In Insights

Exploring The World of Ecommerce; Magento Extensions

Kate Brassington

Author Kate Brassington

Kate is the brains behind the content creation. She creates the majority of content for Nublue, building on her skills from her degree.

A partnership as old as time

Having worked with Magento from the beginning, we’ve seen it evolve and flourish into a world leading platform. From the first iteration of Magento 1 back in 2007 to now with Magento 2.3, Nublue has grown and evolved with the platform as it provides better experiences for developers, clients and users alike. As Magento continued to evolve, they opened their doors for other members of the digital community to contribute to extending the platform. These contributions came in the form of creating Extensions and Themes that can be added to any webpage to improve its functionality.

“The goal with developing Extensions is to not only give back to the Magento community with whom we have worked so closely with since 2007, but also to ensure that everyone who has a Magento store has a little bit of Nublue in them too” Andrew Bailey, Production Manager and Magento 2 Solution Specialist.

So, what are Extensions?

Extensions enhance and extend the performance of a Magento store with products and services developed by a range of ecommerce professionals. The Magento Marketplace has thousands of premium extensions and themes which cover a range of functionalities that develop Magento out-of-the-box.

For merchants that require niche and specific requirements for their ecommerce store, Extensions allow the functionality of Magento out-of-the-box to be stretched to cover a variety of markets and uses. For example, merchants who sell personalised items could have Extensions put in place that allows their customers to have many personalisation options per item.

Examples of Extensions

At Nublue, we would like to stand as influencers in the world of Magento. To do this we like to give back to the rest of the digital community by creating simple yet elegant Extensions. This all started in our own client projects. With some clients we faced new challenges when using the Magento platform so, to get around these, our expert developers created bespoke solutions to overcome the challenges.

“Creating Extensions allows us to build one solution for everyone as opposed to maintaining multiple incantations of practically the same solution. As result, we can iron out that single product and make it more awesome for everyone, without the replication of resource” Sam Butler-Thompson, Lead Developer (Back-End).

We like to think our Extensions will help solve challenges in many different areas of eCommerce while also allowing creative new features to be added to Magento out-of-the-box.

Challenges and features we have overcome with Extensions:

Feature: Customisable delivery options
Extension: Delivery Date and Comments

The Delivery Dates & Comments for Magento 2 extension allows your customers to easily select the date they would like their items to be delivered and add any extra comments related to the delivery.

Feature: ‘Hint card’ sent to loved ones
Extension: Drop A Hint

Drop A Hint from Magento 2 allows you to send a ‘hint card’ via email to a friend or loved one to subtly hint to them that you really want that product.

Feature: Extended video editing options
Extension: MageTube Advanced Youtube Editor

The MageTube Advanced YouTube Editor extension for Magento 2 will extend Magento’s video functionality by exposing the YouTube API to allow for options such as video looping, playback length, video sound and video appearance in the Admin panel.

Feature: Customisable Mega Menu navigation
Extension: Navatron

Fully customisable Mega Menu navigation system for Magento 2 offering a unique user-friendly drag and drop back-end interface.

Problem: Slow Loading Images
Solution: Image Optimizer for Magento 2

Our Image Optimizer delivers a simple solution which allows images to be optimized (GIF, JPG, PNG) reducing file size without losing image quality so webpages can load quicker.

Problem: Slow Loading Webpages
Solution: Cache Warmer for Magento 2

The Cache Warmer Extension allows the Varnish cache to be initialised for every Magento 2 frontend web page to ensure those pages can be served to customers viewing them as quickly as possible.

Feature: Adding custom code to webpages
Extension: Tag Injector

The Tag Injector extension for Magento 2 gives merchants the ability to inject custom HTML, scripts and styles into their web pages.

Problem: Newsletter Sign-up forms being spammed
Solution: Invisible Recaptcha for Newsletters (Magento 1 and Magento 2)

Our Invisible ReCAPTCHA for Newsletters utilises Google’s Invisible ReCAPTCHA technology to prevent spam sign ups to newsletter subscription forms.  The Invisible ReCAPTCHA is tied to the Submit button, meaning only suspicious traffic is made to actively perform an action in order to pass the ReCAPTCHA. Use of this extension stops email lists filling up with spam, reducing server load and administrative time.

Problem: Contact, Customer Registration, Customer Login, Password Reset and Newsletter Sign-Up forms being spammed
Solution: Extended Google Re-CAPTCHA (Magento 1 and Magento 2)

Our Extended Google Re-CAPTCHA utilises Google’s Invisible ReCAPTCHA technology to prevent malicious spam sign ups on your Contact, Customer Registration, Customer Login, Password Reset and Newsletter Sign-Up forms. The extension is tied to the Submit button, meaning only suspicious traffic is made to actively perform an action in order to pass the ReCAPTCHA.

Problem: Unclear UX for counting down promotions
Solution: Shipping Countdown Timer (Mangeto 1 and Magento 2)

Countdown timers are a fantastic clear visual cue which will tell your customers that if they want a product next day on your express delivery service, they must take action. This can be done using our Shipping Countdown Timer which will add this message to your product pages. Creating a sense of urgency can be a powerful method which pushes shoppers into making a faster decision on a purchase they’re considering. The Multi-Language Shipping Countdown Timer for Magento 2 also comes with a multi-language configuration to allow the front end timer to be customized for different store views.

Problem: Unwanted bots crawling your site
Solution: Bot Blocker for Magento 2

There are many bots which are good bots such as search engines, but there are also bad bots that will attempt to crawl your site looking for things such as defects/product copy/or images. When a bot crawls your site, it can reduce its response time due to the number of requests it will make to the Magento platform. This extension will allow you to block bots from crawling your site easily and simply using the Magento Admin Panel.