WebShopApps goes Platinum

Posted by: Karen Monday, May 20th, 2013

It seems barely yesterday that I was trawling the internet in search of a good eCommerce platform to use for my husband’s site. I remember looking at osCommerce and thinking there has to be something better out there. I was fed up with hosted solutions, I wanted control, I wanted flexibility. This was 2008, just over 5 years ago. Magento was the platform I chose, and shipping seemed to be the area I fell into.

Today in 2013 WebShopApps sit here with the honour of obtaining Platinum Industry Partnership status with Magento, and well it’s pretty shocking we have come so far in such a short space of time. I didn’t give up the day job until summer 2009, took on my first employee Josh in Feb 2010. Now in 2013 we have just signed leases on our US Office in Dublin, Ohio and by the summer will have employees in the UK, Australia and the US.

Something people maybe don’t appreciate about WebShopApps is that much of what we do and achieve is down to sheer hard work and determination. You can often find me sitting on skype at night, answering calls, dealing with chat, helping people out with their shipping configuration, coming up with new ideas with customers on how to improve their shipping rate calculations. Nothing here has changed since the early days, maybe its because I’m terrible at delegating(!) or maybe its just that I like to keep it real.

With this Platinum Partnership we remain a small company, bootstrapped, trying to find our way in this chaotic world of eCommerce. I personally value each and every customer that has or will buy our extension, we truly appreciate and value your business with us. Thanks to all the one-man bands that support us, whether you are a small eCommerce store or a lone developer. Thanks to the agencies that we love like Yoma, Blue Acorn, Lyons & Something Digital. We appreciate your business, and I personally appreciate your support and friendship.

I have to also thank Magento, not just for being a great platform for companies like WebShopApps, but also to our Industry Partner contacts Carly, Ryan and Aleza, for well just being there and supporting our business. You have put your faith in us over the years, and I hope we will continue to deliver innovative products that meet the demands of this fast paced industry.

We are embarking now on a change in our business, we will shortly be opening up the Early Access Program for our cloud based offering ShipperHQ to the Magento community. We have learned a lot about shipping and eCommerce over the past 5 years and I believe ShipperHQ.com will be a game changer in shipping rate calculation logic. We look forwards with you to the next chapter.

Posted in Company News | 2 Comments »

Using Video to market your Software & Brand

Posted by: Karen Friday, May 17th, 2013

I thought I’d take a moment today to acknowledge the work of video production company The Buzz Lab and describe their impact on WebShopApps.

If you’ve seen any of the promotional or explainer videos on WebShopApps or our YouTube channel over the past couple years, you were watching the handiwork of these esteemed production wizards from Los Angeles. If you haven’t heard of them, these are the guys that worked with Magento to put on the fantastic production at Magento Imagine 2013.

Why Use a Video?

As a small company WebShopApps has to be careful where we spend out money. We don’t have a large marketing budget, and there are quite a few choices for us around where we use it. Do we spend it on Google or Facebook ads, push it out to the masses and see what happens? Well we could, but personally I’d rather see something tangible, something that projects our brand and helps our clients understand us and our products.

When I look at the costs of these videos I’m looking at how many I need to sell in order to make it worthwhile. I’m also looking at the brand of WebShopApps, so the indirect marketing around our image and whether people feel safe working with us.

Shipping is….well boring. I mean I find it fascinating, but I can see its not everyone’s favourite topic, especially a web designer who just wants to get his site finished so he can get back to playing with the latest new hot technology. And because shipping is often complex & critical, well our extensions have a fair bit going on. We needed a way to explain who we were as a company and a way to explain what the hell our extensions do and how they might help merchants and web design agencies work better.

Enter The Buzz Lab

This is where The Buzz Lab came up trumps for us. We first connected with them back in late 2011, we created a couple of explainer videos for our extensions. The results were significant. We did a re-brand of the site at the same time so its hard to be totally specific, but we saw an almost overnight doubling of our sales. Suddenly people were understanding what we did not just via word of mouth but because they could view our videos and it made sense.

Six months later we entered the Magento Imagine Challenge 2012 and they made us a truly unbelievable mockumentary. Again our sales doubled off the back of this. We are now in a position where we are known & respected as a brand throughout the Magento community, I believe in large part due to the videos done by these guys. Let me remind you, in 2009 I was still working at Thomson Reuters and WebShopApps wasn’t a domain name.

The Process

Whilst I’m no ‘creative’ I have very firm views on my software and how I want it portrayed. I’d had some experience with video production before with 2 other companies, and hadn’t been impressed, in fact we threw the videos in the bin! So getting the Buzz Lab involved was something I did with a lot of trepidation. After all these people are weird socialites aren’t they? I’m a techie, I can’t speak to weirdos(!). What do they know about technology, and more to the point how the hell am I going to ever explain what shipping is about?

I needn’t have worried. The Buzz Lab are part of this new generation of companies that are able marry technology with art & design. A prime statement of this is a comment Joe (Chief Production Officer) made to me the other week – ‘Who isn’t working in technology these days?’. They understand Commerce, they understand the technology behind it, and they understand how to communicate those things to a wider audience.

For my part, being a company owner time is hard to find. I like to work with people that are low maintenance. With The Buzz Lab our relationship now is such that I can have a 10 min Skype call with them, give a brief via email, and they can push out something I know will be fantastic. They understand communication.

Thanks Guys

At the risk of inflating their egos any further, I’ll just say that Ryan, Carson, and Joe are all great fun to work with, fabulously intelligent and personable, but also dead serious about what they do. They absorb your ideas, share their own, and deliver results in a timely fashion. So if you’re in need of some ace video work for you own company, I can’t recommend them highly enough.

I almost don’t want to publish this blog, its a little like that review on Trip Advisor for that fantastic resort that no-one knows about but you. Why tell everyone what a treasure of a company The Buzz Lab is?! But I will, because if we work together to partner with great resources like The Buzz Lab between us we can create something great.

Thank you guys. We are proud to have your name on our videos.

Posted in Extension Marketing | No Comments »

Magento Imagine 2013 recap

Posted by: Josh Friday, April 19th, 2013

Magento Imagine took place last week, April 8th – 10th at the M Resort hotel in Las Vegas. WebShopApps were in attendance and as we have come to expect from Magento, we were not disappointed.

This event was Magento’s 3rd annual conference with 1500 people in attendance from over 44 countries. With a very diverse group that ranged from Merchants, Solutions Partners, Industry Partners and of course the Magento team.

There was a lot to learn through the Breakout sessions. Three different tracks were available; the Technology Track, Strategic Marketing Track and Business Solution Track. there was something for everyone. Topics included SEO, Responsive Design for eCommerce, Hosting, Boosting Revenues, Global growth with Magento, how Start-ups and SMBs grow with Magento Enterprise.

The conference was wrapped up with one of Magento’s legendary after parties. As usual, despite a cold Las Vegas night, Magento pulled out all the stops with an evening of great food, dancing and entertainment. A great way to end the conference.

The theme for this year

The theme for this year was The Art of Commerce. From the Hall ways to the Market Place decor, the stage design, videos and the suprise fashion show. It was all a work of art. So who was behind the artistry? Magento’s Head of Design/Creative Director – John Couch with the aid of the rest of the Magento team, the The Buzz Lab crew and Mike Russek from 1028Designs.

Our take on Imagine

To succeed in the world of commerce, it takes more than just setting up a store and waiting for customers. Succeeding now requires creativity, continuous innovation and a team of talented individuals. Mobile and multi-channel selling is now key and this trend will only continue to grow. Magento is still working hard to continue to enable merchants and continues to value the community and the communities efforts in driving innovation.

Some of the people we managed to meet

As usual, the Magento Community was out in full force. We had the privilege of catching up with our customers, partners and friends from the community, just to name a few; Blue Acorn, interactiv4, ebizmarts, The Buzz Lab, Orange Collar Media, aheadWorks, Sweet Tooth, Session Digital and many many more.

The Great Speakers

The roster of speakers this year included Steven Levitt, the Co-Author of Freakonomics and Jane McGonial, a world-renowned game designer. The talks were engaging, funny and thought provoking. The calibre of the speakers was truly impressive, I would recommend anyone to attend the next Magento Imagine for the speakers alone.

Imagine Stage

Big Announcements

Magento made several big announcements at Imagine.

1. Magento Enterprise 1.13

Jimmy Duvall, Head of Product for Magento announced the release of Magento Enterprise 1.13. Baruch Toledano, Director of Product Management then came on stage to elaborate on some of the improvements made around indexing and scalability. Page loading has been improved, the re-indexing process has been improved by 83% and now 95% of the time you wont need to do full re-indexing. Overall average improvement between EE1.12 and EE1.13 is 65% and the conclusion was that “We can sleep better with EE1.13!”.

2. Magento Community Edition 1.8.2

This is on route and will be with us in the next couple of weeks. A dozen areas have also been improved in CE but our impression was that EE is definetly becoming the standard for serious Magento merchants.

3. Magento 2

This is still in the works and a Beta release can be expected in Q4 this year. Magento are working hard to improve the architecture for developers and solution partners and hopes to create something that is truly modular with clear separation of presentation and business logic.

4. X.commerce Fabric

This has now been decommissioned.

5. New Front End Developer Certification

A Magento Certified Frontend Developer accreditation was announced thus meaning front end developers can now prove their skill-set in Magento theming to their clients.

WebShopApps Booth

This sums up the WebShopApps team’s experience of Magento Imagine 2013. If you missed it then maybe we’ll see you out there next year!

Farai & Tom

Posted in Magento News | 1 Comment »

Magento Imagine – The Greatest eCommerce Show on Earth

Posted by: Karen Friday, April 5th, 2013

Its Friday and I’ve just touched down in Vegas for the Magento Imagine Conference. So why do many of us traipse from all four corners of the world to meetup here, whats the big deal? Let me try enlighten you from my perspective.

Well, firstly if you work in Magento this conference allows you to put faces to those contacts. There are few people in the Magento space that work solely alone. We are maybe solution partners with connections in Magento, we might buy extensions for companies like WebShopApps or Aheadworks, we use Saas solutions such as Bronto or Avalara. Being at the conference also offers you the opportunity to size up the competition. Just who are Lyons Consulting, why is Kevin at Blue Acorn such a nice guy? You can find all this out during the many networking sessions or over the poker table late at night.

For merchants the conference gives you that one-stop show to find out about all things Magento, and actually eCommerce. Its small enough to still retain intimacy, you will create friends here, but its large enough that all the significant players are in attendance. If you are looking for that next web design agency to rebuild your site or take your store to the next level on Magento Enterprise then look no further. Having problems with scaling Magento? Go speak with the Expert Consulting Group and see what they can do to assist. Need a video to promote your site – speak to The Buzz Lab who do all the fantastic production around Imagine.

Magento Imagine lifts the virtual into the physical. Software become alive, Magento breathes, Vinai Kopp really does know how to run! We get re-vitalised by fantastic keynote speeches, we leave with lifelong memories and new found friends. The grand show begins Sunday with the warmup events – I look forward to seeing you there.

Posted in Magento News | No Comments »

Royal Mail Price Changes 2013

Posted by: Josh Thursday, April 4th, 2013

Royal Mail recently announced their 2013 price increases, which came into effect from the 2nd April. Alongside these price increases, they also announced changes to their service.

WebShopApps have reviewed the changes and below are the key changes we have noted.

Letter and Large Letter

The 1^st Class Stamp prices and 2^nd Prices remain unchanged.
The Royal Mail Signed For ™ rates up-to 100g have been increased.
Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed™ rates have been increased.

Parcel

2 new parcel formats have been introduced -Small Parcel and Medium Parcel. The new parcel formats replace the previous rating system which was purely based on parcel weight as they now take into consideration the size of items.
3 clear delivery delivery options are available for parcels – Guaranteed , Confirmed and Standard.
Large parcels are shipped by Parcelforce Worldwide.
Compensation levels for Loss and Damage have been reduced for 1^stClass and 2^ndClass services
Compensation level for Loss and Damage have been increased for 1^stClass Royal Mail Signed For™ and 2^ndClass Royal Mail Signed For™

For more information on the parcel services, prices, dimensions, and individual parcel weight limits, please refer to Royal Mail’s detailed explanation here.

International Prices

Prices for Airmail and International Signed for have also changed. For a detailed list of the price changes, please refer to Royal Mail’s Pricing guide.

Royal Mail Rates for Magento

Want to get hold of the latest rates for your Magento store? Be sure to check out the WebShopApps Royal Mail Rates extension.

Tags: extensions, magento, Royal Mail Rates, shipping
Posted in Shipping in Magento | No Comments »

USPS API Update Jan 13

Posted by: Karen Monday, January 28th, 2013

USPS sent out an email at end of Dec 2012 indicating there would be a number of updates to their API from 27th Jan 2013. WebShopApps have assessed these changes and are providing the community with a patch to ensure you are able to move to the new API.

The update to the rate calculation includes price changes and new shipping methods. The largest changes are:

Parcel Post is to be replaced by Standard Post
First Class Mail International Parcel replaced by First Class Package International Service

If your Magento installation is not updated you will be unable to see these new services, and the old services will obviously disappear.

Our patch release is available via our website and is free of charge. This has been qualified on Community Edition only Magento versions 1.4.0.1 to 1.7.0.2.

This extension is free and unsupported. If you require advice or assistance then we encourage you to purchase a support package.

If you are running Enterprise Edition then we recommend you download the official Magento patch in your downloads area on Magento.

If you are running the WebShopApps Dimensional Shipping extension please contact us for an update to this.

Posted in Shipping in Magento, USPS | No Comments »

Bob Schwartz Checks Out

Posted by: Karen Tuesday, November 6th, 2012

One thing you realise in technology is that nothing stays the same. Today Bob Schwartz added himself to the steady trickle of departures from Magento this year.

I remember Yoav pointing Bob out to me back in 2010 at the Magento offices. He seemed an authoritative corporate kind of guy at first glance, a little intimidating if I’m honest. He looked like he knew what he was doing.

And so he did, he has helped Yoav and Roy steer their way to an acquisition by eBay and neatly backed himself out of his position to move onto pastures new. That’s a sound businessman.

I’d often see him listening avidly to people that other lesser mortals would have walked away from within 20 seconds. Likewise he always seemed perfectly at ease with the CEO’s of companies, his ability to transition so smoothly is not one I’ve come across often.

He actually gave us something quite special – an insight into how it’s possible to combine a work hard, play hard ethic and retain your integrity and dignity throughout. I personally learned a great deal from him.

My overriding memory of Bob will be a cool laid-back guy with a cracking sense of humour. I’ll miss that, the Magento conferences will certainly not be the same without his presence.

Good luck for the future Bob. And good luck Magento.

Posted in Magento News | 2 Comments »

Magento API – Get Product Details

Posted by: Karen Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

I was writing a little code snippet tonight to get the name and url for products in a particular category. Its quite simple to do with the Magento API, here is the code:

<?php

$soapUrl='http://www.testdomain.com/';

$apiUser='karen';

$apiPass='my_api_key';

$proxy = new SoapClient($soapUrl.'api/soap?wsdl');
$sessionId = $proxy->login($apiUser, $apiPass);

$productArr = $proxy->call($sessionId,

                   'catalog_category.assignedProducts', array('33'));

$extnDetails=array();

foreach ($productArr as $product) {

  $productListing = $proxy->call($sessionId, 'product.info', $product['sku']);
  $extnDetails[] = array (

         'name'=>$productListing['name'],

         'url' =>'http://www.testdomain.com/'.$productListing['url_path']

  );
}

print_r($extnDetails);

$proxy->endSession($sessionId);

The output is something like:

[name] => Nike Shoes      [url] => http://www.testdomain.com/nike_shoes.html )

[name] => Adidas Trainers [url] => http://www.testdomain.com/adidas_shoes.html )

Tags: api, magento, product, soap
Posted in Developing with Magento | No Comments »

Magento Extensions Follow Up

Posted by: Karen Friday, September 28th, 2012

What’s it all about?

A little over 3 weeks ago I posted a blog about Magento extensions, and how I felt that there was not enough regulation around the marketplace, or enough information for merchants, web design agencies to make informed decisions.

A few things happened after:

The community responded. Mainly around twitter, but also in the blog comments, people elsewhere had opinions on this topic. We showed we cared, and we understood
Magento responded. Why? Well only they can answer, and maybe not everyone will believe, but my opinion is that they know there is a need to improve and they appreciate they don’t have all the answers
We had a Google+ Hangout, views were aired, people could get in the room, a few couldn’t

Thanks to everyone who got involved, who emailed, and who showed their concern and their passion for Magento. I was pretty surprised tbh.

What happened in the hangout?

So what now, what were the conclusions, where can we go from here?

Quite a few things were raised in the Google+ Hangout. The main areas seemed to me to be:

Magento Connect – we can all see that this needs improvement so that merchants have more information
Reviews & Ratings – clearly on Magento Connect its not working. How can we move this forwards?
Training – We need more magento developers, more self-help blogs, more support for companies trying to expand their knowledge & staff
Improving Accountability – How can we identify the bad extensions/companies, but also help these where required so their can improve
Code Reviews – can we ‘socially’ do code reviews?

Where are we now?

A few of the tangibles I’ve seen coming out of this are:

@IvanChepurnyi created a documentation draft on Github for a possible extension code review site
User Voice page being setup for feedback
The hashtag #extnreview has persisted, though it has to be said from quite a small core group of people
My staff have become even more motivated to learn, improve and evolve – thats a great by-product I didn’t expect at all!
Magento are going to discuss, with a sub-section of the community, the changes they are planning/undertaking around Magento Connect and get feedback from us on it

Interestingly this week Magento suspended the Trusted Extensions Program until further notice. Was that pre-planned, I’m not sure.

I spoke with Magento/X.commerce whilst at Shop.org. Quite a few things were discussed, this is not a topic you can open and close in an hour meeting.

I believe from those discussions that Magento understand that they need to provide some boundaries from which the marketplace can hopefully mature responsibly, but I also think rightly they do not wish to constrain it too much. As that is, after all, the beauty of ‘Open Source’ and a community, it needs freedom.

Where do we go from here?

I realise I’m glossing over quite a bit of detail. Why? Because this isn’t about me or my thoughts, it is about us as a community. If its just one voice it’s no voice.

From a purely personal perspective I think we do need a central area we can talk, collaborate, throw ideas, pass information back to Magento, maybe kick start things ourselves where we have shared interest or shared benefits.

Quite possibly this is the User Voice site.

The big question is:

Do you want to join me?

My vow is that I will go on the site within the next week and put down some of the ideas I’ve fed back to Magento (and some that I haven’t). If no-one else decides to join in, then well its just a waste of a few hours, and I’ll continue on my merry way 😉

And my concerns? Well I think we had this as a comment on the blog, we all mean well but we are all busy. We need to make time for this, and maybe sometimes we have delays, work gets in the way, we just want to sleep. But I hope people can see that this is our future. We need to help improve the Magento Eco-System, because it is in all our interests to do so.

Lastly, I think we really need to be careful we don’t create a ‘club’. I see from my own experiences that there is a need to help developers ranging from those that joined yesterday to those that have been around for 5 years. We cannot discriminate, we cannot afford arrogance or favouritism. We all need to ask ourselves whether we can improve, and I think we would all say yes to that.

Posted in Developing with Magento | 4 Comments »

Some of my beautiful customers

Posted by: Karen Sunday, September 9th, 2012

Today a customer nearly made me cry. I’m not an emotional person, and never has a customer made me feel that way. Why? Because he gave me advice. Not many people give me advice, so I appreciated it more than he would ever realise.

This led me to think about my customers, and the interesting characters I have met over the years. Here I give you an insight into some of them.

– There was the guy that wanted me to write a shipping extension which used buses in Africa. Basically the price of the package varied based on the bus stop it was picked up at and the one it got off at. He didnt take up my offer

– Another chap from an island off Africa (I cant recall its name) who told me he was opening the first e-commerce shop there, and in Magento. He showed me pictures of his baby

– The chap from Brooklyn I met at Imagine 2011, we were both fed up of networking and talking shop so he told me about his young family and I told him about mine. He later become a customer

– The really annoying woman who pestered me forever and nearly closed my business because she kept stretching my extensions til they would work from here to the moon. I ended up writing her a completely custom one. She became one of my best friends

– The guy from San Diego who was an ‘entrepreneur’ and thought we could do great things together until I gave him the quote

– The many men from Dallas, Houston way who charm me with their drawling voices and great character

– The ‘older’ merchants, I spoke to one last week, a guy who had built his shop ‘offline’ and was now joining the world of e-commerce. He invited me to his house to meet his family and showed me a great restaurant we should visit

– The man on chat who lived with lots of dogs, all alone. He kept coming in for support, I think he liked me

– The woman with the whirlpools, she was scary

– The coffee guy, you know who you are. Interesting, articulate, helpful and honest. Someone I aspire to be like

– The chap who first asked me to fix tablerates, and left me with the problem for the weekend. Then it was solved and Matrixrate was born

– Dave, the guy that kept hasselling me whilst I was in a hut in Yellowstone in 2009 with my family, I ended up writing an extension that I’ve never had to reproduce since, god it was complicated

– The man who said he wouldnt pay $40 for an extension, then proceeded to go on getafreelancer.com and ask people to build it for less. He came back 6 weeks later

Whoever said working in technology was boring….

Posted in Developing with Magento | 2 Comments »