IronPlane’s team of expert Magento consultants, developers, solutions specialists, and UX designers have 12+ years of experience developing, customizing, and supporting Magento sites.
We provide a wide range of Magento development services, such as:
- Site audits (including technical code audits, UX and conversion rate audits, and accessibility audits)
- Magento updates
- Magento migrations (from other platforms, or from Magento 1 to Magento 2)
- Magento support and optimization
- Custom development (including custom theme development, Magento extensions, modules, and integrations)
- Magento optimized hosting
- Security solutions and website monitoring
- UX design
- eCommerce business consulting
As a specialized eCommerce agency, we’ve worked with dozens of B2B and B2C Magento stores (both retailers and wholesalers) across many industries. This breadth of experience has helped us develop and refine a work process that we apply to all client engagements.
The process is based on three key principles, which permeate everything we do:
- Clear communication. We communicate all key aspects of our work, including why we’re prioritizing certain tasks and how they support your broader business objectives. That way, you’re always clear on the “what” and “why” behind our decisions.
- Transparency. We track everything we do with collaborative project management tools and give you access to our dashboards. This means you can monitor our progress and understand the “how” behind our work — how things are moving compared to our projected timelines, how much time we spend on each task, how much we charge, and so on.
- Long-term goal setting. We’re not a “job shop” that does one-time projects and moves on to the next client. Instead, we want our expertise to contribute to your long-term goals, so we work hard to find solutions that can help you reach them. We’re also prepared to manage your Magento site over months and years to ensure it has a positive impact on your business.
In this post, we talk about how our expert Magento developers can help you build and customize your site, improve its performance, and much more. We also show a couple of the Magento projects we’ve completed so you can get a good feel for our process and results.
Our team of Magento experts is specialized in both Adobe Commerce (including Adobe Commerce Cloud) and Magento Open Source. Contact us for a free consultation and site audit to discuss if we’re the right agency partner for your business.
The Tried and Tested IronPlane Process for Magento Projects
Every engagement with a prospective IronPlane client starts with a free consultation, which has two objectives:
- Discuss the current challenges you’re facing with your Magento site, like low conversion rates, checkout problems, poor UX, security concerns, and so on.
- See if there’s a fit between our services and your needs. Our goal is to learn more about your business requirements, short- and long-term goals, and the role your Magento site plays in operations to determine if we can provide the best solutions for your unique situation.
If we determine there’s a fit between your needs and our services, we start a business discovery and code audit process.
At this stage, we offer three different types of audits:
- Free Audit. Our Free Audit gives us additional insights into your Magento configuration, your Magento theme, 3rd party modules, custom extensions, server infrastructure, and code management processes. We take this step if we need additional certainty of the fit between your needs and our services. Schedule a free audit with our Magento experts here.
- Code Audit. Our Code Audit is an in-depth analysis of the backend code and frontend code of your Magento site. The goal of this audit is to efficiently identify issues resulting from poorly written code, malfunctioning extensions, inefficient theming structure, as well as security and performance issues.
- Comprehensive Site Audit. Our Comprehensive Audit — and recommended option — builds on the in-depth code audit and adds a more holistic evaluation of your online business and how the site does or does not support your long-term goals and return on investment. This audit typically includes a business discovery as well as a review of your site’s UX, speed, accessibility, and SEO.
Click here to learn more about our Magento Site Audit services.
There are two essential outcomes of the code audit and the comprehensive audit:
- To understand the goals your Magento site should help you achieve.
- To provide you with an estimate for the cost and timing of the work we believe is necessary to support your Magento site.
At the end of the day, IronPlane’s approach ensures your business priorities drive the technology (not the other way around).
After the business discovery and code audit, we move on to project planning and deployment. At this stage, we assign a dedicated Solutions Specialist who:
- Acts as a strategic partner between you and our development team.
- Ensures all requirements are clearly documented and easy to follow.
- Clarifies project tasks and prioritizes the order in which they should be completed.
- Provides regular updates on our developers’ progress and answers any questions along the way.
After this strategic planning is done, we kick off the project. During the engagement, our Magento developers can either work independently or closely with your in-house developers, depending on your preferences.
Now, it’s worth noting that each business we work with has its own unique needs and challenges. That’s why the process we just described paints a general picture of how we approach Magento projects.
The services we provide and the tasks we prioritize are determined by what we find during the code audit and business discovery phase.
To give you a better idea of how this usually plays out, let’s look at a few of our projects in detail.
How We Helped 3 Businesses Achieve Their Magento Goals
In this section, we’ll go over three real-life examples of our work that show how our process leads to valuable results from both technical and financial perspectives.
Royal Chain Group: Optimized Magento Store with a 107% Increase in Revenue
Royal Chain Group is a family-run jewelry wholesaler founded in 1978. They work with many respected retailers across the US and have a focus on beautiful products and exceptional client service.
However, their eCommerce site wasn’t living up to their standards, as it had high bounce rates and a low number of returning visitors. That’s why they decided to adopt Magento 2 and work with IronPlane as their trusted Magento development partner.
Our initial aim was to understand Royal Chain Group’s complex business and current online analytics setup. Based on what we learned, our team began work on a few key tasks. We:
- Restructured product data to comply with industry-standard categorizations and naming conventions.
- Used new product attributes to create a more intuitive search feature and improve the user experience.
- Deployed a custom Magento hosting solution in AWS to make the site more secure, stable, and scalable.
Note: We can create the ideal hosting environment for your Magento site — learn more here. - Built a tool for Magento admins to reflect the market price of gold in real-time on the website.
- Implemented a new client portal with a quick order functionality, product comparison tool, order history, rapid re-order, and much more.
The results from this project were fantastic:
- 107% increase in revenue.
- 66% boost in conversion rate.
- 40% decrease in bounce rate.
- 32% percent increase in average order value (AOV).
Check out the full Royal Chain Group case study here.
Bosca: Upgraded Magento Website with 7.8% Higher Revenue and 10.8% More Transactions
Bosca is a company that sources the highest-quality leather and employs artisan techniques to create beautiful leather goods. Their focus on quality is coupled with a long-standing tradition, with Hugo Bosca starting the company in 1911 and his family still running it today.
While Bosca already had an eCommerce website, it was built on Magento 1, which Adobe would soon stop supporting. They contacted us to migrate their store to Magento 2 and make a handful of additional improvements.
However, there was one key condition — the project had to be completed within six weeks. So our Solutions Specialists worked with Bosca’s team to create a plan that prioritized the right tasks and ensured an on-time launch.
Our development team also used the Colibri foundation to speed up the work. The foundation’s out-of-the-box features helped us massively limit the required development time.
With the plan and foundation in place, we migrated Bosca’s site on time and added:
- Configurable product swatches.
- Customized home page layout and RMA forms.
- Integrations and syncs with their ERP system, Google Tag Manager, and Google Shopping.
We also continued to make further improvements to Bosca’s new Magento 2 store after the launch. We offer a special service for this called Magento Support and Optimization.
Here are the results five months after the site went live:
- Page speed improved by 36%.
- Conversions increased by over 45%.
- Transactions increased by 10.8%, while revenue increased by 7.8%.
Check out the full Bosca case study here.
Russell Marine Products: Brand-New eCommerce Store with a 27% Boost in Conversion Rates
Russell Marine Products (RMP) is a premier fishing technology retailer and a certified distributor of Garmin, Lowrance, Minn Kota, and Humminbird electronics. They pride themselves on helping customers find and use the right products through demonstrations, boat system designs, and installation guides.
Their website was originally built on Volusion — an eCommerce platform that’s more comparable to Shopify or WooCommerce than Magento. However, this platform didn’t support key integrations or have automated order fulfillment capabilities, and their site wasn’t optimized for mobile. RMP’s team decided to migrate to the Magento platform and contacted us for a consultation.
The first task at hand was determining if Magento was the right eCommerce platform for their business requirements. As a partner for both BigCommerce and Magento, we could compare the platforms and find the best long-term solution for RMP.
Once we established Magento as the right choice, our Solutions Specialists designed a personalized migration and implementation plan. This plan involved various tasks like:
- Creating a new, mobile-optimized Magento site with a great UX and fast page load times. Note: We offer dedicated UX and conversion rate audits where our team can find opportunities to improve Magento site performance.
- Implementing the new site with our Colibri Foundation.
- Redesigning complex third-party integrations with each of RMP’s integration partners.
- Building shipment automations that were missing in their previous eCommerce solution.
This project produced three key results for RMP’s team:
- They had a brand-new, mobile-optimized, SEO-friendly store that supported key Magento integrations.
- Conversion rates increased by 27%.
- The average page load time decreased by 54%.
Check out the full Russell Marine Products case study here.
Frequently Asked Questions About Hiring & Working with Magento Developers
Where can I find expert Magento developers?
Adobe’s Partner Directory provides a list of Magento development companies verified by Adobe’s team. This is one of the best places to start your research, as you can be sure every agency in the directory is a certified partner and has past experience on the Magento platform.
However, you shouldn’t just hire a developer based on certifications or online ratings, you should also research each agency’s past work and case studies to make sure their experience aligns with your goals and expectations. Some questions to consider include:
- What types of businesses have they worked with?
- Have they completed custom work?
- Do they have a record of working with clients for longer than a couple of months or years?
- What results have they achieved?
Then, once you’ve narrowed down your options, you can schedule consultations with the development agencies you’re interested in. Use this opportunity to gauge each agency’s expertise, transparency, and responsiveness. Consider the following:
- How easy is it to schedule time with their team?
- Do they take time to ask and learn about your business?
- Can they offer solutions to your current challenges?
- Can they provide references from past clients?
It’s also helpful to ask specific questions about their process and what to expect when working with them, such as:
- How often does their team send status updates?
- How do they charge (per hour, per project, etc.)?
- What type of software do they use to track their work?
- What are their code development practices?
Looking beyond names on a list and digging into past work is the most effective way to find the best Magento developer for your business.
What technical skills should I look for when hiring Magento developers?
Here’s a list of the most important technical skills that a dedicated Magento developer should have:
- Excellent understanding of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL. Experience with other backend languages like Java, Python, or Ruby is also a big plus.
- In-depth knowledge of general eCommerce development best practices and specifically — Magento web development experience.
- Experience with at least one of the big cloud providers — AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
- An understanding of how content management systems (CMSs) and customer relationship management systems (CRMs) work.
- Good working knowledge of A/B testing, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and SEO best practices.
What’s the difference between Magento, Adobe Commerce, and Adobe Commerce Cloud?
Adobe acquired Magento in 2018. Since then, Adobe has split the platform into two offerings:
- Magento Open Source
- Adobe Commerce
This has resulted in some confusion with many people referring to either platform simply as Magento. It is important to briefly understand the distinction between the two platforms.
From the very beginning, Magento has been an open-source eCommerce platform. The nature of open-source software means that the source code is open to the public for free and allows for the download, use, modification, and distribution of that code. For these reasons, Magento Open Source is an attractive option for many businesses. However, as with any robust and complex piece of software, it is essential to have a developer or a development team fully versed in the best practices of code development, upgrades, security patches, infrastructure management, and ongoing optimization.
Adobe Commerce is an eCommerce platform offered directly by Adobe. This platform is most often implemented using Adobe’s cloud infrastructure and support. Distinct from Magento Open Source, Adobe Commerce (and Adobe Commerce Cloud) requires paid license fees.
The benefit of choosing the Adobe Commerce platform is that Adobe prioritizes its functional releases and upgrades for that platform first and foremost. For this reason, the latest and greatest core code including performance, security, and functional upgrades will be delivered to Adobe Commerce well before they make it to the Magento Open Source platform.
Contact Our Expert Magento Developers for a Free Consultation & Site Audit
Our team of certified Magento developers, UX designers, and Solutions Specialists can help you achieve your Magento goals — whether that’s building a new online store or improving your current one with custom pages, a better UX, faster load times, tighter security, and much more.
Schedule a call and free site audit today to see how working with our team can benefit your online business.
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