image via magento
“Magento” is more popular than the term “eCommerce”, and searched for twice as often as its competitor Shopify. Magento also powers more than 26 percent of all eCommerce sites in the Alexa top one million sites list. Magento is rapidly becoming the face of eCommerce, because of two reasons: it’s free and it’s open source. Like many open source platforms, the list of extensions can be overwhelming. So, we narrowed it down for you.
These are our top 5 Magento extensions to consider for your eCommerce business.
What are the best Magento Extensions?
Magento Extensions cover a range of different functions. From getting customers into your store to getting them through checkout, “there’s an extension for that”. This blog post will focus on five main extension types.
- Checkout
- Social Login
- Reviews
- Support
- Email Marketing
Keep in mind that we’re giving you our top 5 from all categories of extensions, combined. Individual categories will usually have multiple good options (see the list of our favorite order management extensions).
Comparison of the Top Magento Extensions
| Name | Category | Popularity | Reviews | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OneStepCheckout | Checkout | 6934 | 4.4/5 | €245 / ~$310 |
| Social Login for Magento | Social Login | 949 | 5/5 | $99 |
| Yotpo | Reviews | 4789 | 4.8/5 | $30 / mo |
| Zendesk | Support | 2197 | 3.7/5 | $49 / mo |
| Bronto | Email Marketing | 936 | 4.4/5 | Free with subscription |
| Popularity and review data taken from Magento Connect, pricing taken from Magento Connect and company website. | ||||
image via OneStepCheckout
OneStepCheckout Extension
Conversion optimization experts preach that one of the key factors to increasing conversion rate is decreasing friction. In the retail world, this means you want the process from when someone decides they want a product to them actually buying that product to be as smooth as possible. OneStepCheckout does this by letting the customer go through the entire checkout process from one screen.
A responsive demo of this can be found here: http://responsive.demo.onestepcheckout.com/
image via Magento Connect
Social Login for Magento
Much like OneStepCheckout, Social Login is attempting to remove some friction from the buying process by letting customers sign-in using their social accounts. It simplifies customer information gathering, and allows the customer to log in more easily in the future. Social Login also comes with free support, which comes highly recommended.
A responsive demo of this can be found here: https://demo.magestore.com/social-login/
Image via Yotpo
Yotpo Extension
Reviews are one of the most important factors in getting your customers to buy your products. Today, few buy a product without first reading through reviews (just look what you’re doing right now). Yotpo makes it easy to get reviews from your customers, so your product pages aren’t void of customer feedback. You can set up your account so Yotpo will email customers a certain time period after they purchase an item to request a review. The coolest part is that the customer can submit their review right from their inbox.
image via Zendesk
Zendesk Magento Extension
Keeping your customers satisfied is just as important as acquiring new customers. Zendesk is cloud-based customer support software that helps you manage your customers’ support issues. Zendesk makes it easy for customers to leave support tickets by allowing them to create support tickets right from your Magento store. Zendesk’s review score on Magento Connect is slightly lower, but this is only because of one seriously unhappy customer and one person simply trying to advertise their own extension.
Image via Bronto
Bronto Magento Extension
Cart abdonment can have a huge impact on your eCommerce business. Every time a customer leaves your site with items in their cart, you’re leaving money on the table. Bronto gets people who abandoned their cart to come back and finish their purchase, helping you increase your final sales. Bronto is a Magento Gold partner and the #1 email marketing provider to the Internet Retailer Top 1000.
This video does a good job explaining all you can do with Bronto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkge4SQQdv0
What to do next
If you’re looking for Magento extensions, you’re probably still in the early(ish) stages of your Magento implementation. If you’re a Magento Go user thinking of making the switch to Magento Community or Enterprise, check out our blog post about what to do now that Magento Go is shutting down. Or, if you’re in the process of getting your store up and running, check out the top 5 Magento hosting providers.
