Andreas Mautz is a Magento Certified Developer and is currently working in WebVisum GmbH as Head of IT and development. He has a vast experience in web development.
In this interview, he shared his knowledge about Magento in detail and talked about his personal interests. Andreas also shared his personal suggestions for merchants who want to increase their sales: “I think that you can improve your sales with nearly everything as long as you know your customers aren’t afraid of new things.”
He also discussed Magento events and the benefits of attending these type of events. He is an avid fan of Kitesurfing. I hope the readers would love this candid interview.
Cloudways: Andreas, you are a Magento Certified Developer and you have vast years of experience on the development side. How did you start your career? How did you come across Magento?
Andreas: I started my Magento career literally by drinking beer. I was in a record store drinking beer and listening to great music where the owner complained about his shop system xt:Commerce. I was studying Business Informatics at the time and I’ve read about Magento which had just released a beta. So, we made the plan to rebuild his shop on magento. It was hard work, but it was all worth it. He is still my customer.!
Cloudways: You are Head of IT and Development at WebVisum. Share with our readers what were the challenges you faced during work and how did you solve them?
Andreas: Challenges for me are mostly the front-end issues. I really hate this diversification in different screen sizes. This results in different behavior patterns on each type of devices out there. It is a mess to test single devices and the effort is sometime out-of-proportion. So, we try to automate as much front-end testing as much as possible.
Cloudways: What are your recommendations for newbies who are trying to learn Magento core development? Andreas, what’s your recommended Magento certification learning platform? What’s your advice for youngsters, who want to pursue a career in Magento?
Andreas: The best platform to learn is by working in a local development environment. Just set up Magento on a VM and try to understand it on your own if you are familiar with the used languages. Otherwise, there are communities (like Magento StackExchange), different Magento chat rooms on IRC, and the ever-useful Magento forum with nearly up-to-date official documentation. These places are from you can prepare for a certification exam. My advice for development youngsters is always to try Magento first on their own. Learn from your programming mistakes, not just by reading stuff from others. Create your own style for solving problems. If you are really stuck, there is help out there.
Cloudways: Magento 2 is now available. Tell us the features of Magento 2 that really excite you. What is the impact of Magento 2 on the ecommerce industry?
Andreas: I didn’t had much time in the last months as I have finished my diploma thesis on “Consumer Behavior Manipulation in Ecommerce.” But, I hope Magento 2 can finally take care of every aspect. By now, I have seen the impact of Magento 2. The development team have listened to the community members—and that they have grown up.
Cloudways: Do you think merchants can improve their sales with Magento 2? What would be your recommendations for those e-merchants looking to upgrade from 1.x to Magento 2? How do you see Magento growing in the coming years?
Andreas: I think that you can improve your sales with nearly everything as long as you know your customers aren’t afraid of new things. For customers looking to upgrade their shops from 1.x to 2, I would recommend (especially in Germany) a half a year of look-and-learn. Magento isn’t the cheapest ecommerce building solution and the German ecommerce market isn’t the easiest one when it comes to legal stuff. So, you have to wait for the German community to adapt the legal aspects to Magento 2 as they did for Magento 1.
Cloudways: Andreas, you attended Meet Magento Germany in 2013. What was the best moment from Meet Magento Germany you’d like to share with our readers? What do you believe are the advantages of such events for the newbies who want to involve themselves in the Magento community?
Andreas: In the beginning, I saw all of those events as “guys in suits selling stuff” with a little bit of tech talk. But, things went well for developers in Europe in such meetings, especially with the Magento Hackathons nearby these events. The best part is the one where you meet friends you haven’t seen for a long time. I would recommend Hackathons for development newbies. Meet Magento and Hackathon events come with the advantage of face-to-face meeting a lot of experienced individuals.
Cloudways: Magento uses extensions and modules. Which five extensions would you recommend for each Magento web store to deploy?
Andreas: It depends. It depends on nearly everything, for e.g. your budget, your infrastructure, your future plans, your products and your market focus. But, I like the modules from Fabrizio Branca. They are always well thought-out and practical. And for German marketeers, MageSetup is a necessity.
Cloudways: We’ve talked a lot about Magento, 🙂 Let’s step aside from that. Tell us about your personal interests. How do you spend your free-time? I follow you on Facebook and I’ve seen some of your surfing pictures. Share some of your best surfing advice.
Andreas: Beside watching 18 terminal windows on 3 monitors, I’m a big fan of outdoor leisure. Kitesurfing is a great sport to do. I love nearly all kind of watersports, but kitesurfing is special. My best advice is the same: Learn from your own mistakes. For kitesurfing, the strategies will give you more pain than learning Magento, but in both cases, there is more to stick.
Cloudways: Everyone has some inspiration behind their success. Name some people from the Magento Community who have inspired you the most?
Andreas: The most inspiring people I have met are: Fabian Blechschmidt, Rico Neitzel and Silvain Rayé.
Editor’s Note: The interview has been edited for the sake of clarity.
Abdur Rahman
Abdur Rahman is the Magento whizz at Cloudways. He is growth ambitious, and aims to learn & share information about Ecommerce & Magento Development through practice and experimentation. He loves to travel and explore new ideas whenever he finds time. Get in touch with him at [email protected]
