It’s been a year since we’ve visited Leipzig, met local Magento fans there and shared our impressions on it in our blog. But the best moments should always be renewed and today we are glad to inform our readers about Meet Magento Germany coming back to Leipzig on June 3-4, 2013. This event is held by dear friend of ours, Netresearch, and we help them spread the word about it.

Good news! Being close friends with organizers, we have an opportunity to offer exclusive bonuses for aheadWorks blog readers only – one FREE 2-day ticket and a couple of €45 discount coupon codes to attend Meet Magento Germany.  

Wanna get them? Write a message onour Facebook wall or on Twitter with #aheadWorks hashtag, explaining why you are interested in the Magento Meetup in Leipzig. A free ticket will be given away according to the ‘first come, first serve’ principle.

Info about the conference: More than 500 participants from Germany and the neighboring countries will be expected for this annual conference. The event offers a unique opportunity to interchange with many enthusiastic decision makers and experts about Magento eCommerce. The target groups of the Meet Magento Germany are merchants, eCommerce leader, developers and online agencies.

Do not forget to examine your conference bags carefully and find some special offers from aheadWorks! Bis dahin wünschen wir Ihnen alles Gute!

I want to start this newsletter with the awesome news – aheadWorks leveled up to Magento Platinum Industry Partner! This transition to a new partnership level is anticipated since at present more than 25,000 Magento merchants and 40+ official partners in 100 countries are using our high-grade extensions and themes.

‘Platinum Partnership means a lot to us. It acknowledges our expertise in Magento extensions and themes development and provides guarantees that our customer service is top notch.

It was a long way to go to become leading players in Magento universe and it looks like we made it‘, – Artyom Rabzonov, the CEO at aheadWorks, states.

New Extensions

April happened to be a really productive month – we released 4 new Magento modules! No wonder as our developers team was inspired by adding 3 more Magento and Zend PHP certificates to their achievements collection

Shipping Price

With the FREE Shipping Price module, you can use any Magento shipping method and inform your customers about shipping price of every product. The price is displayed on product, category, or product and category pages.

Inform your visitors how much they should pay for the product shipping, so they can decide whether the price suits them before making a purchase.

Download Shipping Price right now!

Activity Stream

With the Activity Stream extension for Magento, you can let your customers see what is happening at the current moment. Recent actions are displayed in the block that can be easily added to any place of your site and doesn’t affect any elements of the page. Moreover, you have a possibility to hide some activities from your visitors and focus their attention on the required ones.

The effectiveness of the extension is clear: visitors are influenced by activities of other people; they take the situation as a recommendation for further behavior and start experimenting and discovering your store.

Find the Activity Stream features on the plugin page.

Customer Attributes

With the Customer Attributes Magento extension, you are able to get any information about new customers and already existed ones. The extension gives you a possibility to create additional customer attributes and display them on the registration form or in the customer account area to allow logged in visitors to manage their data.

The Customer Attributes Magento module makes it possible to create different types of attributes such as image, attachment, dropdown, etc. All attributes parameters are located at one place, so the process of collecting info about your clients starts in several simple steps.

Learn more about this module on the Customer Attributes page.

Store Locator

The Store Locator Magento extension is an amazing tool for merchants who have physical locations of retailers. The module gives you help in adding store addresses to the website and navigating visitors to the required one.

You can create as many locations as you need – they will be displayed in a pleasant vertical presentation on a separate page. Just specify the address of your store and see how it will be automatically detected on the map. Let your customers easily find the page with addresses by adding store locations URL to the top Magento links. Customers get to know all existed locations on the map and view the detailed information about them by clicking the store icon.

Try the demo on the Store Locator page

New Service

We have been bombarded with requests to develop a comprehensive and easy-to-use analytics tool for online stores. And we did it! aheadMetrics, currently in beta version, will give you all-round analytics of eCommerce stores real-time with sales, customers and products data measurable in any dimensions.

We charge nothing for aheadMetrics. Start using the service and collect reports indicating your profit rates by moving to aheadMetrics website and creating your account in a couple of minutes.

Browse through aheadMetrics features, try it for your webstore and get back to us with your opinion.

Updated Extensions

Shop By Brand v.1.1

2 features

AJAX Cart Pro v.3.1

4 features / 8 bugfixes

Refer a Friend v.2.0.2

1 bugfix

We are glad to announce that the Activity Stream extension for Magento has been officially released. Now you can buy it in our store and bring a sense of reality to your online shop.

This module is extremely useful for merchants who want to display the activity of customers in the store. Visitors will see what actions other clients carry out. Special customizable block shows who has registered, logged in, what product has been viewed and so on.

Seeing what is happening on the website at the present moment, customers get additional recommendations for further discovering of the store. It’s evident that the more time people spend on the website, the greater is the probability of purchase.

The following features are implemented in the Activity Stream extension:

• Activity Stream block is automatically inserted on all store pages
• Six predefined positions for the overlay
• Overlay customization
• Hide activity streams from unregistered customers
• Numerous types of events
• Limit the quantity of activities displayed in block
• Select specific customers’ activities to appear
• Use predefined templates for activities or edit them up to your taste
• Define time interval for activity stream overlay updating
• Insert activity stream widget in any CMS block or page

Need more information about this module or want to buy it? Visit the Activity Stream page right now.

Visitors of physical shops always feel the presence of the community. They see other people coming, taking goods off the shelves, putting items into shopping carts, passing cash desks… It’s much easier to make a purchase in a public place, when people around are shopping actively.

Online store visitors, on the contrary, are left alone. Nothing reminds there about peer clients giving users one little push to dispel their hesitations and doubts.

Our Activity Stream Magento extension will bring a fresh breath of reality to your store, letting users see actions of others and the way they interact with your products.

Activity Stream displays recent activities of the Magento store visitors in the form of the activity stream block. Your clients will see who has recently registered, what pages have been visited, which products have been added to a wishlist or a shopping cart, and many other activities.

Time to pre-order Activity Stream right now for only $74! After the official release its price will jump 25% higher to $99.

Look at the features this extension possesses.

Activity stream is automatically added to all store pages
The module maintains one global activity stream overlay that appears on the frontend.

Ability to insert the activity stream block as a widget
The activity stream can be shown as one of frontend blocks with the predefined set of configuration options.

Six predefined positions for the overlay
You have the ability to choose any of the following overlay positions: top-left, top-center, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-center, and bottom-right.

Overlay customization
Configure the activity stream block width, background color and opacity, text and link color to suit your website design.

Hide activity streams from unregistered customers
You are free to decide whether the block will be shown to unregistered customers.

Numerous types of activities
There are 14 available activity types. It’s possible to use them with predefined templates or create your own patterns.

Hurry up to pre-order the Activity Stream Magento extension with 25% off!

Still have questions regarding the extension features? Move to Activity Stream product page and find out the details.

We officially announce that Store Locator is no longer in the pre-order status and the extension is available in our store and ready to be used.

This module is a truly must-have solution for merchants operating brick and mortar shops alongside with a Magento-based store. If you are this lucky businessman, you certainly know what gives folks a real pain – the locations of your physical stores hidden deep among neighboring buildings. And while you are thinking over shrewd marketing moves to hit your customers with, they literally get lost on the way to you.

The result wouldn’t be the same if customers saw the map of the area with your stores on it. Many merchants approached us with requests to develop such an extension and we promised them to figure it out. So said, so done.

Today is the day when the Store Locator extension finally appears in our virtual stock to help your clients find the nearest stores with your products. Display your locations on the map and inform customers about places where your offline shops are positioned.

Here is the list of the extension features:

• Quick store location defining
• Ability to use Google Maps Api Key
• Map and Satellite views are supported
• Add URL to the Top Magento Links
• User-friendly URL of the store locations page
• Use static block on the store locations page
• Prioritize store locations
• Store location images
• Define description of any location
• Multistore support

Not sure what some of these features mean? Visit the product page of the extension – read full description, view screenshots and play with the frontend and backend demos there.

Before buying any kind of goods, people prefer to compare items. Quality, origin, material, etc. are often taken into consideration. But price often influences the final decision. As a rule, customers of online stores forget about shipping price and notice it only during the purchasing process. This fact of extra charge frustrates them and sometimes results in purchase rejection.

Good news for merchants who want their visitors to be aware of shipping price beforehand! We have released FREE Shipping Price extension that allows to use any Magento shipping method and inform customers about shipping price of every product.

Merchants will tell clients how much they should pay for the product shipping, so users can decide whether the price suits them before making a purchase. The following features were implemented in the Shipping Price extension.

Ability to calculate price dynamically with AJAX
Calculation of shipping price is a long-term operation. Ajax is used only once to calculate product shipping price when this info is not cached. If this data is saved in the cache, it helps prevent slow page loads during the second and subsequent generations.

Ability to set default shipping method
It brings you the possibility to choose any shipping Magento method as the default one.

Display shipping price on the category page

Display shipping price on the product page

Find more about Shipping Price in our Magento extensions store.

Know Your Customers Better than Ever Before with our new module Customer Attributes.

Exclusive pre-order opportunity! Get Customer Attributes right now and Save 25%!

Understanding customer needs is at the centre of every successful business. Do you know your customers? Does your store answer all their needs?

Our new extension Customer Attributes is a lifesaver for those online owners who want to collect information about customers in order to sell to them more effectively, and win business from your competitors.

Pre-order it now and save 25% from the original price!

See the full description and features on the product page:  http://ecommerce.aheadworks.com/customer-attributes.html

Magento welcomes aheadWorks to the Industry Partner Program as a Platinum Partner. With over 100 high-grade extensions and themes used by more than 25,000 Magento merchants, and 40+ official partners in 100 countries, aheadWorks is one of our most active partners. aheadWorks is committed to serving Magento merchants with continued releases of easy-to-use modules for Magento Community, Enterprise and Go.

Artyom Rabzonov, the CEO at aheadWorks, states, ‘Platinum Partnership is much more than a shiny badge on the website. It acknowledges our expertise in Magento extensions and theme development.”

“We participate in many Magento events and are always ready to support the Magento ecosystem,” said Rabzonov.

Magento merchants are also welcome to take advantage of these aheadWorks services:

OnPulse (Magento mobile administration)

aheadCommerce (storefronts for tablets)

aheadMetrics (the ecommerce store analytics)

aheadWorks is a sponsor of 2013 Imagine eCommerce Conference. If you are going to be at Imagine you can meet the aheadWorks team in the Imagine Marketplace.

All people have friends. Two, three… or even more than one hundred. They go throughout the whole life together: help each other, communicate, share ideas and experience, visit football matches, work and go shopping… How can on-line store merchants get profit from this?

The answer is the Refer a Friend Magento extension by aheadWorks. This smart piece of software enables your customers to invite their friends to your store. As a result, the customers who referred a certain number of friends get % or flat rate discount and you gain more clients and more benefit. This ‘must-have’ plugin helps customers promote your on-line store for you!

Today we are glad to bring to your attention the release of the Refer a Friend extension version 2.0. The module became even more stable than ever to meet any store owner needs. From now on you can create a new rule, discount or transaction faster and easier than before.

Retaining the functionality of the previous versions, this extension includes the following new features:

Possibility to add and subtract bonuses from backend
The amount of bonuses can be changed by a store administrator from the backend.

Customers can specify the amount of fixed discount which they want to be applied to Cart
Ability to choose any amount of fixed discount that is available for the customer.

‘Social share’ widget
Ability to share the information about discounts on social networks.

Multishipping support
If shipping addresses are different in one order, the discount for referred friends will be shared equally among them.

Important note for the users of Refer a Friend v. 1.*
Versions 1.* and 2.* are not fully compatible.

Get complete details on this new reliable module on the Refer a Friend page.

Different aspects influence customers’ choice when they make purchases: product color, quality, size, material and many other preferences. As you might already noticed, for a great number of visitors nothing matters but brands. Often they wander around in search of items made by this or that well-known company. And leave the store if none is found. Sounds familiar?

We deeply and thoroughly studied this “brand obsession” of customers. As a result of our research, we are glad to introduce the Shop By Brand extension. This easy in use tool, perfectly adjusted to user shopping experience with no excessive features, improves navigation around the store and lets customers quickly find the brands and related products of their concern.

Hot deal! Pre-order the Shop by Brand module now for $74 only. Later after the official release the regular price will become $99 .

With Shop By Brand you can connect products with brands seamlessly. The following features will satisfy the needs of merchants just as good as customers’ demands.

• Handy products assigning to the brand. Connect products with brands in your store while editing/creating a new one.

• Brands in the layered navigation. Customers are able to filter products by brands in the left navigation bar.

• Brands menu on the frontend. You can add the brands menu to the frontend and let your visitors find the required brand with its products in one click.

• Priority of brands. Define priority of every brand, so the most important ones will be displayed first. If the priority is not set up, brands will be sorted in an alphabetical order.

• SEO-enhancements. Create SEO-friendly URLs for brand pages and add custom meta tags to improve your site SEO.

It’s just a short list of features you get together with the Shop By Brand extension. To see the module in all its glory with other features and screenshots, visit its product page.

You’ve read through the whole post and yet haven’t made a pre-order? This price is temporary, so click to pre-order right away.