comes to setting up products, payment methods or delivery, configurations of a sitemap, the general setting of the store’s workflow, working with siteground etc.

Magento Website Creation: Why Business Owners Choose Magento

Owners of the online stores can completely control the appearance of their resources, content, and functionality of the site using an intuitive management interface.

There are many reasons why Magento CMS is considered to be an ideal platform for online stores. The main advantage is the abundance of built-in functions: we are talking about currency, languages, discounts and coupons, reports, etc. In addition to the built-in functionality, Magento CMS has a lot of modules (or extensions) and various templates. Also, do not forget that this is a scalable and extensible platform.

Magento CMS makes it possible to create several online stores at once, and then manage them with the help of a common center, one administrative panel, which is certainly very convenient. This feature is one of the pros, which inclines many online store owners to choose this particular platform. CMS Magento is a powerful system with which you can create an online store with an incredible assortment of goods. The creators of the engine cooperate with many companies and private developers who produce extensions and additions, which greatly increases the possibilities of this platform.

Moreover, Magento will help you to make your online store one of the leaders in search engines, thanks to the SEO-friendly status of this platform. Automated settings independently create an XML sitemap required for search engines. Of course, this all has a positive effect on website traffic and increases the number of sales.

Business owners are attracted by the abundance of built-in functions and settings, including:

• various product display schemes;
• holding promotions, creating coupon codes;
• sales statistics system;
• reporting for any period on various parameters (client basket, reviews, search, etc.);
• reviews and evaluation of goods by buyers;
• creating newsletters;
• multi-currency;
• delimitation of administrative access rights;
• management of several online stores from a single center, etc.

For the complete and successful work of your online store, this engine requires a high-quality server. As a rule, providers offer to install some CMS, so pay attention to it as it’s really convenient if Magento is on this list.

Magento Development Workflow: All the Ins and Outs You Need to Consider

In fact, if you are ready to create your own online business but you are not sure in your knowledge of website development, you might need professional help of freelancers or some development companies. Such people will be able to help you with setting a theme and the CMS on the localhost, save your website from being hacked, create backups and many other useful acts for maintenance of your online store without using builders which can cost really much money.

Мagento website Сreation: The Main Preparation Steps

Before hiring people you need to compose all the requirements for your future project. First of all, it is important for you to know and understand all the customer needs. During the preparation stage, you should understand how much work you have in your Magento certified project and you determine whether you need to hire a development company, or if a freelancer (one developer) is enough for you. After collecting all the necessary information it will be easier for you to decide what to do next.

Your developer needs to know the important features of your industry, customers, and products. When you prepare this information we recommend identifying the most obvious facts first and then collecting more detailed information accordingly.

We recommend applying a “User Story” approach here. “User Story” is a short description that consists of several simple sentences describing what a user/client needs to do during their visit to your online store. In other words, “User Story” shows how a customer chooses the product, his/her migration through the website, how does the customer prefer finishing the deal. After this, you will be able to recognize all the customer’s way of getting to your website to making a purchase.

Along with the customers’ needs, it is important to understand that you have your own requirements such as types of reports, integration with other systems, process optimization, suitable workflow, different extensions  and modules, the absence of malware, etc.

Magento Design

If you want to refine the design of your online store, you need to:

• Prepare a brand-book (logos, fonts, corporate colors) and any information about the existing design elements you don’t want to change; it is a useful stage, as this point plays on your brand awareness.
• Search for links to websites offering designs of which you would like to model; here is the important point not to copy the design of some famous brand, as it may play not a good game with you and your service which you propose.
• Prepare comments about what you definitely don’t want to have in your online store as the design elements. Do not overload your website with a huge amount of unnecessary elements and buttons, as more your resource will be convenient for the customer in navigation - the better it will influence your income and promotion.

Choosing the Best Magento Developer

When the project starts, it is important to understand that now you and your developer must operate as a team, and the success of the project depends on both of you. The developer will have access to your Magento admin account including some sensitive confidential information. That is why you need to pay much attention to the search of the professionals.

• Read reviews from different internet sources about the developer you are considering hiring.
• Ask them to provide their portfolio and analyze examples of concrete Magento stores of their existing clients (these can be some certain URLs, sites or themes of Magento online stores).
• Ask for recommendations. Today, many companies, as well as freelancers, are ready to give real contacts for you to communicate with and ask for the feedback.
• During the first communication, you can notice how quickly the answers come. If there are delays or no answer at all, it is a bad indicator. A reliable company never ignores potential customers.
• If you prefer hiring freelancers, you may organize a test work for them to make sure that developers are really professionals.

The developer has more experience in Magento than you do, that is why some good recommendations regarding your project optimization, making your online store more efficient, saving money and so on, have to be provided during project discussions. This will indicate their professional approach.

Find out how long the company has existed. Young companies can be good partners as well, but in this case, you need to check all of the above points more carefully.

Specifications and Cost

Your next point is the technical specification of your Magento project. The developer has to give you this document for confirmation. It is necessary to understand all the points in it. If something is written in technical language and it is not clear to you, ask for clarification. This document is your “safety airbag”, you will check all the work using it and will be able to ask for your money back if something is wrong.

Either in the technical specification or in a separate document, it is essential to agree to the terms of the project and identify those people who are responsible for communication on both sides. According to the technical specification, the price of the project will be calculated. Of course, you have an opportunity to make several calculations with various companies to compare, but it is not a good approach to choose the developer only based on price.

GoMage has been developing Magento online stores since 2010 and has great experience in this sphere. We recommend paying attention to the following points:

• Magento is a great e-commerce platform and about 90% of the functionality is already embedded.
• If functionality is not available in the default version it is highly probable that extensions for that functionality have already been developed and can be found here
• Only 2-3% of the required functionality can be done as customization. This point is the most expensive.

How to Find a Good Magento Developer: Pro Tips

At this stage, an online store owner should be ready to accept the finished work for approval.
If a design is a part of the project, it will be developed. The design is the most difficult part of an evaluation. Be ready to have several design drafts, to give comments about graphics objects and so on. You should know that you may choose a ready-made template for Magento store in different kinds of marketplaces for example.

There is a great variety of categories and themes for the future online business, so you can choose any you need. Along with it, you may separately hire frontend developers, web designers to order a special design for your online store. Here you must know that the unique website design may cost more expensive than a ready-made template or theme or a general complex of services which contains many different digital acts.

There are many different ready-made templates and themes so you can choose one for your future project.

Some technical work can start during the design development and then both functionality and design are developed simultaneously, but it is a rare practice. After approval of graphic design elements, website coding, page composition, and technical work are started. It is not your responsibility to understand all the ins and outs of the project organization. If you hire professional designers and web developers you may be a generator of some ideas while your team will create different modules with specific targets.

A professional developer always communicates with clients and keeps them informed about the work progress. It is really useful to give feedback and ask if something is unclear. Different mistakes always happen, and it is important to inform the developer immediately when one is identified.

From our experience, we know that during the project realization stage it might be very challenging and expensive to change anything. A lot of time has been spent and a lot of work has been done by both sides, so they are "in the same boat". If something goes wrong, the best way is to discuss and work together to find a workable solution with your Magento certified developer.

Magento Website Creation: It is Time to Make Your Decision

All in all, before choosing the best Magento developer it is necessary to make sure that people you hire are really professionals in web developing, design, and so on. Before starting to work on creating an online store, prepare a list with all the needs, requirements, and offers you would like to see on your resource. Your task as an ecommerce business owner is to try and make your online store the best and the most user-friendly place to shop through and you will see how quickly your customers make purchases and return to your resource again and again.

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Google Shopping is one of the most effective advertising instruments to promote your online store products. It has gained great popularity with online merchants.

Google Shopping is a type of advertising campaign in Ads that allows you to advertise your online store products on Google. Google Shopping, in fact, is a commodity aggregator of online stores.

There is a lot of information online describing how attractive Google Shopping Campaigns are, and some people say that you can make money “hand over fist” there. We don’t deny that it is possible. But it is also true that Google Shopping is a constantly developing platform and it is necessary to monitor all changes and know all technical features in order to be effective.

There are three levels of issue in Shopping:
First level. First search page: Google product advertisements in the Google search network. There are several points in the ad: photos, price, store rating, name of the shop, heading + additional information.

Second level. Shopping page - Google Shopping. This is a marketplace (like Yandex.Market, for example), where sellers place their products, and customers are able to find them, go to the seller’s website and make a purchase there. Its advantage is a lower cost per click compared to ads on the search network.

Third level Product page - Google Shopping. On this page you can read a more detailed description of the product model and compare its price in different stores.

Understanding of Google Shopping Campaign Management

GoMage Company has extensive experience in researching different shopping engines including Google Shopping. Our bestselling extension – GoMage Feed Pro – is developed to empower merchants with the ability to widen their markets by uploading product information directly to shopping engines.

Our clients ask us a lot of questions concerning Google Shopping and, in this article, we’d like to review some common missteps that can take place.

Incorrect Google Shopping feed settings
Google Shopping is a platform that has its own structure, and it is not recommended to send the data from an online store to the Merchant Center directly. You can win, but it is appropriate to say that nothing should be done in haste. This is only a short-term benefit.

Doing so, you completely ignore Google Shopping feed settings and your product data will not meet the requirements of the platform. Consequently, the effectiveness of advertising will be very low. For instance, the titles from your online store will be placed as the titles in your Ads, and this is not normally the correct approach.

Google Shopping Campaign Structure

Campaigns with a single ad group, which includes all the products of an online store at once - is an ineffective deal. The budget is wasted, conversions are underpaid, in short, as a result you'll get nothing good. The racket effect appears if the trading campaigns do not have a well-thought-out structure and settings for finding the most profitable products/requests and screening out the least effective ones.

For example, a common rate is set in a campaign with a single product group quite often: how to set up google shopping. The disadvantage is that you cannot select a bid specifically for the product.
All products differ in cost, margins, profits. There is no reason to set the same rate for them when all other indicators differ.

HOT TIP! Strategy is not only about structure, but also about techniques that can be used to increase the effectiveness of campaigns. Therefore, below you will find a couple of options for structures + a couple of strategies that can be applied regardless of how your campaigns are organized.

Bidding-Based Query-Level Structure

Shopping campaigns cannot be targeted to keys. And, of course, since there are no keys, then it won't work for them. It can be a real problem. This is what the bidding-based structure solves at the query level.

This strategy is not really suitable for low-budget businesses. You need to create 3 campaigns, and therefore divide the budget between all of them for this strategy. The budget should be enough for at least 20-30 clicks per campaign per day, i.e. if the cost per click is on average $1, then the budget should be at least $20 per day for each campaign, and that is $60 per day for 3 campaigns. And this is the main restriction on the use of the structure, otherwise it will suit different businesses, regardless of the volume of the range.

Bidding at the request level allows you to segment traffic into 3 categories of requests: basic, branded, grocery. Just like the search campaigns! Segmentation uses priority setting, shared negative keyword lists, and total budget for all 3 campaigns.

The highest priority gets total campaigns. There are two reasons for this:

• first, assigning a high priority to a general campaign allows you to get more traffic;
• secondly, we will have lists of negative keywords, with the help of which we will distribute the traffic into relevant campaigns.

For all three campaigns, the total budget is used, because just such a move will force all 3 campaigns to participate in the same auctions. So, it’s here that the lists of negative keywords will manifest themselves in all their forces, directing traffic to the right campaign, taking into account the wording of the user's search query.

How Much Does Google Shopping Campaign Cost?

Google does not have a minimum bid or a minimum cost for Google Shopping / Product Listing Ads. You can choose a cost per click as low as $0.01 yourself, and there is no minimum daily budget, so you have a lot of flexibility with how much you spend on Google Shopping, which is definitely really convenient.
Google Shopping can cost you $1 a day, $1 a month, or more than $500 a day, depending on how much visibility you want your products to have.

You can decide how much Google Shopping costs by increasing or decreasing your daily budget and your PPC bids. Remember that if your costs on Google Shopping are low, you also will have low Google Shopping ad visibility.

Additionally, it's important to know that Google will stop serving your ads once your Google Shopping daily budget is depleted. So if you have a $40 max daily cost on Google Shopping, your Google Shopping ads will show up until that $40 is depleted. If you have a high Google Shopping average CPC cost with a low Google Shopping cost, your ads will only appear for a fraction of the day as you will run out of spend more quickly.

The amount of goods you have, also plays a huge role on how much your Google Shopping campaign will cost. If you have 200,000 products at a cost of 40 cents per click, you will spend a lot more than a merchant with 200 products at the same cost per click. Google determines which ads to display on Google Shopping based on how the keywords in your data feed match a consumer’s search, in addition to the CPC bids you set up in your Google Shopping PPC campaign.

Google Shopping Campaign Metrics

We would like to show you a list of the most important metrics on Google Ads.

• Clicks. Just the number of clicks on your ad.
• Impressions. Allows you to know how many times users have seen an ad. It is counted each time when it appears on the search results page or on the Google search engine.
• Clickable / Click Through Rate / CTR. The ratio that shows how often users click on your ad after viewing it is a very important indicator of the effectiveness of advertising.
• Quality Score. Score from 1 to 10, which Google assigns to an advertising campaign. The more relevant your ads to visitors, the higher the quality score and the lower the cost per click (CPC).
• Average Cost Per Click. The average amount you pay per click on your ad, given that different keys and placements may have different maximum cost per click. It is calculated as the ratio of the total cost of clicks to their number.
• Average Position / Average Position. A score from 1 to 7, which allows you to rate the rating of your ad compared to competing ads. The order of placing ads on the page depends on the rating.
• Impression Share Percentage Received. This is the number of impressions received, divided by the number of possible impressions in percent, i.e. the number of auctions won in relation to the possible impressions. The higher the score, the more efficiently your ad works and squeezing out more of your impressions is more difficult. The share of impressions can change when new competitors appear or more aggressively assign rates in the segment.
• Conversion. Conversion is any successful action that you select: selling a product, downloading a file, ordering a callback from the site, and so on.
• Cost per conversion. This is your total ad cost divided by the number of conversions. Also referred to as Cost Per Acquisition and Cost Per Action (CPA).
• Conversion Rate. This is the number of conversions divided by the number of clicks.

Google Shopping Feed Information for Magento

Initially, Magento had a special extension – TheFind – that was developed to import products to shopping engines. Back then, the Google Shopping Feed feature was provided in the default version of Magento. But the support of this feature was discontinued in 2015 because Google changed its Shopping API from V1 to V2.

So, to automate the process of the feed generation and product import to Google Shopping, you should use a special Google Shopping extension for Magento. Unfortunately, there is no other way to make the process easier. If you face such a task, we recommend paying attention to our extension – GoMage Feed Pro that is available for both Magento 1 and Magento 2.

Detailed information on how to generate the Google Shopping Feed for Magento is available here.

For instance, in your Magento online store, you can have the product “T-shirt” in three different colors (red, blue and green). That means you have the product that has SKU with the attribute “color” and the values of this attribute should be red, blue and green. So, you have only one product in your store, for effective Google Shopping campaigns, you need to organize three different color version items.

You potentially reduce the click rate on your ads if the product image does not match the color that users are looking for.

Another important advantage of this approach is that each version receives a unique ID, so you will be able to analyze the statistics of each ad and investigate which version of the product is in greater demand.

This applies not only to color but also to the attributes of “size” or “material” and so on.

Not optimizing product titles
In fact, it is not enough to provide a complete range of products (by doing what is described above) - it is also significant to consider what should be included in the title. For this, you need to make a detailed analysis of queries and search keywords. There are some tips you can use:

• Include brand name in the title. Many users prefer to search by brands, so if you use them in the title, you have more chances to catch your clients.
• Include all variations of products in the title. In other words, size, pattern, color, style – all these characteristics can be placed in the title. These details make your title more descriptive. You can also include "big" and "tall" options or “try for size”, if they are appropriate for your store.
• Indicate a gender in the title. For instance, “Big and Tall Men's Green T-shirt”. It is a much stronger title than just “T-shirt”.
• Indicate Manufacturer part number (MPN): this attribute can be very useful in such segments as hardware, household appliances, auto parts and many others.

Lack of experience in bid settings
Bid landscapes is the tool provided by Google for estimation of the performance of different ad groups, criteria, and campaigns using different scenarios. Using it, merchants can optimize their bidding strategy.

But, this is not enough. Lack of experience in the organization of Google shopping campaigns can lead to merchants have no idea if they should bid up, bid down or keep a bid at the same level. In addition, constantly increasing competition on the platform makes advertising expensive.

If you are planning a large campaign, maybe it is more reasonable to ask for help from specialized Google Shopping partners. Google Shopping is becoming increasingly attractive for online advertising. This increases competition between merchants who’d like to use this channel, therefore the effectiveness depends on how well planned and organized your campaign is and will be.

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No matter if your e-Commerce store is just being launched or you’ve been in the game for a long time, most all Magento ® store owners have at least one thing in common.
Google.

Or more precisely, Magento SEO (search engine optimization).

HOT TIP:  SEO is the process of ranking web pages organically on Google’s search results.

If your online store is to succeed being found in Google’s results is a “no-brainer.”  Unfortunately, with so many people saying so many things about how to rank on Google its hard to know who to believe.  That’s why we put together this 5-tip strategy guide for you to follow.

Why should we care about your online eCommerce stores success?  What sets us apart from every other voice on the Web?

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Each merchant has experienced the situation when certain products are no longer available for some reason. All products have been sold out, there are problems with manufacturers or suppliers and the products can’t be delivered, the merchant changes the priorities in the product range and prefers to sell other products, and there are many other reasons that cause this problem.

After all, if there are too many product cards in the online store that are not available, this will have a bad effect on its profitability, as well as on the search engine ranking. Often, an owner of an online store addresses their problem to the webmaster who supports his site. But it is important to understand that a developer can do anything with your web resource, but at the same time, it’s up to you to decide how to deal with pages of products that are not available.

In this article, we will discuss several approaches to solving the problem with cards of goods that are not available. The question is how to deal with this situation.

Product Pages for Unavailable Goods. What to Do With the Old Product Pages

In case certain products are going to be sold in the future you need to keep their pages in the index of search engines and continue to work with the users who visit these pages. Here are a few tips on how you can do just that:

• make a clear message that the product is not available;
• if you know when the products are going to be available, inform them about this as clearly as possible;
• try to receive visitors’ contact information – email or phone, to have a possibility to inform them when the products are in stock;
• display related products with similar features, prices, and show the same type of products by other brands.

All products which are not available should be shown on the relevant search pages in such a way:

• Should be placed at the end of the list (with a clear message that the product is no longer available);
• It is possible to hide such pages of products from the navigation and not to show them in the search results (in this case there are risks that such pages can be dropped out of the index).

The main purpose of such actions is to keep these product pages in the search engines index and when the products are back in stock you can inform users that they are able to make an order.

Product is not Available and Will Never Be in the Product Range

Sometimes there is a situation that outdated products are still in stock. In this case, if the product line is unavailable but previous versions of the product are available, you need to leave everything as it is. It is possible to organize a special marketing campaign to sell these outdated products quickly.

The visible number of products also plays a role, especially when it comes to clothes, jewelry, accessories and other products that are perceived primarily visually.

Product Pages SEO: How to Handle Out of Stock Product Pages

Redirect to the parent category. The main task is to help the customer find needed products and, if other related products which satisfy the same needs are available in the online store, the user can be directed to the parent category.

Leave product pages available. Old pages have a lot of useful information. Reviews and comments can be valuable for visitors of an online store for many reasons. They can evaluate the manufacturer or brand. To compare the product features, it is also useful to see the previous models’ characteristics. So, old product pages can help to sell and it may be better to keep them active.

In this case, the store owner is guided by the fact that the visitor came through the link, and if the product position is removed from the site, the link will disappear and the potential opportunity to get a buyer will be lost. After all, a visitor, after opening a product card, which is not available, may also take a walk in other categories.

Imagine that people who had been looking for something on your website, finally found what they wanted, followed the link and after some thoughts and doubts they click "Buy". Now they get a message that the product is out of stock. In most cases, after this message, a potential customer will click the cross, which will help them to leave the unreliable site.

In some cases, it is better to remove these pages of products. If you have nothing to offer your clients or you stopped selling a certain product category - you can completely delete these product pages using the 410 status code.

The 4xx server response indicates that the server can’t process the request. 410 errors aren’t absolutely the same as 404 errors which identify that the page is “not found.” 410 status codes are more informative and used to “tell” search engine robots that this link has to be deleted from the index. In other words, 410 status codes mean that the page was removed forever and it will never be restored.

It is important for the design of 404 pages to be the same as that of the entire site so that users do not feel that they have got to another web resource. This creates the integrity of the virtual space in which the visitor is given the opportunity to stay while working with the site.

The correct 404 page should contain a link to the main page and a menu so that the visitor can easily return to the website.

A funny design of 404 page is one of the best ways to get the user to view the situation with humor and convince them not to leave. And you can use not only humorous text for page 404 but also pictures of relevant content.

According to statistics, if you use only text for page 404 (without images), the number of defaults from it to the site increases almost 2-3 times. Imagine how many clients you lose when you are too lazy to arrange a 404 page properly and do not let the visitor take any action other than closing the browser tab.

Also, beautiful pages 404 errors smooth out the negative emotions that occur in such situations, which will allow a little bit to improve behavioral factors.
Be creative! You can combine the above recommendations and use funny pictures of 404 pages, suggest using a link to the main page, searching the web resource, or go on to browse the most popular articles. Learn to create interesting 404 pages not to lose a big amount of orders and potential clients.

Do not forget to explain to visitors why they see your beautiful 404 error page. After all, not everyone knows what a 404 error is and how to behave when it is detected. But it does not go into technical details. Let everything be short, clear and tasteful.

Unusual beautiful 404 error pages are not necessary, but they can change the attitude of visitors to your website for better. And this can sometimes help them to make the right decision about the purchase or order services from your online store.

Make a 301 redirect to the pages with new models. It is a popular method in e-commerce because in this way you save all previous SEO results and do not lose the traffic. But this method is not the best one.

Imagine your potential client is looking for a specific product. Most likely, they entered the corresponding request in a search engine and they were given a bunch of online stores, including your website. Customers open several links in parallel, studies the information on them, and on the tab of your site he sees not a product card, which is not available, but just the main page, on which there will most likely be interesting product lines, but not at all those ones for which he came.

Already at this stage, you will lose to competitors whose product cards have opened. Most often, users do not understand why they see the main page of the online store but not the product card that they need. Naturally, most potential customers in such a situation will close your website and leave to explore other options.

Change the content of the old URLs. Technical characteristics, manufacturing data or model numbers are not so essential for some products and you can use old pages for new product lines. If the page has high authority, it will work for new items.

What to Do With the Old Product Pages: Best Practices

We have the best answer to the question. Take maximum care of the client.

• First of all, notify the visitor that the product is not available. For example, if such a product will never be available (limited collection, not produced, out of fashion, etc.), the phrase "out of stock" is appropriate. At the same time, it is important for a client to notice this mention at once when they open the product page, which is not available.
• If there is an opportunity to re-order the goods, but it will take time, you can use the phrases “Goods are available on pre-order”, “Deliver within 3 days”, etc. In this case, you give the choice to the customer, and if they agree to wait, you get a loyal customer.
• Even if you have made a choice in favor of placing the inscription “Not available” on the item card and have removed the order button, do not be too categorical. Leave the opportunity for the visitor to contact you. Perhaps clients will have some questions, so keep the feedback button in a visible for the visitor place.
• An additional concern for the buyer is to notify the appearance of the goods in your store.
• In addition, you can keep the attention of the buyer by offering a selection of similar products on the characteristics. The smarter the selection of similar products to the missing copies will be, the more chances that the visitor will become a real buyer.

Finally, we will give you one more useful advice: if you do not know what to do with goods that are not available, try to consider all possible options for dialogue with the visitor, as if the situation occurred in a real store. It is possible that, depending on the specifics and range of your online store, this approach will help to come up with additional solutions to the problem with the pages of products that are not available at the moment. The more alternative options you apply to your site, the less dissatisfied visitors will spoil your reputation and conversion rates.

In conclusion, there are several recommendations:

• Firstly, if the page generates the traffic and you're not sure that this product is no longer available, the best way is to leave this page with the response code 200. Try to optimize the content of the page, keep the users and propose them relevant and similar products.
• Secondly, if you are sure that this product will not be available, the best way is to do the 301 redirect to the relevant positions.
• If the old page can’t be used and the item it represents will definitely not be available, then give the 410 server response code.
• Try to make all the pages with errors as much attractive as it possible, add a note of humor and creativity.
• Think of different ways of convincing people not to leave your resource but try to help them in making a decision and choice.

We hope that our tips are useful for you and help to keep your customers and increase sales. Try to control all your assortment, amount of goods and the quality of services you suggest, as this factor will always influence your business and income.

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Discussing the future plans with our clients, we realized that some of them are planning for migration to Magento 2. In this regard, there are some questions that we would like to review.

Magento Migration From 1 to 2. What are the Advantages of the Magento 2 Platform?

Before starting your Magento migration to another server, you should know all the pros and cons. Let’s get to know some of the advantages of Magento 2.

Best customer experience
Most of the modern customers would like the online shopping process to be as fast as possible. Magento 2 platform has a built-in checkout feature that greatly optimizes the purchasing process. This feature redirects buyers to a confirmation page where they can place an order. Due to this, they no longer need to create a profile in the online store.

In addition, thanks to the integrated payment modules such as Braintree and PayPal, the online stores save information about the customer's bank cards, which also reduces the time required to place an order.

Responsive Mobile Design
In fact, a great number of orders are made using mobile devices. If you want to keep up with modern trends, then your online store should be convenient for those who want to make a purchase from a mobile phone. Unlike Magento 1, templates for Magento 2 initially have an adaptive design. Besides the fact that the page loading speed is 50% faster, Magento 2 has an advanced product search, which makes it easier for users of mobile devices to find the product they need.

Design
An attractive design is very important for an online store because it really affects the buyer's decision to make a purchase. Templates for Magento 1, with many steps in in the orderign process, slow loading of pages and the lack of responsive design no longer satisfies the needs of modern customers. Because of this, you lose potential profits. At the same time, Magento 2 has the ability to place an order through a guest profile and has many attractive templates that adapt to screens of any resolution.

Performance
Performance is very important for high conversion rates. If your online store is loading too long, then you will increase cart abandonment rate. Magento 2 can process 40% more orders per hour while adding 70% faster to the cart.
Advanced Reports
In order for your business strategy to be really effective, you need to track the most important business metrics. One of the functions of Magento 2 is about 20 advanced reports on the profitability of your online store, which you can track from the admin panel.

Marketing automation
To increase customer retention and “make friends” with customers, you should use mailing services. Dotmailer, a mailing automation tool, was originally integrated into Magento 2. You can create automated SMS, push, and mailings.

Magento Migration Steps. Where to start?

Based on previous experience, we can say that the migration of an online store is a very complicated process that requires preliminary preparations. Therefore, we strongly recommend hiring an e-commerce developer to help you migrate to another platform without losing important data. Let's take a look at the step-by-step migration process to Magento 2.

First, we recommend reading all official documentation on Magento.com. It can help you to understand the stages of this process which is not an easy one. If you do not have enough programming and development skills to understand all the information, GoMage is ready to assist you in the process.

The main task of the merchant is to do careful preparation. Some useful recommendations are below.

Determine a low sales season
In our experience, the low sales season is the best period for migration. It is very difficult to predict how everything goes during the upgrade process, so it is important to upgrade during your period of decreased activity if at all possible. This will help to minimize losses.

Many merchants prefer to plan the migration of the live site on weekends when the store is closed and doesn’t provide any support or delivery service. It is not always a good decision.

Some work can be done during the weekend if it is necessary. But there may be a situation when hosting support stops responding, or the help of an HTML layout designer is needed and the person is not available. There may be many contingencies, so it is better to use business hours or working days. As soon as you identify the migration period you will be able to start preparing.

Make a list of all extensions for Magento 1 that are installed in the store
The list of installed extensions will determine the amount of work that should be done before migration.
If an extension is not provided by the Magento Community you can order its development, which is usually expensive. Another option would be to postpone your migration.

Think About a New Design for Your Online Store

Magento 2 is significantly different from Magento 1. The theme of the existing store can’t be used in the new version. The migration to Magento 2 is a good opportunity to update your store design. You can create a document describing what you’d like to change and what you prefer to leave as it is. Doing such an analysis now can save both time and money in the future.

Make a list of functions you’d like to add during your Magento migration
In fact, migration to Magento 2 means that a new online store will be developed. It will not take as much time as the first one because you have content, products and so on. But from the technical point of view, it is like a new store. You can expand the existing functionality and make your store more user-friendly .

Identify your top pages not to lose your position in search engines
Does migration has an impact on SEO. With Magento 2, your store will be more SEO-friendly. What you definitely need to do is to make a list of pages/references to the pages which have TOP positions in SERP. This means these URLs mustn’t be changed, even if you prefer to update the category structure.

Otherwise, you need to implement redirects not to lose your search traffic. Quite recently Google changed its policies regarding 301 and 302 redirects and the pages don’t lose their weight anymore.

Integration with other systems
If your existing store is integrated with CRM, ERP or other systems, the migration will be more complicated. In this way, your developer should help you strategically plan the work.

NOTE: You will need more time for the project to be completed.

All this information is enough to start making the requirements for your migration project including choosing the developer who will help you to do this.

For certain reasons, it is better to deal with the same company who developed your Magento 1 store if possible. Their team knows the peculiarities of your business and they will need less time to understand your requirements.

What problems can you face with while organizing Magento migration from 1 to 2

Now, we would like to tell you about the most frequent problems encountered while migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2.

• Loss of important data. The most common problem of online store migration with the help of a developer is the loss of information about customers and products. Such data loss adversely affects the operation of an online store. Therefore, we recommend hiring a developer who is aware of all the nuances of migration.
• Slow work of the current online store on Magento 1 during the migration. During the migration, you can continue to work online store on the platform Magento 1. However, this can adversely affect the speed of loading the site. Therefore, we offer the following solutions: hire a developer who optimizes the online store on Magento 1, avoid migration during periods of sales and holidays, when your site will be a large load of traffic, tell customers the time and date of the migration so they can wait for the process to finish.
• Loss of site positions in search engines. During the migration, the URLs of your products, categories, and CMS pages are subject to change. We advise you to identify the existing pages with 404 errors on the new website and adjust the 301 redirects to them. In addition, you can transfer all navigation URLs and pages to the new site to avoid duplicate content.

How to Choose the Right Partner – the Development Company

What we can offer, or GoMage advantages
GoMage has been working with Magento storefronts since 2010 and specializes in Magento only. In our portfolio, we have several successful Magento migration projects and we are ready to provide you with references from our clients.
Gomage has a wide range of services which can be useful for the development of your online business:

• full range of services for complex store development from scratch and existing store customization
• professional upgrade of your existing store to Magento 2 with all extensions and customizations retained
• innovative design and UI/UX services for your Magento store to attract new customers and keep them coming back
• full-service support and maintenance with continuous monitoring of performance and store development
• professional server optimization and 24/7 support for your store to reach and remain maximum performance
• overall security audits detect store vulnerabilities and provide detailed security optimization reports.

How we work. Magento Migration Plan

• We estimate the project cost and timeframe within 24 hours of receiving your inquiry.
• We split the project into several milestones and specify the project completion date.
• We assign a project manager who will work with you on the project.
• We set up your project in our Project Management system along with the development environment and Git repository.
• We work on the project until completion, ensuring you are well-informed of the process at every step.
• Our QA team tests every completed task and conducts final testing of the project.
• We release the results of our work and carry out a final round of QA testing.
• We provide you with ongoing support and maintenance, plus 24/7 server support and optimization.

The extensions for Magento 2 are also available, so you can be sure that the main eCommerce processes will be optimized with the best extensions for Magento 2 in order to help your business grow successfully.

In conclusion, we would like to say that migration to the Magento 2 platform has a positive effect on the following factors:

• Reduced cart abandonment rate. Due to the order through the guest profile and improved website loading speed, your customers will be able to place an order more quickly, thereby reducing the number of left product pages;
• the increase in the number of orders. Thanks to Elasticsearch, Magento 2 has an advanced search of products on the website, so your customers will be able to find the product they need quickly, thereby increasing conversion;
• more orders from mobile devices. Adaptive design allows your customers to make purchases even more convenient, using mobile devices. As a result, not only the level of conversions increases but also the profitability of the online store.

The Magento migration process for each project can be both simple and complex, it all depends on the state of the data (SQL database) if there are any errors in them, as well as how much information needs to be transferred. As with any task, everything can be solved solved; it is only a matter of time and the professionalism of your developers.

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Shopping. There used to be times where people went to a brick and mortar business and found items that they would buy at a check stand. Thanks to current digital technology, everything has changed. This is what encourages companies like GoMage to create products like Free Pro which is all about optimizing your Google Shopping feed. Sounds fancy, but what is it?

That is what this article will focus on toward merchants. Not just any merchants mind you, but ones that are online and using what is quickly becoming the most popular e-Commerce platform available.

Understanding What Google Shopping Feed Optimization Is

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say - Google Shopping, formerly Google Product Search, Google Products and Froogle, is a Google service invented by Craig Nevill-Manning which allows users to search for products on online shopping websites and compare prices between different vendors.

Magento takes the term “online shopping websites” to a whole new level by providing their users with a highly integrated solution for displaying their catalog of products.

Here’s how the process works. First, the eCommerce merchant secures and builds their storefront. Don’t forget to optimize all your images in the process. You're leaving money on the table if you don't.

If you did all the on-page work correctly your job is done, right? Not exactly.
In fact, it has only just begun. Even with the simplest of terms, you need external backlinks to help to push your project forward. Without correctly targeted backlinks including anchor text and diversification your chances of getting to the top of the search engines will be limited.

HOT TIP: Check out the power of SEOprofiler for building backlinks and more.

Google Shopping takes into account not only the quality of the feed and whether the products comply with the Google Merchant Center policy. In addition, attention is drawn to the overall quality of the landing pages and the entire site as a whole.

What does the system pay attention to? First and foremost, check the quality of the basic information on the site:

• the content should be written correctly and contain no grammatical, punctuation and other errors;
• all visitors of the website should be provided with the same information, regardless of the location of the user, the device used, the browser, and so on;
• contact information should be visible and understandable - transparency and trust are important to users;
• most of the content and physical products on the website comply with the Shopping policy. For example, there should be no claims against them regarding copyright (unique content is still important);
• the ordering process is transparent and clear;
• checkout should be clear, convenient and easy for the user. Payment must pass through special services, the format “we will send you a card number for money transfer” is not allowed.

It seems that there may be too many rules. But it is important to understand: Google is trying to create a secure system for the user, a system where it will be impossible to topple the buyer. Therefore, incorrect data about the presence of goods in stock, unexpected price changes and the "muddy" payment process are extremely rebuked.

Please note that Shopping advertising policies also include Google Search Console rules and guidelines for webmasters. Therefore, for example, doorways and cloaking on the site are also unacceptable - even if they appeared by chance and without malicious intent.

Moving Up to The Google Shopping Feed

With an understanding of Google Shopping, Magento eCommerce store owners now have a couple of options. They can spend countless hours uploading all the products that they want to sale on one by one, which would be both boring and time-consuming. Or, they could get the feed tied to where they are pulling products from and let the feed do the work.

Google Shopping feeds speed up the process of getting your products online so that you can focus on more important matters like finding even more high-quality products to sell from your Magento eCommerce storefront.

GoMage understands the power of Google Shopping feeds and took it all to the next level with our Feed Pro extension. The Data Feed process for comparison shopping engines can be time-consuming and exhausting. The Feed Manager by GoMage is a special plugin that allows fixing this problem. This extension for Magento takes all the data about products in an online store and aggregates it in a specially formatted file. Then it performs all operations connected to transferring the information from this formatted file to the desired shopping engines: Amazon, eBay, Google Shopping and others. FeedPro by GoMage automates the feed files creation and export process and saves extra time for managers of the online stores.

Why Magento eCommerce Owners Use GoMage Feed Pro

Simply put, it optimizes search engines with the obvious leading one being Google.
While many merchants may think of optimization as what you do for Google and other search engines, the Feed Pro from GoMage optimizes your time so you can focus on more important matters.

HOT TIP: It matters not if you are using search engines in the US, UK, Australia, Germany, France, Japan, China, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Brazil or Switzerland it works the same. Further GoMage Feed Pro also serves as an amazing tool for getting products up onto Amazon and eBay.

Configuration of the product feed campaigns may take a lot of time and effort. The time and effort that could instead be spent on developing your business, searching for new products and finding new sales channels. This problem has now been solved. GoMage Feed Pro extension can be configured to automatically upload the feed file to the server of the shopping system, online marketplaces, or comparison shopping website, such as Google Shopping, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Buy.com, Sears.com, Nextag, PriceGrabber, and many others.

These and similar shopping systems have become very popular with the online users as they allow them to search for the necessary products within one website, compare the offers from various stores and choose the best propositions. With GoMage Feed Pro you can easily export your product feeds to the shopping systems of your selection and present your products to a much wider audience all over the world.

Imagine the power of being able to get your products in front of more buyers and how that would affect your bottom line. That’s exactly what GoMage feed pro empowers you to be able to do.

New Features of GoMage Feed Pro for Merchants

Those who have worked with this extension previously may have felt it a bit slow but that is in the long-forgotten past. GoMage just made this already amazing resource 10-times faster. The upgrade also brought in smart filtering and product review feeds.

With Smart Filtering the merchant can decide which products to promote while excluding others. Being selective about what your store offers allows you to custom tailor products to your audience which will likely mean increased ROI.

GoMage added the product review feature to GoMage Feed Pro. Now you can share reviews about products as part of what you upload to Google and other search engines.

GoMage Feed Pro extension allows you to expand your marketing channels by uploading your product data directly to all popular shopping engines, online marketplaces, and comparison shopping websites, such as Google Shopping, Amazon, eBay, and many others. This is a special plugin which takes all necessary data about the products in your online store and generates a specially formatted file with that information. This file can be viewed in a browser, downloaded to your computer, uploaded to your Merchant Center with the corresponding shopping system. GoMage Feed Pro extension automates the feeding process and saves your time for new achievements.

10-times Faster than Before. The feed generation technology has been improved and now the generation process takes no more than a few minutes regardless of the number of products you need to export. Create your feeds 10-times faster with the new optimized Feed Pro extension.

Smart Filtering Conditions. Smart filtering options allow you to exclude non-profitable or out of season products from the feed file, or create the feed files with specific products only. The filtering can be done by numerous conditions based on available Magento ® attributes. Significant improvements in the filtering functionality have made this feature even more flexible and efficient.

Attribute Types. Various product attributes are used to export the products and their parameters to the feed file. The field values in the feed file can be taken from the standard Magento ® attributes, output statically or pulled from the Dynamic attributes. Parent Attribute type allows you to export the values of “Parent” products for the simple items that belong to Configurable products.

Product Review Feed. This function allows sending product reviews to required shopping engines. The feed file can be generated in XML format and all necessary variables should be indicated: review ID, user's nickname, user ID, date, title and so on. Strong coding skills are not required. Detailed instruction makes this process very simple.

Categories and Subcategories. Choose categories and subcategories to which your products should belong or map your Magento categories to the corresponding ones from the shopping systems’ lists. Assigning your products to the proper category and subcategory improves your conversion rate.

Output Type Filters. Optimize your product listings to match the search engines requirements. Remove the HTML tags from descriptions, decode or encode special characters, delete spaces in product names and many more.

Multiple Attribute Values Per Cell. Not only for XML! Include multiple values for a single attribute for CSV and TXT files using Prefix and Suffix functionality in the feed Content Settings.

Adapted for Slow Servers. Special options of the Feed Pro extension can be used to optimize the generation process on slow servers. You do not need to worry about the downtime of your server.

Feed Conversion Rules

Feed conversion rules help you more easily and quickly make massive changes to the data feed. They are suitable for changing the name, description or any other attribute. Particularly relevant rules for online stores with a large assortment, where manual filling of the feed takes a lot of resources. A more detailed feed in turn will help Google to more effectively manage your advertising.

How to use the available operations is a matter exclusively for each PPC specialist. The search for new ways to automate manual labor depends primarily on the specifics of the work, the state of the campaign at the moment, the quality of the current feed, and so on.

Concluding Thoughts About Google Shopping Feeds

Magento store owners would be amiss to ignore Google in today’s world. That’s why so many love the power of Google Shopping. Unfortunately, there are limits if you're going to build your store one product at a time.

That’s why feeds like the one that GoMage brings forward are so important. Not only do we increase your ability to bring even more products to your audience, but you can do so within a very timely process. Save your time and allow the professional team to promote and develop your business and increase your income in a very short time.

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Comparison shopping engines play a significant role in driving the eCommerce market and defining the trends in its development. These are attractive platforms to present products to millions of users and increase sales in a short period.

Sell downloadable products in your store, assign unlimited product attributes and even moderate product tags and reviews to maintain full control over your own website. You can also connect with various sales channels such as eBay and Amazon. What is good about Magento integration is that all your products are synchronized with the site. Thus, your customers will not buy goods that are out of stock.

Millions of target customers are searching for attractive prices on different products on Google Shopping, Amazon, eBay, Nextag, Shopzilla and others every day. This provides a huge number of possibilities for online merchants but, on the other hand, strong competition creates certain threats.

If you list your products on a shopping engine, you may have immediate results. The product may be sold in a few minutes after it has been published. But you still run some risks because you must pay for each click or the number of impressions. Here we want to review some channels and their features that you should consider.

Why shopping engines are so popular with online users

Online shopping gives a lot of benefits for both merchants and users. But why do users choose to use a shopping engine? Here are some reasons:

• Convenience: Customers can shop at any time and receive the latest information. To be successful in sales, merchants must monitor and update the product information on these sites.
• Comparison: A shopping engine consolidates thousands of offers by different sellers, which is very convenient for customers. The ability to compare prices of different merchants is only one of the important advantages. Customers can compare reviews, the duration of presence on the platform, product range, quality of content, and so on.
• Wide choice and great probability to catch a good offer: Typically, there is a high level of competition on such websites which also creates advantages for visitors. In the battle for customers, merchants are forced to offer more attractive prices.
• Real reviews: This is a very important point. Customers must be sure that these are real customer reviews. And those merchants who have a positive rating are more likely to attract other online shoppers.

What are comparison shopping engines (CSEs)?

Comparison shopping engines (CSEs, price comparison websites, comparison shopping websites) are special websites where online marketers can display their goods side by side next to other retailers’ products. While shopping, customers can browse a CSEs database of goods, each of which links back to an individual marketer’s website for the deal to take place. Negotiants advertise their products by sending the CSEs a shopping feed, also known as product or data feed, which contains their products’ information.

The comparison shopping engines is really worth your time if you are an established marketer.
If you have a product mix of more than 400 and do more than $1 million in yearly revenue, CSEs are absolutely worth your time to at least consider as an additional source of income. CSE campaigns make up anywhere from 5-50% of our clients’ total online revenue.

Magento Google Shopping Feed Extension

Google Shopping Feed for Magento has been specially created to amplify your online store. It allows a user to set up an entire shopping feed in an easy way – without any lapses, saving your time. With your commodities available in a Google store, you will get a great number of potential customers. The goods or services which you offer can be quickly imported to your Google merchant account to this add-on. To miss different errors, the software checks or supplies all the necessary data and information for your Google Merchant account, to make sure that there are no omissions or unprofessionally-looking results in your data feed. Choosing feed categories from the large Google taxonomy is not always simple when done manually; it can be difficult and time-consuming to choose and repeatedly select correctly. With this add-on, everything is simpler. The extension supports all product types, even configurable and grouped products.

Most comparison shopping engines have the same principles of work: you need to create and upload Comma-Separated-Value file (CSV) or XML file to the site feed, and after this, your items will be displayed to users. It is very important to specify the necessary product information, such as:

• SKU – a product code
• Name – a product name
• Description – a product text description
• Category – product category where you’d like to display your product (For example; clothes > MEN > T-shirts)
• Price
• Product URL
• Different engines have their own specific features and requirements to the data feed file you need to create. Sometimes it is not so easy to do.

Data Feed Magento Extension

For Magento online store owners, GoMage company provides a special Feed Manager extension which is now available for Magento 2 version. GoMage Feed Pro for Magento 2 has been released recently and this extension has a lot of important improvements to offer.

GoMage Feed Pro for Magento 2 extension allows you to expand your marketing channels by uploading your product data directly to all popular shopping engines, online marketplaces, and comparison shopping websites such as Google Shopping, Amazon, eBay, and many others. This is a special plugin that takes all necessary data about the products in your online store and generates a specially formatted file with that information. This file can be viewed in your browser, downloaded to your computer, and uploaded to your Merchant Center with the corresponding shopping system. GoMage Feed Pro for Magento 2 extension automates the feeding process and saves your time for new achievements.

In this new version, you can use your conditions to select products and generate them into your feed file. Each feed file can be edited, so you can change your criteria and update the data you want to list in the shopping engine.

• The time for the feed creation has been reduced significantly. The feed generation technique has been modified significantly to ensure a fast and stable generation process regardless of the quantity of products in your catalog. No matter whether you have 1,500 or 15,000 products – the feed generation takes no more than a few minutes.
• It is easier to work with the extension now because the new interface is more user-friendly. The FeedPro extension interface perfectly fits the view of the Magento 2 administrative panel. The steps of the feed configuration are clear and easy to use, making the configuration process simpler and faster, even for inexperienced users.
• Categories and Subcategories. Assign your products to the proper categories and subcategories to make sure that your feed file is accepted by the target shopping system and improve your conversion rates.
• Upload and Resize Images. The option to upload and resize the product images will help you to ensure that the images used in the feed match the requirements of the necessary shopping engines.
• There are lots of useful features, such as email notifications, auto-upload schedule, low memory server optimization and many others
• Characters Limit. Some shopping systems implement character number limits for product names, attributes, descriptions, etc. GoMage FeedPro settings allow you to set the corresponding limits for each feed file in order to meet the shopping systems’ requirements.
• Output Type Filters. Optimize your product listings to match the shopping systems’ requirements. Remove the HTML tags from the description, decode or encode special characters, delete spaces in product names, convert capitals into lowercase letters and so on.
• Improved Filtering Options. You can choose the attributes by which products will be included or excluded from the feed and set conditions as you like. New convenient and user-friendly filters help you to create the feed file quickly, easily and only with the necessary products.
• GoMage Feed Pro helps you to work with several engines and save your time on routine operations.

Once your data is placed and processed by the shopping engine, your products are displayed on their websites to a huge number of online users.

Configuration of product feed campaigns may take a lot of time and effort, which could instead be spent developing your business, traveling, or resting with your family. This problem has now been solved. GoMage Feed Pro: Feed Manager for Magento 2 is a special plugin that takes all necessary data about the products in your online store and generates a specially formatted file with that information. The Feed Manager can also be configured to automatically upload the feed file to the server of the shopping system, online marketplace or comparison shopping websites such as Google Shopping, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Buy.com, Sears.com, Nextag, PriceGrabber, and many others. GoMage Feed Pro extension for Magento 2 automates the feeding process and saves your time for new achievements.

A lot of shopping engines use Pay-to-Play models. When a user clicks on your product, they are sent to your online store and you are charged for this user activity. There is clearly no guarantee that the user will make a purchase, so you must calculate how much money you are ready to spend on this channel in advance.

Powerful Insights in GoMage Feed Pro M2

• Generation and Upload Schedule.
  You may schedule automatic feed generations and upload these to shopping engines if you need them to be renewed on a regular basis.
• System Notifications
  Use this feature to receive email notifications whenever the feeds are successfully generated and uploaded, or when the process fails due to an error.
• Unlimited Feeds
  Create as many feed files as you need. Flexible filtering options allow you to generate separate feeds depending on categories, prices, product types, size, color, and other product attributes. There are no limits for perfection.

To find out which shopping engine to choose, consider the following statistics.

As you see, Amazon is the leader among the websites where people prefer to shop in the USA. It is interesting that until quite recently there were 2 main programs on Amazon:

• Amazon Marketplace
• Amazon Product Ads

But in December 2015, Amazon stopped the Product Ads program even though it was very popular with merchants and convenient for online shoppers. The decision was based on Google’s entry into this market as it won a strong position in Product Listing Ads.

Let’s review some other players in this market.
The lower Alexa Traffic Rank is, the better it is for the site.
Using Alexa Traffic Rank, you can analyze the traffic of each site and predict the number of users you can attract. If you search on Google, you will find a lot of articles describing the pros and cons of different shopping engines. Most likely, you will come across the fact that there are different opinions about which one is better.

There is no single answer to the question of which shopping engine you should choose as it depends on too many factors. Some websites will work better for the types of products that you sell over others.

For example, if one shopping engine presents many products of your competitors, this may be a sign that there's a lot of potential customers available on that platform. But you have to compete and it is not an easy process. Therefore, you may want to consider another website where the competition is lower.

You should use all opportunities and check all the possibilities to find the answer that works best for the growth of your company.

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The fast index is the key to the success of your online stores and any site development. The main role in this process plays Google Sitemap. So, let us review how to configure this page for Magento.

A sitemap is the simplest way to inform Search Engines about new pages of the site which are available for scanning. The simplest sitemap form is a XML file in which all the addresses (URL) of a certain site are shown with a short description of this site or without it. Metadata which is used for the design of this page helps the search engines to scan the pages faster and more correctly.

Setting a sitemap.xml properly helps search engine bots:

• understand which pages are new on the web resource and need to be indexed
• prioritize pages depending on the specified parameters
• find out when the last changes were made to the pages that have already been indexed;remember the frequency of update pages
• index all the necessary pages, without exception, because if there is no site map and the research is done blindly, there is a high probability that it will simply miss some of them.

In other words, a sitemap is something that can be a kind of a guide to your website, which greatly “simplifies life” for search engine robots and thus increases their level of trust. And this point also adds to the web resource some very useful additional rating points.

How to Create Sitemap in Magento

As a rule, the sitemap helps to find all the internal site links and sometimes it helps to find the external ones and it is very which is very useful. You can bind several pages of a site to each other with Metadata, compute the necessary URL for indexing and many others.

The main thing you need to know about the sitemap is that its presence does not guarantee that the site will be added to the top of search results by the certain requests or the page will be indexed necessarily. But the existence of this file will become a certain tip for the search engines which will help to improve their work in your Magento website.

This card has become widespread in Google Search Engines, Yahoo! (since 2011 this search engine has changed the requirements to the standard card view), and Microsoft. The majority of webmasters think that Google sitemap also helps to index the site with other search engines.
You can get to know the detailed description of the requirements to this file on the sitemaps.org.

How to Create Sitemap in Magento

If you are using the sitemap to provide search engine spiders with a simple system of getting around your project then creating them within an XML platform would be best.
However, if you want to provide this process as yet another way for people to navigate your site then having an HTML sitemap is highly recommended.
Given that both options have their own advantages to your eCommerce project we recommend considering both rather than either or. Depending on what you decide as your need it will directly influence which of the two you opt into.

HOT TIP: When considering sitemaps - if you release videos on a regular basis consider implementing a sitemap that includes listing videos. If you do decide to use this type of a sitemap it should not be done as a replacement for either of the other two suggestions but rather something to be augmented with other navigational properties.

The main advantage of e-commerce Magento platform over other CMS is that it has the ability to create the sitemap auto mode, but not with the integration of the special file in the root system. In order to do it, you should go to your admin panel and find the Top Menu section – Catalog. You will find a special item in this section called Google Sitemap. You should choose the Add Sitemap item there. Then enter the name of your Sitemap and the necessary format which is XML in our case.

The Sitemap saving path is specified automatically, but if it is necessary you can indicate it manually. For example, you need to save the Sitemap in some subsection of the main menu. Then you need to write the following path:

Your subsection / Sitemap (Be sure to place diagonal slash).

Please check whether the chosen section is indexed. After this, you should choose the Store View item and click on the Save Sitemap button.

Using such a simple algorithm you will get an automatic sitemap which will contain the links to all the categories, commodity positions and other pages of your online store. All these items can be chosen in the appropriate position. Also, Magento ® edits your file with the sitemap itself while adding or removing any pages to/from the site. In order to configure this function you need to go to the admin panel: System – Configuration – Google Sitemap.

You can get to know the detailed description of the requirements to this file on the site http://www.sitemaps.org

Should I Use HTML or XML Sitemaps With My Magento ® Storefront

If you are using the sitemap to provide search engine spiders with a simple system of getting around your project then creating them within an XML platform would be best.

However, if you want to provide this process as yet another way for people to navigate your site then having an HTML sitemap is highly recommended.

Given that both options have their own advantages to your eCommerce project we recommend considering both rather than either or.  Depending on what you decide as your need it will directly influence which of the two you opt into.

HOT TIP:  When considering sitemaps - if you release videos on a regular basis consider implementing a sitemap that includes listing videos.  If you do decide to use this type of a sitemap it should not be done as a replacement for either of the other two suggestions but rather something to be augmented with the other navigational properties.

How to create a Magento Sitemap

The main advantage of ee-commerceMagento ® platform over other CMS is that it has the ability to create the sitemap automatically, but not with the integration of the special file in the root system. In order to do it, you should go to your admin panel and find Top Menu section – Catalog. You will find a special item in this section called Google Sitemap. You should choose the Add Sitemap item there. Then enter the name of your Sitemap and the necessary format which is XML in our case.

The Sitemap saving path is specified automatically, but if it is necessary you can indicate it manually. For example, you need to save the Sitemap in some subsection of the main menu. Then you need to write the following path:

Your subsection / Sitemap (Be sure to place diagonal slash).

Please check whether the chosen section is indexed. After this, you should choose the Store View item and click on the Save Sitemap button.

Using such a simple algorithm you will get an automatic sitemap which will contain the links to all the categories, commodity positions and other pages of your online store. All these items can be chosen in the appropriate position. Also, Magento edits your file with the sitemap itself while adding or removing any pages to/from the site. In order to configure this function you need to go to the admin panel: System – Configuration – Google Sitemap.

Magento Sitemap Generation Settings

After creating the file, you need to add it to the GSC (Google Search Console) and robots.txt.
For different types of content (video, images, pages), you need to use different sitemaps (on the Google side, different crawlers are used and a specific syntax is used for each content).
In order for robots not to “stumble” while viewing a map of your web resource, you need to know how to set up sitemap.xml correctly and what are the necessary conditions:

• No file encoding other than UTF-8 is allowed.
• The file size should be up to 10 MB.
• 50,000 URLs - is the limit of addresses number of pages in the sitemap.xml body.
• When one of the previous two indicators is exceeded, the sitemap.xml setup involves breaking it into several files.
• The file should be stored in the root folder of the web resource.

How to Create a Magento Sitemap: Tell Search Engines about Sitemap

To inform Search Engines about your Sitemap for Magento you can bind it to the file called robots.txt.
You need to go to this file and edit it. You should write the following line in this file: Sitemap.

To register a new Sitemap you should go to the websites control panel for webmasters in Google Search Engine. If you do not want to send the Magento Sitemap yourself, you can use special services or contact GoMage specialists in order to get any assistance with your questions.
Also, you might be interested in the SEO extension for Magento which improves search engine optimization. It's easy to use and there is no need for any technical knowledge.

Magento Sitemap Generator: Customizing Sitemap.xml

If you want to configure sitemap.xml you may use one of the following steps:

• Manually. It is a rather difficult job, which you can do yourself if your web resource consists of a small number of pages. It implies the presence of skills to work with the main tags.
• Customize sitemap.xml using specialized online services. There are both paid and free options. All of them work according to a similar principle - you specify the main address of your site, the initial settings and get the generated result. Most often, they have a limit of up to 5,000 page addresses per file.
• Using generators. Setting up sitemap.xml with their help has a number of advantages (the maximum possible number of addresses included, a large number of settings) and one slightly negative point - almost all “serious” options are supplied subject to license purchase (it costs from $ 20).

Magento Sitemap Generator: Customizing Sitemap.xml

• Use the same syntax while specifying a URL. Google will scan them exactly on the list. For example, if the site is located at http://www.example.com/, do not use the URL /https://example.com/ (without www) or ./mywebsite.html (relative URL).
• Do not include session IDs in the URL being added - this can lead to excessive page crawling.
• Tell Google about the version of the page in other languages ​​using the hreflang attribute.
• Sitemaps must use UTF-8 encoding, and the URL must be escaped.
• Split large Sitemaps into smaller files to reduce the load on the server when sending information to Google. Create a Sitemap index file, listing all the Sitemaps in it, and submit it to Google instead of individual files.
• Use the recommended URL canonicalization methods to tell Google about the version of the domain for which the Sitemap was generated (if the site is available with or without www). In this case, only one Sitemap is required.
• Use Sitemap extensions for additional types of information, such as videos, images, and news.
• If the mobile and regular versions of the page have different URLs, we recommend pointing out only one of them. If you still need to point to both URLs, add annotations for them so that different versions are recognized.
• If there are versions of the page in other languages ​​or for other regions, you can specify them using a Sitemap or hreflang attribute.
• Use only numbers and Latin letters. The sitemap must be in UTF-8 encoding (you can usually choose it when saving). A sitemap can contain only ASCII characters. It should not contain extended ASCII characters, certain control codes, and special characters such as * and {}. If they are contained in a URL, an error message will appear when you try to add it.

In addition, all URLs (including addresses in your Sitemap file) must be properly shielded and coded so that they can be processed by the web server. This is usually done automatically if you use a script, tool, or log file to create the URL, that is, do not enter addresses manually. If you receive a notification when Google sends your Sitemap that Google could not find your URLs, make sure they comply with the RFC-3986 URI standard, the RFC-3987 IRI standard, and the XML standard.

Magento Sitemap Generation Settings: Frequent Errors in the Sitemap & Techniques to Check Them

Errors will not have a critical impact on the attitude of the search engines to your site. However, their removal will allow the released resources of the search robot to redirect important pages.
The most common mistakes:

• broken links;
• redirects;
• incorrect dates for publishing or updating content.

To verify the correctness of the site map, numerous online services have been developed that will do it for you automatically and point out all the errors that have been made:

• the validity of the file
• an indication of the URL from another domain
• the excess file size
• online diagnostics of the indexing.

Such programs are free and work with all major search engines (Google, Yandex, Yahoo).
To check the correctness, you need to open the service page, load the XML-file or enter the corresponding URL in the field and click on the check button. If the program detects some errors, it will prompt which addresses give an incorrect answer.

How to Generate Sitemap in Magento: Creating and Sending Sitemaps

• Decide which pages of your site your Google search robots should crawl and determine the canonical URLs for each of them.
• Determine which Sitemap file format to use. You can create Sitemaps manually or automatically using third-party tools.
• Make your sitemap available to Google. To do this, add a link to it in the robots.txt file or send it directly to Google using the Search Console.

Sitemap Formats. Google supports several Sitemap formats, described below. All formats should use a standard protocol. Google currently does not support the attribute in Sitemaps. If the file size or the number of addresses listed in it exceeds the limits, break it into several parts. You can create a Sitemap index file by listing all the Sitemaps in it, and send them to Google.

In the conclusion, it is worth to say that the correct setting of a sitemap.xml can have a very positive effect on the speed of indexation of the pages of your web resource and the general opinion of search engines about it. Therefore, we strongly recommend you to create a map for each of your websites, work with the customization and monitor its timely updates. If you are still not sure in your own knowledge you can always hire some professionals who will organize all the necessary points for you and your resources.

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Our company has been providing development services for Magento stores since 2010. We have extensive experience in different projects and in this article, we want to share some of the myths that merchants may believe in during the development process and before the start of their eCommerce business.

How to Start an Ecommerce Business

Use the best platform or CMS for your online store. In fact, there are a lot of tools to create an online store. You can use both open source solutions and ready-made self-supporting solutions. The main difference between them is that in the first case you should have at least minimal programming skills. But at the same time, you get endless possibilities for customization of the site. The second option is more popular among amateurs. Such website builders have the basic functions for the website to start making money from the very first day of creation. These include the user's cart, payment methods, product catalog, etc.
It is very important to understand the idea of your future online business and create a professional business plan.

1.Сhoosing a domain name
If your business is properly organized and you have your own logo and well-designed brand style, then choosing a domain name will not be a problem. Try using a domain name that identifies your business and will be well remembered by your customers. After brainstorming you should have several options for the site name.

2. Design
Most users make online purchases using their mobile phone. Therefore, it is worth paying special attention to the design of the online store. If you cooperate with an e-commerce agency, remember that you need a responsive design for an online store. Your online store should be convenient for usage on mobile devices, and the user's path should be simple and straightforward.

Even if the online store does not have a super-actual design and custom functionality, but at the same time it is intuitive and easy to use, it will bring you profit. On the other hand, an online store with excessive design and other clappers can dispel customer attention from making a purchase. The main goal of the online store is to make the customer’s way from the product catalog to order forms simple and intuitive.

3. Call-to-action buttons
CTA, or call-to-action buttons, is one of the ways to motivate customers to perform a specific action on a page. Often these buttons are called:

• Click here
• Buy now
• Subscribe

This is a very powerful marketing tool that is popular among many online stores and is suitable for any kind of business. In particular, websites with calls to action increase conversions for 1.5%, if the button is located on the side menu. If the button is on the Main page, you can expect an increase in conversion for 25%.

4. Audience
While creating a design for your online store, you need to take into account the preferences of your target audience. For example, people born in the early 2000s love it when you can find a lot of photos, videos, and reviews on the product page. They also love bright colors and attractive designs. But if your target audience is people over 50, you should stick to more traditional elements in creating design.

5. A mechanism for returning money and goods. Payment
It is a big mistake to start an online store business and not to think out a mechanism for returning money and goods. To get started, get acquainted with how to legally return the goods and money to the buyer. Next, apply this to your online store. You can even make a separate page where customers can view the return policy on your website.

Visitors of your online store should shop quickly and easily. While paying for goods they should have no difficulties. If there is a problem while paying for goods or placing an order, they will leave the cart with products, and you will lose customers. As a result, it will negatively affect your profit and reputation of your business.

6. SEO
SEO, website optimization for search engines is important for every online store. It helps customers to find your eCommerce site on Google with keywords. If you devote enough attention and time to SEO, your website will appear on the first page for a key request. Moreover, it will help you to receive more requests from your website.

Before the creation of your own online business, you should have heard many different myths about tips which are given above. You should know that many of them are real but still others are really only myths. In this article, we would like to present you to some of the most popular ones about ECommerce Business Development.

ECommerce Business Development Myths Busted

All myths that we have identified are based on our observation and they do not always take place. They can be considered as a recommendation or points that you need to pay attention to.

Myth 1. An online store can be created within one day
This business development myth appeared due to the abundance of advertising headlines such as “Build an online store in 24 hours”. In most cases, this refers to the SaaS solutions.

It is true, that with the SaaS platform you can start quicker compared to open source and self-hosted solutions. SaaS is a completely different approach to business. There are a lot of research studies concerning what is better and you, as a customer, have a lot of options to choose from.

In any case, even if we ignore the problems of the online store technical setup, you will need to fill out the store content, place the information about products, distribute them by categories, and it is hard work that takes time. Usually, it is more than one day and even more than a week. So, be realistic when you evaluate the work schedule.

Myth 2. Clients will come immediately when an online store starts working
Unfortunately, this myth is still believed.

Getting a domain and setting up store features are not enough to start your business. Clients don’t know about the new store and they can’t find it in Google search. Any new eCommerce business requires promotions in order to get in front of your audience. SEO, PPC, and SMM marketing can be used to generate traffic at the beginning and as your storefront moves forward. All these activities require time and money for them to be effective.

Myth 3. It is easy to get a quick SEO effect
GoMage is a team of professional developers for Magento ® and we are not experts in SEO. Nevertheless, in many projects, we have to explain the basics of search engine optimization to our customers. The new site should be alive at least six months before you will see the first SEO results. Professional SEO agencies recommend considering the term of 1 year. The older the site is - the more valuable it is for search engines.

Most likely you will not be able to compete and get the top positions on SERP during the first 6 months, even if your online store is ideal for search engines. Unique content, filled titles, H1, H2 on each page, the absence of broken links, correct placement of canonical tags, link building strategy – all these activities will bring business development results, but not right away.

Myth 4. Professional technologies guarantee your success
GoMage specializes only in Magento. This eCommerce platform is the leader in the open source solution segment.

On the one hand, Magento is a strong fundamental platform that opens a lot of opportunities. But on the other hand, it is only an instrument and your success depends on how you use it. The platform can work perfectly on a technical level, but poor marketing, wrong pricing strategy, bad delivery service can bring to naught all benefits of Magento.

Here is an example of our practice.

GoMage LightCheckout has a good reputation. It is considered as a very reliable extension and it is used in thousands of Magento stores. One of our clients who bought this extension for their store told us that after its installation the percentage of abandoned carts increased significantly.

We started to look for the causes. Technically, everything worked correctly. The process became more convenient, and instead of 5 pages, there was one checkout page with all steps that users had to pass. The client didn’t tell us that the display of taxes and shipping costs was also changed.

That information was displayed only on the checkout page where users could see the full price. On product pages and during listing there were prices in which these extra costs were not included. After discovering this fact, it was clear why customers preferred not to complete purchases and abandoned their shopping carts instead.

Myth 5. A developer knows everything about a merchant’s business
We have the experience of working in different projects in various spheres of business. It helps us a lot, but we are experts in Magento only.

Each business is unique and has its own peculiarities. The project can be successful if there is cooperation and synergy between the development company and the merchant.

Myth 6. Service of professional developers is expensive
In most cases, prices for our services can’t compete with freelancers, but we know that many of our new clients were surprised that our services are not extremely expensive and the prices are quite reasonable.

Professionally designed websites from business development companies can create an image that these companies are too cool, have high prices and are not interested in small projects. It is a huge mistake. There are various offers on the market and you have the right to choose.

It is very difficult to create a price list on development services and we don’t publish it on our site. What we can recommend: before the project is launched, you can send a request for the development costs to different companies. You will surely discover that it is possible to find the optimal price-quality ratio.

To send a request to GoMage, visit this page.

Myth 7. After the start, everything works perfectly and there are no bugs
You can try to plan your project perfectly and test the online store carefully, but it is impossible to foresee everything.

There are clients who work well during the project, but they are not willing to spend the time to make corrections after the launch.

Whatever platform you choose for your eCommerce business development, the online store is a complex system that includes various requirements. Reality always makes allowances so be ready to adjust as necessary.

Myth 8. SaaS is better than open source solutions (software license)
As mentioned above, SaaS solutions allow you to start easier and quicker.

Even though we are a development company for Magento, we have cases when we recommended our potential clients to pay attention to popular SaaS platforms. We always do this, when we understand that it is more acceptable for a customer.

But what is important to understand is that there is no single answer that is better. It all depends on the specific situation, type of business, the company's long-term objectives and associated factors.

If you are sure that the SaaS business development solutions are better, then ask yourself why do so many merchants continue to choose Magento and other open source platforms that are used as usual software which needs to be installed on the server?

Before starting your online business, we recommend that you consider various options and make choices based on a variety of opinions. If you need help to understand how to make the best choice, the GoMage team is ready to be your guide.

You can contact us at support@gomage.com.

In the end, we want to say that all myths often appear because of lack of experience and questionless faith in the available information. Explore different sources carefully, ask questions and take all information at face value until you are able to experience the reality of the results.

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