Top 2 Extensions Magento Should Already Have

[Nipuna]

Magento on the whole is without doubt an impressive platform, especially with the enormous range of features that it has at it’s disposal. Most ‘off-the-shelf’ e-commerce platforms don’t allow you to create an endless number of different products types and attributes, and they won’t let you have pre-installed newsletter functionality. They also won’t have superb front-end product filters and the ability to create as many stores on the 1 installation as you require.

Having said that, Magento does seem to be missing a few elements of functionality which would vastly improve the software even further. Think of Magento as a sports car which has a great engine and looks nice and shiny, but wouldn’t it be great with a Sat Nav? And how about heated seats for the winter? Here’s my top 2 extensions that Magento should already have:

1. Simple Configurable Products

What a superb extension this is. One huge drawback of configurable products is the way that the price differences are configured solely in the configurable product. If you’ve got set prices for the simple products in your site, then you have to calculate all the price differences and frankly, it’s a complete mess. This extension simply says, OK, you can buy that version of a configurable product and the price is exactly the same as if it was a simple product. It comes with a good range of options and can easily be turned off and on. Trust me, if you’re adding 1000?s of products to a site which includes a lot of configurable products you need this extension. It also allows bulk price updates via CSV which wouldn’t otherwise be possible!

http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento- ... e-products

2. Enhanced Admin Product Grid

I really like this extension, not just because it’s free but it also makes managing your products manually a much more user-friendly process. Having product images in the grid view makes it much easier to identify products and you can filter and search through your products in a similar way to customers on the frontend. By far the best feature though is the action which allows you to instantly cross-sell and relate products to each other without having to go into each product and change it yourself – a real time saver!

http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento- ... oduct-grid