Dr. Utz Westermann
Meet Magento Event
Enterprise Licensing and Support
Advanced features
• enhanced CMS
• page cache module
• improved search (Solr)
• content staging support
• auditing
• strong data encryption
• customer / catalog
segmentation
• private sales
• reward points, store credits
• …
Subscription License Model
• commercial license
• augments Magento’s
open-source development model
• end-to-end product support
with SLA
• warranty & indemnification
Maturity and Recognition
Commercial Recognition
• Magento dubbed “Emerging Player to Watch”
(Forrester Wave B2C: Commerce Platforms, Q1/2009)
• Magento will be featured in next Forrester
Wave report
Open-Soure Awards
• Amongst “Best of Open Source Enterprise
Applications (E-Commerce)”
(Info-World OSS Best Of Open-Source Awards 2008)
• Winner 2008 “Best New Project” Award
Integration Capabilities
Ability to integrate with
enterprise procresses / apps
Integration points
• Magento core includable as PHP library
• extensible SOAP web service API
• extensible XMLRPC API
• event hook system
• relational database
• available extension modules
– BridgeConnect: SAP, Intuit, Sage,
MS Dynamics, … ERP / CRM connection
– Dataflow file import/export
framework
– dedicated order file import / export
– catalog file import export
– …
In the following: ? = Scalability
to cutting edge e-commerce strategy / technology trends
towards the cloud
to cutting edge e-commerce strategy / technology trends
towards the cloud
Social Network Integration
Background
• blogs & social networks 4th most
popular global online activity
• 67% of global online population
visit social networks regularly
Ideas
• provide customers additional
information on products from blogs or social network posts
• allow customers to show off or
discuss products on social networks
• allow shopping from within social
network (i.e.., Facebook)
Examples
• Charlotte Russe “Shop By Outfit”
facebook app
• Facebook Connect Social Shopping
extension module by Optaros
Implementation with Magento
• social networks usually offer client-side
integration points via JavaScript widgets
• simple integration in Magento templates
• Facebook apps run within iframes
• use Magento’s MVC framework to produce
Shoppable Content
Idea
• make people shop outside product
detail pages
• allow people to directly make a
purchase while consuming teasing content by adding “add-to-cart” buttons
– videos
– magazines
Examples
• LonnyMag (magazine)
• Net-A-Porter (magazine, videos)
Implementation with Magento
• shoppable content usually rich media
technology (e.g., Flash, JavaScript)
• clean product URLs allow for easy
linking to product pages
• category landing pages can be
content blocks that contain rich media
Checkout Process Optimization
Background
• 79% of retailers said that enhancing
checkout is top priority (Shop.org State of Retailing 2009)
• optimizing checkout can reduce
abandonment rates by 20% (Rue La La)
Ideas
• single page checkout
• combine shopping cart with checkout
Examples
• Rue La La (single page checkout)
• Wrangler (single page checkout +
shopping cart)
Implementation with Magento
• enterprise edition features single page
checkout module
• MVC framework enables creating and
Quick View Modals
Ideas
• allow customers to quickly view
product details while browsing
product list without closeing the list
• enable add to cart from preview
• implement AJAX quick view
widgets
Examples
• Rue La La
Implementation with Magento
• MVC framework implementation of
AJAX controllers
• JavaScript part of AJAX can be
Enhanced Product Detail Pages
Background
• 50% of retailers said that they want to
add alternative images of products
• 31% want to add zoom fabric
swatches
(Shop.org State of Retailing 2009)
Ideas
• provide customers with detailed
product information to build trust
• alternate images, zoom, swatches
• real time inventory concerning
selection
• ratings & reviews
• forums, blogs
Examples
• Zalando (ratings, reviews, zoom)
• Rue La La (real time inventory)
• Ocentric (see later)
Implementation with Magento
• quality imagery support included
• zoom extension modules available
• ratings & reviews support included
• extension module system allows for
Nontraditional Landing Pages
Ideas
• Enhance visual appeal of site beyond
– product lists
– product detail pages
Examples
• Levi Strauss
Implementation with Magento
• category pages can be filled with
content blocks
• any kind of rich media can be
to cutting edge e-commerce strategy / technology trends
towards the cloud
Magento on the Cloud
Why?
• flexible, unbureacratic access to an
essentially arbitrary computing power
• load-based up- and down-scaling
• pay per hour, pay per use
• geographically distributed deployment
• (beyond-) enterprise-class hosting
providers (e.g., Amazon, Google)
• top-notch world-wide computing centers
• good monitoring & deployment tools
• distributed backup mechanisms
• large-scale data management services
(e.g., Amazon Relational DBService)
• LAMP stack support
(Rackspace, Amazon EC2)
Where did we do it?
• Fox Connect
• 36 Boutiques
8 Lessons Learned
1. Use c1.medium Instance Type for Magento nodes
• CPU-focused instance type
– 1.7 GB RAM, 2 virtual cores, 350 GB
HD storage, 32 bit, moderate I/O performance
• outperforms standard large instance
type m1.large at half the cost
– 7.5 GB RAM, 2 virtual cores, 850GB
HD storage, 64 bit, high I/O performance
• performance tests
– ~ 12 req. / sec. for cachable page
content (home page)
– ~ 6 req. / sec. for data update
requests (add to cart)
• gist: use the fine granularity offered by
8 Lessons Learned
2. Use reverse-proxy / separate
http server for static content
• no surprise here
• keep static content requests away from
PHP app servers
– images
– CSS
– JavaScript
• put static content on separate web
servers optimized for static content delivery
• make separation explicit or hide behind
reverse proxy
• use content delivery network for
geo-distributed applications
– static content served close to the
viewer
– reduced latency
– many cloud providers already often
offer CDN services (e.g., CloudFront)
3. Cache product catalog views
• using Magento full page cache
• or reverse-proxy (e.g, Varnish)
– avoids PHP processing, DB hits
• Problem: logged in users
– often see session-specific content
– wishlists, shopping carts, inventory
stat
– cannot be cached by full page cache
• Solution: custom caching development
– we found an AJAX-driven approach
useful
– serve session-specific content via
JavaScript widgets
– use Magento full page cache page
for page frame including widgets
– widgets pull in session-specific data
8 Lessons Learned
4. Scale horizontally by adding
Magento servers
• no surprise here
• direct traffic through reverse-proxy
which balances load between Magento nodes
• the cloud advantage
– web service APIs for provisioning
and starting / stopping nodes
– act of minutes
– simple to develop a monitor that
continuously checks the number of nodes required for the experienced traffic and scales the system
appropriately
5. Share Magento backend
caches between all nodes
• avoid inconsistencies
• avoid the need for sticky session
balancing
• be able to react to appearing and
disappearing nodes
• Magento full-page cache in shared
database
8 Lessons Learned
6. Plan for disaster
• cloud nodes fail more frequently than
traditional hardware nodes
• avoid single point of failures
– replicate database
– use multiple Magento nodes and
load-balancing
– keep stand-by instance for
reverse-proxy
• cloud infrastructure offers tools to
implement this
7. Tune database to best
practice
• no surprise here
• Magento is a database-heavy
application
• establish MySQL master / slave setups
when database performance becomes an issue
• this facilitates query load-balancing
• cloud infrastructure offers tools to do
8 Lessons Learned
8. Rely on value-added
infrastructure services
• basic cloud offerings usually comprise
– command line tools
– web service APIs
for
– provisioning of nodes
– monitoring
• deploying and operating a Magento
application based on this usually
requires scripting and tool development
• we found using administration /
monitoring workbenches for cloud computing a worthwhile investment
to cutting edge e-commerce strategy / technology trends
towards the cloud
Convergence of the 3Cs
Some Statistics
• 83% of shoppers are interested in sharing
information about their purchases with friends
• 74% are influenced by opinion of others in social
networks
• 67% are willing to spend more money based on
recommendations
• 77% are influenced by the content quality of
product descriptions
• 79% never purchase product without complete
product information
(various sources, including:
e-tailing group, InternetRetailer, National Retail Federation)
Consequence: break up traditional silos
• e-commerce platforms
• content management systems
Convergence |
Examples
• SEO blogs on product information generate
organic search traffic to blog/product page with 1 click to buy
• RSS and Twitter followers increase
frequency and volume of return visits to pages that generate impulse purchases
• Product/company fans creates SEO user
generated content that increases traffic, return visits, and conversion rates
• Product/company fans creates SEO user
generated content that increases traffic, return visits, and conversion rates
OCentric |
3C - SaaS
OCentric is
• an open-source component assembly
• centered around Magento
• hosted on the cloud
• offered as tailorable SaaS
3C features beyond Magento
• blogs integrated with product catalog (SEO)
• discussion forums on products
• Facebook social shopping
• content syndication to partner sites
• affiliate stores
| Storefront
| Content and community features
| Enterprise Search
| Affiliate applications
| Site analytics
Architecture
Scales on-demand 0 0 Virtual Machine (Rightscale) Syndication, Affiliates (OView) PHP|Symfony Storage (Rightscale) MySQL replication Commerce (Magento) PHP Content & Community (Drupal) PHP Commerce Integration Payment GatewayCustom User Interfaces
PHP, JQuery
Financials Product master
Web Services feeds
Fulfillment Content Integration Digital Assent Management Content Feeds Content Repository
Web Services feeds
OCentric |
User Experience
User Experience can be completely custom or start with best
practice templates and modify from there
Boutique Brand Search
SKUs 100s 1,000s 100,000s
OCentric |
SEO Blogs
Search Engine Optimized
• get traffic to your shop
without AdSense by publishing interesting blog content about products
• Keywords: Title of blog
equals title of page giving fullest weight to highly searched
keywords
• Meta data: Enter
description, meta tags when blog is created
OCentric |
Relate Products to Blogs
Product Association
• Search: Auto-search for
related product during blog creation.
• Product Catalog: Select
from hierarchical product catalog
Analytics
• Traffic: Track growth of
organic search traffic
• Conversion: Track
conversion funnels for organic search traffic
OCentric |
Syndicate Content
Embed Content on Partners
• Any type of content: text, rich
media, video, etc.
• Auto-scales on hosted service
Content Management
• Control content on each partner
site directly through a browser interface CMS system
Analytics
• Full visibility into interaction on
OCentric |
Affiliate Store
Affiliate
• Instead of just an html ad,
place selected items that can be added to a cart – checkout occurs on
ecommerce site
• Similar to Amazon aStore
• Higher click throughs,
OCentric |
Social Shopping
Social Shopping
• Access Facebook social
graph on product detail page
• Share “great find” with
friends
• Ask friends for advice to
improve conversion rate
• Drive traffic to the
product detail page from Facebook
