Hi Amasty blog readers!
To be honest, we were so busy working on new extensions, updating the old ones and helping our customers, that we almost forgot to show our work on location. I mean, on real shops! That's why today we embrace it's never too late thing and share an excellent Magento case study. Meet horsecheck.nl with more than 40,000 items available and the guy behind - Maarten. We asked several questions on his experience with Magento, and Maarten was very kind to answer them.
1. Tell us about the choice of the navigation extensions you use (Improved Sorting, Improved Navigation, Ajax Scroll). What’s the result you intended to get?
After working for 10 years in e-commerce project management and experimenting with various Magento extension developers, I discovered that the key to success is the full package. Therefore, not only the extensions have to be well-built and work seamlessly with the standard Magento functionalities, but also has to be continuously updated and renewed. When working on a project I prefer to work with one extension supplier. This keeps things clean and simple.
For the Horsecheck project, Amasty delivers the full package I need. Improved Navigation, combined with improved Sorting is, in my experience, the best and most reliable extension package. It enables your visitors to filter and sort on small or big webshops with ease. I would recommend anyone to implement them together to get the best result. Even better: with HHVM installed on your server the speed is incredible!
Click to enlarge the main page2. Please tell us a little bit more about how you use Landing Pages extension: what the aims these pages were created were and what the result is.
For Horsecheck this extension is a life saver! The concept of Horsecheck is to be a community and marketplace for every horse rider in the world to explore. So, the need to be present in Google's SERPs for any keyword related to this concept is crucial. Landing Pages makes this possible. If we were able to combine the Landing Pages with the standard Magento categories, this would make the extension invincible.
Click to enlarge the outlet page. It combines the features of Landing Pages (on sale items display), Improved Layered Navigation (on the top left of the page) and Ajax Scroll (scroll down to see how it works).3. Our readers also would like to know more how you manage your catalog using Mass Product Actions and Extended Product Grid.
In my opinion, the functionalities of these extensions should be built in Magento as a standard option. While using it every day, I always forget these are actual extensions and not standard Magento features.
4. How long have you been running your store?
Horsecheck.nl launched a year ago. And everyday we are working hard to get the basics right. I believe that to be successful with a site or shop, every aspect of running an e-commerce platform (front-end/back-end) has to work simply and smoothly before taking the next step.
Click to enlarge the page5. Why did you choose Magento as a platform for your store?
For its worldwide BIG community of developers and users around the world. And especially for Horsecheck because of its enhanced catalog, category and product management functionalities. If you think big, as we do with Horsecheck, we need a platform that can go big and behave flexibly so that you can adjust it to your needs. I think Magento currently is one of the best scalable and flexible solutions for this and will be in the future...
Click to enlarge product details6. Why did you choose Amasty as your extension provider?
Amasty has, as I call it, the full package: smart and well coded extensions combined with continuous development and excellent customer service!
7. What’s the most helpful extension you use on your shop?
Landing Pages.
Click to enlarge the page8. Is there an extension you’d like to have but it’s not developed yet? Please describe its features.
If we were able to combine the Landing Pages extension on Horsecheck with the standard Magento categories and be able to add extra products to a category based on conditions, this would make our operation much easier.
We thank Maarten for being our customer and sharing his experience with Magento e-commerce platform and Amasty extensions. Do you have any questions to Maarten? Welcome to the comments section.