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Dealing with the new, resource-intensive platform

Many store owners often ask me how to take part in our regular ‘Store of the Month’ section and submit their store. Well, there are no explicit steps. Some merchants showcase their stores in our forum, others left reviews on the extensions they’ve bought on the product pages. So, any activity is welcome!

This time I had the opportunity to interview Stefan Schwann, the chief of web development and design of electronic4you, to gain some insights into what goes into creating a Magento store from scratch and why the platform continues to be so popular.

Who: http://electronic4you.at

What: This Austria based retailer sells electronic items, like TV’s, audio products, handies, smartphones, tablet computers, etc. They sell products online and provide shipping within the country and outside Austria.

electronic4you has eight stores were customers can pick up their online orders or take a look at a product before buying it.

The company’s goal is to provide the best quality, price and customer service.

Where: Klagenfurt, Austria

Q. What attracted electronic4you to Magento?

A. Back in 2010, when we began the development of our store we faced the problem of choosing a platform.

We carefully analyzed pros and cons of existing ecommerce platforms and the decision fell to Magento. It was the best platform existing on the market at that time.

Magento can handle a huge amount of products and orders without any problems and the customization of the look and feel is also easy.

aheadWorks extensions in use

Q. Did you switch your store from any other platform to Magento?

A. Yes, before Magento we used a custom program but it was very difficult to change the design and also it wasn’t compatible with all browsers. Moreover, we had issues with SEO. So we decided to use Magento, which is SEO compatible and has a great community behind it.

Q: What’s the most important thing to focus on when setting up a store?

A: The most important thing was to set up a store, which could handle thousands of products. Though Magento needs more hardware than other platforms it was not the crucial thing to us.

Q: Please, name the aheadWorks extensions you use.

A: We use 7 of your modules:







 


Q. Why did you choose aheadWorks as a Magento extensions provider?

A. We’ve tried many modules but the solutions from aheadWorks are awesome. The aheadWorks support team is really fast and when we got any problems with a module they solved them within no time. I don’t have any negative experience at the moment.

Speaking about the extensions code, it meets the best programming practices, so we changed only minimal things after the installation. Moreover, the solutions do exactly what aheadWorks promises.

There is only one word for this: awesome! With other developers we never got such good and fast support.

aheadWorks extensions in use

Q: What’s the most powerful extension for you and why?

A: At the moment Z-Blocks is our absolute favorite module. We can place blocks with banners and ads everywhere on the website without changing layout or template files.

Q: It's well known that many consumers prefer their mobile devices to shop online. Are you going to take advantage of the mobile landscape?

A: Yes, we will install aheadWorks iPhone (mobile) Theme in future because 10% of our users use mobile devices and the number of users with mobile devices is growing every day.

Q: Any recommendations for people evaluating Magento?

A: If you use an interface to an ERP your Magento developer should be a real pro. Be sure to use a really powerful server as Magento is an extremely hungry resource. I would recommend using Memcached on the server.

Q: Any last words you might have?

A: Finally, I would like to thank the aheadWorks team, which gave us such great extensions and we’re looking forward to new ones coming out.

Also I would invite all interested people to visit our store http://electronic4you.at and tell us their opinion about it.

Q: Thank you, Stefan, for your time discussing the Magento platform and your experience using aheadWorks extensions. We look forward to working with you in the future!

P.S. If you would like to share your store with Magento society, please feel free to contact me at [email protected]