It looks like Magento has put great effort in this to make and completely updated the guide with new screenshots and information, and not just added info about the newly added features. With the 291 pages and 10,0 MB pdf file they are really living up to their promises that one day, we’ll be complaining about how much documentation there is for Magento… ;)

Related posts:

1. Magento Community 1.7 and Enterprise 1.12 New Features Walkthrough
2. Magento announcements at #innovate2011
3. Magento announces new Enterprise pricing

Frontend

Mobile HTML5

The previous iPhone Theme was introduced back in in 2008, about time for an update! The new mobile interface features HTML5 support and supports iPhone, Android and Mobile Opera browsers.

To enable a mobile theme in Magento, you can check the post “How to redirect mobile users to your Magento Mobile Theme” from RedLightBlinking. For Magento’s default mobile theme, you use ‘iphone’ as value.

Screenshots of Magento Mobile. Homepage (top left), Product detail (right) and cart (bottom left).

 Multiple Wish Lists (Enterprise only)

First you’ll need to enable this since it’s disabled by default: System > Configuration > Customers > Wishlist > General Options Here you set “Enable Multiple Wishlists” to “Yes”.

Wishlist Configuration in the Magento Backend

In the Frontend you’ll now see arrows popping up alongside products on the catagory overview pages and product detail pages where you can now choose the wishlist you want to put that particular item in.

New wishlist dropdown option

On the Wishlist page under My Account you can manage these multiple wishlists, add new ones and copy/ move products between wishlists. Wishlists can both be private or public so you can share these with people who you hope that are going to buy stuff for you.

Wishlist management for customers

Layered Navigation Pricing Enhancement

This setting can be found under System > Configuration > Catalog > Catalog > Layered Navigation.

Settings for the layered navigation pricing

Here you can choose if you want the product count to show or not, and you can choose if you want the calculation of the ranges to be manual or automatic. The latter option now has 2 versions: equal price ranges (which was available before) and equal product counts (a new feature in 1.7/1.12).

Add to Cart by SKU (Enterprise only)

A nice B2B functionality is the ability to quickly add product to the cart by entering or uploading a list of SKUs. In order to add the ability to Order by SKU to your frontend, you can add it as a widget to one of your content pages or refer to the new Order by SKU section in My Account. When editing a content page, you click on the Add Widget button in the WYSIWYG editor (, second icon from the top left) and configure the widget in the popup that appears.

Configuration options of the Order by SKU widget

To enable Order by SKU on My Account in the frontend, you go to System > Configuration > Sales > Sales > Order By SKU settings (Thx Piotr Kaminski). You can enable/disable for all customers, or make this feature specific to a certain customer group.

Enable the Order by SKU function for selected customer groups

And this is how it looks in the frontend:

Order by SKU in the My Account section. It starts with 1 row, users can add more rows on the go. The widget that you can add to account pages looks the same as it does here.

oAuth integration

This is useful for when you would like to have users to log in to your shop with their Twitter or Facebook credentials and for other apps to be able to access your Magento account. After approval by the customer, Magento and the 3rd party webapplication can exchange data. This might give you the option to retrieve the sex and home location when someone connects through Facebook.

Customers can manage the applications under the new My Account > My Applications tab.

European Union VAT-ID Validation

New VAT-ID Validation configurations

To facilitate tax collection in the EU and simplify international B2B transactions we now have the option to automatically apply tax rules. Accounts are added to a specific user group based on their VAT ID and you can also place invalid VAT ID customers in a specific group. These are checked live against the official VAT Information Exchange System (VIES) from the European Commission (thx for @PeterJaap for confirming this). You also have the option to do these checks only on account creation, or with every order. For the settings you go to System > Configuration > Customers > Customer Configuration. Here you have the added functionality for the consequences you want it to have for the customer groups.

EU Cookie Restriction

It’s great to have a standard solution for this since the new cookie law will be active in many European countries in the next year and already on July 1st here in The Netherlands. Only problem is that there’s still a lot unclear about how to exactly ask for permissions and the exact details about which cookies will be seen as tracking cookies. Glad to see that Magento did a good effort to at least support a form of cookie acceptance, no matter how it pans out over the following months.

The settings can be found under System > Configuration > General > Web > Session Cookie Management. There you can change the “Cookie Restriction Mode” to Yes (default set to No). Thx for Marco de Vries for pointing me in the right direction on this feature.

Backend cookie setting

The message that will now appear in the frontend above your website:

Cookie notification

The Privacy Policy that this message links to, can be found under CMS > Pages > Manage Content. There you can see and edit a new page called “Privacy Policy”.

CAPTCHA

This feature (disabled by default) is added to battle fake login attempts for both customers and backend administrators. The CAPTCHA’s can also be used for the Create User, Forgot Password, Checkout as Guest and Register during Checkout forms. You can choose to show the CAPTCHA immediately, or only after a number of failed attempts. You can configure the number (range) of symbols, which symbols to use and if these should be case sensitive or not. To enable and configure this for customers, go to System > Configuration > Customers > Customer Configuration > CAPTCHA. For Administrators you go to System > Configuration > Advanced > Admin > CAPTCHA.

CAPTCHA configuration options

And this is how it looks in the frontend:

The new CAPTCHA field. It also does a great Yoav ;)

My advice would be to keep this disabled by default, and only start using it when you encounter fake accounts that are probably made by bots.

Backend

Visitor Segmentation (Enterprise only)

Customers > Customer Segments

When you add or edit a customer segment in 1.12 you can now also segment for people that are not logged in to your site so you can target these groups with specific actions. +1 for the psychologists and other behavioral scientists amongst us ;).

New visitor segmentation options

You can segment visitors based on the following variables:

Shopping cart

• Shopping Cart total
• Number of Cart line items
• Products Quantity

Products

• Product List
• Product History

Expanded Rule-based Product Relations (Enterprise only)

Catalog > Rule Based Product relations

This now has the added functionality to target a specific customer (or visitor) segment. This means you can create different related products based on – for instance – the current items that a specific user has in his shopping cart.

Added Customer Segments option

Auto-generation of Coupon Codes

This feature lets you automatically create specific coupon codes based on your settings. You can find the default configuration settings under System > Configuration > Customers > Promotions > Auto Generated Specific Coupon Codes.

Configuration settings for the Auto Generated Specific Coupon Codes

When you add a new Shopping Cart price rule, select the “Specific coupon” option and check the “Use Auto Generation” box:

Here you select the Specific Coupon option and select "Use Auto Generation"

When you do this and save the rule, you’ll see a new menu item appear called “Manage Coupon Codes”:

Automatic Coupon Generation settings

Here you can change the default setting if needed and generate the codes. After creation, you can export these to CSV of Excel for further processing. A much requested feature at the clients I’ve worked with, and a nice addition for the next Magento release might be to also support importing a list of codes.

Customer Group Pricing

Another much requested B2B feature is the ability to have separate pricing for different customers. You can now apply different prices and tier pricing based on customer groups.

Catalog > Manage Products > [Select Product] > Prices tab

New Customer Group Pricing functionality

CMS Page Hierarchy Enhancements (Enterprise only)

When you add a new item (‘Node’) to the CMS hierarchy, you now have the option to directly add it to the website menu:

New Page Navigation Menu Options

Besides that, you can now also copy hierarchies between the stores you have in your Magento installation:

Copy menu items between stores

Backup and Rollback

The only backup action you could do before 1.7/1.12 was to hit the backup button and then wait until the database backup was finished. Options have increased :)

To see the options go to System > Tools > Backup.

The backup option is now split into 3 options:

• System Backup
• Database and Media Backup
• Database Backup

Scheduled Backup options

You can backup and restore Magento in the backend.

Other

REST APIs Support

The new Magento REST API uses three-legged OAuth 1.0a protocol to allow applications to safely access Magento services. What this means for you? You can manage customers, customer addresses, sales orders, inventories and products using HTTP verbs (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE). Data requests and responses can be in XML or JSON format.

This initial version of the REST API supports the following functions:

• Create/Retrieve/Update/Delete a simple product
• Retrieve a list of orders and specific order information
• Update/Retrieve catalog inventory
• Create/Retrieve/Update/Delete complete customer information

Yeah I just copied that from Magento’s announcement. I’m not a developer so I’m not even going to try to get into this one :). If you want to know more, check these resources:

• Magento Wiki: Introduction to REST API
• Ashley Schroder:  Introduction to the Magento REST APIs with oAuth in Version 1.7

Payment Bridge 1.1 Updates (Enterprise only)

If you want to use Magento’s Payment Bridge, this will be a useful update for you. Besides the 3 options previously supported (PayPal, Authorize.net and Payflow Pro) Magento added 13 other gateways:

• Psi Gate
• RBS Worldpay
• Database and Media Backup
• Braintree
• First Data
• Card Gate Plus
• DIBS
• eWay Direct
• Ogone Directlink
• Paybox
• Payone
• Sage Pay
• CCAvenue

Magento Payment Bridge options

Conclusion

That was about it for the new Magento features in 1.7/1.12. I think it’s quite a nice update, especially when you’re looking into using Magento for B2B projects. So what do you think about this update? Will it improve your/ your clients business? What feature are you most looking forward to using in your shop?

This is a translation of the Dutch blog I wrote at http://ecommerceblog.ism.nl.

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Magento 1.12 login screen with CAPTCHA enabled

I swear no Photoshop, just 5 minutes of refreshing ;).

By the way, I’m working on a complete review of all Magento Enterprise 1.12 features (the above CAPTCHA is one of them), so stay tuned for that :).

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#preimagine

Click to enlarge

#magentocommerce

Click to enlarge

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Magento Imagine Swag

We have T-shirts, noteblocks, sunglasses, earbuds, sweets, chocolate, guitar pick, sunblock, frisbee, phone holder, stressballs, rubics kube, mugs, flipflops, armbands and a flashlight. There’s even a brontosaurus and a pretty Angry Bird in there!

Also: Magento has a great goodie store at the event so make sure to stop by if your at the event.

I will write a more in-detail post about the event itself later on, subscribe to my newsletter if you don’t want to miss it!

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Magento Enterprise is released on April 15th 2009 priced at $8,000.-. In June 2010 prices were increased to $12,990.- (45% increase). These prices are the ‘starter price’ for the Magento Enterprise Bundle (1 production license + 1 non-production license) with Gold support included.

The yearly license fee for the Magento Enterprise bundle are now set at $14,420.-, an increase of 11%.

What might me interesting for new users (or companies renewing) is the option to renew for longer periods. You don’t start with e-commerce, or switch to a new platform to stop with it after a year (I hope) so you might as well take advantage of the discounts given with multi-year licenses. You can get a 10% discount when you buy for 3 years and even more when you commit for a five year period or longer (although that might be a bit too long in the quickly moving e-commerce space we’re in).

Magento U and Mobile

The fees for Magento Mobile haven’t changed: $799.- start-up costs and an additional $699.- per year. New on the pricelist are the Magento U training and certification prices that were introduced at the Innovate Conference last year. Since last month the Magento Professional productline has been terminated so of course we don’t see that back in the list.

You can view all different licences and options in the Magento Pricelist March 2012.

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First impression

Well, it certainly looks wonderful and just like Wunderlist. Not a surprise since they’re both build by 6wunderkinder from Berlin. The interface looks friendly and clean (but you do have to like ‘wooden’ backgrounds). And where Wunderlist is meant as ‘just’ a task management/ GTD system, Wunderkit is meant as a broader system for creating, organizing and accomplishing ‘things’. You can create workspaces (projects) where you can add tasks, notes and communicate about the project with team members. Projects can be public so you can publish public updates to a project. It kinda looks like a Twitter stream for projects which others can follow and you can also post public personal tweets eh… updates. Not sure anybody is waiting for yet another system that does that, but that’s what everyone thought of Twitter too when that started so we’ll see how that’s going. You can also view/ join /follow other public projects and comment on those.

Here’s the official walkthrough of the system:

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Wunderlist Plus

I really don’t see me using a system like this and the way it currently works I don’t really see the added value for most people/projects. It doesn’t add that much value to Wunderlist (why give it another name? It’s just Wunderlist Plus IMHO). I know social is hot these days, but I don’t see the added value for (most) projects to have such a heavy social component. But if you already use and love Wunderlist, I bet this will be a very nice upgrade for you, especially if you want to use it with teams.

Integrations

Recurring subtasks

Get in!

If you’re (still) interested :), feel free to give it a try! I just got a Wunderkit Pro Beta account which means I can send others an invite. Just like I did previously with invites to Quora (I invited almost 1000 people there) and Google+ I started handing them out here on my blog.

If you’d like to give Wunderkit Pro a try too, here’s what you can do:

1. Make sure you follow me…
   • …on Twitter
   • …on Facebook
   • …by subscribing to my newsletter
2. Place a comment bellow including the e-mail address you want to receive the invite on. I’ll do my best to invite you to Wunderkit within 48 hours (it’s a manual process).
3. Be happy with you new Wunderkit Plus Beta account :)

Do note that the Wunderkit Plus account only lasts for 90 days. After that you’ll be automatically downgraded to a free account. I don’t see any information on the Wunderkit website that shows what the Plus pricing will be.

PS: if you are wondering: I’m currently using ActiveInbox as a GTD system.

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We started Plundor and for the next 2 weeks, Plundor is selling a $150 dollar  bundle (valued at $1,272.50) that’s worth its weight in gold. It’s the first of many bundles and deals to come!

Content of the 1st Magento Extension Bundle

Automatic Sale Category – Meabee – £ 49.99 ($ 77.50)
Want to provide your users with a nice overview of all items in your shop that are on sale? Use this extention to do so, complete with product filtering and layered navigation.

Better Store Search – Sweettooth – $ 249.-
Manually Specify Weightings and use complete word processing to get more accurate (automated and controlled) search results so your users find what they need.

CheckItOut – Ecomdev – $ 349.-
Get your vistors through that checkout process as quickly as possible! Use this extension to create a short one-step-checkout process with a lot of configuration options.

Knowledge Base – Aheadworks – $ 199.-
Don’t have a FAQ section or need to upgrade it? This section takes care of regular user questions getting information to the customer more quickly and having less customer requests by e-mail. Also a great way to build valuable content for your SEO rankings.

Red Mobile Theme – RedLightBlinking $ 299.-
How many customers visit your website with their mobile device? Don’t lose sales on those customers and get them their own special theme adapted for mobile devices. Easily customizable with your own logos and colors.

Task Manager – Nimerce – $ 99.-
Do you have multiple employees work in the Magento backend? Get them one central place to create and manage tasks and streamline your shop management flow.

Amped about these 6 apps and the huge 86% discount? The official sale starts today and will be available for limited time only!

If you have any suggestion to what extension we should include in our next bundle, let us now at our Extension suggestions page and vote for your favorites.

We hope you like it! :)

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Color is not an exact science. Different cultures focus on the same color in different ways. For example, yellow can represent courage in Japan, while yellow in the Western culture can be referring to cowardice. Because colors have different meanings for different people, it is important to relate your website with the colors suitable for the target audience.

Does look a bit... Well... Colorless...

For the Western civilization, colors represent a variety of moods and feelings when they’re viewed:

• The color red is often associated with things like Valentine’s Day or Christmas. The context of the color is important. For Valentine’s Day, you’d likely see red paired with white and pink, while a Christmas red is generally paired with green, silver, and gold. However, without context, red also has other connotations. It can be used to represent anger, danger, or anxiety. Red is used for stop signs and stop lights, which also refers to danger. Red also can physically cause the heart rate to increase, as well as the metabolism and respiration.
• Orange can be used to represent a call to action, changes, joy, or aggression. It is between a red and yellow, so it does share some aspects of both colors. Orange is generally associated with autumn.
• Yellow, on the other hand, is a positive color. It represents optimism, sunshine, and hope. It is a great way to add a burst of energy and cheerful color to a website. In the Western cultures, yellow might be associated with cowardice, so it should not be overused on a site.
• If you’d like to give a trustworthy or friendly vibe off on your site, try using the color blue. Blue is often used by banks or social networking sites. However, a bank might use blue with green, the color of money, to make you feel that the money is secure in its location.
• Green, while a symbol of wealth, can also be representative of the environment, jealousy, and envy. Green is the easiest color to look at, so the context and alternate colors used are an important factor when being used in combination.
• Purple can be used to represent creativity or royalty, as well as wisdom. Love and romance can sometimes be represented by light shades of purple, like lavender or periwinkle. Combined with pink, which represents calm, friendship, love, and romance, purple could be used to represent a loving and romantic site.
• White is a color most often used in combination. This color can represent emptiness when left alone, as it is a stark color. It generally is associated with positive connotations. This could be used with black, for instance, which represents power, elegance, and a feeling of classiness.
• Gold is often used to represent wealth or prestige. This color is not usually used as the main color on a webpage, but may be used as a secondary color scheme. Gold is very similar to yellow, so if it were to be used as the main color it would take on the same meanings as yellow.
• Silver is also used to represent prestige; however, it is colder in nature. This means it is not going to evoke as happy an emotion as gold might in the same circumstance.

The psychology of colors used on a website can help improve the visibility and memorability of a site. Logos often use a color scheme that makes them memorable. For one example, yellow and blue is used for the Build-A-Bear logo. This evokes a happy, cheerful, and friendly feeling. Other logos might use red and black to represent aggressive, but classy, activities, such as cards or gambling. The way you represent your site can be changed to influence your consumers very simply by changing the colors and theme of the page. Color has been shown to influence brand recognition by up to 85 percent.

Agressive, but classy: the colors in a card deck

In other research about the philosophy behind color persuasion, 93 percent of respondents stated that color was important to their purchase. A total of 85 percent stated that color was the reason for a purchase. Then, 80 percent agreed that the color of a brand represents consumer quality. For an example of how these statistics can be applied, take the color red. You’d normally see this near a clearance section. This increases the heart rate of consumers, creates urgency, and gets their attention. Green may be in areas of expensive pieces. Green is used to associate the items with wealth and is used to help the consumer relax.

A nice infographic from Kissmetrics: “How do colors affect purchases?”

Keeping these color associations and the cultural deviations in mind while designing your webshop is a great way to use color persuasion in a way that benefits your business. How do you make use of the colors on your webshop? What emotions are you trying to evoke?

Related posts:

1. Presentation: Online Persuasion
2. Persuasion profiling: Dawn of a New Marketing Era
3. Missing Persuasion: Marriott Mobile App

Click on the image to get the wallpapers from the Inchoo website

I think they also look great on an iPad though :)

Magento wallpaper by Inchoo on my iPad

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