Minerva Shipping Extension
http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/pickup-at-event-multiple-flatrates.html
- FREE – This extension offers your customers the option to collect their order at your store (or other collection points)

Web Forms
http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/webforms-community-edition.html
- FREE – A nifty form creator complete with Captcha allowing you to build your own contact forms and embed it anywhere on your website.
In my case I had a little Product Enquiry form put into all product pages.

Bank Payment
http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/bankpayment.html
- FREE – Allows your customers the option to pay by Bank Transfer/EFT, the checkout process is complete and custom is given bank account details to complete payment.

Fooman Speedster
http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/fooman-speedster.html
- FREE-  Must have extension that gives your Magento store a speed boost. It compresses and caches your JS and CSS code.

Seamless Delete Order
http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/seamless-delete-order.html
- FREE- For some odd reason (staff security i guess) Magento does not allow you to easily delete orders. I’d recommend this extension to use in a test enviroment and delete all your sample orders. In a Live store, rather cancel the order and keep a record of it somewhere instead of deleting it altogether.

Fooman Jirafe
http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/jirafe-analytics-free-extension-4173.html
- FREE – A fantastic little realtime analytics extension. While not as indepth as Google Analytics, it gives you some quick and valuable information such as keywords, referrals, conversion info and more.

Ebizmarts Mailchimp Integration
http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/ebizmarts-mailchimp-sync-official-full-mailchimp-integration.html
- FREE – a must have extension to integrate your magento store with your Mailchimp email list and order tracking

Global PDF
http://www.maisondulogiciel.com/english/magento/global-pdf.html
- 90euro – This extension allows you to create a PDF catalog of your store.  You can edit existing pdf’s for your shipping, invoicing and so on. We use it primarily to generate a printable catalog of our products. Their support is rudimentary at best but documentation is precise and detailed. More then enough to get going.

Quick Add Product
http://www.maisondulogiciel.com/english/magento/quick-product-creation.html
- 60euro -  The default version of this extension allows you to create products quicker then the normal Magento “step by step” method. Unfortunately it lacked the ability to include an image and category.  I have since modified this to include those missing features and further modifying it to do a few custom actions. More on this in another blog post.

Magento Payment Gateway -
*I have not used this but most likely plan on using it in coming weeks.*
http://www.customscripts.co.za/
- R600 (about $70) – A  Magento MyGate payment gateway script. They also offer various other gateway extensions.

This is by no means a definitive Magento list however  I can assure you i have tried, tested and successfully implemented these in my stores.

I would suggest browsing the Magento Connect repository for hundreds of free and premium themes that you can download or purchase, I decided to go  with www.HelloThemes.com

They offer an awesome range of themes, all of which are professionally designed, polished, seo optimized and up to date with current design trends.  Undecided on what theme to choose (they all looked so good!) I purchased a 1 year Theme Club license for $99.  Essentially giving me access to ALL  their past themes and at least 2 new themes a month for the next year. Bargain!

Like any reputable Theme seller they offer detailed installation documentation, setup video’s, support forums and more. Off course you could opt for a completely custom developed design and theme but expect to spend on this. Depending on the designer, and their talent one should budget a minimum of $600, and ideally shoot for upwards of $1500 for some really good designs.

Lastly I needed to modify their themes to suit my needs.  Work like this is normally to small for a company to take on and I resort to freelancers.   Sites like Freelancer.com and Maglance.com are great for finding freelancers willing to take on small jobs.

Often I advise companies to treat an online store like a physical store. In a brick & mortar store one can spend thousands of rands on fixtures,  point-of-sale signage, lighting, flooring etc. Using the same reasoning, surely you should be spending on making your online store look professional and polished.   The notion of “online store” being cheap and free needs to be dispelled. Sure start-up costs and overheads might be lower then a brick & mortar store, but overheads are there and one should be spending some cash to keep things running smoothly.

With the above being said, I try to go live as soon as possible. Afterall if your ecommerce store is not live and selling, then it is running at a loss.  Be reasonable and realistic, do as much as you can to get things going, the rest you can tackle after you go live and tweak as you go along.

Next post: some of the extensions I use and recommend.

First things first. Find a Webhost!

There are hundreds of bloggers ranting about how unstable Magento is and how resource heavy it is.  Yes Magento is a resource hog, but if your  hosting is setup correctly, there is little chance of your store crashing.

Ideally a dedicated server is great, but this comes a price and with a startup store, funds are limited.  I’d recommend and am currently using a Shared Hosting platform, however I’ve ensured the webhost is familiar with Magento and the necessary requirements. In fact most, if not all Magento specialist stores off it as a “one click” application. Saving you the trouble of uploading and manually installing it.

Where does one find such a host?  Look at www.MagentoEcommerce.com – the official Magento website and my new favorite website.

Navigate your way to their Solution & Industry Partners, also look at the Magento Wiki

The two companies listed under South Africa did not inspire much confidence. I chose to go with Nexcess, an American based hosting company with servers in USA and the UK, additionally  they are an official Magento Enterprise Partner. This was the deal clincher for me.

While not as cheap as your typical $9.95 Dreamhost package, these cost a little more but offer a stack of Magento optimized features and more  importantly their Magento certification means they can assist when things go pear shaped. At the end of the day you need to decide how important and serious your ecommerce project is. Spend a little extra and save in the long run with stability, speed and security.

I opted for the USA Based Magento Package, and hosting multiple stores i went with their SIP-200 Package for $79.95/month. I suppose for a single store you could go with their $29 solution.

Their service is nothing short of exceptional,  pre-sales questions and general setup questions where resolved inside of an hour or at times after a few minutes. All the other hosting bells and whistles are included (control panel, email, etc) In our case we use Google Apps to manage our email, Nexcess support staff setup the correct DNS & configurations in less then 10 minutes.

I  highly recommended Nexcess.net

When it comes to Magento hosting in South Africa, unfortunately I have not come across South African hosting companies who are geared up to host Magento or offer Magento optimized servers and hardware.

Currently i have 2 public Magento stores (ie. TerrificTrophies & BLKcherry) running on the Nexcess SIP-200 package. Each site has approximately 120 products.  Our combined bandwidth usage is approximately 20gigs a month and the stores combined receive about 12 000 unique visitors a month.  So far we have had zero downtime and speeds (for an internationally hosted website) is pretty impressive.

For larger stores (upwards of 1000 products and receiving 100k+ visitors a month) logic would dictate one to utilize a dedicated server and consider content delivery networks or some sort of clustered server solution to manage your traffic.

Next post will deal with store front design and themes.

As it stands right now, 2 of my stores are running on Magento Community Edition (CE for short) – these are,

www.TerrificTrophies.co.za – a niche store specializing in trophies and medals.

www.BLKcherry.co.za – our furniture experimental store retailing outdoor furniture and lounge suites.

Before choosing Magento CE the first decision was “Why Choose Magento?” in other words, what makes Magento better then other open source shopping carts.

The usual features are standard on all shopping cart software. Categories, product listings, checkout system, etc.

Two important factors for me were:

1.  community.Magento has a thriving community, granted some parts of their forum is dead. However one can find a wealth of information on their forums, and on several independent blogs. Additionally there are hundreds if not thousands of agencies and freelancers who specialize in Magento development.
2. extensions. aka Plugins, modules or add-ons. Features that one can add to enhance your store. From PDF catalog generations, to analytics to social media sharing. There is nearly a plugin for every need out there. Off course one can always hire a Magento developer to build up any customized extensions.

Sure there are other reasons such as popularity, reviews, SEO usability, and looking at other leading ecommerce stores but to me these were my deciding factors.

After looking at the above, i narrowed by choice to:

• Magento Community Edition
• Prestashop
• Opencart

I’d like to mention OScommerce but personally i think its about as useful as Windows98.

Opencart & Prestashop looked great but Magento CE just looked that much better. More polished, much more features and what seems to be a more popular choice. Opencart & Prestashop seem to be much more lighter on resources and can work on just about any hosting environment. It also seems to have a much easier learning curve.
All that aside, I’m quite happy with my choice of Magento for our stores and future stores.

I’d like to point out that I prefer a dedicated ecommerce solution, I’ve chosen not to look at “bolt on” solutions such as WP-Ecommerce (WordPress plugin) and Virtuemart (joomla add on).
I have used Wp-Ecommerce in the past with mediocre results. I suppose these would work for really small stores (less then 50 products). Right tool for the job I say.
Wordpress and (to some extent) Joomla is nothing short of amazing and I have done dozens of websites using WordPress, however for ecommerce it just falls short in my opinion.

Magento CE is not the holy grail of ecommerce. Yes it may be free and Open Source but it is not cheap. Expect to spend countless hours simply learning the features of running a store. In the last 3 or 4 months I have probably spent about 100+ hours simply exploring the interface, configurations, catalog system, installing add-on extensions and modifying themes. More importantly, expect to spend a wad of cash on customizing your store. I suppose one  could spend hours trying to hack it but often I prefer to simply outsource mundane coding work or have modules created that are beyond my skill set.

I think most Magento store owners and developers will agree, Magento CE has a very steep learning curve but the rewards are there when you have a profit generating online store.

With my existing 2 stores, our primary goal is to have an easy to navigate catalog that is seo-friendly, easily up-datable and all prices visible. A product xml feed is necessary to list your goods with price comparison sites.

Looking at BLKcherry.co.za – being a furniture store, almost all customers prefer to visit the showroom and go through the whole tactile shopping experience, TerrificTrophies.co.za on the other hand, most customers prefer to email or call us and discuss their order and arrange for customizations such as engraving, gel badging and so on.

Essentially the shopping cart feature is rarely used. Its great to have and we are receiving a steady trickle of online sales.

The shopping cart feature, one could say, is a bonus. With these two stores, the bulk of sales are done by store visits and via email/telephone.

All in all we are having great success with Magento.  A very informal statistic and comparison:  With our trophy store, it took 3 weeks to receive 49 online transactions, and it took nearly 10 months to receive 70 online transactionswhile we were using WP-Ecommerce.

Next post in this series will tackle hosting a Magento store.

Firstup is hardware. I’m using a medium level Asus Notebook – K50ij series with 2gigs of ram, 320g storage, Intel Dual Core T4300.   This has surprised me with its speed and ability to multi-task with Photoshop, Corel draw, Gmail and a few other browsers. Lastly a 500g external usb powered drive for daily backups of all files, settings, software, etc. Watching movies and playing games is not a priority hence a 15” LED backlit screen suits me just fine.

For file management between JHB offices, webclients and myself. We are all using Dropbox.  The 2gig free version is more then enough to keep things going smoothly.  Website updates, advert submissions and text documents are all handled through this. A few successful referrals has bumped me to about 4gigs of online storage.

Now add in Skype, MSN, Gmail and SMS text messaging to keep constant contact with colleagues, friends and family at a near free cost.  Skype to landlines (to south african landlines) costs about R5 for a 10 minute call.  Obviously Skype to Skype is free and preferred. Free Video calls are an added bonus!

Connectivity is where Egypt shines! Broadband is fast, relatively cheap and accessible almost everywhere.

We are using Etisalat’s 3.75g hsdpa post-paid option.  1750egp (about R2360) gets you a high speed up to 7mbps USB modem and unlimited monthly usage for 6 months. Thereafter its 299pounds per month. However their ‘fair use’ policy is good for up to 6gigs. Thereafter throttled to 64k speeds.
In short, 290egp per month for 6gigs & USB modem included.  The modem has a MicroSD memory card slot which allows it to act as a flash drive too.

A cheaper option is a slightly slower USB stick modem and 1gig prepaid for 99egp (about R135) – simply recharge by paying cash at an Etisalat store or scratch cards.

Mobile phones, once again is cheap and cost effective,
SMS costs .25egp local and .80egp international.  Calls are per minute and cost between .25egp and 50egp for local calls.  We are using Skype for international calls

check out www.etisalat.com.eg for the full breakdown

Apparently the apartment we move in tomorrow has broadband at 50egp per month. While I’m not sure about the speed, it would most likely be rather fast due to an internet cafe operating in the same building. Methinks the landlord (who owns it all) piggybacks of their connectivity.

LinkDsl offers extremely cheap broadband – fellow South Africans can sob a tear when viewing their website and pricing.  We will most likely stick to 3.75g hsdpa for easier movements.

Lastly my trusty Canon 300D dslr camera has been replaced by a 1000D.  Added bonus is the SD Memory card storage and my notebook having a built in SD memory card slot.  One less device to carry with.

Now when selling online, we do not always have an item in stock or even carry it in stock. Out of over 7000 items on system, there are a few hundred that are either sold out or on special order.  Many a time it is not financially viable to stock a R30 000 alloy wheel that you might only sell once a year and customers fully understand this and do not mind waiting a specific time period for the item.

Below is a ruling from SunniPath: (original link)

Question:
I’m thinking of starting an online PC shop. Consumers would see PC’s on my website and if they buy any, they pay for it straight away. However I would only buy the relevant parts after I have received payment from the consumer. The reason for this is that consumers can customize the PC’s so the parts may vary and I do not have the funds to keep that much stock. Can you tell me if it is permissible for me to trade like this?

Answer:
In the name of Allah, Most Compassionate, Most Merciful,

The general principle of Shariah is that it is not permitted to sell a commodity that is not in one’s ownership. It is one of the basic requirements for a valid sale that the commodity or item being sold is in the ownership and possession of the seller. Hence, if the seller does not own a particular item, it will not be permitted for him/her to sell it to someone else.

Hakim ibn Hizam (Allah be pleased with him) reports that he said to the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace): O Messenger of Allah! At times an individual comes to me to purchase a specific item that I do not possess. Can I sell him the item and then purchase it from the market? The Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him & give him peace) said: Do not sell what you don’t own.(Sunan Tirmidhi, no: 1232 and others)

However, there is an exception to this general rule, namely the sale of what is known as Salam. Salam is a special type of sale wherein the seller undertakes to supply the commodity or goods to the buyer at a future date in exchange of payment fully paid at spot. (See: al-Fatawa al-Hindiyya, 3/178)

The fact that Salam was an exception to the general rule, it was subjected by the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) to certain strict conditions. The jurists (fuqaha) have explained these conditions in great length and detail in their respected works. It is not possible to explain these conditions here in detail, but the following is a very brief summary of these conditions:

1) The buyer must pay the price in full at the time of effecting the sale. If the buyer defers all or some part of the price to a later date, the sale would be invalid, for this would constitute exchanging a debt against a debt which has been prohibited by the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace).

2) Salam is only permitted in commodities and items whose quality and quantity can be specified exactly. Precious stones and similar items cannot be sold on the basis of a Salam contract, for every stone is normally different from the other in quality, size or weight.

3) The commodity or item being sold on the basis of Salam must be specified and described clearly. All the various relevant details and descriptions must be clearly mentioned leaving no room for ambiguity.

4) The exact date of delivering the commodity must be specified in the contract. (The Hanafi fuqaha, contrary to the fuqaha of the other three schools, have made a minimum of one month between the contract and delivery a condition for the validity of this sale. However, many contemporary Hanafi jurists have overlooked this condition due to the needs of the time; hence both parties may fix any date for delivery with mutual consent).

5) Salam is not permitted in items that must be exchanged at spot, such as exchanging gold in return of silver.

6) The item or commodity must remain in the market right from the date of contract to the date of delivery. Hence, if the item being sold is not available in the market at the time of contracting the sale, it will not be allowed.

7) The contract of Salam cannot be carried out on particular commodities, such as the fruit of a particular tree, etc, as it could be destroyed before delivery. Thus, it will not be allowed to effect Salam in commodities the supply of which is not certain. (See: al-Fatawa al-Hindiyya, 3/ 179-181)

In light of the above details, it would be permitted for you to sell PC’s with the consumer paying at spot and you delivering the commodity at a later date, provided all the conditions mentioned above are fully met.

The consumer must pay the payment in full and not defer any amount. Similarly, all the necessary details of the commodity must be clearly outlined and specified, the date of delivery must be determined, and other such conditions must be met. By doing so, your trade in selling PC’s in the manner explained by you will be halal(lawful), Insha Allah.

And Allah knows best

Muhammad ibn Adam al-Kawthari
Darul Iftaa, Leicester, UK

To summarise, not only Islamic but good online business practice should have the following:
1) delivery time frame (eg 2 to 4 working days) and notification if there are any delays
2)clear and concise description of the product as well as a good resolution photograph or graphic and open lines of communication should a customer need clarification.
3) payment must be made in full for us to being an order process.
4) items are fixed in shape and size. Not like Gold or silver.