Chapter 5: Magento 2 – Downloads and Extensions

The Guide:

This Chapter:

Introduction

Magento 2 comes with plenty of out-of-the-box features, but there will always be instances where you need to add extra features to make your website work in the way you want or need.

Fortunately, there are plenty of downloads and extensions that are available, and that is what we will discuss in this chapter.

We will include a mix of both paid and free extensions that cover: checkout, marketing and SEO, navigation, performance, social media and more. The prices included below were correct at the time of writing.

Note: Click on the icons to get extended information and the rationale behind each change or click here to show them all.

Better Blog

An excellent blog can make a big difference between you attracting more customers and web visitors, and getting left behind by your competitors. The way you display your information and use call-to-action can vary dramatically.

The Better Blog extension allows you to create posts in a way that looks good and are easy for your customers to read. You can also easily set a featured image, categories, tags and topic.

It easily integrates into the Magento backend too so you can efficiently manage your blog and your e-commerce all in one place.

eCommerce websites are essential for marketing your business, but also for driving customers to your store and the responsive layout of this extension does this seamlessly.

better blogBetter Blog Top Features

  • Integrates with Magento default XML sitemap
  • Flexible blog attributes
  • RSS integration
  • WYSIWYG interface
  • Supports multiple stores
  • Social sharing buttons
  • Multiple comment engines, e.g. Disqus or Facebook
  • Blog breadcrumbs
  • Product-related posts

Availability of Better Blog

Price: Free

Link: https://marketplace.magento.com/mageplaza-magento-2-blog-extension.html

Shop By Brand

Shop By Brand extension allows users to search for products in a whole new way. Website visitors are able to shop for the products they want based on their brand. This provides an improved user experience too, as well as creating a unique landing page for each brand.

Shop By Brand Top Features

  • Shop By Brand layered navigation
  • Unlimited brand names and logos
  • Search and import brands
  • WYSIWYG editor
  • Integrated with Sitemap.xml
  • Shop by Brand widget
  • Customisable style
  • Bulk import

Availability of Better Brand

Price: $99

Link: https://www.mageplaza.com/magento-2-shop-by-brand/

smtp extensionSMTP

This extension gives you better opportunities to reach your customers through email marketing. It comes with email templates to attract the attention of your customers and help you have an even more successful email marketing campaign.

Coming with a 60-day money-back guarantee, lifetime upgrades and 365-day support. Email marketing helps you maintain customer relationships and the templates that come with this extension reduce your risk of your emails getting classed as Spam.

Email marketing is an increasingly important aspect for every store-owner. By sending emails to your customers, you are showing them you care and providing them with incentives to come back to your store and make a purchase.

SMTP Top Features

  • Easily customisable
  • Test your emails before sending to customers
  • View your email logs
  • 100% Open source code

Availability of SMTP

Price: Free but add-ons come at an additional cost

Link: https://www.mageplaza.com/magento-2-smtp

social loginSocial Login

This extension is designed to provide a quick way for customers to login to your Magento store. For some, the process of logging into Magento can be complicated and long-winded, and this simplifies that process.

Social Login will integrate with Facebook, Google, GitHub, Twitter, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Instagram.

The idea is that instead of signing-up for a new default Magento account, social logins are available on the right of the login page. Upon clicking on these buttons, the module will use the information from the customer’s social media account (providing they are already logged in) and use that to help create their account.

Social Login Top Features

  • Easily customisable with your store design
  • Fully compatible with one-step checkout
  • Easily update customer information
  • Supports the loyalty program
  • Helps to increase your sign-up rate
  • Supports standard registration

Availability of Social Login

Price: Free but add-ons come at an additional cost

Link: https://www.mageplaza.com/magento-2-social-login-extension/

currency switcherCurrency Switcher

This extension allows you to show the prices of the products of your online store in currencies local to your customers to provide them with a better shopping experience.

It works by using your customers’ geo-location by their IP address and then replaces the product prices with their currency using various price rounding algorithms. As a result, customers tend to find your prices to be more attractive and affordable, which help them make purchasing decisions.

Using this extension on your eCommerce store can help to increase the outreach of your store, reduce basket abandonment, and improve the overall shopping experience.

Currency Switcher Top Features

  • Show prices in local currencies
  • Round off product-prices in local currency
  • Configure currency switching for specific countries
  • Auto-update foreign currency rates
  • Restrict currency changing for certain user agents

Availability of Currency Switcher

Price: $69.99

Link: https://www.fmeextensions.com/magento-2-currency-switcher-extension.html

Advanced Report

advaned reports extension

This extension module helps online stores to track, process and manage their store better with these advanced customisable reports. It uses statistical data from customers, orders, sales, and your products to provide a more effective process for reporting that can even help with business and marketing decision making.

You can change the time of the report as needed too, down to one day, one week, one month or any period. The extension also comes with handy comparison features so you can easily measure positive or negative performance.

Advanced Report Top Features

  • Customise and compare reports
  • Display report data in charts
  • Flexible report layouts with multiple report views
  • Filter your report elements
  • Drag and resize your report dashboards

Availability of Advanced Report

Price: Free with paid options available

Link: https://www.mageplaza.com/magento-2-reports-extension/

google recaptchaGoogle ReCaptcha

Spam comments and spam messages can be a problem with any website, but with the Google Recaptcha extension, it is possible to put a stop to that.

As well as the typical style of Recaptcha, this extension allows site admins to add an invisible style Recaptcha which works in the same way, but in the background, and can provide an improved user experience as well as conversion rate.

You can add Repcatcha to any forms on your website, as well as on the backend.

Google ReCaptcha Top Features

  • Visible and invisible Recaptcha supported
  • Select language codes for CAPTCHA forms
  • Add reCAPTCHs to the admin-login form
  • Ability to add reCAPTCHA to an unlimited number of forms on Frontend
  • Choose themes and set sizes

Availability of Google ReCaptcha

Price: Free

Link: https://www.mageplaza.com/magento-2-google-recaptcha/

Affiliate Extension

affiliate extension

Affiliate programs are a great way to bring more visitors to your online store, bring back quality leads, as well as creating greater awareness of your brand.

Affiliate marketing is when online publishers help to advertise your business and your products through referrals. By having an affiliate program, companies can enjoy increases in sales in return for offering a commission every time one of their affiliates helps to generate a sale.

Affiliate Extension Top Features

  • Create multi-affiliate marketing programs
  • Establish different levels of commissions with tiers
  • Customize the affiliate link
  • Affiliate banners with links
  • Affiliate reports
  • Import and export affiliate data

Availability of Affiliate Extension

Price: $99

Link: https://www.mageplaza.com/magento-2-affiliate-extension/

Special Promotions Pro

special promotions pro

This extension allows you to create personalised promotions using your customer’s information. You can build customer loyalty with unique offers based on their order history.

With the default Magento setup, setting up promotions and discounts can be difficult as the basic settings do not cover this functionality.

By using this extension, site owners can increase the efficiency of creating these promotions with flexible rules that cover any promotions you will like to create. You can set up deals based on various attributes that target specific customers with offers that you know are likely to encourage them to buy.

Special Promotions Pro Top Features

  • Create highly targeted promotions
  • Give discounts based on customers’ order history
  • Create rules based on customer attributes
  • Boost sales for cross-sell products
  • Enhanced functionality of shopping cart rules grid
  • Expand the Magento price rules functionality
  • Clearly inform customers about discounts

Availability of Special Promotions Pro

Price: $159

Link: https://amasty.com/special-promotions-pro.html

Reward Points

reward points

This extension allows customers to earn points through customer actions such as buying products, sharing products on social media etc. Customers can also use these reward points to pay for products.

This is not only a great way to attract new customers, but also to help retain loyal customers.

Reward Points Top Features

  • Customise to establish spending and earning rules
  • Build customer loyalty
  • Set your own points labels
  • Points spending slider
  • Milestone program

Availability of Reward Points

Price: $99

Link: https://www.mageplaza.com/magento-2-reward-points-extension/

Free Shipping Bar

free shipping bar

Increase your customer’s shopping cart value by displaying the tempting free shipping offer as a bar across your store. This is an incentivised reminder of the benefits of shopping with you.

Free shipping is considered a standard for eCommerce for many shoppers. With this extension, the reminder will be displayed, encouraging them to add more items to their cart to get this free shipping. As a result, you can see your conversion rates, sales and more increase.

You can even customise the extension to display different messages based on the amount that each customer currently has in their cart.

Free Shipping Bar Top Features

  • Display free shipping offer on any page
  • Show messages based on auto-calculating cart total
  • Flexible design and customisation
  • Set the shipping message to display during set times as needed
  • Ready to use templates

Availability of Free Shipping Bar

Price: $99

Link: https://www.mageplaza.com/magento-2-free-shipping-bar/

omnisend extensionOmniSend

This extension allows you to automate much of your omnichannel messaging. You can communicate with customers via email, SMS, Facebook Messenger and more. Use this tool to help move your first-time visitors further down the funnel towards making a purchase.

You can provide your customers with a unified experience and reach out to them in the way they expect and combine them all into one workflow.

OmniSend Top Features

  • Powerful features tailored for eCommerce needs
  • Predefined automation workflows
  • Grow your Brand with Beautifully Designed Emails
  • Engage Customers with Integrated SMS Marketing
  • Drive More Sales with Advanced Automation

Availability of OmniSend

Price: Free

Link: https://www.omnisend.com/

beeketingBeeketing

This extension helps you to optimise your sales funnel and increase your conversion rate. It comes with ten powerful tools which allow you to make tweaks to your store, including the ability to upsell, cross-sell, and prevent cart abandonment.

It is a full-service tool allowing you to make the most of your eCommerce store.

Beeketing Top Features

  • Create and display recent sales notification as small corner popups
  • Show a countdown timer and / or a stock indicator on specific product pages
  • Bundle multiple complementary products to upsell and cross-sell
  • Target leaving customer and offer an incentive to prevent abandoned carts
  • Product recommendation sliders
  • Smart recommendation with AI
  • Pre-built drip campaigns in an email marketing tool

Availability of Beeketing

Price: Free

Link: https://beeketing.com/beeketing-for-magento

one step checkoutOne Step Checkout

Simplify the checkout process, reduce the abandonment rate and increase the conversion rate of your store dramatically. This One Step Checkout extension gathers all complicated default steps to display on one page only resulting in better user experience.

There are nearly 100 payment methods compatible with the extension and available at the checkout, enabling customers to pay with whatever process they are most comfortable.

The store owner is easy to change the specific appearance from the admin configuration to make it seamlessly fit in with your online store and branding.

One Step Checkout Top Features

  • Compatible with 100 payment methods
  • Delivery time allows the customers to receive the items according to their preferred time
  • Auto-detect the existing email that the customer used to register
  • Address auto-suggestion powered by Google
  • Optimised checkout page
  • Colour and layout customisation
  • Automatically sending emails to customers to remind them about their abandoned carts and offer them a discount
  • Drag and drop to arrange checkout fields you need
  • Trust badges

Availability of One Step Checkout

Price: $199

Link: https://www.mageplaza.com/magento-2-one-step-checkout-extension/

delivery time and dateDelivery Date and Time

This extension allows you to improve your UX at the checkout page by making it easy for customers to leave a delivery comment and security code and set preferred delivery dates and times.

Increase customer satisfaction and expectation by installing this extension. It also integrates seamlessly with the one-step checkout.

Delivery Date and Time Top Features

  • Smart calendar in the delivery date
  • Leave a delivery note
  • Allow/disallow customers to choose deliveries on certain dates

Availability of Delivery Date and Time

Price: $79

Link: https://www.mageplaza.com/magento-2-delivery-time-extension/

search extensionSearch Extension

This extension makes it quick and easy for customers to find the product they want at a glance with thousands of related suggestions. This brings with it greater customer satisfaction and increased sales.

The results of the search will be shown as a drop-down list as the user starts to type.

Search Extension Top Features

  • Auto-complete search results in a quick popup box
  • Help support over 10,000 SKUs
  • Multi-language support
  • Flexible Search configuration options
  • Seamless integration

Availability of Search Extension

Price: $99

Link: https://www.mageplaza.com/magento-2-search-extension/

ElasticSearch

elastic-search

This extension offers improved search capabilities including a “Did you mean …” feature. This not only improves your searches but enhances the relevancy of the results.

By installing this extension, your Magento 2 store should enjoy a more pleasant user experience.

ElasticSearch Top Features

  • Fast autocomplete
  • Search on products, categories and CMS pages
  • Give higher weight to your attributes
  • Define a configuration specific to each store view
  • Handle thousands of products easily

Availability of ElasticSearch

Price: $120

Link: https://www.wyomind.com/elastic-search-magento.html

layered-navigationLayered Navigation

Layered Navigation extension allows your customers to filter your products by Categories, Colours and more, and can even filter by New, In-Stock, On Sale, Product Ratings etc. This is useful as it allows users to remove products that they feel may be unsuitable and help them to find what they need and convert.

Customers can also select multiple options for each product attribute. For example, they can filter by both “cotton” and “fleece” under the Materials section and can be shown as either buttons or checkboxes (depending on your preference) for the user to select.

Layered Navigation Top Features

  • Find by different product attributes
  • Advanced filter choices
  • Multiple stores and languages
  • Smart price slider
  • Shop By Brand Included

Availability of Layered Navigation

Price: $99

Link: https://www.mageplaza.com/magento-2-layered-navigation-extension/

live chat extensionLive Chat

Providing a live chat feature on your store can do wonders for your business. Customers usually want their problems resolved on the spot and want their questions answered without waiting. This LiveChat extension gives you the ability to talk to your customers live. This will not only increase conversion but increase customer loyalty as well.

Live Chat Top Features

  • Chat and user archives
  • Forward emails to tickets
  • Tag your chats and tickets
  • Set roles for your live chat agents
  • Advanced reporting features

Availability of Live Chat

Price: Varies, free trial available

Link: https://www.livechat.com/

Keep reading to discover more about migrating from Magento 1.9.x to Magento 2 in the next chapter.