Tips, hints and ideas for success selling online by eCorner

Whats happening to Magento 1.x?

Magento 1 has a reputation as a solid enterprise ecommerce platform. Released in 2007 with over 230,000 live stores currently running on Magento 1, the platform was chosen to power some of the world's largest ecommerce websites. After its acquisition by Adobe in 2018, they announced in September 2018 that the Magento 1 platform would be end-of-life and no longer be supported by June 2020. This meant that ecommerce businesses operating on Magento 1 had to make a decison to replatform in order to ensure the continuity of their online stores.

Magento as a solution was always a complex implementation but allows for highly flexible customisation. The hosting requirements were generally higher that with most other ecommerce software solutions. So although many enterprises took advantage of the free version of Magento (which will no longer be supported) the total cost of ownership and maintenance was high.
 

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Transitioning from Magento 1

eCommerce projects can be complex and the transition from one platform to another is no exception.

Adobe have released Magento 2 as the next generation of their eCommerce platform. Moving from Magento 1 to Magento 2 is as complex as moving to a solution from a different vendor.

Choosing which platform is the best fit for your business is an important first step to be able to successfully replatform. Since Magento was released in 2007, the eCommerce solutions market has changed considerably. There are now more options available and functionality has been greatly expanded. What might have been a custom requirement in 2007 could be standard functionality today or even not required at all.

From a business perspective however, the singular most important aspect in a successful transition is to maintain your data integrity.

We recommend that you export product, order and customer content from Magento and save it, along with any other content that you need to transition. This can be used to import into other systems. You can find more inforrmation about exporting data here.

Replatforming also offers a great opportunity to introduce a more modern and user friendly design and user experience. Often this can be achieved with little extra cost.

Why choose eCorner and ePages?

eCorner has multiple solutions that can be used to replace Magento including pre-defined packages for small business and dedicated packages for larger enterprises or contact us for more information or a call.

eCorner solutions are based on ePages, an enterprise grade eCommerce solution used by 100,000's of companies worldwide. The ePages software has been localised for Australia and New Zealand with local payment, shipping, tax and reporting features all built in.

Our core software fully supports a B2B and B2C model, but we have also enhanced that with specific functionality for resellers. It's primarily focused on merchants that want to manage large product catalogues and data feeds from distributors.

Our packages include all core functionality, software, hosting, maintenance and support.

Our solution is built to perform and be secure. Unlike with Magento, eCorner provide hosting, maintenance and support as an integral part of the packages we offer.

What does our solution provide?

Standard B2C Functionality built-in

1. Integrated website and online store
2. Customer order online with payment and shipping
3. Range of themes with built-in functionality supporting all devices (which can be customised if needed)
4. Predictive search and filtered search results
5. Automated up-sell and cross-sell support
6. Multi-channel with eBay, Amazon and other marketplaces supported
7. Newsletters and coupons built-in
8. Fully multi-media content management

Standard B2B Functionality built-in

We have extensive support for the business to business model built-in as standard. These include:

1. Multiple customers groups and prices lists
2. Log-in to access
3. View group pricing after log-in
4. Price lists with volume and value-based discount structures
5. Simple order forms
6. Multiple delivery addresses per account
7. Save orders to shopping lists and reprocess as new orders

Resellerate for IT Resellers multi-distributor functionality

1. All of the above
2. Ability to automatically manage data feeds
3. PO’s for distributors
4. Multiple suppliers or warehouses for a product (different stock and prices)
5. Buy price and sell price managed by markup rules
6. Quote management system
7. Saved quotes and orders created from quotes
8. Addon warranty built-in

Flexible Design

Design is a critical factor for any website. eCorner provide a range of free or paid themes that can be modified to your needs. We also offer a custom design service that can create a beautiful design unique to your website.

Hosting, Security and PCI Compliance

eCorner provided a secure environment that is Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS V3.2) certified by an external quality assurance auditor.

1. eCorner is hosted in one of Australia’s most secure data centres - Macquarie Telecom.
2. There is full real-time denial of service monitoring, blocking and management
3. Systems are monitored for virus and malicious software intrusion
4. There are quarterly penetration tests carried out by our security audit providers
5. We do not publish source code or provide any critical components via 3^rd parties
6. We undertake full PCI DSS annual reviews and audits through Hivint - a qualified security auditor.

Analytics and Business Reporting (Wagtail)

Magento has very little business reporting capability built-in and so often customisation and add-ons where required. eCorner provide a business reporting system to help you manage your ecommerce business.

Wagtail Analytics, is a reporting dashboard from eCorner that is available for any eCorner online store. It enables you to see at a glance exactly what is happening on your online store. The login and dashboard are separate from the website administration so as to allow you easier access and also to provide access to other people in your business without accessing the critical management back office of your store.

Shopping Cart Recovery

Wagtail includes extensive marketing capabilities including an abandoned baskets recovery (Cart Recovery). You can learn more at - Wagtail Shopping Cart Recovery.

Wagtail is continuously being improved and provides direct reporting to the SQL data base along with features such as uncompleted (abandoned) basket reporting and retrieval.

Accepting payments online

We support a number of different payment providers most will require an online merchant bank account. All are very good and offer different pricing plans. PayPal is easiest to get started as they can send funds to any bank account. With PayPal you can accept payments via credit card or PayPal account.

• PayPal – does not require an online merchant bank account
• eWAY Rapid
• SecurePay
• Payment Express
• Stripe – does not require an online merchant bank account
• ZipMoney / ZipPay – buy now pay later
• OpenPay – buy now pay later
• Authorise.net
• Many international payment methods
• Afterpay - buy now pay later
• Pay by account or invoice for B2B based on customer group

Australia Post integration

Australia post is supported and available in all packages  – uses multiple Australia Post methods (Standard, Express, International etc.) and you need weights and dimensions in each product. Calculation is based on postcode or destination country. Good for packages up to 22kg. (supports free over a certain order value)

Supported shipping

There are multiple shipping methods that you can use and following is a summary. You can change shipping method, have multiple methods or have some methods fixed to specific products.

1. Australia Post calculator including Australia Post and Startrack account based pricing.
2. Free shipping
3. Free over a certain order value then a fixed price
4. Shipping by Weight & Region – allows you to create complex shipping tables based on postcode ranges and weight ranges (supports free over a certain order value)
5. Weight of product in basket – calculates shipping cost based on total weight (can be a table) (supports free over a certain order value)
6. Number of products in basket – calculates shipping cost based on number of product (can be a table) (supports free over a certain order value)
7. Couriers Please integration
8. Shipping based on customer group for B2B
9. Shippit integration (needs a Shippit account - www.shippit.com) - shipping quotes, labels and tracking

Connecting to Account and Xero

eCorner have a direct integration to Xero - learn more.

Integrate to Vend HQ and Kounta Point of Sale

Built in integration to advanced Point of Sale (POS) included.

Integrate to Unleashed inventory management:

Unleashed Software inventory management is supported. Please contact eCorner for more information and integration details.

Connecting to Marketplaces

Integration to eBay, Amazon and many other portals like Google Shopping and Getprice are included.

An important part of our business is the local technical support, hosting and development services that we offer to our clients included in the package monthly fee.

Our ecommerce infrastructure is located in Sydney giving you piece of mind that your website will be available (and that we’ll be contactable) when you need it most.

Manage it yourself

One of the key benefits of setting up an online store with ePages is your ability to ‘self-manage’ all of the components. Depending on your initial requirements and skill set, you can design and build the site yourself, or we can do that for you. Then you simply maintain the content of the store by adding/removing products, processing orders and running marketing campaigns.

How do we compare to other solutions?

Every eCommerce Solution that you review will have similarities and differences. So it is a good idea to compare solutions around the key elements that are necessary for a successful online business. eCorner can provide a free review of your Magento environment and a quote to update to an ePages solution.

How do we compare when your business grows?

eCorner supports small to medium sized businesses to grow. So rather that taxing their grows with unreasonable fees on the amount of revenue we maintain our flat fee structure with no hidden fees.