Magento is popular amongst online retailers selling anything from clothes to books. In the retail industry, we know the most important thing is visual imagery. There’s only so much you can say in words. Sometimes you need to let your products speak for themselves.
Whilst there are a number of features to help you do this, you have to remember Magento’s default package is a way to help you get started. It’s a basic set of modules that allows you to create a retail website.
To customise it, you need to explore the range of Magento modules available to you. Many of these are available entirely free of charge. We’re going to take a look at some of the ways Magento can help you to highlight your products and make it easier for customers to examine each item in your catalogue.
Visuals and Psychology
Retailers have been focusing on the psychology of the customer for years. Many industries must rely on a healthy stream of impulse buys. These are relatively low-cost items that don’t require much consideration before buying. And this is how they make most of their money. Loyal customers form the base, but impulse buys boost the business bottom line.
Google can’t read into images, but you do get SEO points for putting different types of media on your pages. Rather than looking at how you can rise up the search engine rankings, target your marketing towards the end user; the person looking at the page.
There are more ways to look at a product than staring at the original image. Below are a few extensions you can use to change the way you view your products.
Colour Swatches
Magento actively supports colour swatches. Download the plugin and you can enable your customer to view an item in a different colour. This is especially important for stores that sell items of clothing. It’s a better option than having separate product pages for items of a different colour.
By putting everything in one place, you’re reducing the barriers to entry. And this is a crucial part of retail psychology. Stores that have shorter purchasing paths will always have a higher number of conversions than those that add further steps.
Zoom In
One area of eCommerce that frustrates people is small images. Again, the Magento eCommerce platform caters to this. Download the Magic Zoom extension and your customers will be able to view a close-up version of your product.
The advantage of this is a small window appears on the page. It doesn’t require your customer to click the image and be taken to another page where they can view the product. It reduces the number of mouse clicks and makes buying from you more convenient.
What Can Magento Extensions Do for You?
In short, the goal of these extensions is to improve the buyer experience. Much has been made of this in recent years. Stores are in an arms race to see who can create the most convenient store.
You have to join this race, and these extensions will put you in good stead. The main goal should be to make purchases faster. This is the heart of convenience. Furthermore, it better facilitates impulse buys. As previously mentioned, a store will have to rely partially on its impulse buys to make a profit.
Magento itself benefits from the fact it’s an open source platform. Independent developers are free to create extensions that can be added to make stores that much more user-friendly.
Any business owner should be constantly looking at the latest extensions to enhance the functionality of their Magento store.