Intro to the Magento Marketplace: How to Find the Best Extensions for Your Business

Both Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source customers have immediate access to dozens of useful business tools and feature right out of the box. With integrated checkout features, mobile-optimized themes, streamlined catalog management tools, site search functionality, and many other built-in capabilities, businesses of all sizes can enhance customer satisfaction and improve their online presence with ease. However, these functionalities can be further improved by taking advantage of the thousands of extensions on the Magento Marketplace. 

Benefits of Magento Extensions

While Magento extensions can be found on other sites, only the ones found on the Magento Marketplace have been verified by developers. All of the extensions available through the Magento Marketplace have been thoroughly evaluated through the EQP (Extension Quality Program). This test ensures that every extension listed on the Marketplace meets coding requirements and follows Magento’s recommendations. With both an automated check and a manual review conducted by a Magento engineer, merchants can have confidence knowing that each extension offered on the Marketplace has been evaluated based on its scalability, security, performance, and compatibility with the platform.

With the wide range of high-quality extensions available through the Marketplace, retailers can greatly improve their online stores in these 7 key areas: 

• Customer support. Customer support extensions include help center integrations, live chat options, phone support features, and more.
• Payments and security. Increase your store’s security and boost customer trust by enhancing your checkout experience, adding different payment options, and using tools to detect and prevent fraud. 
• Marketing. Retailers can give their marketing campaigns a boost with advertising, SEO, email marketing, automation, and CRM extensions. 
• Accounting and finance. Make bookkeeping easier than ever with extensions for managing taxes, accounting, and ERP system integrations.
• Shipping and fulfillment. With extensions ranging from shipping fulfillment options to cross-border eCommerce solutions, merchants will be able to manage inventory, track deliveries, and set accurate delivery dates with ease. 
• Site optimization. Along with keeping your Magento site updated and secure, you can utilize extensions to further improve your store’s speed, hosting, and overall performance.
• Content management. These extensions can make blog posts pop, improve site search functionality, boost customer personalization abilities, and utilize location-based targeting features to get your content in front of the right customer at the right time.

Useful Extensions for All Businesses

With over 3,600 extensions to choose from, it can be overwhelming to choose the most useful extensions for your particular business needs. However, the majority of online retailers can benefit from a few extensions that were designed to improve the most basic business tasks. A couple of extensions you may want to consider include: 

• Coupon Auto Share At Checkout. This neat feature makes it easy for merchants to deliver coupon codes to a customer’s email after they’ve completed a purchase
• Hubspot Contact Sync. For retailers who use HubSpot for its CRM software, this extension could be a massive time saver. It allows for the seamless transfer of information from Magento 2 to HubSpot and the synchronization of customer data.
• Quickbooks Desktop. Merchants can set up this extension to transfer unlimited online transaction data automatically, including products, sales orders, and invoices to keep their finances organized and updated effortlessly.
• Zendesk Connector. Zendesk, a customer service platform, allows buyers to submit support tickets and quickly connect with the right person who can help them. This extension effectively connects the retailer’s Magento site with their Zendesk account to easily track and take care of consumer needs as efficiently as possible.

How to Install Extensions

Whether you choose a free or paid extension for your Magento site, you’ll require an access key to sync the installation with your account. Once an extension is synchronized with your Magento account, you’ll be required to enter the access key to make any changes to the extension (such as upgrade the installation) or add a new extension from the Marketplace.

In order to create an access key, simply sign in to your Magento account and follow these steps:

• Click the Marketplace tab on your My Account page.
• In the upper-right corner of the page, hit the down arrow and click My Profile. 
• On the Marketplace tab beneath My Products, click Access Keys. From here, you can either check to see if you already have access keys from previous Marketplace purchases, or you can select the option: Create a New Access Key.
• When you’re finished, hit OK, and then copy and paste the values that appear on the next screen to sync your account with Magento Marketplace.

Every extension should have detailed documentation regarding its installation process and how to begin utilizing its features. If you have difficulty installing an extension, you can contact the creator of the extension or check out the Marketplace Help Center. Furthermore, if an extension doesn’t meet your needs, you can request a refund from Magento within 25 days of purchasing it. 

Whether you want to launch your own site or improve your existing Magento store, be sure to take full advantage of all the helpful, time-saving tools available through the Marketplace!