Nowadays it’s really trendy to optimize websites for mobile devices. We do our utmost to let Magento store owners be in step with the times. After great success of the iPhone Theme for Magento we are glad to introduce a new mobile module which is available with 50% discount right now.

The Mobile Order Tracking Magento extension from aheadWorks will help you express caring attitude towards your clients. Undoubtedly, it will improve your customer service and enhance the level of customer satisfaction.

With Mobile Order Tracking, your customers can track the shipment & payment statuses all the way through the delivery process using mobile devices or desktop computers. They can get updated information about their orders at any moment.

Now it’s so easy to track orders. Your clients get the real-time access to the information without logging-in to your web store. It’s really convenient. The customers receive a completely protected link by email. Following it they get admission to the details of shipment & payment statuses via mobile phones or PC’s.

Moreover, Mobile Order Tracking Magento extension gives the opportunity to check shipment & payment statuses from your Magento store easily and quickly. Your customers have to enter only their order ID and email address.

Cater to your clientele. Pleasantly surprise your customers with new possibilities. The Mobile Order Tracking Magento extension will give them a positive experience and encourage future purchases.

Hurry up and get it now! The 50% OFF price is only available for a limited time.

We are just about to release our new Magento extension which will help your customers easily track their orders from their mobile devices as well as PC’s. Our QA department has already tested it carefully and the extension is on the final stage of preparing for final release.

Now we are looking for some volunteers from the Magento community to finalize our tests. Every volunteer will get a significant discount after the extension official release.

If you run Magento CE 1.5+ or PE/EE 1.11 and have DHL, FedEx or UPS installed and configured, please contact Peter Samoilov at samoilov@aheadworks.com for further details.

We use Advanced Newsletter + MailChimp for our email marketing purposes. The Advanced Newsletter extension allows us to segment our subscribers and send them the information they are interested in only. MailChimp is very cool and useful email marketing service which lets us to successfully send our campaigns as well as thoroughly analyze them afterwards.

MailChimp allows reviewing subscribers’ activity. Don’t forget that this member rating is counted according to email opens and clicks. Here an email is tracked as “open” when recipient has images turned on. Unfortunately, it is not possible to define who has images turned off. So be careful and apologize if the email was sent to your regular reader by mistake

I analyzed the level of our subscribers’ engagement and came to the conclusion that about 50% of them either did not open our emails at all or opened them long ago. Our subscribers’ base is rather “mature”. No wonder that for several years many of our emails readers could move to other CMS, change their area of activity, forget password or get new email address.

I intended to clean out inactive members from our list as we didn’t want to boost our ego with laaaarge list of email addresses, but aimed to work only with those who are interested in the things we share with them. So it was decided to find subscribers with low member rating and send them our last email from aheadWorks.

Email marketing gurus say that you shouldn’t hope for high open rates of such emails. But I couldn’t just delete those people from our list – I wanted to give them the last chance.

When sending an email to people who haven’t read your newsletters for years you have only few seconds to attract the recipients’ attention and single your email out in the everyday flow of messages. So I had to find a “hook” – an emotionally strong phrase which makes people open the email. Such subject can be of any kind, but it should definitely touch people’s feelings and emotions. I found such phrase and got 6.2% open rate!

Great! People opened my email. But what’s next? I had to arouse their interest in Magento and aheadWorks and motivate them to keep reading us. A couple of teasers and 1.5% asked me not to delete their email addresses. So I can assure you – tell people what vitally important information you are going to share with them in the nearest future and get profit!

In my email, I also asked our subscribers to let me know why they had broken off the relations with aheadWorks and stopped reading our emails. I didn’t expect for a single answer but it was nice to get several emails where people told me that they were very busy at the moment and hadn’t a spare minute to check their email. I am proud and thankful that they’ve managed to find time to open my email as well as answer me.

My email sending gave the following results:

• successful deliveries – 98.9%
• opens – 6.1%
• unsubscribers – 0.3%
• asked to keep their email address – 1.5%

So, finally, let’s sum up what I’ve done and what you should do to cut “deadwood” from the subscribers’ list:

1. Use a “hook” in email subject
   to make them open your email.
    
2. Ask your subscribers why they stopped reading your messages
   to analyze what’s wrong.
    
3. Motivate your subscribers to keep reading your emails
   to convert them in your return customers.

Now I am sure that we can build our email marketing efficiently and will get trustworthy results. And the same I wish to you

The Custom Stock Display extension replaces the native Magento stock status with image, text, or both text & image showing customers the available number of items in an attractive and eye-catching way.

Use the Custom Stock Display extension for Magento to better inform your customers about stock availability of your products. Upload different images for different available items quantity and make your product page more informative and cute.

Even instead of the standard ‘Out of Stock’ Magento notification, the Custom Stock Display Magento extension offers you to specify the text and/or images you wish to be displayed on the product page.

With Custom Stock Display, you can define the expected date when the product will be available. So when a product quantity drops below 1, the admin-specified notification will be automatically displayed, e.g. ‘In Stock in 5 Days’.

The Custom Stock Display extension is very easy at installation and configuration. So it will take a couple of minutes to configure the module to show items quantity for simple, configurable, virtual, and downloadable products.

Features

• Various products support:
• simple
• downloadable
• configurable
• virtual
• Advanced stock status in selector for configurable products
  The quantity on configurable products page is displayed not only for the main product, but also for each option in the dropdown box.
   
• Flexible display of product quantity:
• text
• image
• text and image



• Unlimited number of custom stock display rules
  You can create multiple rules using different product attributes and set priority to them. Rules with greater priority value are processed first.



• Flexible rules
  Using the module, you have the ability to set and display stock status for each and every product as well as for the whole category. Rule conditions in the Custom Stock Display module fully coincide with Magento Catalog Price Rules, making the module easy to use.



• Use nice-looking images to show stock statuses
  You can use either the default graphic bar images to show how many items are in stock or upload your own catchy pictures that will be changed according to the product quantity left.



• Ability to add & edit text showed up in custom stock notifications
  Liven up the standard ‘Out of Stock’ notification with informative text. Use the %qty% variable in the ‘Text’ field to display product quantity, or the %product% variable to show product name in stock status. For example, ‘Hurry up! Only 10 items left!’ or ‘We’re sorry but NY T-Shirt is SOLD OUT’.



• Multistore support
  The Custom Stock Display Magento extension allows you to set different images and texts for the same product sold in different stores.

Go to the product page right now to play with Custom Stock Display demo!

Small images in the standard media gallery do not draw your customers’ attention. Your site visitors can even overlook them. It is a great pity and moreover loss of profits for many businesses. You can’t afford losing your potential clients because of the so inconspicuous but extremely important elements of the product page.

Forget about this dull native More Views gallery! It is very time to make the displaying of your items images attractive and up-to-date. The Product Images Slider Magento extension from aheadWorks replaces standard media gallery with its cute slider.

The Product Images Slider extension rotates the pictures of your items, so that you can be sure that your customers’ attention will be definitely attracted. Play with different animation speed values and select the one which is the most comfortable for your eyes.

Small Magento static gallery is not catching and doesn’t make your product page look unique. With Product Images Slider, just select the type of animation effect for your items pictures to be displayed and enjoy how your product page brisks.

Features

Represent product images as slider view in the same way Image Slider does

Multistore support

Multiple blocks on one CMS page

Different types of animation effects:

• simple slider
• fade\appear
• blind up \ blind down
• slide up \ slide down
• jalousie

Predefined positions:

• replace native image switcher
  
• use your own position
  

Ability to:

• insert slider via widgets, CMS, and layout
  
• specify first frame timeout
• define animation speed
• hide images navigation automatically
• set up period for image displaying
• disable block navigation
  

Visit the Product Images Slider page to learn more.

We have been talking about it in Facebook and Twitter for several weeks. And finally today we are ready to release it – the Advanced Search Magento extension which replaces native search with Sphinx, an external search engine.

100 000 inventory items and 10 000 blog posts search is not a problem now
If you run a really large Magento store, you definitely know how difficult it is for your customers to find something they require very fast. Advanced Search is a perfect solution for search through Magento-based stores.

If you have 10000 products in your store, our brand new extension will help your customers to find those which are required.

If you have 1000 posts in your blog from aheadWorks, it’s not a problem for Advanced Search as well.

How it works
Advanced Search uses Sphinx. Sphinx is an open source full text search server. This powerful search engine is used by different popular websites, such as Craigslist.org, mysql.com, joomla.org, tumblr.com, Dailymotion.com. etc.

Features

Easy setup
Just install Sphinx on your server, configure Advanced Search and enjoy. You won’t have to deal with complicated Sphinx configuration – Advanced Search will do everything for you.

Easy search settings
The Advanced Search Magento extension configures Sphinx for you in accordance with your settings.

Sphinx supports many different API’s, PHP, Python, Java, etc. So you can easily integrate an external application to perform search over Sphinx indexes.

With Sphinx installed on dedicated server, your search becomes even faster.

Configure search and index in the most appropriate way for your store
Different products are sold in different stores and they all need different search. If search by manufacturer is primary in your store, just define the higher weight for corresponding attribute.

Visit the Advanced Search page to learn more.

Pre-order

We have prepared a special offer for you this time! You can pre-order our brand new Magento extension and save about 50% off the original price!

The Advanced Search Magento module replaces native search with Sphinx, an external search engine, so search works much more faster, server load is decreased, and results become more trustworthy.

On the Advanced Search page, you can find the guaranteed features you’ll get with this new extension, but as a bonus after official module release this list can be enlarged with some new benefits.

Updated Extensions

Delivery Date and Notice v.1.2 1 feature / 2 bugfixes See changelog	Advanced Newsletter v.2.0.4 1 feature / 3 bugfixes See changelog	Who Bought This Also Bought v.1.2.1 7 bugfixes See changelog
Market Segmentation Suite v.1.1.7 1 feature See changelog	Subscriptions and Recurring Payments v.1.5.1 1 feature See changelog	Catalog Permissions v.1.1.1 1 feature See changelog
Customer Purchases v.1.2.3 1 feature / 2 bugfixes See changelog	Refer a Friend v.1.4.3 3 features See changelog	Product Preview Pro v.1.0.1 1 New Feature / 2 Bugfixes See changelog
Review Rotator v.1.3.1 1 feature See changelog	AJAX Catalog v.1.0.1 1 feature See changelog	Featured Products 3 v.3.2.1 1 feature See changelog
Advanced Reports v.2.2 11 features / 17 bugfixes See changelog	Blog v.1.1 2 features / 9 bugfixes See changelog	Image Slider 1.2 1 feature / 1 bugfix See changelog
RMA v.1.1.2 1 feature / 3 bugfixes See changelog	Facebook Link v.2.0.2 1 feature / 7 bugfixes See changelog	PopUp v.1.0.3 2 bugfixes See changelog

Group buying allows providing attractive collective deals with significant discounts. Being offered for a short term, such deals give your customers a sense of urgency and exclusivity making them add a product to cart without long-term thinking and hesitating.

The business that runs the deal pays nothing upfront. So if the minimum of required purchases is not conducted, the business pays nothing at all. But if the deal goes through, everybody is happy – the consumers get their product or service with discount and the merchant gets vast numbers of a particular product\service sold in specified period of time.

How it works

1. Select a product for group buying.
2. Specify the discount amount and the period within which the deal is active.
   For example, 10 phones can be bought with 20% discount within 3 days.
3. Make the deal active in your store.
4. People make a purchase and advertise this phone to their friends because if 10 phones are not sold within three days, the deal won’t go through and people won’t get the phone with 20% off.
5. If the deal goes through, send the product to your customers.

Benefits of group buying

Promoting your new product\service
Collective buying can be effectively used to launch new products or services.

Return customers
Significant discounts attract people, increase their loyalty and turn them into your regular buyers.

Competitiveness increase
Group purchasing scheme can create brand awareness for relatively unknown businesses, reduce business costs and increase competitiveness in the local area.

Targeted traffic
Being organized at city level, group deals help merchants to geo-target customers.

Fast promotion via social networking sites
Collective bargaining is a great way of your website promotion. No money is spent, but real traffic is drawn. You buyers share your offers with their friends in Facebook, Twitter, or Google +. Thereby they band together to get better deals or discounts.

How to arrange group buying on your website

Native Magento functionality doesn’t allow arranging collective buying. It means that if you want to boost-up your business, you should:

1. Install the Group Deals extension from aheadWorks.
2. Set up deal’s conditions.
3. Start the deal!

Why Group Deals is the best solution for group buying

With the Group Deals Magento extension, you CAN: create unlimited number of deals add separate blocks on category and product pages be sure that you and your customers will be notified about deal success, failure and expiration change coupon code status manually With the Group Deals Magento extension, you GET: four deal types:    * upcoming    * featured    * active    * closed coupons auto-generation optional deal auto-closure on succeed main product types support complete multistore support With the Group Deals Magento extension, you are EMPOWERED TO: set up a coupon expiration period limit coupons quantity generated for each deal bind coupon to a certain product personalize your deals by configuring:    * name    * image    * short description    * description    * store view schedule deals to be run automatically specify maximum allowed purchases auto-count of the discount and “you save” price

CE version price: $299 EE version price: $999

Learn more about this extension for collective buying on the Group Deals page.

Monthly Promo

If you are looking for a solution for social bookmarking your products and store pages, the Sociable Magento extension is exactly for you! This aheadWorks module allows sharing links to any page from your store on Twitter, Facebook or any social networking site.

Since 1.1. version, Sociable lets your visitors click the Google +1 button to give your website public stamp of approval. The Google +1 button allows people who love your products recommend them on Google search.

Till the end of this month, you have a chance to get this perfect solution for social bookmarking with 30% discount. No coupon code is required. Just buy the Sociable extension till October 31, 2011.

New Extensions

Group Deals Now you can gain from the service of collective purchases as well in your Magento store with the Group Deals Magento extension. This brand new module from aheadWorks is a fantastic way out for those online merchants who want to organize collective purchases process. Group buying is a truly fantastic way for businesses to connect with new prospects. Make new and diverse deals with the Group Deals extension by aheadWorks. Every day you can feature a cool new experience on unbeatable price in your store and assemble a huge group of people with the targeting power to get amazing deals. With Group Deals, you can offer products and services at significantly lower prices. The deal takes place when a minimum required number of people buy the product.

Automatic Related Products 2 Cross-selling and cross-promoting has never been so easy than with Automatic Related Products 2 Magento extension. Choose any product attribute while defining the rules for items selection and let this software populate the related products block automatically! Display auto-assigned related products anywhere on the product page or category page. Automatic Related Products 2 blocks may be noted as “We Recommend” or “Similar Products”, but might also be rule-assigned “Daily Deal” or even more generically entitled “People Who Viewed This Ultimately Bought”. With Automatic Related Products 2, you can use any of four predefined positions as well as insert automatic related products as CMS block or widget in any place on any page.

Updated Extensions

Minimum Advertised Price v.1.2 2 New Features / 3 Bugfixes See details	Search Autocomplete and Suggest v.3.1 2 New Features / 1 Bugfix See details	Help Desk Ultimate v.2.8.1 1 New Feature / 2 Bugfixes See details
Points and Rewards v.1.2.1 1 New Feature / 6 Bugfixes See details	Price Match v.1.1 4 New Features / 3 Bugfixes See details	iPhone Theme v.1.3 3 New Features / 10 Bugfixes See details

Cyril Holub, the co-founder of aheadWorks Co., delivered his report at the Internet marketing section. His speech on “5 unable- to-say-no offers for website visitors” is considered to be one of the most informative and highly appreciated by Twitter community. At the end of his speech, Cyril handed out $17,000 of total discount what became a pleasant surprise for event participants.

Alexander Malkov, the head of support department at aheadWorks Co., made his speech in the Ecommerce section. He shared the secrets of support department management and, by the way, was the only speaker who touched upon this topic at the conference.

Business Internet, held for the 6-th time, is the largest annual off-line event of the year for Belarusian Internet society and represents an important practical conference where participants may find answers for many issues related to handling business through the Internet.

The conference was split between 3 halls covering different topics, including online marketing, social media marketing, internet marketing, projects management, ecommerce, etc. About 1700 participants had a perfect opportunity to listen to informative and instructive reports of speakers from Google, Yandex, Hewlett Packard, Ford, and many other companies and organizations.