Are you in the market for the best Magento 2 extensions? Magento is a powerful opensource eCommerce platform with world-class features and a mobile-friendly interface. Features such as cross-sells and up-sells help to make Magento a world-wide phenomenon with more than 400,000 websites actively using this platform to enhance their sales and revenue.

Thanks to its recent acquisition by Adobe, Magento has become more user-friendly, integrating recognisable CMS tools for handling both the customer experience and brand messaging. The latest version of Magento goes even further by allowing merchants to manage their inventories across multiple physical locations within Magento’s admin page. For example, tracking inventory, assigning inventory to different fulfilment sources (distribution centres, stores, warehouses, etc.), and prioritising these inventory sources to fulfil online orders. You can even keep track of your inventory in real-time as online customers add products to their cart.

Best Magento 2 extensions – Check Out Progressive Web Apps

To create next-generation shopping experiences, Magento is now exploring PWA technology (Progressive Web Apps). PWA enables merchants and developers to create powerful mobile interactions that offer lightning-fast app-like browsing experiences that boost conversion rates and increase customer engagement. PWA has been hailed as the future of mobile shopping, in fact, it is set to revolutionise mobile-driven eCommerce.

PWA allows merchants to rethink their customer’s mobile experience, offering improved performance and usability, whilst at the same time eliminating the massive developmental costs of native apps. This technology will have a big impact on businesses of all sizes, more so, however, for small to medium-sized businesses that don’t have the resources to develop their own native apps. Some of the best Magento 2 extensions will use PWA technology.

For customers, these apps mean faster browsing experiences, access to app functionality via a browser – rather than downloading an app and push notifications with opt-ins. They are search engine friendly and can be used on both mobile devices and PCs.

Must-have Magento 2 extensions

Extensions increase the functionality of Magento for both merchants and customers. They allow merchants to customise their online stores to suit their products and brand messaging. There are lots of extensions available on the internet – here are seven of our favourite must-have Magento 2 extensions for 2020.

1. One Step Checkout

This OneStepCheckout solution allows customers to navigate through checkout without multiple slow page reloads, making it a fast and efficient process. This extension was designed to reduce abandoned carts by providing customers with a seamless checkout experience. In contrast to the default Magento checkout process, this one step checkout experience streamlines all checkout steps into one page, markedly reducing checkout times.

This streamlined checkout extension not only increases your conversion rates by 30%, but it is mobile friendly. It also auto-updates prices and totals when customers make changes during the checkout process sets a default shipping and payment method, auto-updates available shipping rates dependent on address, and much more.

2. Upsells & Related Products

Upsells and related products are proven strategies for increasing sales and revenue. This extension makes it very easy to configure upsells and related products automatically, simply by setting a few rules based on dynamic conditions. They can be located almost anywhere on the page and on any pages (product pages, category pages, shopping carts and checkout). They can even be displayed in popups, and you can also include discounts offers. You can decide to show different upsells to specific groups of customers based on location, set start and end dates for the upsells, specify categories or products that will display these upsells and much more. This extension is one of our more popular must-have Magento 2 extensions for eCommerce sites.

3. Review Reminder & Incentives

Product reviews increase a merchant’s credibility and online presence. Many customers check product reviews before making a buying decision, so they also help to increase sales and revenue. Manually emailing customers to write reviews is time-consuming and long-winded, but with the Review Reminder & Incentives extension, merchants can quickly and efficiently automate this process. Email reminders can be sent to customers at specified time intervals, requesting a product review, and customers who have already provided a review excluded from these emails. Default emails can be customised to suit brand messaging (including brand logos), schedules created and emails can be previewed prior to sending. Coupons can be sent to customers who have written reviews and time limits set for receiving these email requests.

4. Order Manager

One of the biggest limitations for many eCommerce stores is managing orders. What you need is a fast, clean and simple extension that allows merchants to quickly handle their orders, which is why the Order Manager extension is so popular. This extension not only makes the order process much faster, but it also enables address and billing changes to be quickly accommodated into this process, ensuring that orders still go out on time. Payments can be authorised inside Magento without returning to the payment gateway and secure payments can be made with Authorize.net making checkout faster. Order Manager is one of the best Magento 2 extensions for optimising the ordering process and building a base of repeat customers.

5. Special Promotions

Increase customer loyalty with special promotions, based on their name, DOB or purchasing history. For example, you can use customer details to create exclusive deals related to prior purchases, offer three for the price of two, or offer discounts when displaying cross-selling promotions. With a Special Promotions extension, certain products can be excluded from these promotions using specific rules and only fulfilled orders taken into consideration. You can even create banners to promote a ‘Buy one get one free’ promotion, ‘Buy two and get a third at 50% off’, and so on.

How to add extensions in Magento

Once you have found an extension that you need for your eCommerce site, purchased it and downloaded it to your computer, you need to upload it to your online store. Adding Magento 2 install extensions is a fairly simple process if you know what you are doing. The first step is to duplicate your eCommerce store and then back up all the files and database (including themes and other extensions). Knowing how to add extensions in Magento is a good skill, but some extensions require different setups and others require the assistance of a developer. Essentially, however, they all follow a similar setup process, as follows.

1. Login to your eCommerce site as an administrator.

2. Go to system > tools > web setup wizard.

3. Click extension manager and then sign in.

4. Enter the licence keys as requested.

5. Click the ‘review and install’ button.

6. Select the extension to install and click ‘install’.

An additional step before the installation actually commences is to check that the extension is compatible with your version of Magento, so click on ‘start readiness check’. Once this is completed, the extension will install, but your store will be offline during the install, which should not take too long.

Next, you need to clear the cache and finally, you can configure your new extension by going to stores > settings > configuration.

Reading about how to add extensions in Magento, doesn’t always help when this isn’t your strong suit. This is why it is helpful to have a developer on board who can customise your eCommerce store to your exact needs, and do it quickly and efficiently. For help creating or customising your online store, as well as for professional Magento development, call the friendly team at acidgreen on 1300 139 658 or ask for a free quote today.