NEWS/BLOG
3 Strategies for E-Commerce Growth in 2017
Since the start e-commerce has grown leaps and bounds each year. 2016 saw a 4.7% overall spend increase up from 1.8% in 2015. For those both starting out in e-commerce and those will well-established stores, the name of the game is always how to increase visibility and growth year after year – to keep your customers coming back for more. Here are three strategies for e-commerce growth in 2017!
read more6 Tips to Strengthen the Security of Your Magento Store for the New Year
2016 was the year of scandalous hacking stories, from Dirty COWS, to DDOS attacks to endless waves of ransomware. With the year’s end quickly approaching, how can you stay ahead of the tide of cyber attacks in 2017?
read more3 Simple Tips for Improving Customer Experience
How is your overall user experience? Improving your customer’s experience with your website is crucial for closing the deal and increasing customer loyalty. Here are three simple factors to keep in mind when thinking about your user experience.
read moreSetting Up a Persistent Shopping Cart in Magento 2.0
A persistent shopping cart keeps track of the items a customer adds to their cart but does not purchase during their session. Persistent shopping carts can help to reduce the amount of abandoned carts and increase your sales. Persistent shopping carts help to improve the customer experience by providing continuity. Learn how to set up persistent shopping carts on your Magento 2.0 store!
read moreHow to Create Categories in Magento 2.0
Creating new product category pages is one of the most basic functions any Magento store owner or admin should learn. Keeping products organized by category is important for user experience, organization and SEO. Read more to learn how!
read moreBlack Friday Website Tech Support
Just a quick note to let you know that most of our team will be in the office on Friday, just in case you have Magento-related site issues on Black Friday. In order to make sure we can help, make sure you know and have recently tested your site's hosting credentails...
read moreCatalog Price Rules vs Cart Price Rules – How to Choose Which Promotion to Set for Your Magento 2.0 Store
Confused between when you should choose a Cart Price Rule or a Catalog Price Rule for your new promotion? Knowing the differences is the key to setting up a successful promotion that achieves your goals. Learn more!
read moreCreating Fixed Price Discounts with Coupon Codes on Magento 2.0 (Cart Price Rules)
One of the most common ways you might want to set up a promotion on your Magento 2.0 store is to have a flat discount, hidden with a coupon code that your customers have to enter in at checkout. Setting up this type of promotion is easy to do with a new Cart Price Rule. Learn more >>
read moreHow To Set Up a Buy-One-Get-One-Free Promotions in Magento 2.0 (Cart Price Rules)
Magento bestows you with nearly limitless options for how to set up sales, discounts, pricing conventions and more. One of the most commonly asked questions is how to set up a “buy-one-get-one-free” style promotion. This type of promotion is easy to set up and customize through a Cart Price Rule. Learn more >>
read moreOutbound Links Matter (for SEO)
Last week was quite a bit of a surprise for me. Why? It turns out that outbound links on your website do actually matter and can affect your SEO rankings. I was shocked. (You thought I was talking about something else?) Read more below >> Outbound Links Matter...
read more
Quick Fix Friday #7: Changing Logos on Transaction Emails (Magento 2.0)
You’ve got your Magento 2.0 store up and running, but then you notice the default logo is going out on your transactional emails instead of your store’s logo. Learn how to fix this >>
read moreConfiguring, Adding & Reporting on Search Terms in Magento 2.0 (Part 3)
Knowing how to check your Search Terms Report is crucial, allowing you to see which search terms have been searched for and at what frequency on your Magento 2 store, learn how >>
read moreConfiguring, Adding & Reporting on Search Terms in Magento 2.0 (Part 2)
Part 2: Adding Additional Search Terms In the previous article we learned how to Configure Popular Search Terms, now we will take a look at Adding Additional Search Terms to your Magento 2.0 store. Adding additional search terms will help your customers find products...
read moreConfiguring, Adding & Reporting on Search Terms in Magento 2.0 (Part 1)
Correctly setting up your eCommerce website with search terms is crucial in guiding your customer to the products you have listed. Through utilizing keywords, synonyms and misspelled words, you can more effectively guide customers to your products through search. Learn more >>
read moreLinux Operating System Vulnerability – The “Dirty Cow”
This week a new vulnerability in the Linux system was discovered. Nicknamed “Dirty COW”. The bug affects how the system handles “copy on-write” functions (COW). Is your site affected by this wide spread compromise?
read moreMore info on last week’s DDOS DNS attacks
Commonly Asked Questions #5: What are the Different Product Types in Magento 2.0?
If you are having trouble choosing between simple and configurable, grouped or bundled or can’t figure out the difference between virtual and downloadable…this guide is for you!
read more
6000 Online Stores Compromised with Malware – How to Protect Your Site
The news that has taken the eCommerce world by storm this week – a report has been published stating that nearly 6,000 online stores have been compromised and outfitted with credit card skimming operations. Unbeknownst to most of the store owners – these hacks have...
read more
Commonly Asked Questions #4: How Much Does Magento Cost?
Thinking about starting up a Magento store and wondering what sort of costs you might be looking at? Read more >>
read more4 Tips for Holiday Email Marketing
The 2016 holiday season is fast approaching. Studies show the during the 2015 holiday season that only second to search marketing, email marketing drove 20% of sales. Email marketing can play a huge role in the success of your holiday shopping season, here are four...
read more
Quick Fix Friday #6 – Google Analytics and Magento 2.0
Implementing Google Analytics with any online venture is important. Especially so with an eCommerce website, allowing the store owner to make informed decisions based on your customer's actions. Luckily, in Magento 2.0 Google Analytics is quick and easy to set up and...
read more3 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Installing a New Magento Module
The Magento Marketplace is vast – the number is extensions that store owners have to choose from is nearly limitless. It is great that store owners have so many options. The flipside of that coin is that the marketplace can seem confusing. Many extensions offer the...
read more4 Tips When Selecting a Magento Theme
With so many beautiful themes available for Magento, it can be hard to know where to start when creating a new store or overhauling an existing store. Magento is a hugely robust platform with countless features, and if you have already made the decision to work on the...
read more
Quick Fix Friday #5 – The Sub-Domain Switch
Recently, we worked with a client on some major site revisions. They came to us with a huge workload including translating many image files into functional site pages. We also learned that part of their website overhaul would include transitioning hundreds of bundled products into simple products. We wanted to find a solution that made their live site the least amount of work for them as possible….
read more4 Basic SEO Tips for Magento Store Owners
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) lives near the very top of the food chain. For any website or business, SEO can play a critical role in your success. For an eCommerce site – even more so. The higher your store can rank in organic searches; theoretically, the more...
read more
Quick Fix Friday #4 – Magento Modules Not Installing on Live Server
We recently had a problem with installing Magento extensions on a live server. The setup files ran fine on our development servers, but when we installed on the clients live servers, the setup files didn't run at all. Problem: When installing extensions on our demo...
read more
Commonly Asked Questions #3: How Many Products Can Magento Handle?
Commonly Asked Question: How many products (SKUs) can Magento handle? One of the first questions business owners ask when trying to determine if the Magento platform is right for them is “How many products can I put on my Magento store?” One of the biggest...
read moreFixed: Polycom IP phones not connecting to network (DHCP – DNS Routing)
We have a relatively new phone system, using Polycom IP phones. Specifically, Polycom IP331 2-line phones. We also have a few cloud soft phones, as well as a Generic SIP Phone (AnyPhone). We've had a few small power outages here, and that's killed the power to the...
read more
Quick Fix Friday #3 – Creating Pages & Static Blocks as a “Non-Tech” Admin (Pt. 2)
In part one of this two part “quick fix” we explored how to create a new page for your Magento 2.0 eCommerce website. This week we are going to take a look at creating a new CMS Static Block and then adding this new block to the page we created in last weeks tutorial....
read more
The Dev Series – Seth Zweig
What’s it like to work here at Customer Paradigm? What’s the culture and the pace like? Seth – one of Customer Paradigm’s Magento & WordPress developers – goes on camera to discuss what it’s like behind the scenes as a developer in Boulder, Colorado.
read more
Commonly Asked Questions: Magento vs WordPress
If you are just starting a new website for online sales, or already run a website and are looking to add some eCommerce features it is easy to find the choice between Magento and WordPress daunting – here is what you need to know!
read more
Quick Fix Friday #3 – Creating Pages & Static Blocks as a “Non-Tech” Admin User (Pt. 1)
For the non-tech oriented user Magento might seem like an alien language. However, with a few basic skills anyone can navigate their way around adding the basics to a Magento site. In this two part “Quick Fix” we will first take a look at how to add a new page to your Magento 2.0 site.
read more
Commonly Asked Questions: Magento 1.X vs Magento 2.0 – Should You Upgrade?
With the release of Magento 2.0 we have seen an influx of clients question if transitioning from Magento 1.x to Magento 2.0 is right for them. There is a lot of information floating around out there and it can be hard to know what is the best decision for your eCommerce site. The pros, cons, new features and 1.x support cut-off date – here is what you need to know!
read moreBehind The Scenes with Customer Paradigm – Picture Day!
We’ve had a lot of new additions to the Customer Paradigm team lately – which means, time for a photoshoot! Our Founder Jeff Finkelstein set up a studio right here in our office to take some headshot for both new and long-time staff members! Be sure to head on over to the staff page to check out our new additions! Ian caught all the fun on film and made this awesome behind the scenes video!
read more
Quick Fix Friday #2 – Magento 2.0 Admin Session Timeout
Administrator session length is a problem for both Magento 2.0 store administrators and developers. Learn how to lengthen your admin session time in Magento 2.0
read more
Massive Growth Projected for eCommerce this Holiday Season – Is Your Site Ready?
The first half of 2016 has proven to be an extremely strong year for eCommerce. Research from comScore points to more growth as we head into the 2016 holiday season. 2016 - The Year of eCommerce In April online sales from desktop users increased 19% this year....
read more
Quick Fix Friday #1 – When the Garbage Man Stops Collecting
When the customers of a major eCommerce retailer began experiencing items vanishing from their cart before they were ready to check out – we knew there was a problem!
read morePhotos of Sea Turtles and Sunsets in Hawaii
Enjoy these photos from a recent trip to Hawaii. Most were taken with the Canon 5D Mark III, but I was also testing out a Fuji underwater camera as well, so anything close to the water was captured with that smaller camera. Need A Photographer? Call Jeff...
read moreHow to test orders on Magento 2 with cart pricing rules and coupons
July 4th Fireworks Photos in Boulder, CO
Enjoy these photos from July 4th here in Boulder, Colorado. We were on a field just south of Folsom Field at CU. All of these were taken with a Canon 5D Mark III, using a tripod and external shutter release with a 17-40 mm f/4.0 lens. Exposures ranged from 1-6...
read more