Since the moment Magento was first released many developers have been working on improvement of its functionality and broadening of the standard features. The number of themes and modules created during this time is really countless. The most popular features that Magento users usually wish to improve are navigation and checkout process. Another important feature frequently required by Magento users is a possibility to export their product feeds from Magento to other shopping systems used all over the world. These features are provided by many Magento extensions developed by different companies. Today we will review the extensions developed by GoMage, a bronze Magento industry partner. You can see the list of extensions developed by them at https://www.gomage.com/extensions.html

GoMage LightCheckout

The key feature of this extension is simplifying the checkout process to make it as much convenient and easy for customers as possible. The extension merges the standard checkout steps into a single one representing all of them on one page. The checkout page is divided into several blocks in which a customer can enter the information required to complete their order.

The first block is ‘Billing address’. It contains the fields for customer’s name, email address, country, state, city, phone number and other contact data which the store owner considers necessary. The option called GeoIP can be enabled in this block, which will allow the address data to be filled automatically based on customer’s IP address. The field for entering VAT number for EU customers is also present in this block. It can be enabled or disabled on the backend depending on whether or not the store owner is going to sell their products in EU. The extension settings allow the store owner to make certain fields optional or required, enable or disable some address fields, configure automatic registration or allow guest users make orders. There is also an option to disable shopping cart page which, once enabled, will take a customer straight to the checkout page when they click ‘Add to cart’ button.

The billing address can be set as a shipping address, as well, without a necessity to fill in all address fields again. If this option is enabled, there is no separate block for shipping displayed.

The block ‘Shipping method’, correspondingly, displays available shipping methods for a customer to choose. An additional option makes it possible to offer customers available delivery time where they can choose the day and time most convenient for them. All of the most popular shipping methods from all over the world are supported.

‘Payment method’ block displays available payment methods according to the backend configuration. The LightCheckout extension supports all of the most popular payment methods including all features offered by PayPal.

The block ‘Order review’ contains the information about the product being ordered, allows to change the quantity of product items if necessary, add gift wrapping and gift messages, enter a discount code or add a comment to the order.

The LightCheckout extension has responsive design and is supported on mobile devices. If necessary, it can be disabled on mobile devices, and then customers will be redirected to the standard Magento checkout if they use a mobile device.

The design of extension blocks can also be adjusted on the backend. The extension code is not encrypted which makes it highly flexible and customizable. The extension can be ordered and installed through Magento Connect or directly at https://www.gomage.com/extensions/gomage-lightcheckout.html

GoMage Advanced Navigation

This extension is designed to improve the functionality of the standard Magento Layered Navigation. The navigation block can be placed in the right, left or central part of the page. The category filters can be displayed in the top menu as well as in the navigation block along with other filters. The navigation view of the categories can be selected on the backend, e.g. fly-out, image, block, drop-down, plain or default.

Different types of attribute filters can be configured, such as image, slider, drop-down list, block, input, input and slider, etc. The attribute settings also allow exclude certain categories, if any of the filters should not be displayed on some of category pages. Another type of filtering that can be used is a ‘Stock filter’. It can be enabled or disabled in the extension settings.

Ajax function can be enabled for all types of filtering in the Advanced Navigation. If it is enabled, only a certain block on the page is refreshed instead of the whole page reloading, e.g. when filtering products, which makes the site pages load much faster and reduces the server load significantly. Automatic scroll feature allows users to scroll through the products without having to switch to the next pages. Ajax can be enabled for this feature, as well.

The Ajax loader pop-up window can be enabled, disabled and customized according to the store owner’s desire. Both the text and the view can be modified in the extension settings.

The Advanced Navigation extension also works for improving SEO parameters of the site as it can be configured to optimize the site URLs with the help of ‘Friendly URLs’ option. This option includes adding the filter results to URLs and optimizing the ultimate URL to look more SEO-friendly.

The navigation view can be adjusted according to the website theme. Additional CSS customization is also offered by the company, in case a third party theme requires modification of styles on the programming level.

The extension can be ordered and installed through Magento Connect or directly at https://www.gomage.com/extensions/gomage-advanced-navigation.html

GoMage FeedPro

The main function of this extension is generation of product feed files according to the requirements of the target shopping system to which the feed file is going to be uploaded. Every shopping system has a generic template listing the fields which are necessary to be filled for each product in the feed. The feed file will be accepted by the system only if all necessary fields are present and all necessary values are filled. Each field usually corresponds to a specific product attribute (category, brand, color, size, gender, etc.). The attribute values for all products should be filled in the product settings on Magento backend, otherwise the target shopping system will not accept the products with empty attribute values.

The settings of the FeedPro extension are designed to help the store owner to configure their product feed files, generate them and then upload them to the target shopping system. The extension creates feed files in three formats: CSV, TXT and XML. The principle of the feed creation is quite simple: in the feed settings, it is necessary to list all required fields and point them to the corresponding product attributes. The extension contains filtering options which allow us choose which products will be included or excluded from the feed. If no filters are used, all active in-stock products will be exported automatically. These settings can also be modified to allow exporting of disabled and out-of-stock products.

The ‘Dynamic attributes’ option is designed to create specific dynamic conditions according to which certain actions need to be applied. This option serves well for price modifications depending on tax rates, for example, as it provides higher flexibility to the feed file settings.

When the configuration is complete and the feed file is generated, it should contain the list of products and their attributes in the specified format. If the configuration is correct and all desired data is present, the feed file is ready to be uploaded to the shopping system.

The feed generation can be done manually or scheduled to be done automatically using Cron. The automatic upload to the shopping system through FTP/SFTP can also be configured. Of course, this will require that Cron is configured on the server first.

The extension can be ordered and installed through Magento Connect or directly at https://www.gomage.com/extensions/gomage-feed-pro.html

The extensions presented above are the most popular and highly-rated of the modules created by GoMage.  The other modules by this developer include ProCart – Ajax cart solution, Product Designer, SEO Booster, Ads & Promo, Sales & Deals, Banner Slider and Social Connector. Each of these extensions provides additional features to Magento e-Commerce stores which improve and extend the store functionality. The company offers support, upgrade and customization services for all extensions.