We are always looking for the stories of successful agencies and ecommerce stores so that others can take inspiration and achieve their dream by following the successful examples. In today’s episode of the Agency’s Success stories, we are interviewing Vitali Dudin, CEO at Mageworx.
Mageworx is one of the pioneers in the Magento 2 extension development. Established back in 2008, one year after the release of the first public Magento 1 beta version, Mageworx has grown and developed together with Magento. Today, they offer a wide range of Magento 1 and Magento 2 extensions and several related services.
For a change, we will let Vitali tell the story himself.
How It All Started?
We started the company about 12 years ago with one extension―Sitemap Suite. Back in 2008, it was the first and only SEO-related product on the market. As of today, there must be more than 20 similar solutions by other vendors. And Mageworx was just two of us, two bright-eyed and bushy-tailed developers coding in the evenings and nights after our full-time jobs. Was it easy? It surely was not. But “success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.” (~Pele)
Marketing Taught Us the Best Business Lessons
All new businesses face the same difficulties at the start. One of them is marketing.
As a startup, businesses plunge into developing a new solution with the prime focus on making it stable, bug-free, and feature-reach. While concentrating on the technical parts, many give up on, postpone, or cut corners on marketing. That’s probably the mistake we made in the beginning when we tried to set our first product. Without the help of a marketing professional, it can be challenging to get your solution or service noticed by the intended audience.
But wait, there is more:
The hallmark of Magento is the full compliance of solutions with the official development standards. Thus, make sure you do not underestimate the importance of product quality and testing as the critical stage of the development lifecycle.
Top-notch, highly-responsive, and professional technical support is also a must. Customer queries must be addressed fast and effectively.
Employees Are Important!
The biggest Mageworx achievement is our team. It took us years to piece together the one-of-a-kind team of like-minded professionals. Every member of the Mageworx family is an expert in a specific field, passionate about what we do, open to new endeavors, always learning, and self-improving.
Every Mageworx employee is important and highly appreciated. We do our best to ensure our team members get to work in a positive, friendly environment. Every person is welcome to share their business ideas and must be heard. And importantly, we do our best to ensure these ideas are brought to life.
Why Magento?
We made our choice long ago and have never had any regrets. Open source, highly secure, well-supported, flexible, scalable, with multi-store functionality―the platform has proved to be effective through many years and has an enormous community of passionate developers.
Bring True Value For the Customers
I won’t surely throw all the cards on the table, but the mechanism is rather simple. You must know the platform upside-down and understand the merchant’s needs to the full.
Keeping these two aspects in mind will let you come up with a solution aimed at filling in a specific functionality gap and bringing true value to the merchants using Magento 2.
Motivation During COVID-19 Pandemic
Though the doors of our office remained open, we had to revamp some of our internal processes to ensure all Mageworx employees stay safe, healthy, and positive. Now, our team is free to choose the working environment that is the most comfortable for them, either remote, in-house, or mixed.
We do our best to ensure the communication with the team is regular, honest, and enthusiastic. Before the pandemic, we used to order pizzas in the office regularly. As of now, we try to stick to this good tradition and order food to our employees’ homes occasionally to cheer them up.
Think creatively, and work collaboratively – this approach probably describes our attitude to the work during the COVID-19 pandemic the best.
Remembering Magento 1
Remember that we all had two years to get ready for Magento 1 End Of Life. The platform has been around for over a decade, and an impressive number of stores are built upon Magento 1.
The migration process to M2 takes time and requires an investment that goes beyond money. SEO, security, design, site architecture, extensions migration―depending on the complexity of the store. The process resembles building an entirely new site, which is not a trivial initiative.
Nevertheless, as Magento 1 keeps functioning without the official support and security updates, the platform is becoming less secure and more vulnerable to nefarious actors. It makes the migration process logical and inevitable, as well as partnering with trusted development companies that can give you a hand in keeping their sites secure, protecting customer data, and merchants’ reputation.
Tips & Tricks For Newbies
Magento has it all to let you think big. Make sure every sunrise brings you an opportunity to learn new things, acquire and develop new skills.
Besides the technical aspect, the beauty and power of Magento is its distinct community. Multiple passionate developers are ready to pitch in, share their experience, or a piece of advice. Either paid or free, either video or documented, either official or contributed, you will find a great many learning resources to grow as a Magento professional instantly. Make the most of it!
Don’t be afraid to search. Explore eCommerce and the needs of a merchant. It will help you go further duplicating and create a new product, solution, or service that will bring true value. It will make you distinct.
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]
