How to choose extensions and partners?

Transcript

Brandon: Welcome. How are you doing?

Inna: Hey, Brandon. Nice being here. Doing good.

Brandon: Good. Hey. It’s great to see you again. Great to connect again. For those that are kind of just just listening in, you know, we appreciate you joining our podcast where we talk to some of our customers, talk about a little bit about the projects, but ultimately we learn about you, right? And what you guys are doing. So if you wouldn’t mind, take just a second if you would introduce yourself and who you’re with.

Inna: My name is Inna. My last name is Kleimionycheva. I’m the head of a project management department at Aheadworks. I hope that most of you guys looking at this video should know or probably heard about Aheadworks, which is a Magento development company that has been there since Magento1.

Brandon: You definitely have. In fact, I remember some of my first Magento sites that I had the opportunity to work on and a brand or two that I got to build, and I was always looking to do something, extend Magento in some way, and it was always there. It was the head work, the head work. There were a ton of extensions and I remember that. So yeah, good job. You have been around a long time.

Inna: Yeah, I believe since 2009.

Brandon: Yeah. So that very early days in magento, you guys saw an opportunity and jumped on it. Now, how long have you been with the aheadworks yourself?

Inna: I have been with the aheadworks for over four years now. 

Brandon: Great. 

Inna: Yeah, in project management roles. And now I’m the head of the project management department.

Brandon: Well, something must have worked out, right if you’re leading that team up now. So. Good job. 

Inna: Thank you. 

Brandon: Yeah. Of course. Well, again, thanks for taking time to talk a little bit about you know, maybe some of the collaborations we have and obviously about Aheadworks and what you guys are doing. That’s our goal, right? If we’re just as I try to interview our clients and customers just to get to know each other, just to, you know, share that with the world. You know, hopefully there’s some tidbits of information where, you know, something you’ve learned along the way as you worked with with companies like ourselves that maybe, you know, a merchant, another agency, another app developer, you know, whoever it might be, might get excited about and learn something from. So thanks again. Yeah. So you’ve been around a long time with the Aheadworks. Tell us a little bit about your focus. Like what? What do Aheadworks see within the Magento space? And, you know, how do you focus on or what do you focus on?

Inna: Aheadworks has always been focused on delivering, like, quality products that would help extend the platform and provide the necessary functionalities that are not necessarily always present out of the box, because obviously we understand as much as Magento is a flexible platform that covers a lot of cases, that provides a lot of functionality. Not every business is the same, and some businesses may require something else or something in addition to what they get. And of course, we strive to help those businesses, like, achieve their goals through providing them the solutions that would. They could plug and play and they could utilize this functionality because, as we know, custom development may take a long time in some cases. Whereas you can buy a product that has already functionality that you’ve been looking for, such as subscriptions, for example. This is something that is getting trendy in the e-commerce world. Like everybody wants to sell subscriptions.

Brandon: That’s right. Yeah. Recurring revenue. Right?

Inna: Yeah, yeah, you have to have that stream. However, Magento did not have this functionality from out of the box, and we saw this as an opportunity to help merchants get this offering for their customers with the help of our product. Obviously, since the Magento days, the headworks has been offering a large array of products that could be blogs, FAQs, searches, whatever you can think of. But now that we’ve moved to Magento two, our catalog of products has become smaller in numbers, but we believe it has become better in quality. Yeah, we try to provide solutions that are flexible enough, give you enough functionality to achieve whatever that you’re trying to achieve there. Brandon: Yeah. Very good. I think you know, a question that comes to my mind is with the extensions that are out there, you know, maybe I’m a merchant looking. And how do you choose, right? How do you choose an extension and take that leap of faith that it’s going to be a good extension for you and your business?

Inna: Well, definitely. One should focus on the final goal. What is it that I’m trying to achieve? And then you’re looking for the extensions that would cover most of those scenarios that you need. But apart from that, there is always this quality component because as we know, there are like a lot of extensions that are out there, but they have not even passed the tests to appear on the Magento Marketplace. This is a bad sign. This tells you that, okay, these guys did not pass the quality tests of the core platform. So probably even if they seem like someone who is providing the functionality, their quality may not be up to the mark. And you may face some issues like future upgrades. Whenever you’re looking for something, it’s always better to start with Magento Marketplace because you can be sure that the quality has been verified. And then of course, you’re choosing out of the functionalities that would cover most of your scenarios.

Brandon: So we’ve had the opportunity to work together on some of those. What can you tell us about the projects that ITDelight helped you with, or that we worked together on? Maybe just a little bit about the projects would be interesting.

Inna: Yeah.So we were very lucky to collaborate with you, to work with you on making some of our extensions Hyva compatible. So as many of your viewers may know, Hyva is a very hot and trending topic in the Magento world. Yes, this is a new front end that gives you better performance, that is cleaner and respectively, a lot of merchants are looking to get this front end for them. However, it is always the trade off, like I’m getting a better front end, but I also have some functionalities that need to work with this front end, obviously. And we as the vendor who provide solutions, are definitely interested in getting it done for them to make our solutions compatible with the new front end, so that they could benefit from the functionality without the need of custom development, adjusting the modules to the front end of their choice and respectively. Once we understood that there is a great need for those compatibility. And since we have quite an extensive catalog, and there is also the regular maintenance that we have to do, new features we have to release, we understood that it would be better to find a partner who has good experience working with Hyva front end, who could bring in a bit of a muscle and assist us in this feat of delivering the modules to our merchants as soon as possible. So yes, we knew that you guys at ITDelight have had quite a few projects already realized by then together with Hyva, so it seemed like a logical choice. And we were very happy with what we got as a result. You helped us make two modules compatible. That was a blog and that was also layered navigation. Layered navigation is a specialty front end heavy because it gives you the opportunity to filter through the products that you get on the category page, because obviously whoever is looking for trousers, who goes to the category, they may be getting thousands of products and they just need the black ones of size. Large probably. So of course this opportunity to filter through the products is very significant. It is a very front end heavy thing to have those filters on your storefront. So this was one of the extensions that your guys made compatible with Hyva. And the other one blog also has quite a few pages. You have the blog listing page, you have the blog post page, you have the functionality that allows you to comment on the tags, the filtering, all those sorts of things. So they were not small extensions. Those were big.

Brandon: That’s true. Very content. Heavy. You’re right.

Inna: Yeah, yeah. We’re quite front end heavy. So your teams did a great job with delivering high quality code. Our developers reviewed everything to learn a few things as well. Not only review the quality. Yes. So. And since I personally was supervising the projects, I was very much impressed on how everything was so transparent. You know, the project plan, the timelines, the deliveries, the reporting on your progress. Everything was up to the mark like we had. Not a day. When we would think, oh, like, where are we? What’s going on? When are we getting? So there was never a moment when we didn’t know what’s going on, when we were going to get what we’ve been expecting, to get the deliverables. So from this perspective, everything was up to the mark. The quality, the process, the transparency, the communication. I was very, very satisfied.

Brandon: Oh, that. Honestly, that is so great to hear. Right. Especially coming from you. Right. You know a thing or two about delivering quality projects. So to see that the team was able to layer, you know, layer both layers into your structure and how you see things and what you needed. But you’re able to also come to that point where you can learn, you know, some new ways, some new ways of looking at things. Right? I mean, I think that’s, that’s that’s critical, right? Because no matter who we work with, there’s always something more to learn. Another approach, another idea. Yeah. That’s incredible. Well, thanks for the feedback. First and foremost, I appreciate that. You know, you’re kind of giving us a little bit of information along the way. You know, were there any things that we could have worked towards and improved in, in terms of our delivery that come to mind as you think about the project?

Inna: I wouldn’t say so, because the only minor things that appeared would be a matter of preference, rather than a matter of, you know, being a quality delivery. For example, our product owner, when he was reviewing the delivered blog compatibility module, said, oh, it would be better to be left aligned, not center lined, which is clearly a matter of preference, not a matter of it being a good or a bad solution in this particular case. So yeah, we had those minor points of feedback that we sent to your team. They have fixed everything as per our preference.

Brandon: Good as it should be.

Inna: Almost no time. Yes. So honestly. I would not have anything listed as a thing that you should work on or improve. Because everything was up to the mark.

Brandon: Good. Well, that’s what we always strive for, right? We always want to make sure that, you know, even if it’s a preference. Right. It is your preference. But it’s your brand. It’s who you’re trying to represent. And how do we ultimately make it? Make it you. So you’d say the objectives were met. You’d say there were obviously some learnings along the way. How has it gone? So out of curiosity, I mean, as we see Huva pick up speed a little bit here and we, we love working with them because again, the, the site the ability to for sites to perform nowadays is I mean, I just think it becomes more and more relevant, more and more critical every day that goes by. What’s your impressions on, you know, the need for extensions to work? Well, from a site performance perspective? What are you seeing out there?

Inna: It’s never going down. One thing’s for sure. Yeah. We see a lot of customers, a lot of merchants who are seeking solutions that would enable them to increase website performance, to increase speed and have a nice design that is more modern, that is clean. And we see that a lot of our customers are leaning towards Hyva. So that’s why we are also working in the direction of making as many of our extensions compatible as possible. We’ve covered half the catalog by now, and we see that, yes, people are coming and inquiring like, do you have this on your roadmap? Are you planning to make this Hugo compatible? So yeah, we have a list of priorities based on how many people are inquiring after this compatibility module. So definitely this is not going away. Not tomorrow, not in five years probably. So maybe Hyva guys will come up with Hyva too.But there you go. Yeah, until I’m not making it.

Brandon: Any announcements for them today, but I’m sure there’s lots in the works. Yeah.

Inna: We wouldn’t know they didn’t share this with us. 

Brandon: That’s right.

Inna: However. Yeah Until then, I believe humor is gonna remain like one of those top trending options for those who are seeking better performance. Higher speed.

Brandon: That’s great. Such a critical piece today. I’m curious, you know, and so in your role, you’ve worked with you know, internal developers and probably a number of agencies and things throughout your, you know, your career. If there’s anyone kind of listening in that’s trying to make that choice, that decision on, you know, who to go with for, you know, a website build an integration whatever it might be. What are some of the tips and tricks or the things that you’ve learned throughout your career on how to choose the kind of that best agency to work with you?

Inna: That’s a tricky question.

You know, I believe it really depends on the scale of the business, because obviously there exists huge major companies that have very big revenues going through their e-commerce store. There exist smaller and medium companies who are not working, you know, to significantly expand their functionalities or rather looking for ongoing maintenance, you know, security support, those kind of things. So first and foremost, one should understand what are your plans and aims and how you’re going to further develop or utilize your e-commerce platform if it is the major stream of your revenue, if you see that you have to further significantly, like develop enhanced functionalities, increase your product offering. That’s one story. If you’re looking for stability with what you have currently, you have a small store. This is just a part of your business. You’re looking for a partner who will take care of it on a day to day basis, but you don’t have significant plans on further development. You could be looking for different offerings. Agency wise, because obviously if you need a lot of muscle to develop new functionalities, build complex integrations, you might be looking for a bigger agency, but you should be aware that respectively, your bill would be on. Upper end, let’s say. But if you’re just looking to keep your store secure, stable, updated, you might be looking for an agency who has a package offering for you which would facilitate this. Take this off of your hands. You would have an agency with certified developers. This might be a smaller agency in such a case, but respectively your bill would also be on the smaller scale, let’s put it like that.

Brandon: Good suggestions. I think you said something that, at least for me, is so critical as I talk to different clients. Right. And it’s I mean, you start with kind of your business goals and your objectives, what you what you have in mind. I remember a time I was actually talking to a client not that long ago about a migration to Hyva. And it was just one of those things. They were like, yeah, we need to migrate to Hyva. Like, yeah, great. And I mean, I’m not going to argue with that. You absolutely should do that. I know all of the benefits that they’re going to get. But when I asked them I said, “but why?” So why are we doing that? Right. What is it that we’re trying to solve for you? What is your business facing today and what are your plans, where are you going to go with that? And how does Hyva make a difference for you? How is our time together going to make a difference? You know, and that was the part that they struggled with. Right. They struggled to say they said, well it’s just everyone’s like we just keep hearing that’s what we need to do. And we don’t know why we need to do it. We just got to do it. So I love your suggestion. Right. Start with that in mind. Make sure you build that. And then all of those other pieces are so, so important, right. Who you choose, how you choose them. So speaking about the future just a little bit. What’s next for aheadworks. What’s going on? What do you plan to do next?

Inna: Well we’ve already touched upon that a little bit. We plan to further expand the compatibility of our modules with Hyva. Right now we are working to get a lot of B2B related modules compatible. So we continue working on that front nonstop. And apart from that one of our best selling products that a lot of merchants are looking for is our subscription module, and considering subscription mom business may significantly vary, like from one company to another. We’ve been working a lot to make it flexible enough, you know. Do you offer a trial? What are your plans? How do you charge people? How do you pause your subscription? All of those kinds of things that we’ve been working to integrate into our solution. But now we can also see that there are very, very big players on the market who have thousands, tens of thousands of subscriptions processed every day, which creates a huge load. On, in your store, obviously. So right now we’re working to make our solution even more scalable. We plan on delivering a new version very, very soon. So be on the lookout for that for our new and better subscription model. And apart from that, there is another interesting product that’s called Blank Shop. It’s a translation integration for a Magento store, which could be very interesting for the merchants who have international stores and deliver to different markets.

Brandon: That’s amazing. I wish both of these products would have been available when I was using my Magento one store, you know, as I was building my brand because we were selling stuff and you know, it was a parts and accessories business and we were selling things all over the globe and, and, you know, of course, we were had everything in English and in US dollars. And it was that’s all we could do at that time. It was a long time ago, so it would have been helpful. And the reoccurring model would have been I know you and I are going to have the opportunity to hopefully meet up here soon. I’m not sure when everybody will watch this. So, you know, we’ll say you know, early 2024. Tell us a little bit about your event that you’re working on. Yeah.

Inna: Thank you for bringing this up. Aheadworks together with Rave Digital. Our mother company will be organizing Meet Magento Florida 2024 very, very late January. So 31st of January, 1st of February. This is going to be an e-commerce conference for those Magento lovers who want to stay on track. We will have a lot of good partners presented there, yourselves included, and we will have a business track tech track with a lot of people who know what they’re talking about when they’re talking Magento. So everybody who would like to know where Magento is going, how this ecosystem is moving, like who is out there, who is part of this ecosystem are welcome to come join us or follow us on social media and see what news we bring.

Brandon: That’s great. These events are big. They take a lot of effort. I was really excited to see some of the fun things that you have planned as well. There’s. The one thing about the Meet Magento is the community, you know, that’s around the events is it’s a very friendly group of people. It’s a, you know, we all know each other, it seems like. And so what what from a merchant perspective. Right. I would say merchants are always I mean, we love it when the merchants come and support and learn more about Magento, but any words of support in terms of, you know, merchants who may be on the fence in terms of, you know, should they take the time, join what? What might they learn? Any words of advice for them?

Inna: You know, obviously those merchants who are already on Magento, they can still very much benefit from events like that because it’s not enough in our modern day, you know, to just have the platform you have to have a lot of things that are supporting this business of yours that you’re running on Magento. You have to calculate taxes. You are seeking to increase your website performance, you are potentially considering what agency you might be on the lookout for because your business is expanding and you need more help with your Magento. So whenever you have those questions arising, like what would be the better choice? Attending such a conference would bring you to a group of people who are very well aware of what’s out there, of what solutions work best with Magento, because as we know, a lot of services are available today. However, are they primarily focused on being Magento compatible? Do they have high quality integration with Magento? Will they work smoothly with Magento because you might have selected, you know, a tax service who doesn’t have a magento connector and you’re going to be stuck there like they offer you. Probably a good price, but you’re going to have to invest into the development, into getting this integrated. Whenever you come to a meetup like this, like Meet Magento, you can see specifically those companies cater to this platform who focus on staying up to date, who follow where the platform is going, how it’s evolving, and they keep track. And apart from that, of course, you can listen to the speakers who bring up very important topics such as what frontend to choose, how do you select extensions, how do you select agency partners? How do you do this or how do you do that? Or what are the best practices this year? Or what are the trends in e-commerce they can bring up, you know, a few ideas to the table that you haven’t been thinking about. But as you see that other merchants are utilizing those and are benefiting from, you know, new features or something of the sort, you could consider those for your own store as well.

Brandon: I think you’re spot on. The, you know, the the thing that I would say to just, you know, and build off of what you, you mentioned there, I mean the this is going to be a conference, just like, you know, many of the other Magento conferences. I mean, it’s full of amazing product experts, amazing e-commerce experts. I mean, you won’t find a better understanding of Magento, Magento technologies, you know, the Adobe commerce side of it, what works, what doesn’t then at these events. Right? So if you’re a merchant that has any questions about what your future looks like or where were you might be able to go with something this is a great way to generate ideas, right? Doesn’t mean you have to work with every agency you talk to there, but I think every agency and every vendor there has a unique perspective from their experience on what works, what doesn’t, where e-commerce is going, and what you might be able to do from from your store’s perspective to become more successful, you know, this year and beyond. So to me, that’s that was always the, the the best thing, right? Everyone’s got ideas and opinions. You may not agree with all of them, but they certainly all have their place And this group of people absolutely been kind of the core of the e-commerce team that I look to you know, in the industry to be able to understand what’s next. And I think that’s pretty critical.

Inna: Yeah. Totally agree.

Brandon: Well, listen, if anybody’s out there listening and they need you know, on the merchant side and they need information on tickets, something like that. Just reach out, you know, find a way. Either one of us, I’m sure we can. We can ensure that people find their, you know, find themselves in the right place. But Inna, thank you for your time today and for your openness to share a little bit about the projects we’ve worked on together and a little bit about Aheadworks and where you guys are going.

Inna: Thank you so much for having me.

Brandon: You bet. Have a great day and we’ll see you in Florida soon.

Inna: Thank you.