Magento is the most powerful, tested and supported open source e-Commerce solution available. Unfortunately, Magento can have a large learning curve. From learning how to add products to in the Magento admin to taking advantage of the special rules and promotion logic that is freely available to anyone using Magento. The difficulty with it is pinning down all of the resources available to operate one’s online store at full strength, all while not feeling intimidated along the way.
Below are a few areas of Magento administration that I feel Magento website owners need to pay the most attention to as well as list every major free resource that is available through Magento, from Videos to PDFs to webinars.
First, let us take a look at some of of the functions and common sense practices every Magento store owner should be made aware of. Then, you will be provided with links to learn more about these functions and practices. At the end of the article, you will receive a complete list of all available free resources to help you get started in setting up, configuring and enhancing your Magento store.
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Key Function #1 – Magento Product Special Rules
Special Rules allow you to define price exceptions based on certain actions that a customer takes when visiting your website. For instance, if a product is normally on sale for $100 but you want to offer a discount, a shopping cart price rule will allow you to have full control over offering a discount over that product if the customer buys more than one of those items. You can tell Magento to assign a discount for many other actions such as products of a certain type or certain category. You can even create coupons using price rules. This feature is part of the wide array of promotional functions available to you as a Magento store owner. For a complete list of tutorials that will help you learn more about promotional rules, you can visit their knowledge base section for Magento promotional tools by clicking here.
Below is a list of some of the tutorials available to you:
- Configuring Product Promotions—Related Products
- Apply a Promotion to Multiple SKUs
- How to Set Up Buy X Get Y Free
- How to Create Region-Specific Promotions
- How to Set Discount with Minimum Purchase
Key Function #2 – Importing and Exporting Products in Magento
What many Magento store owners do not realize is that it is fairly easy to import and export both products and customer data. You do not have to program your own spreadsheets or build a script to do this. Magento is loaded with tools to help you along the way and the best resource, in order to master this section, would be the Magento Store Management Video Series that they offer. You can view the video descriptions by clicking here and learn more about how to sign up for them. Pay note to the fact that all you have to do is register and make sure you receive all of the video tutorials you need as it comes in 3 parts. Part one focuses on catalog/store management, part two focuses on product marketing and part three focuses on key Magento operations that can help you make your store more powerful.
Now that you have a hint as to what key functions you should study up on, it is also important to know about key practices; this involves properly ensuring that you are not only properly setting up your store but making sure that you are properly doing business with Magento.
Key Practice – Magento PCI Compliance
One question many store owners have is how they can be PCI compliant to ensure they are properly handling their credit card transactions so they do not get in trouble with their merchant account. This is absolutely one of the most important elements you need to focus on before you go live and, if you are live and have not done so, you should make sure to grab their free white paper available which discusses how to ensure you are, in fact, PCI compliant. You can view the PDF by clicking here. To view the page that specifies every step necessary for you to take, visit their resource titled “
Helping Merchants Achieve PCI Compliance” by clicking here.
Moving Forward
Now that you know see the difference between running your store properly, in the admin, and doing so outside of the Magento admin (such as properly ensuring you are PCI compliant) make note of the free resource list below. It contains a wide array of videos, screen casts, tutorials and white papers available to you as a web store owner. Take full advantage of them and make sure to bookmark those resources as they are continually updating those sections over time.
Magento Free Resources
Webinars
https://www.magentocommerce.com/media/webinars
Tutorial Videos:
https://www.magentocommerce.com/media/screencasts
Free 3 Part Series
Magento User Guide:
https://www.magentocommerce.com/resources/magento-user-guide
Ecommerce Resource Library:
https://www.magentocommerce.com/ecommerce-resource-library/
Data Sheets:
https://www.magentocommerce.com/ecommerce-resource-library/category/view/data-sheets
PCI Compliance:
https://www.magentocommerce.com/company/pci-compliance
Knowledge Base:
https://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base
How To Manage Your Store:
https://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/categories/category/manage-your-store/
Promotional Articles:
Hope this will help expand your knowledge about Magento, free available resources, training and optimization. If you would like to add any additional Magento useful resources or links, please leave a comment below….
Magento Development Lead
