The release will include the following functionality when it’s rolled out on August 1, 2010…

• This version fully supports Magento Enterprise 1.7 and above and Magento Professional with store credit and loyalty points
• A much easier installation process that does not require any change to templates and just activates from the backend
• Your customers have the choice of multiple addresses for customers who are logged into their account
• Administrative setting for displaying pricing with or without taxes
• Administrative setting to configure whether the email newsletter checkbox should appear “checked” or “unchecked” when a customer is checking out.
• And some more fixes and tweaks to OneStepCheckout’s functionality

I’ve long waited for the day when people would start to use mobile commerce in their businesses.  With people using more and more smart phones in everyday life it was only a matter of time until someone developed the architecture for the next wave of business… m-commerce.  M-Commerce or “Mobile commerce” as it’s known is the ability to buy and sell products and services using mobile devices like PDAs, smart phones and mobile (cell) phones.

Recently, Magento Commerce said that it now has the ability to commerce through mobile devices.  This feature has not been released to all users just yet but it’s only a matter of time.  So what does this mean to the average business owner?

• A new way to conduct your business
• The ability to reach more customers in a new way

So what does Magento Mobile have to offer you and your business?  Here is a list of features about the latest mobile commerce offering from Magento Commerce:

• Integration with PayPal Mobile – Naturally if you are going to offer a mobile commerce solution you are going to need a payment gateway that is capable of processing payments made on mobile devices which is where PayPal Mobile comes into play with its processing power.
• It’s Completely Customizable – That’s right!  You can customize your mobile commerce website as you see fit!
• The Total Cost of Ownership is low – Ultimately a solution that is truly best should cost a small fortune and the total cost of ownership is something that Magento has focused on in releasing this mobile commerce solution to the masses
• Manage Multiple Devices – In order for Magento Mobile to be successful in helping you grow your business you need the mobile website to work on many different types of mobile phones, PDAs and smart phones and Magento Mobile allows you to do this with a growing list of supported mobile devices under its belt.
• And more…

So if you are interested in adding a new sales channel to your existing business or you want a way to sell through mobile devices then Magento Mobile might just be able to help you out with this!  Oh yeah, checkout this screenshot of how it looks on a iPod or iPhone.

Registration Modes

In this update Magento website owners can use different modes to allow their customers to register when they checkout using OneStepCheckout including:

• Registration Required – Much like it sounds when you select this option your customers will need to register during the checkout process
• Registration Disabled – This gives any customer the option to checkout of your ecommerce website without needing to register
• Allow guests and logged in users – This mode offers your customers the option to check out as a guest meaning that you don’t need to create an account and previous customers to use their account to log in and purchase from you again
• Enable registration on success page – This mode gives your customers the option to create an account after they’ve checked out and are on the thank you page of your website
• Auto-generate account for new emails – This mode will create accounts for each new email address your customer enters during checkout which

In case you didn’t get a chance to read my original product review click here to read it! To read about more details that these new registration modes offer click here to see the article that the team at OneStepCheckout wrote about this on their blog.

In this posting I am going to provide some solutions that you can implement on your website to take advantage of canonical links for your website’s SEO efforts.  I’ve only decided to focus on Magento Commerce (an ecommerce platform) and WordPress (my CMS platform of choice) and I will be talking about 3 plug-ins in particular that when implemented will integrate the canonical linking structure to your website and web pages within your site.

The “All in one SEO Pack” for WordPress by Michael Torbert

Now I’ve used the All in One SEO Pack for a while now myself and the thing I really love about it is how easy it is to use.  You don’t need to be an SEO expert to understand what’s going on and all you need to do is click a checkbox and the canonical link structure will be added to your website.  Just have a look and see how easy it is to turn on the canonical link setting with the “All in one SEO Pack” WordPress plug-in by clicking here!

The “Canonical URLs for Magneto” Extension by Joost De Valk and Joachim Houtman

For those of you using Magento to run your ecommerce operations there is a simple extension that you can add to your Magento commerce installation.  When installed it adds the canonical link structure to your website’s header section allowing search engines to tell the unique links for the highly similar ones.  Click here to check out this Magento Extension

The “Canonical URLs for WordPress” Plug-in by Joost De Valk

It’s worth a mention as Joost De Valk of Yoast.com wrote this plug-in for WordPress users to take advantage of the canonical linking structure on WordPress sites specifically.  The plug-in itself is pretty straight forward and you can grab it here!

If you use any platform software like WordPress, Magento Commerce or one of the countless others check first to make sure the core platform architecture doesn’t already support canonical links and if it currently doesn’t i’d suggest you check out their plug-ins, extensions and add-ons to see if there is a solution to help you with this.  Happy “canonical-ing”!

Luc Arnold

What I did like about this plug-in

The plug-in does what it says it’s going to do. There is sometimes nothing worse than getting a plug-in or technology activated on your website that doesn’t live up to the hype of what it claimed to do. This plug-in claims to reduce a 6 step checkout process down to a one step checkout process and it delivers.

One of the biggest if not the biggest problem in ecommerce today is shopping cart abandonment. This is a statistic that takes into account the number of people who started in the checkout process compared to the number of people of finished the checkout process and placed their order. What a one page checkout does or is supposed to do is decrease the number of shoppers who abandon their shopping cart because they are frustrated, give up somewhere in the process or are affected by performance.

Also, one step checkout processes enhance the customer’s experience which can drive up the conversion rate and if you bought this plug-in you’d be best to test it on your Magento ecommerce website.

This plug-in also gives you the ability to disable or enable certain fields quickly and easily including “Fax”, “Company Name”, “Terms and Conditions”, “Comments” and others. I am hoping to see them implement more customization aspects into future versions but here is what some companies have already done to customize and implement the OneStepCheckout plug-in into their everyday businesses.

What I didn’t like about this plug-in

It’s only available for Magento users which mean that if you are using another ecommerce platform to run your online business then you will not be able to use this plug-in. It’s a solid plug-in as you can see from the screenshots… Who wouldn’t want to use it on their ecommerce website?

Another point to consider is that it literally takes the checkout process from six steps to one step so if you wanted to customize a checkout process to say three steps this plug-in will not allow you to do that easily.

Because the plug-in doesn’t currently support adding custom fields having and using what are known as “Coupon”, “Promotion” or “Discount” codes when a customer checks out could pose an issue if this is something that your ecommerce business does currently and it is something that you should be aware of when buying this plug-in for your Magento ecommerce website

I was checking out the screencasts on the OneStepCheckout website and it makes mention multiple times of being able to use” GeoIP” which is a technology that allows you to base where a customer is globally using their IP address and fills in the blanks of the OneStepCheckout page using this information. If you are sold on this feature in particular you may be sad to hear (I know that I was) that GeoIP is only available on their “ENTERPRISE” version of this plug-in but if you need it then maybe you can justify spending the 590 Euros for the enterprise addition of OneStepCheckout

Why should you run out and buy this plug-in?

If you are running a Magento ecommerce website and you are looking to enhance the checkout process and increase those lower than expected conversion rates this plug-in will help you do that successful. The one page checkout collects the following information all in one step…

• Name and address information
• Shipping method information
• Payment method information
• “Review your order” information

… Lastly your customers will simply click the “Place Order” button and the one step checkout process is complete!

How much does One Step Checkout cost?

The Standard version of OneStepCheckout will cost you 190 Euros and includes most of the functionality that the enterprise version has except for GeoIP as I originally discussed, use of the plug-in on multiple domains within the same installation, Free support, 1 hour of technical customization help and only six months of free updates.

The Enterprise version of OneStepCheckout costs 590 Euros but for that you also get a lot of extras not included in the standard version including GeoIP, use of the plug-in on multiple domains within the same installation, Free support, 1 hour of technical customization help and UNLIMITED free updates and priority on requests for new features. This is well worth the money if you are using it on multiple Magento ecommerce websites or just want access to all the bells and whistles.

Update: Discount/Promo Code functionality – November 18, 2009.

I heard back from Jone Eide, the CTO (Chief Technical Officer) at OneStepCheckout who has this to say about the functionality if discount/promo codes when OneStepCheckout is being used…

I was getting a query from a customer today, which claimed that OneStepCheckout doesn’t support coupon/promo codes. That is actually incorrect. In Magento, the discount/promo code field is displayed in the cart, and not in the actual checkout. That’s the same for OneStepCheckout. You can still have a discount field in your cart, like it does by default, and when you enter OneStepCheckout, you will see the discount added and taken into account in the review part with the totals. It would be great if you can update this in your review. Sorry for the confusion.

Jone Eide, CTO OneStepCheckout

Screenshot of Walmart.com Vertical Menu functionality

Screenshot of SilverThemes.com Vertical Menu functionality

Cons of using the Magento Vertical Menu add-on

Size of your ecommerce site – This add-on was really designed for online retailers looking for a better way to showcase a wide number of categories in a very ”user friendly” way. If you run a smaller ecommerce website with fewer categories the functionality may not benefit your business as much as using it on a larger ecommerce site with more products and categories.

Optimized to work with SilverThemes Magento Themes – Because SilverThemes built this add-on they have optimized it to work exclusively with their themes. If you buy another Magento Theme for your site from a different Magento Theme vendor it may be harder to implement and use this add-on for your business’ needs. This is not clear from SilverThemes.com as to how it will operate with another non-SilverThemes.com ecommerce theme but you can rest assured that SilverThemes.com is one of the best Magento Theme, Widget and Addon Vendors around currently.

Pros of using the Magento Vertical Menu add-on

Very Browser Compatible – I tested the Magento Vertical Menu add-on using Mozilla Firefox (3.0.12), IE (6.0.2900.2180) and Google Chrome (2.0.172.39). What I noticed in IE is that it takes longer for the mouse over to generate the Vertical Menu however once it pops up it works the same way as in the other web browsers mentioned. Usability in IE could be an issue as it is with most things JavaScript in IE.

Excellent Price – The price is very reasonable for companies that are looking to implement this functionality into their ecommerce website and this is an attractive feature for any company running Magento Commerce to support their online ecommerce sales channels.

Overall it’s a great add-on that SilverThemes team has developed and designed. The only concerns that can be raised about using this add-on with a Magento Commerce site are optimize issue and compatibility with IE and how it could affect the functionality of this add-on. The Magento Vertical Menu is available from SilverThemes.com and sells for a very reasonable price of $99.00. Check it out in action by clicking here.

What’s included in the SilverThemes Summer Offer?

• The SilverThemes Magento TubeTheme – Regular Price $149.00
• The MagicZoom plugin from Magic Toolbox – Regular Price $37.00
• The SilverThemes Magento Vertical Menu Addon – Regular Price $99.00
• A SilverThemes Widget of your choice – Regular Price $49.00

So how much do you think all this costs? Would you believe you can get all these Magento functionality for $249.00? Well that’s exactly correct. You will save $85.00 or about 25% off the regular price of $334.00 which will definitely hope those of you looking to either switch platforms to try out Magento Commerce or for those of you designing Magento sites for clients and looking for excellent core functionality this package from SilverThemes is worth a look at. Check it out here today in action! But it won’t last long. The offer ends August 15, 2009.

Originally, I talked about SilverThemes, a company designing for the Magento Commerce platform that is producing some interesting themes and add-ons. I recently came across their AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript) Product Popup Module. What this module allows you to do is integrate with your Magento Commerce website and give you the ability to show product popups without placing strain on the web server hosting your website by reducing the page load. It’s a great tool for customers to sneak a peek at the product before they ever click through to the product page.

According to SilverThemes.com, you can customize this module using CSS and HTML. You can set the following attributes using this module…

• Serial
• Thumbnail Width and Height
• Thumbnail Count
• Big Image Width and Height
• Description Character Limit

If you are running a Magento Commerce website and are looking for a way to customize product pages this module can definitely help you out. Also with a price tag of $89.99 for the AJAX Product Popup Module it is pretty cost effective for the small to mid-sized company to afford to implement this functionality. Check it out at SilverThemes.com today!

One of their most Popular Themes Includes…

The Mega Store Magento Theme is available for $149.00 and is currently supported for up to version 1.3.1 of Magento.  It supports 4 column category pages (4 products per row).  The theme itself is useful for larger stores and is designed to work in all major web browsers.

One of their most Popular Widgets Includes…

The SquaredSpace Widget is new and costs $49.00 and it allows users to show featured products in categories inside static blocks or on the front page of your magento website.  Its a very customizable widget and allows you to change the size, colors, texts, links and titles.  Click here to see this widget in action.

Currently, for the month of May 2009, SilverThemes offers its customers a special package that includes its Mega Store Theme, Simpleboard Widget, the MagicZoom Plus product/image-magnifier and the category dropdown widget for $199. It’s a good price considering that you would normally spend over $300.  Check it out here today, the offer is only good until May 31, 2009 so you better hurry up.