Ecommerce has come a long way ever since its origin. Ranging from things as small as a microchip to big refrigerators, the online stores literally sell everything that can be delivered at our doorsteps.
The community of developers has played a key role in helping businesses set up a store online through various means. There are numerous eCommerce platforms to help you establish a store for yourself. The platforms are further backed with extensions and applications designed to serve every need of the store allowing the merchants to run them with ease.
However, every business is unique, so are the ways owners want their services to look. At times, the default functions of the stores and the third party extensions aren’t sufficient to meet the exact requirements of the owner.
For instance, though the eCommerce giants eBay and Amazon belong to the same niche- offering marketplace platform, they have their own ways to showcase the products:
While eBay shows products with their prices, shipping charges, and the exact numbers sold to the date, Amazon limits the data with just the price, availability in the region, and the average ratings.
The unique ways to list products comes by understanding your exact audience. To implement them on a live store, a store owner needs the help of a custom eCommerce developer.
The custom Magento development agency at The Brihaspati Infotech recently helped to establish a bespoke store for a client. In the process, we developed an advanced pricing Magento 2 extension that allows the store owners to run promotions and sales with a click.
Need for custom Magento extension development
The client owns an online store to sell fabrics. Backed by the excellent eCommerce services of Magento 2, the store offered everything the customers expected on an online store:
- An intuitive product display
- Final prices including the taxes
- A good range of product recommendations
And everything a buyer would want to know prior to the payment.
The client wanted to add customized price methods for group purchases and seasonal discounts on his store. As the default Magento extensions either worked on subscriptions or weren’t scalable enough to add sufficient grouping techniques, we decided to make our customization.
But before pricing, we had another roadblock- the product quantity.
The default Magento settings offer product quantities in whole numbers. One can purchase 3 bottles or 5 notebooks. However, measuring fabrics meant more than that.
Usually, textile stuff is measured with decimal values like 2.5 meters or 3.6 meters. The online store on Magento limited the customer’s ability to purchase products with similar needs.
At this, a customer who wants to purchase 2.5 meters of clothes, is left with only two options:
- Go for the nearest whole number, that is purchasing 3 meters (a surplus of 0.5 metres)
- Try out for an alternative store
In both situations, the customer leaves the website on a bad note. In the following gif file we can find a similar situation where the client is left with no other option than selecting the nearest whole number:
The client thus wanted extended support to help him establish a store that allows selling products in decimal quantities, manages the final prices and the stock levels in the Magento backend. And, there we were:
It is noticeable that the product quantity is in decimal values while the final cost takes this value into account. We thus developed a custom Magento inventory management extension in the first place.
The approach: Magento 2 advanced pricing extension development
The client had us hired previously, for migrating his Magento 1 based store to Magento 2. We helped him with the following:
- Custom Theme development
- Migrating products, customers and orders
- Installing extensions
There were few extensions in the existing Magento 1 store, that didn’t have a corresponding Magento 2 extension. Our developers had to go the extra mile to customize the closest available extension on Magento 2 with tailored features as availed by the former. You can read about Magento migration processes in one of our previous blogs: Upgrade Magento 1.9 to Magento 2.3.
Developing Magento 2 Advanced Inventory Extension
The textile industry demanded a Magento 2 store that treats them like fabrics than an ordinary product. Seemingly, this demanded a unique way to treat the conventional ways of handling product quantities.
By default, the Magento 2 product configurations restricted us to implement the same. Our grip on the eCommerce platform allowed us to find a way to get through this. We turned on the Qty uses Decimal option in the Magento catalog settings to ensure that the product quantities are now measured in decimals.
While that somehow did the magic, we were still away from the exact results expected from our extension for advanced inventory in Magento 2. We had to make sufficient changes in the default Magento 2 setup to ensure that the product quantities are managed precisely in the store.
The result:
Extension for Magento 2 custom stock status
Managing product quantity in decimals followed another hurdle in the development. Managing the stock levels. The Magento 2 admin dashboard wasn’t prepared for this unique demand.
The developers thus had to make sufficient changes in the data input sections to ensure that the database takes the inputs as entered at the storefront. The existing fields were customized and the input variable type were modified. With that, the Magento 2 inventory syncs with the order quantities in the desired decimal format.
We thus have an admin dashboard that now shows stock levels in decimal values.
Advanced Pricing Magento 2 Extension
This was one of the primary needs of the client. He wanted a way to make a way for enhanced promotions. Seasonal discounts and bulk sales were his primary techniques. Initially, the client had to manually handle the grouped pricing by spending hours negotiating the discount rates. Not only was it time taking, it somehow hampered the relations with the existing re-sellers.
The best way to deal with this was to introduce specific rates for the customer groups. The Magento 2 dashboard allows the admin to introduce customers under groups of their choice.
We furthered the abilities of the groups to discounts for bulk purchasing.
The following picture gives us a glimpse of a similar setting that encourages the buyers to make bulk purchases.
Going with a similar approach, we ensured that the admin can add seasonal discounts with ease. The panel allows custom pricing fields and calendars to schedule sales as and when required.
In order to enhance the Magento custom stock status management, we had to play with the default Magento 2 fields. We customized them to ensure that they align with the client’s exact business requirements. The end result was pretty much satisfactory allowing us to deliver the much-needed bespoke online Magento 2 store.
Our experience with custom Magento extension development
Leveraging the default Magento 2 configurations and customizing them for a client’s business, demands extensive knowledge of the eCommerce platforms and the best available workarounds.
The in-house Magento experts at The Brihaspati Infotech, over the past 10+ years, have delivered some exclusive solutions to the eCommerce startups helping the clients with eCommerce store features they have always yearned for.
Our Magento archive speaks of some of our excellent custom Magento developments in the past ranging from migration, store setups, and developing custom Magento 2 extensions for specific stores as well as the marketplace.
In a nutshell
Ecommerce platforms offer an endless number of opportunities for a bespoke online store, only when they are handed to right resources. You can always hire Magento expert developers from our organization for the slightest of the changes. Our developers ensure that your store is technologically prepared for the coming times while offering you an easy to handle panel.
If you too have a similar project in your mind, you can contact us. Our team can readily discuss the project and the best possible ways to bring your vision to reality.
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