MM14NY Presentations: From the Magento Community to Conversion Optimization

Meet Magento New York 2014 is one more successful Magento conference held in the United States for the first time.

It was full of events, including the hackathon and numerous informative sessions, and fabulous  presentations. Today we highlight some of them, which cover both e-commerce tips and Magento plans for the future.

Magento Community

Ben Marks, Magento Evangelist, Magento Inc.

Photos from: http://ny.meet-magento.com/

The future of the Magento Community is a subject of care for each and every member of this formation. The Community deeply influences the dynamics of the platform being a powerful driving force for Magento. This value and provided support make us all perceive it as individual entity, which needs to be supervised and cultivated mindfully.

In his presentation Ben Marks reveals some plans for the future, which are in line with his main tasks – developing the platform, community, and entire ecosystem. To be precise, he announces his plans regarding the role of the Magento Advisory Board, GitHub usage, Magento Connect perspectives, Forums future, and Community Content delivery.

Coming soon monthly community reports and coming later revamped events page are also the tasks to be done.

So, the plans are really strategic and multiple, at the same time. Hope, Ben will make them reality soon.

Magento Security and Us

Lee Saferite, Senior Web developer, AOE

Photos from: http://ny.meet-magento.com/

This short presentation contains multiple security suggestions and enumerates different Magento threats we should be aware of. Maybe, it raises more questions than provides answers, but it is still very informative for Magento security starters as unveils the topic strictly in accordance with the Magento structure and functionality.

It starts from the server security and covers some truly valuable tips worthy to be marked:

• Do not run other software on the e-commerce server;


• Open only the port necessary for server operations;


• Use a bastion host to restrict the SSH access;


• Use the external log file storage;


• Fulfill backup security procedures.

Server and user permissions are the next level of the Magento security policy and can be briefly described as the following: “Do not provide excessive permissions and do not give permissions to unnecessary users”.

The author advises to grant server only user permissions and not provide it with the login shell. The site code should have “read-only” permissions while the files in /var and /media folders should be only writable by the web server user and should not allow running scripts.

Consistent code security audits are the key to reliable and safe functioning of your Magento store. Several simple precautions will help you maintain your system secured:

• Never trust third-party modules without security reviews;


• Stay away from encrypted or obfuscated codes;


• Never allow modules to include remote self-updates;


• Do not install modules from Magento Connect via the admin downloader.

Next. As Magento and other e-commerce stores are of high value for fraudsters you should have several incident response plans for different situations, including code modifications, data steal, or site lockout. This will help you take either proactive measures or instantly respond to compromising actions.



As you see, even this small abstract is very valuable, while you can get even more from the entire presentation.

Quick Conversion Rate Improvements before the Holiday Season

Jenna Warren, Executive Vice-President, Creatuity Corp.

Photos from: http://ny.meet-magento.com/

This holiday season is almost here and Magento merchants have less and less time to get ready for the holiday rush, but this topic is of current interest all year round for most sellers, and you can use them anytime you want.

Jenna gathered in her presentation numerous worthy tips, which are able to increase your conversion rate and prepare your Magento store for the holiday season. Starting from gifts the presentation circles us through performance and mobile tips, abandonment and checkout improvements, to retention and long-term loyalty.

Here are only some tips from this presentation:

• Many shoppers use Pinterest as a wishlist for holidays. Use this fact in your social marketing plans;


• Use remarketing and personalized emails;


• Shipping costs are very important for customers. Decreasing them you can significantly reduce abandonment;


• Use the 2013 holiday data, which contains a lot of hints applicable to this year high season.

Build Better Responsive Websites

Hrvoje Jurisic, Frontend Developer, Inchoo

Photos from: http://ny.meet-magento.com/

The main idea behind this presentation is that customers are impatient and expect even more from your mobile website rather than from the desktop version. Seconds and even milliseconds are worthwhile today, however sites gradually become larger and it’s a great challenge for store owners to find a proper balance between the load time and design.

However, the author propose us to perceive the site speed as a UX feature. This statement does not oppose these two goals, but combines them into one general task.

So, responsive website design is able to be effective and convertible, if properly made. The solution lies in reduced HTTP requests, optimized images, minified JS and CSS, etc.

The presentation contains multiple performance test diagrams, which illustrate speed accelerations resulted from the mentioned above actions and measures. Finally, we can achieve significant improvements and speed up our stores twice or even more.

Conversion Rate Optimization. What's Really Proved to Matter?

Viacheslav Kravchuk, CEO, Atwix

Photos from: http://ny.meet-magento.com/

This presentation contains some valuable ideas about site tests and conclusions made based on their results. Viacheslav explains the uniqueness of each site and test environment, which makes you use only your own testing results, while the others’ experiments are usually useless for your store. Also testing requires you to comply with several analytic and statistic standards for reliable results.

And one more thing, do not reduce the scope of relevant factors to just the user interface and user experience on your site. The effecting environment is usually more complex and multilayered.

The entire list of presentations from the Meet Magento New York 2014 conference you can find on the event's site, the "Speakers" section.

Share your ideas about this post in comment below.
Subscribe to our RSS.