(This post was originally published on July 18, 2012. We’ve updated it for accuracy and completeness. For a current list of our favorite Magento extensions please read our post about the top 5 Magento extensions of 2014.)
Magento is an excellent resource for online retailers, offering a host of features to help improve site management, customer experience, marketing and much more.
However, because Magento is open-source, it relies heavily on extensions from third-party developers to enhance its performance.
These extensions offer everything you need to run a successful online business. However, because there are so many, we’ve compiled some of our favorites.
Here are 8 great Magento extensions for your eCommerce store.
1. Top Magento Blog Extension
Magento Blog Extension
Blog – Community Edition by aheadWorks
Creating a blog for your business remains one of those effective internet marketing strategies you can implement. This Magento extension gives you the opportunity to share company news, product information, promotions and more. With the added SEO benefits of owning a blog, this is a must-have Magento extension.
2. Top Magento Shipping Extension
Shipworks Extension
ShipWorks
As your business continues to grow, you’ll be faced with fortunate challenge of shipping an increasing amount of products. The ShipWorks extension makes that much easier, allowing you to create shipping labels, send customer emails, update order statuses, and more. ShipWorks also has integrated support for all of the major shipping carriers.
3. Top Magento Zoom Extension
Magic Zoom
This extension allows users to get incredible product detail by zooming in on a product image. All the user has to do is mouse over the image. Even better, it works in all major browsers, including the iPad and iPhone.
4. Top Magento Price Range Slider Extension
Price Slider Daffodil Extension
Price Slider Daffodil
Every shopper has a price range in mind when shopping for a product. One of the major benefits of online shopping is being able to filter items by that price. This Magento module gives users that opportunity. An easy-to-use slider allows your customers to specify a range of prices when looking at your products.
5. Top Magento Extension for Selling by Color
Color Swatches for Magento
Color Swatches
Color Swatches is a great extension for retailers that sell products that come in a variety of styles, as it gives users an option to see a particular product in any number of different colors, shapes, or designs. Product images and prices (should they be different) will change as the user selects different styles to view.
6. Best Magento Extension for Shopping by Brands
Shop by Brands
Shop By Brand
A customer should always be able to easily find what they’re looking for. So, If you have an expansive catalog of products, its important to offer as many filtering tools as possible. If you sell products from multiple brands, this extension gives users the opportunity to find the specific brands they want. Users can shop by brand, colors, collection and more, giving them all the filtering tools they need to find the products they want.
7. Best Magento Extension for Live Chat
Zopim Live Chat
Zopim Live Chat
Zopin Live Chat is a live chat service to address impulse buyers or to allow customers to chat with a representative about your products. In the era of text and Instant Messaging, many users dont want to wait for a response from a customer support email. They want instant access. Giving customers the option of having their questions answered immediately goes a long way to driving sales and building your customer base.
8. The Best Integration Software for Magento
nChannel
nChannel
Yes, I suppose it’s self promotional to put our own company on this list. But hey, at least it’s not number one. nChannel offers connectors that can sync your Magento platform to all the major software solutions that your company uses, including your POS, ERP/accounting software, and other marketplaces like Amazon & eBay. nChannel synchronizes item, inventory, order, customer, and shipping/tracking data between your systems.
Also, nChannel does more than just integration. We provide solutions to manage your product information, uncover business intelligence, and much more.
What to do next
If you enjoyed this post, please check out our posts about choosing a Magento inventory management system, the 5 best Magento extensions of 2014, or the top 5 Magento shopping cart abandonment extensions.
If you have any questions, or think there is an extension we missed, let us know in the comments!
I have a store on magento and tried a number of extensions to make it work efficiently…. By far the great module i recommend to everybody is Improved navigation by Amasty, cause it includes number of features for which i needed to use many different modules before. Shop by brands, advanced categories, variety of filter options, Seo improvements and many more… for a reasonable price. and it is working perfect. highly recommend!! http://amasty.com/improved-navigation.html
Thanks for the list, these extensions are really useful and are must-haves for almost every Magento shop. I would also add this one https://amasty.com/special-promotions.html, it helps create advanced promotions which is indispensable for holidays period.
Nice display of your collected Extension. Definitely these Modules really work for Magento Stores owners.i am also going to share a useful extension with you http://www.fmeextensions.com/magento-percentage-pricing.html. if you are running web store having mas amount of products then this Plug-in will helps you in updating Prices of bundle of products
Nice list you’ve got there, I am sure they would be useful in improving efficiency for Magento sites.
What I see missing in the list though is an extension for improving conversions through personalized product discovery.
One step checkout http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/one-step-checkout-22.html
Reward Points http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/reward-points-10-23217.html
Hello
Thank you for information.
Remove Duplicate Product Images is really used for every magento store owner to find duplicate images in store.
http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/remove-duplicate-product-image.html
Thanks for the information, these extensions are really useful and are
must-haves for almost every Magento shop. I would also add this one http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/responsive-banner-slider-by-solwin.html., it helps create responsive and good looking website and many other are as given below.
http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/developer/solwin
Thanks for useful information which you showed above!
I would like to add one more extension by Magecheckout: One Step Checkout which makes me significantly satisfaction.
Magecheckout One step checkout dramatically simplifies the original Magento checkout process into one step. Making your customers checkout easier, reducing waiting time on Checkout page, you will increase your revenue, conversion rate and also cut down shopping cart abandonment rate.
Try and use Magecheckout to get your own satisfaction: https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/one-step-checkout-37-28858.html
Greatful
Thank you for a great post!
I also want to share a very useful extension called Magento Unboxed extension that can increase customer interaction by allowing customers to upload product images to our Magento sites (products are bought from our stores) for sharing to other customers and also help our store to attract more customers bu these real using product image
https://goo.gl/Vt687Y
Images are shown in a particular page: in the main page with Ajax loading image support and in the Gallery page with some tagged products related to product images that customers upload
Other customers can give likes, comments on images uploaded and also share product images via a social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and also email to friends
– Customers can easily search images by post code and city or by product. When searching by product, product names can be auto suggested
– Manage account integrated with Magento site account
+ Edit profile
+ Manage photo album: upload photo
+ Manage followers, following, likes and comments
Useful extension!
For anyone needs a solution for only Grouped Product, I suggest using extension named Grouped Product with Custom Options, here is demo: http://bsscommerce.com/magento-2-grouped-product-with-custom-options.html
Thanks for sharing the list with us! Here’s another list of must have Magento extensions that can help you take your ecommerce store to the next level. https://goo.gl/PhpKco
nice
Great List of Magento extensions. Apart from this, I want to add Appjetty’s Magento Delivery Date Scheduler in this list. It allows your online users to specify the date and time on which they want their orders to be delivered to a specific address.