Top 16 Adobe (Powered by Magento) Extensions

There’s no doubt that Magento Commerce (recently renamed “Adobe Commerce”) is one of the most powerful eCommerce platforms on the planet,but you’ll need certain extensions if you want to get the most out of it. Otherwise, you’re definitely leaving money on the table.

Over the years at IWD Agency, we’ve also useda lot, I mean a lot,of extensions to get the exact site our clients are looking for. It would probably take days for me to list them all.

So instead of doing that, I’m just going to list the top 16 that we use almost every single time we custom build Adobe Commerce sites. I’m going to give you an extension for every single step of your buyer’s journey and finish with some great options for optimizing other important aspects of your online business.

Before I dive into extensions that will help with the rest of the buyer’s journey, I actually want to begin by talking about the actual purchase.

Because if you don’t nail this final step, the rest of your efforts don’t matter.

And no matter what kind of market you’re serving,everycompany needs a checkout page that is desktop AND mobile-friendly. The majority of customers use mobile devices to go online these days and that trend is honestly only going to continue. So, if your checkout page isn’t keeping pace, your conversion rate is going to suffer.

Buthaving a mobile-friendly checkout page isn’t enough anymore.

That’s because abandonment rates are actuallyhigherfor mobile users by about 10%. This makes sense when you think about it. Most checkout pages just aren’t mobile-friendly, even if they’re responsive. Why would your customers follow the same checkout process on desktop as on their mobile device? They just aren’t designed with mobile customers in mind.

 And what happens? Mobile users give up.

1. Dominate Checkout Suite

 
For your checkout page, I recommend Dominate. The name pretty much says it all. This checkout suite comes with everything you need to finish the conversion process on a high note.

It supports more than 120 different payment gateways and even payment plans through PayPal Commerce. It allows you to offer subscriptions and one click checkout payments. Dominate is also 100% customizable, so your checkout page can be just as on-brand as the rest of your site. And you can customize the checkout experience based off of the device, whether that means one step or multi-step checkout, build the checkout process that makes the most sense for your customers.

Dominate helps you get this done.

2. SEO Toolkit

Alright, now let’s move to the very beginning of your customer’s journey: getting people to your site!

For this vital step, I recommend SEO Toolkit for Adobe Commerce.

With Adobe Commerce, it’s easy to build big sites with thousands of pages for huge inventories. Unfortunately, all those pages can hurt your SEO if they’re not optimized. Add SEO Toolkit and there’s no reason this should be an issue.

This user-friendly extension takes the pain out of the most important SEO tasks, things like making HTML and XML sitemaps, creating descriptive meta tags, and inserting redirects. It even automates the adding of internal and external links, which issooo incrediblyimportant for SEO but can also beextremely tedious and time-consuming.

3. Blog Pro for Magento 2

Speaking of traffic, what’s one of the most reliable ways to generate lots and lots of it?

A blog focused on topics you know your customers regularly search for, duh. 

But Magento doesn’t come with a built-in blog feature.

While WordPress seems like the natural solution to many business owners we work with, there are a couple of reasons this isn’t our number one recommendation.

First, if you’re invested in going truly headless, we’d have to do a lot of design work to develop a seamless flow from your blog to your eCommerce store because it would involve two completely different platforms.

Second, WordPress comes with some serious security issues. In fact, you can’t even use it with Adobe Commerce unless you pay for your own server.

The good news is that Amasty’s extension, Blog Pro, takes care of all of these issues. Adobe has no problem with it, so there’s no need for your own server and because it was designedspecificallyfor Adobe Commerce, you won’t need hours of design work to get the look you want and you can manage your blog right from your Magento admin panel. It’s also much easier to use your blog to reference products from your store this way.

This extension is packed with all the other great features you’d want in a blogging platform, too – from SEO tools to content management to a responsive layout and more.

4. Social Login for Magento 2

Now that you have visitors on your site, you want them to create an account, right?

Of course you do.. 

Let me recommend a Social Login extension.

It will dramatically increase these registrations and user experience by allowing customers to quickly log in through the accounts they’re already using. If your audience is videogamers, they can use Twitch. If they’re Millennials, PayPal or Venmo. Whatever they use, they’re just one click away from starting a new account. Quick and easy – two things everyone loves.

All they need to do is click their mouse once to log in. After they do, Social Login will collect the relevant customer data you want to boost your traffic and conversions.

5. Custom Form for Magento 2

One of the most underrated ways to make the most out of all that traffic you’re generating is to use forms to learn more about your market.

This really couldn’t be easier thanks to the Custom Forms extension. It comes with premade templates and 20 different elements to customize them through a simple drag-and-drop interface.

You can even create forms where answering one question will change what the following questions are dependent on that answer. These kinds of forms make it way easier to get all kinds of great information out of your customers.

Obviously, you always want to pay close attention to your site’s analytics, but if you aren’t using forms to do things like gather more information about your shoppers, gain catalog sign-ups, or application processes, you’re probably missing out on some very powerful insights.

6. Klevu

Imagine uploading your entire inventory to Magento, going to the trouble of writing compelling product descriptions, and adding high-quality images only to miss out on conversions because shoppers can’t find the exact products they want.

That would beextremelyfrustrating, right?

To keep this from ever happening from our clients, we use Klevu.

This search extension has a lot to offer, but here are the three that really stand out to me:

•        First, I love that it offers autocomplete, so it’s easy for your customers to quickly enter queries. The faster they can do that, the faster they can find what they want to buy. This feature will also fix any spelling mistakes customers make, which would make it harder for them to find what they’re after.
•        Second, complete customization for your site’s search experience. You choose how your customers can search and what your search pages will look like. Klevu lets you create the experience that optimizes conversions for your specific market.
•        Third, Klevu leverages the power of Artificial Intelligence. Its “Smart Search” feature delivers search results based on the shopper’s behavior, maximizing your chances of showing them exactly what they want and locking in more conversions.

7. Improved Layered Navigation

You can take your site’s navigation another step further with Improved Layered Navigation. With this extension, you can customize your store’s filters in ways you only dream of. Whether that’s price, customer reviews, colors, brands – literally any product feature your customers care about. 

This extension also lets you pick how customers can use these filters. Instead of the typical click filter, they could use price sliders, multi-select, and more. You can also display your filters with horizontal or vertical layouts.

On top of all of that, Improved Layered Navigation offers AJAX Load, which means the page doesn’t need to reload every time customers apply a new filter. This makes it much more convenient for customers to search for their favorite products.

Lastly, you can create custom URLs for all of your pages with filtered results to ensure that they’re SEO-friendly. Filtered result pages are usually a mess from an SEO standpoint, so being able to actually use these pages to pick up more traffic is a massive plus in my book.

8. Olark

Of course, sometimes, you can do everything possible to help your customers find the products they wantand provide them with detailed predictions and GUESS WHAT?

They’re still going to have questions.

Instead of sending them back to Google to get answers – and maybe never returning – I recommend using a chat extension so they can just message you with their questions.

While this has become a crowded market in recent years, I still really like Olark for this important job.

Why?

Well, aside from the fact that it’s extremely easy for both customers and customer support  to use, Olark also lets you store structured notes for your customer service team, log transcripts of their chats, and provides lots of helpful insights about these important interactions so you can continuously improve on them.

You can also set up this extension so that it sends automated messages to visitors based on the specific pages they’re visiting. By preemptively offering help this way, you’ll catch customers before they decide to leave your site. And because this is automated, you don’t need a small army to offer great customer support. Your people only have to converse with the customers who respond.

If all you did was use Olark to message customers who are stuck on the checkout page, this extension could behugefor increasing your company’s revenue.

But if youdohave customer support who can man this app, Olark will keep track of the customers’ journey before they land on the page that they decided to contact you on and let you know if they’re a returning customer. This type of information could help You can use this information to increase conversions and even average order value by landing easy upsells.

9. Yotpo

Alright, let’s now talk about your product page: where sales actually happen.

Once you’ve done all that other work to get shoppers to this page, what’s one of the absolute best ways to increase your sales?

Showing your customersexactlywhat they can expect from your products.

How do you do that?

With social proof – specifically, you do this with product reviews.

And for that, I absolutely love Yotpo.

Yotpo will help you collect this feedback to begin with and then post it throughout your website to keep customers clicking until they finally convert.

That’s not all. You can also use Yotpo to create loyalty programs, offer coupons, measure the ROI of these kinds of changes and a whole lot more. If you want more conversions, you want Yotpo for your site.

10.SplitIt

Do some of your products come with a big price tag?

Do you ever worry that you’re losing some customers because those prices scare them off?

Before you go rethinking what you charge, I suggest you try Splitit first.

SplitIt will let customers pay for your products in installments. You can choose to offer 6-, 12-, or 24-month plans. Even better, there are no interest rates or late fees, so there’s no reason Splitit shouldn’t increase your conversions and average order values dramatically while also dropping your cart abandonment rate.

In fact, according to research done by Splitit, 25% of online shoppers say they’d spend more if they were offered to make interest-free monthly payments. And 47% of online shoppers say 0% interest is the most important factor when considering an installment plan.

So, don’t let big prices become a big problem. This extension may be all it takes to hit record numbers.

11. IWD’s PAYPAL POS

But what if your company has a real-world presence, as well?

How can you make sure that your online store is in sync with your actual stores?

We had enough customers asking that question that our agency partnered with PayPal to create a solution for this specific situation.

With PayPal POS extension, you can connect the PayPal POS System app on your IOS device right to your Magento store. It literally takes like two minutes to do.

After that, you can take your store wherever you take your mobile device. Whether that’s in your store or in the field, make and record sales as if they were happening right on your site.

Pretty cool, right?

Well, it gets better.

This extension also syncs with your inventory in real-time, so if an order is placed on your site or through the Magento admin panel, you’ll see it on your POS system. If an order is placed through the system, that will be shown in your Magento admin panel.  

But wait. There’s more.

We also designed our PayPal POS extension to support touchless payments because customers love just being able to wave their card over your device to pay. This is something every store will offer someday, so use our extension to get ahead of this trend.

And one last feature I’ll mention: this extension can accept payments even when you’re not connected to the Internet. Keep swiping cards like you normally would and, once you’re back online, PayPal will process those payments.

There’s plenty more to love about this extension, too. I’ll link to a video about it in the description if you want to learn more about everything it can do.

12. IWD Order Manager

But what happens if a customer wants to change their order afterthey’ve checked out?

A lot of business owners are surprised to learn that Magento doesn’t let them make changes on behalf of their customers. Instead, you have to cancel the entire order andmake your customer redo the order.

Annoying..

Order Manager extension lets you – the business owner – make any adjustments your customers request. This means fewer returns, greater customer satisfaction, and no more headaches.

We’ve createda ton of extensions over the years and this isstillone of the most popular ones we’ve ever made. Business owners absolutely love this one. If you have a Magento store, this extension is going to make your life a lot easier - and make you a lot more money in the process, too.

13. ShipperHQ

Okay, you’ve locked in the conversion.

Now all you need to do is ship your customer their product.

For that, you should check out our friends over at ShipperHQ.

This one extension offers endless options for customizing shipping rules, rates, in-store pickup rules, delivery dates and times, multi-origin shipping, backup carriers, and more. Decide which work best for your business and then display those options right on your checkout page where your customers can see them.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen companies use this extension to increase conversions and AOV and even improve other areas of their own business simply by optimizing their delivery process. 

14. Inspectlet

Alright, those extensions cover each step of the buyer’s journey, but now I want to look at one that will help you improve your entire website experience.

Because when it comes to increasing your profits, finding outwhatbrings customers to your site is only half the battle.

The other half is learning what they do once they get there.

Inspectlet is easily my favorite extension for this critical task. As their website says, “Google Analytics tells you what. Inspectlet tells you why.”

More than 90,000 companies rely on this extension to watch how their visitors use their site – every movement, scroll, keypress, and click.

My team also loves using it when our clients tell us their customers are reporting problems. We can go back and watch the videos to seeexactlywhat kind of interactions were leading to these issues, which leads to much faster fixes.

15. dotdigital

Another smart way to improve the average Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) of your site is to implement email marketing.

And thebest way to do that is with dotdigital.

This omnichannel marketing extension can do about a million different things, but I absolutely love their email platform. It comes with 30 different customizable templates or you can build yours from scratch with their drag-and-drop tool.

Look, abandoned carts are going to happen. It doesn’t matter how much you do to optimize your site, some of your customers are still going to leave. In fact, the average cart abandonment rate is astaggering 70%.

Something like 94% of shoppers who view a product will leave without putting it in their cart at all.

These don’t have to be numbers you just accept, though. With dotdigital, you can build out email campaigns that target these abandoners and remind them about the products they were considering. This is probably the most cost-effective way to increase your revenue.

dotdigital doesn’t stop there, though. Connect it with your site and this tool canproactivelymake personalized product recommendations to your customers based on their previous purchases and onsite behavior. This extension is even powered with Artificial Intelligence that can determine when the best possible time is to send your emails so recipients are more likely to open them.

16. Vertex

Finally, we all know there are two certainties in life and while there isn’t a Magento extension that can help with death, I have a great recommendation that can handle taxes.

If you sell to customers all over the country – much less the entire world – you should definitely be using Vertex to make sure you’re complying 100% with all relevant tax laws. The absolute last thing you want is to learn the hard way that you haven’t been following all of the rules.

Vertex is trusted by about 60% of Fortune 500 companies, which speaks volumes about how well it handles all of the complexities that come with taxesandhow well it scales.

No matter where you’re based or where you sell to, Vertex is worth it just for the peace of mind you’ll have knowing the IRS is never going to come knocking.

These are the top 16 extensions we tell each and every one of our Magento clients about. They are absolute game changers that will definitely make a big difference to your online business. I can’t recommend them enough. 

If you need help choosing, using, installing, or even customizing any of these extensions, contact us.