The Top 10 Magento2 Extensions to Supercharge Your Store
Magento2 is a powerful eCommerce platform and very popular worldwide , the Community Edition version of Magento2 has many features that work perfectly straight ‘out-of-the-box’.
This is primarily why a lot of businesses inside New Zealand and worldwide choose to use it as their ecommerce store’s platform.
However some of the already functionally rich sections of Magento2 can be further enhanced to improve your stores overall performance and also to help you save more time completing simple but manual tasks in Magento’s powerful admin .
Such sections include:
- Overall search engine optimisation
- Frontend Search Functionality
- Rewards Points Systems and Promotions
- Frontend Checkout Functionality.
- Product Administration
- Personalisation
- Transactional Management
- Content Management (blogging)
We have listed below our ten top picks for Magento extensions, these extension recommendations are listed in order of importance, SEO being the most important item that you must get right on your Magento2 store to improve traffic, rankings and ultimately SALES .
1) MAGENTO2 SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Search engine optimisation for any ecommerce store is quite possibly the most important aspect that you need to invest serious time and effort into.
If you want your store, products and categories to rank in Google then you must make sure you have the right on-page structure and that you also have properly optimised those pages for your keywords.
Why do we say this? Because by ensuring you have the right on-page structure on all product and category pages this will improve your ability to rank higher in Google and other search engines, combining that with good optimisation for your keywords including back-links will then see you move up the rankings and secure traffic to your site.
The biggest issue faced by any ecommerce site aside from on-page structure and keyword optimisation is that ecommerce sites regardless of platform can be penalised for duplicate content , e.g. Google indexing the same product via two different URL’s therefore creating duplicate content.
Google does not like having multiple results for the same page in their search engine (they consider this spam) and this will then mean they will penalise your site’s overall ranking.
Our extension recommendation for Magento2 SEO is the MageWorx SEO Suite Ultimate, this extension is specifically designed to; eliminate duplicate content issues, create good on-page structure, optimise your site for keywords, enhance the standard Magento sitemap system and it is perfect for any size store.
This extension by Magento2 extension company MageWorx is jam-packed with amazing features, all of which are focused on improving your store’s rankings and overall optimisation .
Extension Details:
View Extension: MageWorx SEO Suite Ultimate
Company: MageWorx
Price: $399 USD / Licence / Site
Overall Rating: 9/10.
2) MAGENTO2 SEARCH
After SEO, your websites search functionality is possibly one of the most important features that will help improve conversion, overall usability and bounce rates.
Magento’s standard search functionality has always been somewhat lacking, although good for a basic free system it hasn’t evolved further in the last few years.
We find that most of our customer’s will raise the issue of store and product searches at least once in their Magento2 website’s lifetime. Either Magento2 is not producing accurate matching results or certain products are not showing up that are being searched.
Some of this is to do with configuration of the standard search functionality, but quite often it’s more about auto-complete and recommendations based on search terms that get shown to the customer to speed up the search process.
We have two extension recommendations that we have used a lot of in the past to improve the search functions on a lot of our Magento2 customer sites.
The first is Amasty’s Search Pro extension , this extension uses auto-complete and suggestions, it also enhances search functionality by allowing Magento2 to search through your product attributes system to further match up search terms with product.
Extension Details
View Extension: Amasty Search Pro
Company: Amasty
Price: $99 USD / Licence / Site
Overall Rating: 8/10
The second search extension is Better Store Search by Sweet Tooth, this extension is very powerful for enhancing your search as it not only searches product but also searches site content such as blog posts.
It has functionality such as custom search weightings, complete word processing and density based matching.
Extension Details
View Extension: Better Store Search
Company: Sweet Tooth - Better Store Search
Price: $249 USD / Licence / Site
Overall Rating: 9/10
3) MAGENTO2 REWARDS
Powerful rewards systems have been proven to work in retail many times over, just imagine how powerful they will be on your ecommerce store.
With many reward points systems available, the key to getting the best setup and system is not by spending the least, nor is it by spending the most.
We have worked with a number of NZ Magento2 stores that have revenue turnover larger than $1 million NZD. Every single one of those stores has had some sort of rewards system.
If you are serious about growing your store then a rewards and loyalty points system is definitely key.
The only extension we can recommend in this area is the Sweet Tooth Rewards Points System for Magento2 .
Extension Details
View Extension: Sweet Tooth Rewards Points System
Company: Sweet Tooth
Price: $58 USD / Licence / Site
Overall Rating: 10/10
4) MAGENTO2 ONE STEP CHECKOUT
Magento’s standard checkout system uses the very popular ajax one page checkout system. In theory this system works perfectly fine and has been proven to work on many large Magento2 websites.
But you can optimise this part of your ecommerce store even further with a One Step Checkout system.
The One Step Checkout system has proven to increase successful conversions by more than 60%. Stores that implemented this system also saw cart abandonment drop significantly with strong credibility messages incorporated into the One Step system.
Aheadworks One Step Checkout system is simple and very easy to customise, with good support we definitely recommend their extension.
Extension Details
View Extension: Aheadworks One Step Checkout
Company: Aheadworks
Price: $149 USD / Licence / Site
Overall Rating: 9/10
5) MAGENTO2 ENHANCED PRODUCT ADMIN
When you are managing an online store that has over a 1000 plus SKU’s you definitely need all product editing tasks to be easy and fast , such as simple product editing actions without having to click through to each product edit page.
Magento’s standard product editing system by default forces you to click through to the product edit page to make even the smallest of changes to price, stock and other product configuration.
We have implemented a number of the Enhanced Product Admin extensions for our customers, the most popular by far has been the AMASTY Extended Product Grid with Editor.
Extension Details
View Extension: AMASTY Extended Product Grid with Editor
Company: AMASTY
Price: $99 USD / Licence / Site
Overall Rating: 9/10
6) MAGENTO2 ENHANCED ORDER ADMIN
Working with a site that receives a number of orders daily or even hourly can be a time consuming task. Although there are integrations available for inventory systems or even ERP platforms that take the order processing out of Magento2, quite often smaller shops will use the Magento2 Order system be default.
Completing bulk tasks and changes to orders even if it means updating the status can be done a lot faster without having to click into the Order page itself.
We have implemented extensions to enhance the functionality of Magento’s standard Order system to improve overall time and efficiency of order management on large and small stores.
Extension Details
View Extension: AMASTY Extended Order Grid
Company: AMASTY
Price: $99 USD / Licence / Site
Overall Rating: 9/10
7) MAGENTO2 MAILCHIMP INTEGRATION
It has long been known by anyone that has used the Magento platform, that even though there is an inbuilt newsletter system within the platform, it is not very feature rich for reporting or editing.
As ecommerce specialists we have worked with the internal Magento2 Newsletter system and have found it somewhat un-customer-friendly.
We now promote Mailchimp.com to all our clients as the best solution which is targeted at the end user (the customer) who needs a simple but feature rich system that will help promote their product and store to their many customers.
We have implemented many integrations using Magento2 and Mailchimp in combination to give a streamlined subscribe system, list management and professional newsletter mail outs.
Extension Details
View Extension: Mage Monkey by Ebizmarts
Company: Ebizmarts
Price: FREE Licence / Site
Overall Rating: 10/10
8) MAGENTO2 TRANSACTION SURCHARGE FEE
Are you using Paypal or Payment Express, and do you get charged credit card fees for accepting payments online? Credit card fees may be a percentage of the transaction size or a separate fee charged by the credit card company.
For an online store, quite often you are forced to add this cost into your product pricing or even your overall business financial model. But for smaller businesses you might not have a fully integrated payment system setup when you are first starting out.
Merchant services, credit card and bank fees might have the potential to cripple your profits and business whilst you are gaining traction.
We have used the Surcharge extension developed by FOOMAN , on a number of occasions to alleviate this issue for small businesses and cover any transaction fees incurred.
Extension Details
View Extension: FOOMAN Surcharge Fee
Company: FOOMAN
Price: $99 NZD / Licence / Site
Overall Rating: 10/10
9) MAGENTO2 BLOGGING
Adding blog or SEO content to any ecommerce store is always a little harder than you think it should be, not only that but the standard Magento system does not include a straight out of the box system.
When you are adding content to a blog you also want to make sure that the blog system is SEO friendly so that you won’t get stung for duplicate content or bad URL’s.
We have used Aheadworks Free Blog system for Magento many times and it provides a professional and easy to use system to post blog articles and optimise for keywords.
Extension Details
View Extension: AheadWorks Community Blog
Company: Aheadworks
Price: FREE / Licence / Site
Overall Rating: 9/10
We have also used Blog Pro from MagPleasure to give our customers an easy to use blogging system that allows you to have total control over content and even enhance the content with blog author bio’s.
View Extension: Blog Pro from MagPleasure
Company: Magpleasure
Price: $119 USD / Licence / Site
Overall Rating: 10/10
10) MAGENTO2 GIFT MESSAGE AND DELIVERY DATE
Magento2 has great standard gift customisation options but what about delivery dates for special days such as Birthdays, anniversaries or Mothers Day?
With a custom gift message and delivery date you add a lot more personalisation to your store and that extra bit of service to the customer. Its personalised touches like these that will increase conversion and retention for ongoing sales.
We have worked with a number of gift related and consumer product ecommerce sites , the majority of them that pay attention to personalisation do well because they give their customers options.
We recommend the Aheadworks Magento2 Gift Message extension.
View Extension: Aheadworks Gift Message Extension
Company: Aheadworks
Price: $99 USD / Licence / Site
Overall Rating: 9/10
For Delivery dates we also recommend the Aheadworks Delivery Date Magento2 extension.
Extension Details
View Extension: Aheadworks Delivery Date & Notice Extension
Company: Aheadworks
Price: $89 USD / Licence / Site
Overall Rating: 9/10
Magento2 Extensions to Supercharge your Store
We hope this article has given you insight into what is required to make your store really hum with traffic and sales. We have implemented these extensions a number of times for various customers including other extensions not listed here.
If you require assistance installing and configuring any of these extensions including full Magento2 support and training, our team can assist you - get in touch today.
As a Magento2 extension developer creating custom extensions for our customers we know that any third party software being added to Magento2 needs to be high quality, secure and bug free.
If you require a custom extension developed not found on the list above or anywhere else, please get in touch with our team today.
