Shop by Brand

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Shop by Brand

Overview

Shop by Brand Magento extension by Activo allows store owners to create per brand navigation for their Magento store. It also helps to improve the store SEO with brands as keywords. Activo Shop by Brand extension will create a separate page for each brand, which is fully customizable, and provides the flyout brand navigation widget that can be used anywhere in the store.

Each brand page can have a custom free form description section (with full WYSIWYG design), brand logo, meta field and URL key for better SEO. If can also have custom page layout from the list of available layouts in your store.

Highlights

  • Improve end user experience by allowing your customers to shop by specific brands
  • Improve store SEO by creating separate pages for each brand with custom SEO-friendly URL key and custom meta tags
  • Allow using custom layout per each brand
  • WYSIWIG editor for brand description
  • Include brand logo image
  • Widget to include brand navigation flyout at any page in the store
  • Sort brand alphabetically or in custom defined order
  • Use any user defined attribute (of dropdown type) for a brand
  • Uses standard Magento mechanisms for extended compatibility
  • Fully Open Source
  • 100% Money Back Guarantee

    • Why Should I Use Shop by Brands?

    The main reason for using such an extension is if you offer many brands in your online store and brand pages optimization is important to you. From our experience, Magento stores that take an extra step and customize their brand pages gain significant traffic boost. We have worked with our customers to understand what is needed when it comes to Shop by Brands. We then hired an SEO expert to assist with building an amazing solution that generates real results. With this extension, you will be enhancing your online catalog in ways that bring your brands alive and raise their visibility in the eyes of search engines, like Google. It is also greatly beneficial to have custom landing page for each brand in your store. You can use these landing pages in your marketing campaigns as well.

    Who is this Extension Intended For?

    This Magento extension is intended for store owners, Magento developers, and Magento theme designers. While we will take care of defaults and the basic setup for the average user, we intend to leave all the template files and CSS/JS files available for anyone to modify and customize further. Hence this is a great extension to include with themes or vertical oriented multi-store setups as well as the average Magento store.

    Installation

    Installation is very simple and is done using the Magento Connect interface. Just follow these steps:

  • Once you purchased the extension, download the installation package by logging into your account and going to My Downloadable Products section.
  • After you downloaded the installation package, log in to your store admin interface and go to System / Magento Connect / Magento Connect Manager.
  • At the "Direct package file upload" section click on "Choose file" button, select the package file you just downloaded and click "upload".
  • After upload is done, go back to the admin panel by clicking "Return to Admin" link at the top right.
  • Go to System / Cache Management and refresh the Configuration cache.
  • IMPORTANT! After finishing the initial installation steps above, you need to log out and log in back into your administration interface in order to see the extension configuration.
  • When you log in back to your admin panel, your installation process is complete and you can now configure the Shop by Brand extension.

    • Please read this first if you are using Apple Safari to download the installation package. By default Safari tries to open the "safe" file extensions, this includes the .tgz packages. Therefore it will uncompress the package upon download and will make it unfit for Magento Connect. To prevent this behavior in the menu bar, go Safari -> Preferences. In the "General" tab, uncheck "Open 'safe' files after downloading". This will stop Safari from automatically unzipping the files. Read more on Stack Exchange here.

    Please see more detailed installation instructions, a screencast and a troubleshooting guide here:
    Installing Magento Extensions Using Connect Manager

    Configuration and Setup

    Please see the detailed installation instructions at the Activo Shop by Brand extension page. There are also several screencasts to illustrate how this extension can be configured and used.

    Coming Soon

    We are actively working on this extension, the following features are in the works and will be coming soon. All existing customers will be eligible for a free upgrade.

  • Ability to create "featured brands" section with custom configuration.
  • A new widget to create customizable page with all brands.
  • A new widget to create a customizable slider (carousel) element for featured brands.
  • An option for the bulk import of the brands.
  • Integration with our XML Sitemap PRO Magento extension to include brand pages in XML Sitemap with custom weight.
  • Integration with our Advanced Search Magento extension to get custom brand pages properly indexed with custom attribute weights.

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    Magento Editions Compatibility

    Community Edition: 1.5.0 and above (including Magento CE 1.8.0 and newer)

    License Agreement

    This software is subject to terms and conditions of our License Agreement for Professional Extensions. You can find the latest copy of the license agreement here: http://extensions.activo.com/license_professional

    In short, you are required to purchase a separate license for each of the domains (stores) you are running this software for (excluding common variations, like adding 'www.' to the domain name). However you can run this software on multiple servers, provided that you have a separate license for each of the domains (for instance in configurations with load balancers).

    You can also use a copy of this software for free on one development or one staging server per license purchased in addition to your production servers, provided that this development or staging server is not used for any live sales transactions.

    All purchases are subject to the terms and conditions outlined in our Terms of Service document. Please read it carefully.

    Community Support Forum

    Have any questions regarding this extension? Need help with installation and/or configuration? Have some good tips and tricks about using it? Please visit the Activo Extensions support forum.