Under the Hood of Alexander Galtsow

Posted by: Alana Twelmeyer Wednesday, March 4th, 2015

WebShopApps values each and every person involved in making Magento what it is today. The Magento community is made up of many significant people; we interviewed these individuals to show off who they really are. These interviews helped us get a feel for what their place is within the community and who they are outside of work.

Alexander is the VP Communications and Partnerships at aheadWorks (@aheadWorks), a web development company that supplies software solutions for the eCommerce sector. aheadWorks is a leading provider of Magento extensions, Magento themes and templates, and custom Magento development services. aheadWorks strives to provide innovative technologies to web store owners, so their customers can enhance their online stores and heighten sales.

Alexander enjoys his line of work and cherishes the time he spends with his new daughter. To provide more insight on his personal and professional life, Alexander answered a few questions for us.

Can you describe what you really do at work?

The main areas of my responsibilities are to Nurture existing aheadWorks partnerships and search for new ways of cooperation within the ecosystem and beyond. This mostly involves email correspondence, phone talks, personal meetings and a good amount of strategic planning.

If money was no object, what would you spend your days doing?

Sounds dull, but I’d be happy to do the same set of things I do now.

In your spare time what do you get upto, and how do you balance this with your workload?

For the last 8 months my baby daughter took over almost every aspect of my life, and I’m happy to spend my leisure time with her. I also love cycling. I’m trying to start running on a regular basis, and I do my best to reserve some time for reading (non-fiction mostly).

How do you see the future evolving for Magento and the eCommerce space in general?

Although eCommerce progressed greatly in the last couple of decades, it’s still somewhat inefficient and clumsy in many aspects. However, things are moving forward incredibly fast, and in next 20 years we might as well find ourselves in a world with no physical stores at all (at least not as we know them now). As for Magento, with all the recent big news, 2015 promises to be quite interesting and I’m really looking forward to the upcoming release of version 2.0’s Developer RC. Magento is the one and only truly open-source eCommerce platform; the community around it is stronger than one can imagine, and I believe it’s got what it takes to overcome any challenge and keep progressing.

What is usually your last thought before falling asleep?

“Should’ve gone to bed two hours ago.”

Who is your role model, and why?

Not quite a role model, but Sir Isaac Newton is a man I truly admire. He significantly improved our understanding of the Universe, providing foundation for the bigger part of today’s science. If I were to choose from my contemporaries, it would probably be Elon Musk, who is also pretty good at thinking big, as well as at bringing elements of the future from sci-fi books and movies to reality.

Whats the worst thing you have to do as part of your job role?

Can’t think of anything that could be considered as a downside of what I do.

What motivates you?

Getting things done. It always inspires to take on new, bigger challenges.

What is the most played song on your MP3 player or phone?

Didn’t really do any extensive studies here, but according to iTunes it’s “Tell Them” by Seconds (aka Markus Enochson and Luciano Leiva).

Would you like to plug anything?

Imagine 2015 is just around the corner and I can’t wait to get there and meet with all the friends. See you soon, guys!

Posted in Magento Community | 1 Comment »

eBay to Sell/IPO eBay Enterprise & Magento

Posted by: Karen Thursday, January 22nd, 2015

This is big news. Back in 2011 Magento was acquired by eBay for over $180 million. Now, after pretty much floundering around with it for 3 years eBay is going to cast it out for either full/partial acquisition or listing on the stock exchange (IPO). Not just that, but eBay Enterprise (formerly GSI) is also cast aside in the same division so that eBay can focus on it’s flailing Marketplaces Division.

Well, well, well.

eBay has stated in their quarterly results they are ‘Redeploying resources to top priorities. Scaling back/stopping other initiatives‘. Reading between the lines here it sounds like they need more money to refocus on Marketplaces, which they admit is struggling, and they have given up the ‘Amazon fight’ around providing a full end-2-end solution for merchants small, large and giant, including on the potentially lucrative fulfillment side. Amazon won.

Having worked in large companies before my experience is that those at the top are always worrying about the financial markets, the share price, shorter term goals (1-3 years max), their investors, their bonuses ultimately. By separating eBay into three there are some easy wins, they get cash, the share price will rise just on the imminent change of the CEO, the share buy back, and the simplification of the company.

On top of this eBay are laying off 2400 staff (7% of workforce) including across eBay Enterprise (which seems already stretched to me).

Listening to the Earnings call and the subsequent questions one thing that strikes you is that there is very little talk of eBay Enterprise. Which really indicates that the financial markets care about Paypal and they care about eBay Marketplaces.

And Magento?

The downside is that for us in ‘Magento Land’ we are now at the whim of what happens next, and it is totally out of our control. eBay Enterprise is the part of the division making the money, have no doubt that the Magento side is only really making money around the PayPal revenue it generates, nothing more. And with PayPal going then that relationship totally changes. You would hope (or maybe not) that Magento and eBay Enterprise will stay together, but there is clearly a risk someone acquiring will not see the value of Magento.

What I suppose is most disappointing is that from my perspective I see a team that pretty much is getting itself sorted, the cogs running smoothly and is clearly deeply passionate about Magento 2. This uncertainty around what will happen to the staff and the division really could not have come at a worse time. We are in the middle of major investment in updating this platform so it will serve merchants for the next 4-5 years, and who knows what the purchaser or next CEO will want to do. Let’s hope that eBay stick to what they have stated and provide the ‘stability and continuity‘ during this change period.

It sounds like eBay Enterprise will be cast off before Paypal, so really as soon as someone is interested. I personally don’t see an IPO, I think a company like Accenture, IBM, Oracle even will step in here and make an offer.

And the Conclusion

Will this affect us? Maybe not, maybe slowly, maybe sooner. What’s clear to me as a technology provider is that relying on one platform for your source of revenue could be a dangerous game. What I also know is that this community has tremendous momentum. If the right company can get behind Magento it has the ability to truly fly (it’s doing pretty well right now even with eBay around). And I believe the true revenue model is in the affiliate side of an App Shop (kickback fees), not in the Magento Enterprise sales. I’m ignoring eBay Enterprise here, thats a whole separate discussion.

What’s also clear is that Magento 2 could have issues with timelines. It’s going to be very hard for the division to focus when you basically have a carve up going on. I’d expect to see some key faces in Magento walk away by the summer.

If the right company doesn’t get behind it then you will see a fork, because there are just so many companies now where Magento is the core of their business, and this community has some very intelligent people within it. It would require organisation but you would be surprised what a motivated community can do. I personally don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Maybe I’m naive, maybe I’m way off the ball, but what’s clear is that eBay wasn’t able to keep up with eCommerce, security or SEO, and now they are paying the price.

What’s the saying “The King is dead, long live the King“.

Bring on the next chapter of Magento. Microsoft, please don’t buy it 😉

Posted in Magento News | 8 Comments »

January 2015 USPS API Update

Posted by: Daniel Wednesday, January 21st, 2015

USPS Logo

Another update to the USPS APIs will roll out at 12:01 AM US Central time on Sunday, January 25th. As we always do, we’ve reviewed these updates and analyzed their potential impact on merchants running various versions of Magento.

What’s Changing

There are only a few changes included in this update. Here’s a summary:

New content type for perishable goods
Restrictions around packaging which can be used for content type of “LIVES” which is live animals
Changes around the USPS Electronic Verification System (e-VS) which is used by some high-volume USPS clients. Magento does not currently offer integration with this service so no change here.
New event for tracking “Held at Customer Request” used when customers request a shipment be held at a Post Office location instead of being delivered.

What Should You Do?

Thankfully, there’s nothing you need to do. According to our investigation, the Magento USPS integration and all WebShopApps extensions require no changes. If you’re shipping perishable goods, or live animals it’s best to contact USPS directly and work out how these changes may effect you.

A positive note is that Magento’s built-in USPS tracking will support the “Held at Customer Request” tracking event with no action required on your part! Previously, if a customer requested a package to be held at a Post Office location the tracking may have been misreported. This update corrects those issues.

Further Information

If you need more details on this update, you can download PDFs of the January 2015 Release Notes and Transition Guide at USPS.com. If you need any other help with your shipping in Magento, you’re always welcome to contact us.

Posted in Shipping News, USPS | No Comments »

Magento 2 – The Roadmap in Merchant Language

Posted by: Karen Friday, January 16th, 2015

We have been getting a lot of calls from Merchants who are confused by the timings around Magento 2, so I’ve decided to put together this blog. To be clear, this is the WebShopApps perspective and is not the official source of information. If you want greater detail then go take a look at Magento’s Chief Architect’s Alan Kent’s blog on this, where he looks at it from more of a technical perspective. I’m not aware of any official Magento marketing on Magento 2 with such information, but if anyone has please feel free to add to the comments.

What is Magento 2?

Magento 2 is the much talked about follow up product to Magento 1 (which was initially released back in 2007/8). Magento 1.x has been an highly successful product, and continues to be so, we see clients daily moving to the Magento platform or upgrading their sites.

Magento 2 is intended to be a product that will serve the eCommerce space for the next few years (4-5 I would expect). Since 2008 lots of technologies have improved or changed. Merchants themselves are demanding more and more functionality as they too evolve and grow.

So it’s necessary sometimes to do a major product upgrade to bring those new capabilities in.

Magento 2 is what you could call a product refresh, though its fair to say it will still have many of the great features and underlying architecture that Magento 1.x has. You would hope improving on some of the areas where there are problems, in particular, extension conflicts, performance, code quality, etc. And of course updating to the current technologies where possible (and where it is not possible to do without a complete refresh).

So Where are we Now?

In December 2014 the Developer Beta was released. This is an incomplete release (payment has been removed) so even if you wanted to deploy it you couldn’t. In my opinion Magento have released this to achieve the following:

Get it in the hands of the developers within the Magento ecosystem so they can get familiar with it
Get feedback on the implementation from the ecosystem
Allow early access and visibility as its taken so long to get this far (hey its now a reality!!), this allows the ecosystem to start their own planning
Breakdown and Solidify their own planning – now they have released a timeline and we can see they are hitting it they have more of a push to continue to deliver

What’s the Upcoming Roadmap

At end of Q1 2015 we go into a Developer Release Candidate. What this means is that the architecture and general code should be stable by then, so really the changes after would be new features, stability/bug fixing. A merchant is not affected by this.

In Q3 2015 we enter Merchant Beta. Its my guess at this time we will get a release that can be deployed to a live site in theory. It will not be a 2.0 release, more likely still a beta release or a Release Candidate.

At end of 2015 Magento 2 will be fully released (this is what I would call the 2.0 release). So from start of 2016 in theory you will see sites live.

When will it be ready for Merchants?

So to summarise, end of year in theory as a Merchant you could go onto Magento 2. So when do you do it?

Well I think there are 2 schools of thought here:

1) Go early – So start in Sept/Oct 2015 with a view to first launch from Feb onwards in 2016

2) Wait for the dust to settle – So start in May/June 2016

When I say ‘start’ here I mean starting on development/implementation. Now there will always be people that start very early, and those that leave for 3 years or more, so this is just a general guideline for those considering their options. But this is how I would see it.

I personally think a lot of the extension companies will take 2-3 months to really get their extensions sorted for Magento 2, though some will come out of the gate sooner, I think by Feb 2016 a lot of key extensions will be available (but maybe not that tiny one that you so crucially rely on).

The Web Design Agencies are so busy that I expect them to run a little behind and only start to get involved in understanding Magento 2 when merchants are pounding on the door asking, so the Merchants will really lead there (though at the top end of the market you will see the agencies actively putting resources on learning it, not so much in the mid/bottom).

When Would I move to Magento 2?

Some of you may know my husband was a small merchant, which is how I got involved in Magento in the first place. If I was him then I’d look to switch when I felt like my site was in need of a renewal and it was summer 2016 or later.

If I had an Enterprise site and had some pretty big issues with my current site I might take an early run at it, otherwise Oct/Nov this year I think is a good time to start (assuming a 4-6 month project).

Where does this leave Magento 1?

Well, this is obviously subjective, but it’s my opinion that Magento 1 will continue to run for a couple of years after Magento 2 is released, though I don’t expect agencies offering major new development on it after Summer 2016. So effectively it will go into maintenance. Many companies, including WebShopApps plan to support Magento 1 into probably around 2018, thats a fair way off.

Should you wait then for Magento 2?

If you have an older Magento 1.x site you are probably wondering if you should wait for Magento 2. This is a difficult question to answer, because really it depends on your circumstances. Magento 1.x has vastly improved over the past couple of years, especially around the responsive elements which open up the opportunities around mobile/tablet space.

If you are not mobile ready (i.e. have a responsive theme) then moving to 1.9 Magento CE would be no bad thing (or clearly the 1.14 Enterprise Edition if you are in that band). You will see an immediate upturn, the facts on this are very clear. Likewise if you are having problems with your current site, or you need a design refresh because this will bring revenue benefits then I would recommend you upgrade.

It is my personal and professional view that Magento 1 is the most flexible, extensible eCommerce platform that is available today. I firmly believe this will also be the defacto commerce platform for the next 4-5 years. By getting on Magento in 1.x you will be putting yourself on the right environment to go forwards with, and the migration to 2.x will be much easier for you as you would have done a lot of the leg work already with integrations into your current processes, etc.

We are seeing demand this January like never before for Magento, it’s clear there is a very healthy ecosystem out there which is growing daily. On 1.x you probably won’t need to upgrade until 2017/2018 if you develop it correctly. And developers will be supporting Magento 1 for some time, so you will not be left with an unsupported platform.

Magento is not all things to all men, no platform is, these are the choices you make, and I cannot and do not want to sway that. We have some clients for whom Shopify or BigCommerce is a better choice, but generally my feeling is that right now with some tweaks Magento has the ability to serve clients right from the Mom&Pop stores upto the Enterprise level sites for many years to come.

And in Conclusion

There are no right or wrong answers here, but hopefully this gives you some food for thought.

Posted in Magento 2 | No Comments »

Dimensional Shipping – Part 2 – The Solution

Posted by: Karen Wednesday, December 10th, 2014

Does Dimensional Shipping Affect Me?

Firstly, we would encourage you to read Part 1 on Dimensional Shipping so you have a base understanding of it.

January is looming and it’s clear from our phone calls and enquiries, plus the articles such as that from Internet Retailer this week, that merchants are worried about Dimensional Shipping.

Dimensional Shipping really only comes into effect if you are selling items which are either light in comparison to their dimensions or awkwardly shaped goods. A good example is a golfing site. If you sell golfballs you probably wont need to worry about dimensions, because these are small, relatively heavy, and the weight is the most important factor. If though you sell golf clubs dimensions come into play.

So lets give some other examples here. Sites that we don’t often see affected:

Apparel
Food
Electronics
Flowers

Sites that we see affected sometimes:

Furniture
B2B
Houseware
Office Supplies (large)
Sporting Goods

It’s worth bearing in mind that currently if you are selling LTL Freight most companies are not looking at volumetrics – right now. But there is a move to it, so in the future it will be a consideration. So start thinking about this and talk to your shipping reps.

If you are unsure about the affect on you of the recent UPS/FedEx announcements we encourage you to talk to your reps here as they will have been briefed about this change. They should understand your product line and be able to advise on the impact to you in January 2015 when the switch over to charging based on Dim Weight happens.

We mainly see this as a problem for US clients right now. This is not to say that it is not a problem elsewhere. Volumetric charging is an issue in other countries, predominately Australia, UK and Europe. As we find a lot of time currently people use custom defined rates we offer other solutions to this problem via our ProductMatrix and Premium Rates extensions. I’ll cover this in Part 3. For the rest of this discussion I will be focused on the 3 main carriers used in the US – UPS, FedEx and USPS.

How Does Dimensional Shipping work in Magento?

Well, right now it doesn’t. Worse than that there is no in built support to even split your products into separate packages aside from within bundled products. As of today the only splitting that will happen is if you exceed the maximum package weight (e.g. 150lbs).

So inside Magento you can only set up your products based on weight. Any requests sent to UPS, FedEx or USPS will use weight, origin, destination as the primary factors in deciding the shipping.

The Mathematical Problem

We have spent significant time investigating the problem, and how it actually affects merchants. Many companies propose that they offer a solution to the bin-packing algorithm, but in reality this is a NP-Hard problem, which means no-one has found a reasonable solution, and its been diagnosed as not possible to find an algorithmic solution that works 100%.

Any company that says they can solve all your dimensional problems 100% is lying. Simple solutions unfortunately do not exist to allow packing of a cart so that all the time the best box is picked and its packed correctly.

There are very few solutions in this space for this reason. We have seen other extension providers come and go here, I suspect because customers have become frustrated and made chargebacks, etc. We have also seen open source versions, they do not work.

The reason primarily is that the best-fit algorithm that many propose to use for this is not actually suitable for merchants.

Best Fit works based on placing items in the fullest bin that still has room. The problem with this is in deciding which box to use first, do you try to go for a large box, or a small box? How do you decide which box to use? Best Fit does not look at shipping pricing, which is important, for instance it may be better to use 2 * smaller boxes rather than 1 larger in some circumstances.

How Does WebShopApps Help Here?

WebShopApps has spent 3 years building and refining an intelligent Dimensional Shipping solution. For us Dimensional Shipping is a a problem that we will continue to refine and build a solution out for. We are already hard at work building more features for merchants in our ShipperHQ.com offering and actively working with a number of clients that have highly unique requirements on this at present.

We take the approach of looking at how merchants view their products and their packaging boxes. We have an intelligent completely bespoke algorithm in our codebase which looks at the whole cart, the boxes assigned to each product, how you the merchant want to pack them. It is possible for a merchant to specify the following types of rules:

Identify whether a product ships in it’s own box (and if so how many fit in that box)
Enable the shipping of multiple product types in one box
Allow multiple boxes to be assigned to products and allow the algorithm to select the boxes that best work for the cart in question
Give the ability to split a product into multiple boxes in some scenarios (e.g. you can’t split a TV but you can split a bulk purchase of shampoo)
Allow the ability to have multiple boxes for 1 product (e.g. a table and chair bundle set)
Allow you to specify packing via qty that can fit in a box (which a lot of merchants want to do), or just use volumetrics and dimensions (which works well if you have lots of skus)
Allow for USPS Flat box sending when qty’s are under certain numbers, switching to UPS/FedEx when cart is too big
No requirements to set dimensions on all products, just on those that are dimensional large or you feel are an issue

There are many other features, too many to list here. Unfortunately, as much as we would like to, we are unable to go into major detail due to the problems around protection of IP. What we would say is come talk to us, we are here in Ohio and our doors are open to you and if you are a web design agency your clients.

We have multiple packing algorithms, because not all merchants are the same. Our experience with the many thousands of merchants we deal with has taught us they all have different needs, they sell different products and we need to account for that.

Can we Solve Everything?

Probably not. We are realistic, and we are honest. We believe that with our solution you can see a significant improvement in your rating in comparison to your shipment fees. We believe it works very well for specific scenarios, especially if you have clear and defined rules. If you stock millions of SKUs and have hundreds of box sizes its probably not going to work. If you don’t invest some effort yourself in understanding how and where you are affected by Dimensional Rates it will not work. Any other software company that says this is easy is making light of what is a difficult problem to solve.

WebShopApps have assisted many merchants over the years in setting up their Dimensional Shipping and this I believe is what sets us apart. If you ring us up you as a merchant can have an intelligent conversation with us about your needs and we will advise you based on not just our own experience, but the experience we have had with prior merchants on how best we can assist. And if we can’t we will be truthful on that.

There is an investment of effort in testing any solution, you do not want your rates to change adversely and affect your sales. Likewise you do not want to suddenly find you are caught out by large unexpected shipping charges.

At WebShopApps we have the experience to assist, feel free to contact us for a risk-free no pressure assessment. You can ring us on 614-526-9534 on EST time to speak directly to Karen about your specific needs.

The goal of WebShopApps is to enable it’s merchants, it’s web design agencies, and it’s logistic partners. We believe with Dimensional Shipping we have a solution that does that.

Posted in Shipping in Magento | No Comments »

Dimensional Shipping – Part 1 Introduction

Posted by: Karen Wednesday, December 10th, 2014

What is Dimensional Weight?

Dimensional Weight is the calculation of the weight of goods in terms of their dimensions. The length, width, height of a package is used to give a volume, then this is usually increased by a multiplier to give a dimensional weight.

For example we may have an item that is Length 25inches, Height 20in, Width 32in. If we use UPS as an example then for Domestic US Air shipments the Dimensional Weight is calculated as (25*20*32)/166 = 96. The Dimensional Weight would be 96lbs.

How does Dimensional Weight affect Shipment Pricing?

Traditionally the calculation of shipment pricing has been done using the origin, the destination and the weight. I’ve clearly made a generalization in this statement as there are other factors such as the packaging container, account type, etc which affect pricing, but you can think of this as the general rule.

But, with countries such as the US space is of a premium. If you think in terms of an aircraft, let’s say I wanted to send 500lbs of cotton wool. Well this is going to take up much more room than say 500lbs of lead weight. So what logistics companies such as UPS and FedEx have done is created a calculation which takes into account this Dimensional Weight, if its relevant. They look at what is known as the Billable Weight.

The Billable Weight can be simply viewed as the greater of the Dimensonal Weight and the Actual Weight. So if we have the 96lb Dimensional Weight example from above the Billable Weight would be 96lb unless the actual weight is greater. So a 120lb piece of gym equipment would result in a Billable Weight of 120lbs. A 34lb bike would result in a Billable Weight of 96lb. The lower value is ignored.

Why is this Important?

And the reason this is important? Because you will be charged based on this Billable Weight, and not the actual weight. So if you were shipping that bike and only using the actual weight you would have charged the customer a much less lower price than its actually costing you to ship.

Why is this even more important in 2014?

The advent of online commerce has resulted in an explosion in shipments. Just a few years ago most goods were purchased via a visit to the local mall or the Home Depot/Warehouse. Now we are seeing a mass move to getting our goods via the mail.

From a logistics carrier perspective they have been playing catchup with this move to online commerce too, and having to rethink how shipment pricing works as a result of the pressures on them in terms of space, fuel costs and sheer amounts of parcels now being delivered.

What has also happened is that companies like Amazon have realised its more efficient for them to have less box sizes, and use a larger box with more empty space rather than try to pack what we would call efficiently. The best way to think about this is when you receive goods from Amazon do you notice that often there are ‘packers’ in the box and a big box with not much in it? This is because this is easier for Amazon. Its not easier for the carriers as this space is all taking up room in their vans and planes.

This image from Japan sums up the issue perfectly.

So, in 2014 Logistics Companies are fighting back. They want to pack more densely, and if they can’t then they want to charge appropriately for this. There have been three key announcements in recent weeks around Dimensional Weight based shipping:

FedEx announced they would be moving to dimensional pricing for Ground and Freight from Jan 1 2015
UPS announces Dimensional Pricing from Dec 2014 on Ground shipments (is already in place on Air/International)
UPS Freight announces a move to Density Based Pricing (aka Dimensional Pricing) in a move away from long held Classification Pricing (NMFC codes)

How does it work in Magento?

Right now in Magento there is no support for Dimensional Based Pricing. And its not easy to implement. Why? Because generally a package is made up of more than 1 item. So you can’t just enter dimensions on products like you do with weights and solve this issue. It’s deeper than that.

In Part 2 I’ll go over how we solve this at WebShopApps and in ShipperHQ. In the meantime feel free to contact us or take a look at our Dimensional Shipping Extension if you are in need of a solution today.

Posted in Shipping in Magento | 1 Comment »

Magento Connect is a Fraud

Posted by: Karen Thursday, December 4th, 2014

High Level Summary

Let me make this simple. Connect is screwed. There endeth the conversation.

Well I knew this back in 2012 and a great many developers/agencies/merchant know this also. What we probably don’t take into account so much is this:

Merchants still use it
Developers/Companies are manipulating Connect to their own financial advantage

The knock on effect of this is that:

Merchants are getting extensions that break their site (and often these are the merchants that can least afford this to happen to them)
Developers that are trying to make a living out of extensions are getting banged on the head daily by the fraudulent sellers.

Some Facts

I’ve ignored themes for this study.

There are 6505 Extensions on Connect (as of Sept 14). That’s a 33% increase since 2012. 38% of those are Free (or software as a service so free install).

There are 2074 unique extension providers, 1215 of which have appeared since 2012. 533 providers left Magento Connect

Half of all providers only list free extensions.

700 extensions are produced by providers with Mage in their name. My point being that we probably dont register who they are because Mage is so overused.

The download figures are corrupt. There was a tidy up in 2012 when I wrote a report and sent to Magento on just how fiddled the figures were. But nonetheless the review was limited and there remain some glaring errors, indeed some well known extensions are on Connect where IMO they have basically defrauded the system (to the detriment of the rest of us and to merchants).

The Good Guys (we think!)

Here is a list of the Top Downloads once we parsed the list and cleared the fraudulent sellers (we cannot be 100% of this list so I’d suggest may be others that are corrupting stats but its our attempt – open to feedback):

AheadWorks
ASchroder
Black+Cat
Condnitive
ESSUA
FishPig
Flagbit
Fooman
Interakting.com
jesteve
Mage Psycho
Magento(!)
MageSpecialist
Pheonix
Rico Neittzel
Sweet Tooth
Templates Master
Unirgy
Vinai
WebShopApps
zig2004

Here are some of the top downloaded extensions:

German Language Pack
LightBox
Bank Payment
Enhanced Admin Product Grid
eBay Magento Integration
Vertical Navigation
Blog CE
Speedster
Cash on Delivery
MatrixRate
EasyTabs

These are probably also some of the most copied. If you are a developer and in this list, and you dont see any recognition of what you did then its because you are buried within 6505 listings and a load of corrupt reviews/stats/etc.

Personally I’d like to stand up and applaud Aheadworks.com for standing their ground. They are amongst the most copied extns on Magento, and these guys have kept their integrity, worked hard and attempted to overcome the challenges and barriers put in front of them. I would ask Magento to step in and help Aheadworks, because you have a great hard-working dedicated and passionate company there, you need to get more behind them.

And Some Important Facts

20% of extensions are listed by the top 3% of providers (>20 extns)
1425 extensions listed on Connect by just 32 providers (as a FYI WebShopApps are not in this list, we gave up with Connect a while back)
1% of extension providers have > 40 extns
Thats 6 Providers with 459 extensions (mostly paid)
Only 1 of these is innovating
The rest are copying

So just to make that clear. It is my belief that you have extensions listed by 6 providers where I believe only 1 of those developers is doing anything original. The rest just copy, not necessarily the code, but the functionality, the ideas, the UI. They are making a lot of money at other developers expense.

What Merchants Need to do

Stop using Connect. Ask Magento to fix it. Tell them you deserve better and you deserve it now.

Work with reputable companies. Support people you trust.

What Magento Need to Do

My request to Magento is simple. Fix Connect or switch it off. But stop this craziness, because you are harming the ecosystem.

Stop supporting corruption.

Certainly don’t make these providers your partners.

Start working with the people in this community that actually are making a difference, before they disappear and go do something less frustrating.

As I said at the end of my NY presentation – I’m a 40+ year old woman and I managed in 1 weekend to work out all this, to come up with a tremendous amount of stats and really understand Connect. You have had 2 years (and quite seriously a lot more resource) to digest my first report and act. You haven’t done it, you continue not to address the problems, and the impact of you not doing this is massive. Stop telling me it’s coming, act now and get out of your boadrooms and high level meetings. Because this is hurting us. It has a direct impact on the people that have helped make Magento great.

In 2 years time your Magento Imagine sponsors will be those companies that defrauded the system. They are already sponsoring Meet Magento events. Is this what you want? Is this Magento? Encourage innovation, make it good for the next generation of developers.

I don’t apologise for my statements here. It’s been 3 months since MM NY when I presented this, 2 years since my first report. I’ve sat quiet long enough.

Posted in Magento News | 13 Comments »

2014 Holiday Shipping Cut-Off Dates

Posted by: Daniel Thursday, November 20th, 2014

Tree in Winter If you’re a merchant you’ve almost definitely been gearing up for the holidays already. Checking your inventory and suppliers to make sure you can meet demand, beefing up your fulfillment and customer support staff, and making final changes to your site. Shipping becomes critical as we approach Christmas and it becomes especially important for you and your customers to understand what service they’ll need to choose as that date approaches.

On our ShipperHQ Blog we’ve put together a 2014 Holiday Shipping Cut-Off Dates summary for the most popular UPS, FedEx, and USPS services so you can prepare your team and customers for the holidays.

As always, if you have questions about eCommerce shipping get in touch with us. If you have questions about specific options and restrictions available from your carriers, we encourage you to contact them.

Posted in Shipping News | No Comments »

A young Engineer

Posted by: Karen Thursday, November 20th, 2014

I’ve always been a fan of training up staff. When I used to work at Reuters I’d say this was my favourite secret job. To have a young person come in new to this great profession and be able to watch them grow and spread their wings, well its just a fantastic thing to watch.

But when you run your own company its a lot harder. You have other things going on, you are juggling 200 balls in the air daily, and sometimes as much as you want to be there for everyone, well you just simply can’t. You have to split yourself amongst many staff, your many customers, your family, and then often lastly yourself. Thats the life of a company founder.

Back in 2012 we decided we needed just some tech savvy people that could help out with the simpler stuff. Not a degree qualified guy who wanted to develop, but someone who could help customers with their shipping configurations, do testing, and with time create releases, demos, etc.

Adam was one of the guys we interviewed. He felt young enough to be my son (which was a little scary!), and had this enthusiasm about him, this energy. What he lacked in technical skills he made up for in passion. So Adam joined us. And to give some stats on him – in the last week he sent 175 mails and assisted 67 customers. He is a do-er. When a member of staff tries his best, well really thats all you can ask.

Today Adam leaves WebShopApps, and onto pastures new. It’s time for Adam to go step out into the wider world beyond WebShopApps and make his mark. I just want to thank Adam for everything he has given us, and I hope we have set him on a path of discovery in this great industry we work in.

What’s important to me is that we all too often only acknowledge the people at the top – the company founders, the best developer, the innovator. But people like Adam really make small business work. We need to encourage these young engineers, to give them our time, because they are the future.

Posted in Company News | No Comments »

Shipping Game Changers: Same Day Delivery

Posted by: Daniel Wednesday, October 29th, 2014

Ecommerce is a fast-moving world and services which were major differentiators just a few years ago are customer expectations today. A great example is modern Same Day Shipping. Balancing cost and speed for Same Day Shipping can be daunting, but new services are poised to reduce headaches.

Local Milk Delivery in 1920's America

Coming Full Circle

About a century ago, Same Day delivery by the milkman or bakery was the norm. Modern Same Day couriers are the spiritual descendants of early local delivery companies. However, in the mid 1900’s mail order boom, speed took a back seat to logistics network efficiency and national delivery services. Customers expected access to a wide variety of products delivered in a few weeks nationwide.

Modern Options

Grocery delivery services like, now defunct services, Webvan and HomeGrocer.com and current options like AmazonFresh pick up where the milkman and bakery truck left off and give us useful examples of what to do and not do in modern Same Day delivery.

Couriers like Google Express (launched in 2013), Deliv (founded in 2012), or UberRUSH (announced in 2014) show signs of making inroads for non-grocery merchants where others have failed . The key difference between these services and small-package carriers (e.g. UPS or FedEx) is the approach to pickup and delivery logistics.

Same-Day Couriers vs. Small-Package Carriers

Comparison of Hub and Spoke and Point to Point Logistics

Standard carriers use a hub and spoke logistics approach where all packages are shipped into massive hubs, sorted, and shipped out. While this is a cost-effective approach (fewer vehicles, less empty driving), it adds about a day to any delivery since the package makes a stop at the hub before delivery.

Same Day couriers use a fleet of smaller vehicles which are dispatched to merchant locations when a package is ready for pickup, then drive straight to the customer’s location. Since this is a point to point system, it’s inherently more local (service area is determined by distance from the merchant) but slightly less cost-efficient as a delivery vehicle may be making certain parts of its trip with few or no packages on board. This introduces challenges, but modern technology has been quickly mitigating these potential pitfalls.

The Future of Same-Day Delivery

With more fuel-efficient vehicles (electric vehicles, hybrids, even bikes or mopeds), and powered by mobile technology allowing for instantaneous delivery scheduling, Same Day Shipping has taken strides in the past year to become more broadly available to customers and cost-effective for merchants.

Because the service is local, rollouts of these services rarely happen nation-wide. Large or tech-heavy cities like San Francisco, San Jose, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. have a number of services to choose from, but the service areas are growing quickly as couriers, like the ones mentioned above, start operations outside these primary markets.

While not widespread yet, expect to see more large retailers offer Same Day Delivery as they leverage their stores as fulfillment locations. Small or medium-sized multi-channel merchants and online pure-play merchants with fulfillment centers in urban areas should be looking at same-day delivery as a way to compete with large merchants and stay a step ahead of the competition.