Welcome Amasty New Partners

We continue introducing Amasty partners! This time we’ve interviewing David, a Director at Best Response Media. The company provides innovative Magento e-commerce and digital marketing solutions from their offices in Central London. Best Response Media joined Amasty Partner Program a while ago, and we can’t wait to introduce the company to our readers.  – Could you please tell us a little bit more about Best Response Media? We were founded in 2009 and since then we have worked on hundreds of Magento e-commerce design and development projects and digital marketing campaigns. We are a full service e-commerce digital agency, which means that we offer an end to end digital service for our clients. We have a team of 25 in our Central London office that provides a range of digital services including: UX design and Magento development, Magento support, SEO, PPC, CRO and email marketing. Our team are all extremely passionate about digital and helping our clients to achieve success online. All of our Magento developers are constantly pushing to improve their skill set and knowledge of the platform. This results in our sites always getting faster and more efficient in the use of code.  – What is your company’s core advantage when it comes to e-commerce development and services? Being a full service digital agency means that all of our teams are involved in the design and development of a new Magento website. We have encountered scenarios where a project has been developed by an agency that does not have an in-house SEO team, which has resulted in a site that misses some key SEO fundamentals and in some cases, the migration has not been implemented effectively, which could result in a significant loss of rankings. When we have a new project, key stakeholders from each team will sit down to plan it out. Everything will be considered from user experience for maximizing conversions, to SEO considerations as well as design requirements and how they could impact overall site performance. We give our clients the confidence that they have the weight of an experienced eCommerce digital marketing team behind their project that will maximize its chances of success.  – Please tell us a little bit more about your Magento training services. Do you offer online or offline training? Do small Magento shop owners or more of enterprise level employees come to learn? Our training services are extremely flexible based on the requirements of the particular client. We have a training facility at our Central London offices and are also able to provide training on-site and online. The courses will be tailored based on the client’s requirements, for example, a manager will be more interested in reporting, whereas a site administrator will need to understand the day to day tasks such as adding products and processing orders. But even with these differences, our trainers will tailor the course to the technical expertise of the audience.  – Do you remember how and why your company has started working with Magento? We consolidated our efforts a number of years ago on Magento as there was a huge demand from the market for websites on this particular platform. Our developers all had a preference for working with Magento and it made sense for us to focus on one platform from a business perspective.    – Can you share the most unusual project you’ve worked on? The most unusual project that we worked on was probably an integration that we built between Magento and Barclays Partner Finance. A client sold big ticket items and wanted to offer an option for customers to apply for finance at the checkout. There are some finance companies that provide a Magento extension, however, their preferred provider, Barclays Partner Finance did not have an integration out of the box. We therefore had to build something out of the box for them. It was quite unusual as due to the nature of the operation, there were many rounds of approval that needed to be given before it was signed off by Barclays. We managed to meet the end process and it was very satisfying for the team to achieve this.  – Can you share the most difficult project you’ve worked on? I would say that one of the most challenging projects that we worked on would be a modification that we needed to make to one of your extensions! We needed to modify the Amasty Product Parts Finder extension so that we could implement an integration with the DVLA in the UK. This offered their customers the opportunity to enter their UK vehicle license plate and that would bring up their vehicle along with logo and then allow them to select the relevant parts. The same customization also had to fully customize the display to provide vehicle logos that could be selected instead of using a drop down. This customization project was extremely challenging, but our developers managed to achieve exactly what they needed.  – When did you start working with Magento 2 and where are you now in this area of development?   This was a gradual process until the official launch later on in 2015. Since then, we have spent a lot of time familiarising ourselves with the code and new structure to where we are today. It is still not where we want it to be, but it is a lot better than the initial launch. We have a number of Magento 2 projects in development that we expect to launch soon.  – Based on experience of your company, do you feel continuous and raising demand of Magento 2 services, especially when it comes to transition from M1 to M2? Or are the merchants still hesitant about switching their platforms en masse? The demand for Magento 2 is growing, but it is still small in comparison to the entire Magento user base. There is definitely an appetite for migrating to the platform, but most experienced merchants are approaching with caution. We thank David for sharing his thoughts about the market and telling us about the company! Looking forward to fruitful partnership, as always.

Today we’d like to introduce a new Amasty partner, which joined our professional family a couple of months ago. Please meet SmartSites! To put you in touch with this company, we interviewed Michael Melen, SmartSites Co-Founder. — Could you please tell us about SmartSites? SmartSites is an online marketing firm whose goal is to help companies and businesses succeed in the online sphere. The company was was founded in 2011 by my brother Alex and myself. From the very beginning, client feedback has guided SmartSites. We began as an SEO-only agency, but quickly expanded our offerings to include design and development.  In addition to SEO, clients asked if we could help them out with web design; we wondered too, so we gave it a try and it worked! SmartSites now offers the digital trifecta: web design, PPC, and SEO.   Whether it is through building a new website, implementing strategic SEO initiatives, or launching an aggressive PPC campaign, we like to get creative. Everything the SmartSites team does is unique to our specific clients’ needs. Since our inception in 2011, the team has expanded to over 40 full-time employees, but we never lost our personal touch. — What is your main advantage when it comes to the online marketing sphere? Why should business owners turn to you, not to your competitors? Our client-focused approach is probably our strongest suit. While it takes a team of over 10 people to plan, design, and develop a site, each project that we take on is assigned a dedicated project manager to work with the client every step of the way. We offer unbeatable personal attention that the larger companies simply cannot rival. This leads to proven results time and time again. While it would be nice if online success relied on pretty designs, that is not realistic. Numbers matter and we know it. Not only do we create beautiful designs, but we also develop winning marketing solutions to support them. Feel free to check us out on Facebook and Yelp; we have five-star reviews across the board and are very proud of it! — Can you share the most unusual project you’ve worked on? LPM, a precious metal retailer based out of Hong Kong, was a project that certainly pushed our boundaries. There were a variety of challenges we tackled while building this website. Working with the Southeast Asian geography was new, as was implementing the Hong Kong Dollar as the main form of currency. This proved interesting, as very few credit card processors take Hong Kong currencies Then there was the challenge of  live market pricing, which needed to be updated by the minute according to the changes in prices of gold and silver.  This was coupled with tiered pricing, which was based on quantity and payment method. It was not an easy project, but the results proved quite rewarding. LPM now rivals some of the US bullion retailers and grows daily. We still work with them to continually improve the website and are actually in the process of incorporating auto-hedging on the site.We’ve learned not to limit ourselves with regards to what we can offer; who knows what will come next?

We offer unbeatable personal attention that the larger companies simply cannot rival.

— Can you share the most difficult project you’ve worked on? The client Cut Sheet Labels comes to mind. They were the first company we worked with on a Magento 2 project, so it was a challenge to figure out the kinks that inevitably come along with trail-blazers. We didn’t want to compromise quality, but we also had to be honest in the fact that we were operating with a newly-released edition that did not yet have the proven track record of Magento 1. Another challenge with this project was incorporating a custom design tool that one of our developers, Sergey, built from scratch specifically for Cut Sheet Labels. This was another element that we had never done before, but wanted to incorporate because we had confidence that it would be beneficial in the long run. Now that the site is now live and flourishing, we have implemented an ongoing SEO plan. All of the hours developing the website were worth it, as we see the sales continue to grow month after month. — Let’s talk about Magento 2. Do you have plans to work with it in the future when it comes to site design and development? We already work with it!  As mentioned above, Cut Sheet Labels was our first Magento 2 project, but certainly not our last. In fact, we are actively working on 5 more Magento 2 projects that are due to launch in the coming months. It’s an exciting time in the web development space, especially with regards to ecommerce platforms. We feel lucky to be at the forefront of all of these changes. — Do you have your special marketing/web design superpower? We have the advantage of starting out as a marketing company and evolving into a full service agency. Because of this, all of our projects have a huge focus on SEO. Instead of just jumping into design like many agencies do, we create a comprehensive website roadmap so the client knows exactly where the project is going at all times from the day of the kickoff to the launch of the website. — How often do you choose Magento as a platform for your clients’ projects? And why? Magento is our go-to for ecommerce sites. If a client plans on selling products online, we recommend Magento immediately. Clients come to us because they are not web developers, so we want to give them a platform that is user friendly for both us and them. We don’t think it’s fair to keep the secrets of the trade hidden in the SmartSites vault…because there isn’t one! SmartSites provides our clients with utmost transparency and Magento allows our clients to be as involved in their projects as they like. In a select few cases where the ecommerce portion of the site was minimal and secondary, we opted for WordPress Woocommerce. Otherwise, if we know a site is going to have a significant e-commerce portion, we go with Magento. It’s a no-brainer. We’re excited about the upcoming partnership opportunities with SmartSites and wish them good luck in making their clients happy!

Today we’re gladly introducing an Amasty partner – Envision Ecommerce. We talked to Vikrant Shukla about the company and its journey on the path of e-commerce development. – Could you please tell us a little bit more about Envision Ecommerce?  – Envision Ecommerce (ISO 9001:2008 Certified Company) is an End to End Magento Consultancy. Envision started in April 2015 with a team of 5 people and has seen a good growth with the team size increasing to 40 people currently. The team consists of 5 Magento Certified Professionals including me as Magento Certified Solution Specialist. Apart from that, we have the best Magento team in our region. We work on Magento 1 and Magento 2 extension development, Magento Enterprise Application development and Magento Mobile Solutions. We also cater the digital marketing needs of our customers with the help of in-house Google Analytics and Adwords Certified Professionals. We have been engaged with customers ranging from Startup (with innovative ideas) to Fortune 10 Clients. We have taken up Magento 2 and are already listed on Magento Marketplace with our extensions. Apart from Magento, Envision Ecommerce also works on M-Commerce using Ionic Framework. And at last, there is a lot of fun at Envision apart from work, come and see our Faceboook Page!  – What is your company’s core advantage when it comes to e-commerce development and services? The biggest advantage of Envision Ecommerce when it comes to e-commerce development and service is that we believe in providing a solution that helps the hardest working employees in the e-commerce fiield. We know (with our experience) what it takes to make a ROI driven Ecommerce solution and that is what we aim to produce. We ensure with our strategies that the solution developed is Scalable, Sustainable and on top of all Profitable for the customer.  – Do you remember how and why your company has started working with Magento? – As you can make out from our name, the aim to start this company was to have a focused Magento Ecommerce Consultancy where the clients can just bring their idea and leave the rest to the team to manage. Gone are the days where people needed just developers, now everyone wants an expert and that is what Envision Ecommerce aims to be in the field of e-commerce. Whether it is Scope Discussion, Architecture Planning, Database design, Implementation, Go to Market Strategy, After launch Maintenance and at last Sales using Optimal Digital Marketing, we ensure to deliver the optimal solution. I personally have been working on Magento since its inception in 2008 (in fact before that on beta version) and am a Diehard Magento Enthusiast. This certainly is another reason for starting this company and we are being focused for Magento.  – Can you share the most unusual project you’ve worked on? – Well will not term it as unusual but we are working on a Magento 2 store that has around 3000+ visits daily, it already has over $3,50,000 sales in last seven month. Some day we see a traffic of 10,000+ when there is membership registration open on the website. The reason it is challenging is that we choose Magento 2 as the technology stack for it as it was termed as stable. I personally knew that our team would face challenges but that is how you learn and make mark for yourselves. The store is doing awesome in terms of visibility and sales. There are challenges like speed, regular upgrade and stability (considering that Magento 2 still has over 1000 known bugs posted on GitHub). It’s great to see our team achieving something of such sort in Magento 2.  – Can you share the most difficult project you’ve worked on? – We recently got opportunity to work with a Fortune 10 client, a giant in its industry. The project was certainly a tough one for a company like us, not technically but due to the timeline it had. We were to build multiple store fronts with lots of third party integration and checks. We are glad that we took the partnership with Amasty on time and used many of Amasty’s plugins and extensions in that store. The difficulties become easier when you got the right planning, the right solutioning and precise implementation. With our experience, capable team and different custom and third party extensions, we not only delivered the project successfully on time but also were able to generate repeated business and referrals from the client.

 – When did you start working with Magento 2 and where are you now in this area of development? – As mentioned above, we started working with Magento 2 in March this year. We have been developing Magento 2 extensions (one of which is already live on Marketplace) and a couple of others are in review. Apart from that, we took the challenge to start a multistore website on Magento 2 which has been a roller coaster ride but so far has yield good results. The journey has just begun for Magento 2 and there is still a lot to be done in it. We are also publishing a series of tutorials via our blog related to different “How To Do” in Magento 2.  – Based on experience of your company, do you feel continuous and raising demand of Magento 2 services, especially when it comes to transition from M1 to M2? Or are the merchants still hesitant about switching their platforms en masse? – I see that the merchants are more inclined towards Magento 2. But I believe that it is us (technical solution architects) who are supposed to help them with this decision. Magento 2 is still not ready for massive development (which we have already seen with our experience), unless you are ready to take up the challenge of doing custom plugins development in it. There are many hurdles still in Magento 2. For a new start-up store, it should certainly be something that we should be educating the merchant with to take a right decision on platform selection. Regarding the transition from M1 to M2, well, we recently performed that too for a smaller Magento 1 store. There are challenges, big ones. The biggest of them is that old stores are using some extensions for a particular set of tasks which is not yet possible in Magento 2. Now not all merchants understand that Magento 2 is still an upcoming technology and its marketplace is yet not stable as of Magento 1. So the biggest challenge comes to explain why Magento 2 migration or store creation will take more time than what Magento 1 would have taken. Technical challenges are still there. Thanks to the grown up Magento community, learning and adopting Magento 2 is way much quicker than what it used to back in the days when Magento 1 was launched. My personal advice to merchants is to wait for some more time before planning to move to Magento 2 with their existing store. For merchants seeking for a new store development, well, the advice is: do listen to an Architect and a Consultant. Magento 2 is certainly the latest but it will take time to reach where Magento 1 has in past 8 years. We thank Vikrant for sharing his thoughts about the market and telling us about the company! Looking forward to fruitful partnership, as always.

Today we’re announcing partnership with Alinga, a Magento e-commerce agency, which shares their vast Magento experience and provides Magento training for merchants.

About Alinga

Alinga is a creative website design and development company with expertise in online marketing. Specializing in Magento e-commerce website design, the company delivers high impact, innovative websites that stand out and help clients maximize sales opportunities online. A talented team of MCSS and Certified Developers provides e-commerce solutions to Brisbane, Sydney,  and Melbourne merchants.

Magento for Merchants training from Alinga

The training provides merchants with the knowledge on how to optimize Magento stores, attract new customers and increase conversion. The workshop was created for Magento merchants or anyone running or planning to establish an online presence. It also covers Magento store configuration and management, including shipping, emails, creating and managing products, attributes and customers, pricing and sales, Magento 2 platform and much more. To see the upcoming Magento training courses and all the details, please visit the official page.

Amasty partners with Alinga

Amasty partners with Alinga as an official extensions provider. It means that we offer a 15% one-time discount on Amasty extensions for each Alinga course participant. We do this to support merchants that are eager to expand their online stores and to educate themselves, to implement the received knowledge right away and to eventually boost their e-commerce business. Good luck to Alinga training and the future merchants!

Here are the guys that joined Amasty Partnership program during the last months:

envisionecommerce.com – a team of passionate & creative Envisionaries whose ambition is to create innovative e-commerce solutions that not only gratify the present needs but also are compatible with the future e-commerce innovations.

Companies that have recently joined Amasty Partnership Program

VT Netzwelt is an internationally-recognized brand for the development of sophisticated web and mobile applications. VT Netzwelt is officially ISO 9001 certified and possesses technical certifications in Project Management (e.g. Certified Scrum Master, Certified Associate of Project Management, ITIL certification, etc), Technical Development (e.g. Magento Certified Solution Specialist, Magento Certified Developer, etc) and Quality Assurance (e.g. CTFL issued by ISTQB).

welters.de deals with open source software and helps you with installation, configuration operation and updates of many technologies, such as VPN gateways, Apache, PHP, MySQL, WordPress, Joomla, Magento, IMAP, Redmine, and more. Forix is an 100+ person digital agency, specializing in e-commerce, mobile app development and custom application design. As an official Magento Solution Partner, the e-commerce department alone has one of the largest collections of Magento Certified Plus developers, specializing in Enterprise Edition development. 121eCommerce is a company specializing in eCommerce website development and customization. The areas of expertise include web, mobile, and application development for eCommerce as well as front end design and website optimization. Crimson Agility is a full service Magento firm with a broad set of design, development, integration and marketing skills, as well as years of industry experience and successful implementations. The company’s Magento consultants and developers are experts when it comes to working with Magento and implementing e-commerce. Velocity e-commerce agency delivers modern and practical IT systems, transparent websites, online shops and mobile applications. The keys of their success are years of experience, a team of the best specialists, excellent tools and constant skills upgrading.

Here are the guys that joined Amasty Partnership program during the last months:

Amasty Partner Program offers a great chance to earn more, increase your online presence and gain a reliable friend in the world of E-commerce. Amasty is glad to provide its Partners with a huge number of pleasant and profitable benefits including up to 50% discount on extensions and leads for custom development services. Find more information here and enjoy our new partners: We are glad to congratulate the following companies with their new status – the status of Amasty Partner:

Amasty Partner Program is a great chance for any company dealing with Magento extensions to increase sales and save some money. Plenty of companies have already joined the Partner Program to attain better results and provide their customers with a wider choice of high-quality extensions. Amasty Partner Program lets you receive up to 50% discount on all Amasty extensions, reach more potential clients, stimulate interest and awareness of your services and a lot more. We would like to welcome aboard the following companies and say them thank you for joining us once again:

March has brought Amasty the following Partners:

Say “Hi!” to the following new Amasty Partners:

Check the websites of our Partners offer and maybe you will find great offers suitable for you:

Here come the Partners of June 2014:

Here are the guys that joined Amasty Partnership program during the last months:

envisionecommerce.com – a team of passionate & creative Envisionaries whose ambition is to create innovative e-commerce solutions that not only gratify the present needs but also are compatible with the future e-commerce innovations.

This is a great day for Amasty Partner Program: we have reached 50 Partners milestone and are happy to celebrate this event with our grand Magento Partners Infographics and a special discount on our Partner Program. Want to learn more about the lucky 52 Companies that are already enjoying all the bonuses of our Program? Get inside and check our infographics and a coupon code for joining Amasty Partner Program.

Amasty Team cherishes every Partner that joins our Program. We have 3 service plans that allow you to get up to 50% discount on all our Magento extensions. To get a $50 discount on joining our Partner Program drop a line to our Partnership Development Manager Dmitry Koteshov and mention a code word AMASTY50. Hurry up, the offer is valid only till May, 19.

And now let’s get back to our existing Partners. Check Magento infographics to learn more about them.