Michael Cristancho, Author at The eComm Manager

May 12, 2017July 24, 2019

Magento 2 Product Import Template – Additional Attributes Column Hack

Anyone that has worked on the backend of Magento 1 importing products knows that Magento 2 has rewritten the book on how you import in custom product attributes in the Product CSV file. Where Magento 1 used to allow a columnar approach where you could do 1 column for each piece of information (see below)

Custom Product Attribute 1	Custom Product Attribute 2	Custom Product Attribute 3
Attribute 1 Value 1	Attribute 2 Value1	Attribute 3 Value1
Attribute 1 Value 2	Attribute 2 Value2	Attribute 3 Value2

Magento 2 does not allow that individual column (per attribute) approach, but rather a single area called “additional_attributes” that is used for all your custom Magento 2 product attributes.

Now, if you have a web developer on staff this won’t be any issue because developers can write code to bring together your old format with the new format. However, if you are an owner operator or don’t have a web developer available it may be difficult or time consuming for you to match the new format of the Additional Attributes field.

I have created a template that does all the heavy lifting for you and all you have to do is update the Google Sheet with your own store’s information information.

View The Google Drive Sheet Document Here

To make your own copy of my sheet go to File and click Make A Copy. You will need your own Google account to do this.

When you are done with that additional attributes field copy the row and PASTE SPECIAL into your Magento Product Import CSV. Sample Product CSV here.

May 8, 2017July 24, 2019

How to Setup Value Added Tax (VAT) in Magento 2

Some countries around the would charge what is called a “value added tax”, or most commonly known as “VAT”, on their goods and services. Depending on which stage your business is in of the supply chain there can be different VAT rates. If you are a manufacturer, wholesaler, b2b, and offer services all for the same product/product types you may need more than one VAT Tax. For this case I am going to do a simple product that is shipping within Germany.

Configuring Magento 2 VAT Tax

The following instructions include a tutorial on how to set up a 19% VAT in the country of Germany for direct sales (B2C) to retail customers. For other tax rates and countries, follow the general procedure but enter the correct information that corresponds to your country, VAT rate, customer types that you need Magento to manage for you.

Before proceeding, make sure to find out which rules and regulations apply to VAT in your area and write them out on paper or notepad file. Organization will keep you from pulling your hair out and keep you on task and focused.

In certain business-to-business transactions, VAT is not assessed. Magento can validate a customer’s VAT ID to ensure that VAT is assessed (or not assessed) properly. I’ll write on this in the future.

Process Overview:

Step 1: Set Up Tax Zones and Rates
Step 2: Set Up Customer Tax Classes
Step 3: Set Up Product Tax Classes
Step 4: Apply Tax Classes to Products

Step 1: Set Up Tax Zones and Rates

1. On the Admin sidebar, tap Stores. Then under Taxes, choose Tax Zones and Rates. See screenshot above.

2. In the upper-right corner, tap Add New Tax Rate . Then, add the following new tax rates:

VAT Standard Rate Tax Identifier: VAT Standard

Zip/Post Code: * (a “*” means all zipcodes)

State: * (a “*” means all states)

Country: Germany

Rate Percent: 19.00

3. Tap Save Rate for your new rate.

If you have many tax rates, you can use the grid filter controls to list only the new VAT rates.

Step 2: Set Up Customer Tax Classes

1. On the Magento 2 Admin sidebar, tap Stores. Then choose Tax Rules from the menu items.

2. Expand the Additional Settings section at the bottom of the screen and do the following steps:

a. In the Customer Tax Class box, make sure that there is an appropriate customer tax class to use with the VAT. If you need to create an additional class, tap Add New Tax Class. ***In this example I used the stock “Retail Customer” customer tax class group.

b. Enter a Name for the new customer tax class, and tap the checkmark to Save.

Step 3: Set Up Product Tax Classes

1. In the Product Tax Class box, tap Add New Tax Class, Then, create the following product tax

classes: “VAT Standard”

2. Tap the checkmark to Save each new class.

Step 4: Set Up Tax Rules in Product

1. On the Admin sidebar, tap Products. Then under Inventory, choose Catalog.

2. Open a product from your catalog in edit mode.

3. Under Product Details, set Tax Class to the VAT class that you want to use for the product.

4. When complete, tap Save and you should be charging 19% VAT Tax when someone order’s this item.

April 7, 2017July 24, 2019

How To Reset Customer Password Magento 2

In Magento 1 there was a field for easily updating a customer’s password to a specific string, however in Magento 2 that feature has been removed and the expectation is that if you are in the admin panel you will reset their password and Magento will request the user themselves to create a new password by following a link sent to them in their email.

While this is safer and more streamlined it can pose an issue if you have a customer that wants a specific password, or can’t receive emails (or they all go to spam). I’ll show you how to easily reset a customer password in Magento 2.

This is really helpful for developers as well if they are working on a staging or development site and emails are setup to send.

READY? SET? MAGEN-GO!

1. Login to your Magento 2 admin panel

2. Navigate to the customer you want to modify and copy their email address for later on in the Magento 2 walkthrough. You need to have their exact customer account email address for this method.

3. Now Navigate to System>Data Transfer>Export

4. From the dropdown select “Customers Main File”.

4b. If you want the full customer list you can skip step 5.

5. Paste in the email address for the single customer you are looking to modify. I really like to limit my exposure to “fracking something up” so I only deal with the minimum amount of data that I need to.

6. Scroll to the bottom of the page and hit the “Continue” button. A file will download to your browser or ask you to save the file.

7. Find the location of your recently downloaded file and open it up. It is a CSV (comma separated values) file so you’ll need an application to open that. My favorite apps to use are OpenOffice (the excel knockoff) or even Google Sheets if you use Gmail.

8. Scroll all the way to the right and update the “Password” column to be the password the customer, or you, want to use. Don’t use spaces. It must be one continuous word or numbers.

Helpful tip: If your customer has set a previous password (at ANY point) the column named password_hash will be filled in. You’ll want to delete that hash value before importing your file.

9. Save your CSV file and go back to Magento. Navigate to System>Data Transfer>Import.

10. Choose from the dropdown Customer Main File then on the next screen “Add/Update Complex Data”. DO NOT CHOOSE ANY OTHER OPTION.

11. Find your local CSV that you edited and then upload it.

12 THATS IT! The Magento 2 customer should their password reset to the password they want.

November 17, 2016July 17, 2019

Importing Configurable Products for Magento 2

The built-in import feature in Magento can often be frustrating due to its complexity and less than forgiving nature. In Magento 1, many extensions were created to aid in importing products quickly and easily. With the recent release of Magento 2, there are not many extensions to help with importing products. Documentation is also sparse when it comes to various methods of importing products.

Importing simple type products in Magento 2 isn’t that difficult. You can export a simple product under:
System -> Export

and then look at the format. For configurable products (products that have ordering options like size, color, etc… where a number of simple products are attached to a main configurable product), the import process is much more complicated. You can export a configurable product with its associated simple products, but it may not be obvious what is required to have a successful import.

Here are the steps needed to successfully import configurable products (with associated simple products) into Magento 2:

Prerequisites

Before you perform an import, the following items should be completed beforehand:

Product attributes should already be created and defined properly. (Stores -> Attributes -> Products)
The product attributes you plan to import should be assigned to an attribute set. (Stores -> Attributes -> Attribute Set)
The category / categories these products will go into should already be set up. (Products -> Categories)
Non of the simple products or configurable products should exist in the catalog before importing.

The CSV import file

Magento accepts a valid Comma Separated Value (CSV) text file for import. The file should, by default, use a comma as the field and multiple value separator. You can change these during the import options being selected in the admin panel, but it may cause issues.

There are 5 items you have to take into account when creating the CSV file:

All simple products should be listed before the configurable product in the CSV file. This is required.
The “attribute_set_code” field should match the Attribute Set that contains the attributes for each product.
The “configurable_variations” field should be a pipe separated set of sku/option combinations for each simple, and be populated only for the configurable product.
The “configurable_variation_labels” field should correlate the Attribute code to the Label Name, and be populated only for the configurable product.
The “additional_attributes” field should list the options for each simple product (comma separated if more than one attribute per simple product).

Example Configurable Product

We’ll look at a basic configurable product as an example:
a T-shirt that comes in two colors: Black and Red

In this example, we assume the Product Attribute “color” exists and has defined colors that include Black and Red. We also assume the Color attribute exists in the “Default” Attribute Set. We set the category for the products to “Default Category/Gear/Bags” as an example category.

Here is an example CSV file to import these 3 products (2 simple products and the configurable product):

sku,store_view_code,attribute_set_code,product_type,categories,product_websites,name,description,short_description,weight,product_online,tax_class_name,visibility,price,special_price,special_price_from_date,special_price_to_date,url_key,meta_title,meta_keywords,meta_description,base_image,base_image_label,small_image,small_image_label,thumbnail_image,thumbnail_image_label,swatch_image,swatch_image_label,created_at,updated_at,new_from_date,new_to_date,display_product_options_in,map_price,msrp_price,map_enabled,gift_message_available,custom_design,custom_design_from,custom_design_to,custom_layout_update,page_layout,product_options_container,msrp_display_actual_price_type,country_of_manufacture,additional_attributes,qty,out_of_stock_qty,use_config_min_qty,is_qty_decimal,allow_backorders,use_config_backorders,min_cart_qty,use_config_min_sale_qty,max_cart_qty,use_config_max_sale_qty,is_in_stock,notify_on_stock_below,use_config_notify_stock_qty,manage_stock,use_config_manage_stock,use_config_qty_increments,qty_increments,use_config_enable_qty_inc,enable_qty_increments,is_decimal_divided,website_id,related_skus,crosssell_skus,upsell_skus,additional_images,additional_image_labels,hide_from_product_page,bundle_price_type,bundle_sku_type,bundle_price_view,bundle_weight_type,bundle_values,configurable_variations,configurable_variation_labels,associated_skus
shirt-black,,Default,simple,Default Category/Gear/Bags,base,T-Shirt - Black,,,1,1,Taxable Goods,Not Visible Individually,1,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,1/23/2016 19:45,1/23/2016 19:45,,,Block after Info Column,,,,,,,,,,,,,color=Black,5,0,1,0,0,1,1,1,0,1,1,,1,0,0,1,1,0,0,0,1,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
shirt-red,,Default,simple,Default Category/Gear/Bags,base,T-Shirt - Red,,,1,1,Taxable Goods,Not Visible Individually,1,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,1/23/2016 19:45,1/23/2016 19:45,,,Block after Info Column,,,,,,,,,,,,,color=Red,5,0,1,0,0,1,1,1,0,1,1,,1,0,0,1,1,0,0,0,1,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
shirt,,Default,configurable,Default Category/Gear/Bags,base,T-Shirt,,,1,1,Taxable Goods,"Catalog, Search",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,1/23/2016 19:45,1/23/2016 19:45,,,Block after Info Column,,,,,,,,,,,,,size=55 cm,0,0,1,0,0,1,1,1,0,1,1,,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,1,,,,,,,,,,,,"sku=shirt-black,color=Black|sku=shirt-red,color=Red",color=Color,

You may also download the sample CSV file.

Key fields include:

additional_attributes:
For the Black T-shirt: color=Black
For the Red T-shirt: color=Red

configurable_variations: For the configurable T-shirt product:
“sku=shirt-black,color=Black|sku=shirt-red,color=Red”

configurable_variation_labels: For the configurable T-shirt product:
color=Color

The import process

Once you have your import file built, you may import it in the admin panel under:
System -> Import

Default options for the import should look like:

IMPORTING CONFIGURABLE PRODUCTS FOR MAGENTO 2 - Import Options — Import Options

Then you can click “Check Data” in the upper right of the screen. This should complete fairly quickly. If it hangs up for a very long time, it’s very likely your import file either has bad header options, or is not a properly formatted CSV file.

If the check passes, you may click the “Import” button at the bottom to perform the import. Once it is complete, you should go edit one of the configurable products and make sure that on the bottom of the edit product screen, the list of expected simple products are present in the Configurations section:

IMPORTING CONFIGURABLE PRODUCTS FOR MAGENTO 2 - List of simple products — List of simple products

If you do not see a list of associated simple products, your import file likely had bad data or formatting in the “configurable_variations” field for the configurable product.

Summary

As you can see from the details above, importing configurable products into Magento 2 requires many steps and proper configuration before-hand. If you follow the guidelines above, you should be able to successfully import configurable products into Magento using the native Import function.

November 17, 2016July 18, 2019

3 Must Do Holiday Ecommerce Marketing Tips 2016

The holiday season is just around the corner, and if you’re hoping to exceed your sales goals, you’ve come to the right place. Whether your holiday marketing plan is in full swing, or you’re still not sure where to start, let us help you maximize your site’s exposure and make this season a success.

Last year, consumers spent $69.1 billion online during the holidays, and that number is expected to increase by 10 percent this year. Gone are the days of driving to the mall, fighting for a parking spot and standing in line. Today’s consumer understands – and appreciates – the convenience of shopping from home. But with so many outlets to choose from, it’s more important than ever that your website is holiday-ready because we know online shoppers don’t have the desire – or time – to stumble through a winding checkout process or be subjected to a sub-par user experience.

What are some ways you can prepare for the holiday surge and ensure you get a piece of the multi-billion-dollar pie?

1) You can start by reviewing your mobile presentation. According to the National Retail Federation, more and more people are shopping online using mobile devices. In fact, it reported that 56 percent of holiday shopping searches were conducted on a mobile device. It makes sense when you think about it because we’re all tied to our cellphones and tablets. Why wouldn’t consumers order items while watching TV, waiting in line for coffee or during their lunch breaks? Columnist Christi Olson, who recently wrote about preparing search campaigns for the holidays, recommends updating your mobile bid modifiers to make sure your brand is visible on mobile devices. It’s imperative that your mobile presence is visually pleasing and easy to navigate. Create welcoming holiday visuals to help put shoppers in the Christmas spirit. This is an audience you can’t afford to ignore.

2) Another way to drive traffic to your site is by creating buzz through discounts and limited-time offers. Today’s shoppers spend time researching their items before committing to a purchase. No one is going to pay more for something they found elsewhere for less. Help your clients save money by offering deals such as free shipping, discounts and buy-one, get-one offers. Knowledgeable consumers want the best deal and it’s up to you to provide it.

Olson also suggests reviewing last year’s purchase trends, in addition to recent sales, to determine how much to boost desk and mobile bids by both day and time to capitalize on holiday sales. She also recommends using scripts to notify you so you don’t exceed your budget.

3) Cross-channel promotions are key in any marketing plan. Consumers use multiple channels to research and purchase products, and it’s critical that you provide a consistantly on-brand experience through all of those channels. Olson urges business owners to “sync with your peers” across channels like email, display and social media to create a cross-channel promotional calendar. Find out what promotions they’re running and when, and ask about their holiday message and campaign tagging. Put that information to use by creating “remarketing audiences” based on cross-channel consumers, what Olson refers to as “target and bid.” “You can adjust your search messaging based on the cross-channel promotional messaging and match your ad extensions to take consumers further down the funnel,” she said. She suggests developing audiences through email campaigns, such as loyal shoppers; Pinterest and social shoppers; and affiliate discount shoppers. For each remarketing campaign, view your cross-channel calendar “and adjust the ad copy to include the right promotions, and adjust your site links based on where the consumer might be within the purchase cycle.”

November 17, 2016July 16, 2019

Enough of Scrum Already

The conversation goes on in the Scrum and Agile circles about how far a team can stray from the hard and fast “Rules of Scrum” before becoming a “Scrum Outcast” and … earning the derision and scorn of the “True Believers.” But there is something about the stasis of staying the same and always playing by those rules that might bother some people.
Here are some thoughts on the concept of keeping to the rules or improving out of them.

The Rules Of Scrum

Scrum, despite its definition by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland as “a framework for developing and sustaining complex products” ^[1], has a distinct set of rules. Unbreakable rules. In fact, the subtitle of the Scrum Guide from which that definition is taken is “The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game.

The rules are what make Scrum, Scrum. If you don’t follow the rules you are not doing Scrum.

Now this is not a consideration uniquely tied to Scrum. If you want to play chess, you follow the rules of the pieces (the way they move), the board (8 x 8), and the other rules of the game. If you want to do something else (say, introduce a new piece, for example, the “jester” (moves 2 up, 2 over, and the player has to tell a joke) then you are no longer playing chess. There are many variations of a game with balls, bats, bases, and players, but there is only one set of rules governing baseball. And so forth.

Each of the agile approaches has rules. Extreme Programming (XP) has its Twelve Principles which establish the rules for XP. If you do not follow all twelve of the Principles, you are not doing XP. Feature Driven Development (FDD) has its processes. And so on.

The concerns of the Scrum elite are valid. They are trying to make sure that teams that only follow some of the Scrum rules and not others, and fail, do not blame Scrum for the failure. In other words, the belief is that if you follow Scrum exactly as it is defined in the rules of Scrum, the software development (or the product development) effort will be successful. If not successful, the rules were not followed, in the form of software development called “Scrumbut” (“we are doing Scrum, but [specify some rule that is not followed. e.g. we still have a project manager] ).

When asked if Scrum can be performed without various of the defined components, such as having a Scrum Master, or daily stand-ups, or a retrospective, the Scrum community is fairly unanimous is saying, “no.”

Here are some random comments from the Yahoo Scrum Development Group and the LinkedIn Agile and Lean Software development Group over the past several years.

When asked if it were possible to “do Scrum” without Scrum Master (names withheld):

“No, it is not possible to have Scrum without Scrum Master. Have a great day.”

“You can still go and do the development work without a Scrum Master, but you can’t call that Scrum.”

“If you do not have a Scrum Master on your team, you are not doing Scrum. If you do not have two bishops at the start of a chess game, you are not playing chess.”

Similar responses applied to doing Scrum without a standup and without a formal end of sprint retrospective: “It’s not Scrum, it’s Scrumbut.” So changing the rules should be avoided since no one likes to be called a “but” especially a “Scrumbut.”

What If The Rules Stop Applying?

But what happens when the team or the players find the rules constraining or restricting or decidedly non-Agile?

Is that possible?

Example:

The team had been together over three years, using Scrum as their software development approach. They were by any measure a performing team under the Tuckman model. They regularly made all their sprint commitments and performed at a high velocity especially when compared to the other Scrum teams in the department.

Over the years, in their quest for continual process improvement, they made a number of changes which affected the basic tenets of Scrum.

Because they were co-located and talked among themselves continually, they decided that their Daily Stand Up was redundant. At the Stand Up, they retold what everyone already knew from the day before. Basically, they all knew what each other was doing. They said that they didn’t miss the Stand Ups and liked the extra fifteen minutes a day the got by not having it.

They also decided that waiting until the end of the Sprint to review what they were doing was too late, making the Retrospective also redundant. They were making changes during the Sprint and adjusting and having ad hoc meetings to address issues. The Retrospective had become a review of what already happened and a waste of time.

They eliminated it.

Finally, they realized they were able to deal with all the obstacles and impediments themselves. They didn’t need to go to a Scrum Master to act as an intermediary. They ran their own Sprint Planning Sessions, and Reviews with the Product owner and they certainly needed no further instruction on how Scrum works.

Since they were functioning as a high performing team, they also worked out all their issues among themselves. They suggested that the Scrum Master could better spend his time with other teams. The Scrum Master did. (I talked to the Scrum Master, who voiced no feeling of failure or resentment at being relieved of his duties. He had more of a sense of a parent watching the child graduate from college and enter the workforce on his own. He expressed that he hoped other teams would ask that he be removed.)

Their velocity and output continued to be high in terms of both quantity and quality. But they were not doing Scrum because they were not following the Rules of Scrum. And this is all right. Certainly, the team was not concerned about labels and in any case they still assumed they were doing Scrum. The Scrum Sheriff had not arrived in town as yet to tell them to cease and desist.

First Follow All The Rules

You have to follow the rules because you need a baseline from which to evolve. Otherwise, how would you know you have improved? To paraphrase the comment from Seneca, how are you going to know the direction you want to take if you don’t have a point to start from?

If you improve your process and change one of the rules of Scrum to make it better for you, then you are no longer doing Scrum. You can call it something else. Maybe Cricket or NuScrum or Murcs (Scrum spelled backward).

What Do You Call It?

So if it is not Scrum then what is it? We can probably call the process whatever we want. The team mentioned above had just such a discussion. One suggestion was to call it “Elvis” (from an Elvis fan) because “We’re fast and we rock.” Other suggestions included “Super Scrum” (with appropriate uniforms), “Uber Scrum,” “Scrumptious,” and, of course, “Over Scrum” which the team member highlighted the double entendre by stating, “We are so over Scrum.”

What was their final answer? What did they answer when other developers or management asked them what they were doing? What did they finally end up calling their approach?

Nothing. They decided that they didn’t need a name. Or a title. Or an “Agile approach.” They decided that they didn’t even need to call themselves “Agile.” They were simply developing software the best way they knew how. And that was enough for them.

Agile Is Not About Developing Software Or Product

Maybe we have it wrong. Maybe “Agile” is not about better ways to develop software. Maybe Scrum isn’t really a “product development framework.” Maybe Agile is a way to get a group of software developers together and work as a team and then as a high functioning team. Maybe software development is just what is done while the team is forming and performing. All of the practices and indications of Agile, from pair programming to the Scrum Master, to collective ownership of code, and so forth seem to be about improving the collaboration of the team as much as producing software.

Perhaps if we view “Agile” as a team development method rather than a software development approach, all the issues with being one approach or another start fading away. When the focus is on developing a high-performance team, backlogs, refactoring, having only three roles, Feature Lists, prototyping sessions, and all the rest become methods and techniques for developing the high-performance team.

Graduation Time

In the public school system in the US during the 1950s (I don’t know how long it continued) a graduation ceremony was held when the children moved from kindergarten to first grade of elementary school. I have an old photograph of myself graduating from kindergarten, passed on to my wife from my mother. In sepia tones, I am standing in front of a school wall replete with suspenders (the dress of the day), mortar board and some kind of certificate in my hand.

Am I suggesting that Scrum is like kindergarten? In a way.

Just as Robert Fulghum said, “All I really need to know (about life) I learned in kindergarten” so we might say about Scrum: “All we need to know to be a highly productive software development team we learn in Scrum.”

Just as in kindergarten and throughout all school, the ultimate goal is to learn something and to graduate. With Scrum (and with all Agile approaches) our goal is to learn something (especially about being in a team) and eventually to graduate from Scrum. And it doesn’t matter what we call the process we use after we “graduate” from Scrum. We can simply call it “Agile,”

Your goal should be to start with all the rules of Scrum so that you are doing Scrum and then improve to the point where you are not doing Scrum and graduate to something better: your team’s own software development process.

As Tobias Meyer once said,” the ultimate goal of Scrum is to eventually stop using Scrum.”

Author: Steve Blais

Steve Blais, PMP, has over 43 years’ experience in business analysis, project management, and software development. He provides consulting services to companies developing business analysis processes. He is on the committee for the IIBA’s BABOK Guide 3.0. He is the author of Business Analysis: Best Practices for Success.

June 12, 2016July 18, 2019

Magento Certified Solution Specialist – #2 Omni vs Multi-Channel

Q: What is the Difference Between Omni-Channel and Multichannel Retailing?

Multi-channel
Selling in two or more distribution channels.
The CUX can be and is often different.
Example: eCommerce vs Brick and Mortar
Company: Savannah Bee Company
Omni-channel
Selling in two or more distribution channels
A single view of the customer
A single brand voice and CUX
Example: a gift card
Company: Wal-mart

June 12, 2016July 24, 2019

Magento Certified Solution Specialist Exam Study Guide – #1 Overview

Finally! an exam for Business Professionals
The exam is designed to test your knowledge of:
Magento Community 1.8
Magento Enterprise 1.13 and potentially 1.14
eCommerce trends
Typical merchant issues and requests
Professional that should take the test:
Project & Account Managers, Business Analysts, QA Testers, UX and Web Designers, eCommerce consultants and even merchants.
—
“Front of the Line” Magento Community and Enterprise knowledge.
An digital/eCommerce professional with deep knowledge of business.
An efficiency expert.
Someone that is dedicated to learning and hones their craft.
—
Computer based test
66 multiple choice questions; however 6 are thrown out.
These are generally questions Magento phases in.
90 Minutes to complete the exam
Professional test taking facilities only
Versions: 1.8 and 1.13
—
Contents of the Exam:
General eCommerce Knowledge
Magento architecture
Elements of a Magento site
How to reach goals using Magento (within a business)

June 11, 2016July 17, 2019

Magento 2 – Tutorial #1 – Magento 2.0 History, Overview, Feature Set

– So Magento 2 is finally arrived and it’s been a long time coming.
– Released Nov. 17th 2015
– First mention of Magento 2 was back in 2010 and the plans were to release the product by the end of 2011.
– The beta was released in Nov 2014, 4 years after the initial mention. So first, THANK YOU FOR PUSHING IT OUT.
– M2 was put on the shelf by eBay during their reign and it was stifled. I just got back from the Imagine conference a month or so ago and I have from a good source that zero lines of code were laid down during the eBay’s tenure.

Feature Set

– Open flexible architecture
– The platform is built around the API instead of in Magento 1 where they created the platform then retrofitted an API around it.
– The performance is overall better and more stable.
– Magento shipping with CSS preprocessor LESS (even though a lot of developers use SASS) and more synchronous processing speed.
– It uses modern technology like PHP 5.5+, HTML 5, CSS 3, and requires MYSQL 5.6 or higher. Now this may be an issue for most shared servers like Hostgator, Bluehost, etc to meet the required specs but a dedicated on premise machine should be able to handle anything you need.
– Similar to Magento 1 it ships with an RWD theme so you can address mobile design immediately.
– Other UX add ons are integrated video,
– new checkout that includes in window PayPal usage and quicker account creation.
– Ajax Add to Cart is a cool new feature will streamline the shopping experience
– While some of these features are available now, some will rollout with new versions
– Brand new admin panel that looks beautiful compared to M1
– This new admin allows merchants to create products more quickly and as we know time is money
– Product imports and exports are up to 4 times quicker
– Admin table filtering to show your user the information that you want to see when you want to see it.
– M2 continues to focus on scalability and performance
– Varnish cache is baked in, full page cache is baked into enterprise, and the database structure allows for many master slave duplicates.
– Not to get into the details but the new pricing structure for Magento 2 also allows for increased efficiency and speed because they don’t charge per application instance anymore, but rather one license fee for all. So you can run 10 servers and load balance across your infrastructure.
– Similar to M1 Magento has integrated payment and shipping partners.
– PayPal, Braintree, and Authorize still remain but Magento also integrates with WorldPay and Cybersource natively.
– Lastly the marketplace is growing. The last number I heard was 250+
– There are more than 228k downloads of the magento 2 community edition and enterprise edition, 800+ active sites, and 100+ trained solutions partners.

You can visit my website here to view more in depth details about Magento 2.

May 16, 2016August 14, 2019

107 Amazing Sales Tips, Stats, and Facts

Rather just scroll through the raw data? Here you go …

1. 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up. [Source: Scripted]

2. The average sales person only makes 2 attempts to reach a prospect. [Source: Sirius Decisions]

3. 80% of sales require 5 follow-up phone calls after the meeting. [Source: The Marketing Donut]

4. Research shows that 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. [Source:InsideSales.com]

5. If you follow up with web leads within 5 minutes, you’re 9 times more likely to convert them. [Source: InsideSales.com]

6. 63% of people requesting information on your company today will not purchase for at least three months – and 20% will take more than 12 months to buy. [Source: Marketing Donut]

7. Only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales. [Source: Gleanster Research]

8. 50% of leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy. [Source: Gleanster Research]

9. Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. [Source: DemandGen Report]

10. Companies that excel at lead nurturing have 9% more sales reps making quota. [Source: CSO Insights]

11. Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. [Source: The Annuitas Group]

12. At any given time, only 3% of your market is actively buying. 56% are not ready, 40% are poised to begin. [Source: Vorsight]

13. Companies that automate lead management see a 10% or greater increase in revenue in 6-9 months. [Source: Gartner Research]

14. Lead nurturing emails generate an 8% CTR compared to general email sends, which generate just a 3% CTR. [Source: HubSpot]

15. Lead nurturing emails get 4-10 times the response rate compared to standalone email blasts. [Source: SilverPop/DemandGen Report]

16. Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads [Source: ANNUITAS Group]

17. Companies that nurture leads make 50% more sales at a cost 33% less than non-nurtured leads. [Source: Forrester Research]

18. 25% of marketers who adopt mature lead management processes report that sales teams contact prospects within one day. Only 10% of marketers report the same follow-up time without mature lead management processes. [Source: Forrester Research]

19. 22% of B2B organizations touch leads with lead nurturing on a weekly basis. [Source: MarketingSherpa]

20. 65% of B2B marketers have not established lead nurturing. [Source: MarketingSherpa]

21. In a typical firm with 100-500 employees, an average of 7 people are involved in most buying decision. [Source: Gartner Group]

22. Nearly 2/3 of B2B marketers identified engaging key decision makers as their top challenge [Source: Forrester Research]

23. After a presentation, 63% of attendees remember stories. Only 5% remember statistics. [Source: Dan & Chip Heath]

24. Visuals are processed 60,000x faster in the brain than text. (Lesson: Use visuals in presentations) [Source: Neo Mammalian Studios]

25. 70% of people make purchasing decisions to solve problems. 30% make decisions to gain something. [Source: Impact Communications]

26. Customers believe that sales reps are 88% knowledgeable on product and only 24% on business expertise. [Source: Corporate Visions]

27. 78% of decision makers polled have taken an appointment or attended an event that came from an email or cold call [Source: DiscoverOrg]

28. 95% of buyers chose a solution provider that “Provided them with ample content to help navigate through each stage of the buying process” [Source: DemandGen Report]

29. The best times to email prospects are 8am and 3pm. [Source: GetResponse]

30. Tuesday emails have the highest open rate compared to other weekdays. [Source: Experian]

31. Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14%, and conversion rates by 10%. [Source: Aberdeen Group]

32. Personalized emails including the recipient’s first name in the subject line have higher open rates. [Source: Retention Science]

33. Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails. [Source: Jupiter Research]

34. An average buyer gets 100+ emails a day, opens just 23%, and clicks on just 2% of them. [Source: Tellwise]

35. 40% of emails are opened on mobile first – where the average mobile screen can only fit 4-7 words max. [Source: ContactMonkey]

36. 33% of email recipients open emails based on subject line alone. [Source: Convince and Convert]

37. Subject lines that create a sense of urgency and exclusivity can give a 22% higher open rate. [Source: Email Institute]

38. For B2B companies, subject lines that contained the words “alert” and “breaking” perform well. [Source: Adestra]

39. Subject lines with more than 3 words experience a drop in open rate by over 60%. [Source: ContactMonkey]

40. Emails with “Free” in the subject line were opened 10% more than those without. [Source: HubSpot]

41. Emails with “Quick” in the subject line were opened 17% less than those without. [Source: HubSpot]

42. Emails with no subject all together were opened 8% more than those with a subject line. [Source: HubSpot]

43. Only 2% of cold calls result in an appointment. [Source: Leap Job]

44. In 2007 it took an average of 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8 attempts. [Source: TeleNet and Ovation Sales Group]

45. 93% of converted leads are contacted by the 6th call attempt [Source: Velocify]

46. On the phone, tone is 86% of our communication. Words we actually use are only 14% of our communication. [Source: ContactPoint]

47. Email marketing has 2X higher ROI than cold calling, networking or trade shows. [Source: MarketingSherpa]

48. A team of 50 sales reps leave about 1,277 hours of voicemails per month. [Source: RingDNA]

49. The optimal voicemail message is between 8 and 14 seconds. [Source: The Sales Hunter]

50. 15% of every sales reps’ time simply leaving voicemails. [Source: RingLead]

51. 80% of calls go to voicemail, and 90% of first time voicemails are never returned. [Source: RingLead]

52. The average voicemail response rate is 4.8%. [Source: InsideSales]

53. The best time to cold call is 4pm – 5pm. The second best time is 8am – 10am. The worst times are 11am and 2pm. [Source: InsideSales]

54. The best days to call are Wednesdays and Thursdays from 6:45 to 9 a.m. and 4 to 6 p.m. [Source: RingDNA]

55. The worst days to call are Mondays from 6 a.m. to noon and Fridays in the afternoon. [Source: RingDNA]

56. Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25-95% [Source: Bain & Company]

57. 91% of customers say they’d give referrals. Only 11% of salespeople ask for referrals. [Source: Dale Carnegie]

58. Each year, you’ll lose 14% of your customers. [Source: BusinessBrief.com]

59. 83% of consumers are comfortable making a referral after a positive experience. [Source: Texas Tech University]

60. Customers are 4x more likely to buy when referred by a friend. [Source: Neilsen]

61. The lifetime value of a referred customer is 16% higher than a non-referred customer. [Source: Journal of Marketing]

62. 65% of a company’s new business is from referrals. [Source: New York Times]

63. A referred customer is 18% more loyal than a customer acquired through a different method. [Source: Journal of Marketing]

64. A referred customer spends 13.2% more than a non-referred customer. [Source: Journal of Marketing]

65. 73% of salespeople using social selling as part of their sales process outperform their sales peers and exceeded quota 23% more often. [Source: Aberdeen]

66. You are 70% more likely to get an appointment on an unexpected sale if you join LinkedIn Groups. [Source: Vorsight]

67. Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing. [Source: Hubspot]

68. 5% of B2B sales teams consider social media a successful lead generation method. [Source: Ken Krogue]

69. Sales reps using social selling are 50% more likely to meet or exceed their sales quota. [Source: Liz Gelb-O’Connor]

70. The top salespeople use LinkedIn at least 6 hours per week. [Source: The Sales Management Association]

71. 82% of buyers viewed at least 5 pieces of content from the winning vendor. [Source: Forrester]

72. 57% of the buyer’s journey is completed before the buyer talks to sales. [Source: Corporate Executive Board]

73. 68% of consumers feel more positive about a brand after consuming content from it. [Source: iMedia Connection]

74. 44% of inside sales pipeline comes from marketing, and inside sales average dials are down 20% year-over-year. [Source: Bridge Group Inc]

75. 76% of content marketers are forgetting sales enablement. [Source: Hubspot]

76. 75% of buyers want marketers to curb the sales-speak in their content. [Source: DemandGen Report]

77. Businesses with websites of 401-1000 pages get 6x more leads than those with 51-100 pages. [Source: Hubspot]

78. 68% of B2B businesses use landing pages to garner a new sales lead for future conversion. [Source: MarketingSherpa]

79. 86% of B2B buyers access business-related content on mobile devices. [Source: Genwi]

80. An outside sales call costs $308, an inside sales call costs $50. [Source: PointClear]

81. 46% of high-growth tech companies are growing via inside sales. [Source: Harvard Business Review]

82. Lost sales productivity and wasted marketing budget costs companies at least $1 trillion a year [Source: The B2B Lead]

83. 50% of sales time is wasted on unproductive prospecting. [Source: The B2B Lead]

84. 71% of sales reps say they spend too much time on data entry [Source: Toutapp]

85. Only 33% of inside sales rep time is spent actively selling. [Source: CSO Insights]

86. By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their interaction with the enterprise without interacting with a human. [Source: Gartner]

87. The average sales person makes 8 dials per hour and prospects for 6.25 hours to set 1 appointment. [Source: Ovation Sales Group]

88. Nearly 57% of B2B prospects and customers feel that their sales teams are not prepared for the first meeting. [Source: IDC]

89. 88% of missed opportunities were caused because sales couldn’t find or leverage internal resources. [Source: Qvidian]

90. Companies with aligned sales and marketing generated 208% more revenue from marketing [Source: MarketingProfs]

91. When sales and marketing teams are in sync, companies became 67% better at closing deals [Source: Marketo]

92. 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to Sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified. [Source: MarketingSherpa]

93. A whopping 68% of B2B organizations have not identified their funnel. [Source: MarketingSherpa]

94. Alignment of sales and marketing impacts revenue growth up to 3 times [Source: Bulldog Solutions]

95. Only 30% of CMOs have a clear process or program to make marketing and sales alignment a priority [Source: CMO Council]

96. Companies with “dynamic, adaptable sales and marketing processes” reported an average of 10% more sales people on-quota compared to other companies [Source: CSO Insights]

97. Companies with mature lead generation and management practices have a 9.3% higher sales quota achievement rate. [Source: CSO Insights]

98. 46% of marketers with mature lead management processes have sales teams that follow up on more than 75% of marketing-generated leads. [Source: Forrester Research]

99. Sales reps ignore 50% of marketing leads [Source: The B2B Lead]

100. B2B companies’ inability to align sales and marketing teams has cost them upwards of 10% or more of revenue per year. [Source: IDC]

101. Just 56% of B2B organizations verify valid business leads before they are passed to Sales [Source: MarketingSherpa]

102. Only 44% of companies are using any kind of lead scoring system [Source: DecisionTree]

103. 38% of CMOs said that aligning and integrating sales and marketing was a top priority in 2014. [Source: CMO Council]

104. Automated & enforced sales processes generate 88% quota attainment. [Source: Velocify]

105. B2B organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing operations achieved 24% faster three-year revenue growth, and 27% faster three-year profit growth [Source: SiriusDecisions]

106. Organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing functions enjoyed 36% higher customer retention rates [Source: MarketingProfs]

107. 57% of B2B organizations identify ‘converting qualified leads into paying customers’ as a top funnel priority. [Source: MarketingSherpa]