It might seem that picking among three thousand available Magneto extensions is a simple and great way to extend your e-commerce store’s functionality.
But the thing is, the more extensions that appear on a marketplace, the harder it will be to understand which of them will suit the needs of your e-commerce store.
In this post, we will share a couple of tips and several factors that you need to consider when picking a quality Magneto extension for your store:
1. Define your purpose clearly
The default Magneto online store already offers you a variety of features to your e-commerce store. These extensions provide supporting features to improve and meet the business demands of your online customers.
Therefore, it’s not essential that you install as many extensions, because some are costly while others are ineffective.
That’s why you need to have a clearly defined purpose.
Say you want to allow people to sell products through your online store, then you might want to check out the Multi-Vendor Marketplace. On the other hand, if you have a virtual store, then a delivery extension doesn’t make much sense.
So, think about a particular extension’s purpose. Why do you need it? If you can answer the purpose of installing it, then you may have effectively identified an advanced functionality that you can use for your Magneto store.
There will also be times where you discover more than one extension that offers a particular capability that you need. You can compare these extensions side by side to figure out which fulfills your needs better.
2. Find a trusted provider
Several extensions offer the same set of functionalities, so how do you choose the best? Here are some factors that you should consider:
- Read Online Reviews: You can look for online reviews on popular social media channels like Facebook or YouTube. The reviews that you find online should make you confident in using an extension. Ideally, check for the ratings and reviews to have a better idea of the experience of others with a particular extension that you wanted to purchase.
- Discuss with Other Online Users: The best places to go to are forums and other discussion threads found on social media.
- Search for the Frequency of Updates: This is to ensure that the particular extension is continuously being improved and to find out which developers are taking a more proactive stance in making important bug fixes, newly added features, and better versions.
- Search for a Money-back Guarantee: If a particular vendor is confident about their product, then they would offer a money-back guarantee. Make sure that this offer shouldn’t be less than two weeks so that you have sufficient time to try out the extension and be familiar with it.
3. Self analyze the extension
Providers might offer different features of extensions, which could be all the same. But user-experience is another different point.
Some things that you need to consider at this time is the front-end design, streamlined functionality, easy configuration, and so on. Take your time to try out the backend and frontend demo.
Choose the ones that best suit your needs. Moreover, taking a demo before you install an extension lets you know which ones work the best and fits your requirements.
4. Check the product “Change Log”
When you check the “change log” of the product, you’ll have a better idea of the product’s life cycle. You’ll also see how it is designed, it’s quality, and the areas that needed to be improved upon like coding quality, bug fixes, frontend and backend demo, updates, features, and so on.
You can also check for the latest updated date for a particular extension. See if it supports the latest Magneto version if it’s designed according to the latest demands of the e-commerce industry, as well as your customers’ requirements.
5. See if You can Contact the Service Provider
You can create and submit a ticket to check your service provider’s support team how they would handle your tickets and emails.
Communicating with a particular extension’s service provider enables you to know how their company deals with its customers and encouraging them to make the right purchasing decision. How they would reply to your ticket allows you to know whether they’re only targeting sales.
Ideally, try to reach out and communicate to them first to know how they serve users in queries and products before ultimately purchasing with them.
Final Thoughts
There you have it. Hopefully, you can choose the right Magneto extension for your e-commerce site that is specifically tailored to your needs.
Following the tips that we have mentioned above will allow you to pick the best Magneto extensions effectively.
By then, you can decide and choose the Magneto extensions that could be perfect solutions for your e-commerce store this 2020.