Today, we’re back with another success story of the amazing Magento agency: Staylime, which has been keeping businesses on top of their game for years now. Here’s the story of how they started and grew to become a known name in the industry, and what’s in store for them in the future.
Without further ado, let’s jump in!
How It All Started
Staylime was acquired by Mageworx, a renowned Magento extension developer, some 5 years ago. At the time, Mageworx was already a well-established company that only developed their own products with no focus on providing Magento-related services.
The agency, on the other hand, was exploring new markets and opportunities. It offered Mageworx a hand in processing customer requests on extension customization, bespoke development, and store maintenance & support. Fast-forward 5 years, and Staylime is now a well-known company that engineers unique ecommerce solutions which drive measurable results for niche leaders around the globe.
We All Learn From Our Mistakes
For Staylime, the best business lesson they learned was always considering new business development activities from different perspectives.
A few years ago when they first started marketing activities, they were challenged by prioritizing what services to promote given their limited resources. Since Magento 1 was coming to its end-of-life, they opted to migrate Magento 1 to Magento 2, since this would be more in demand. However, they failed to properly estimate the amount of time it would take them to spread the word and get themselves out there in a highly competitive marketing environment. Long story short, by the time they had sufficient visibility to start receiving first requests, Magento 1’s EOL had already come to pass.
The moral they took from the story: never underestimate the complexity or implication of any business development endeavor, no matter how timely or smart you think it is.
The Big Break
Staylime is known for staying ahead of the curve. Last year, Adobe awarded them the status of an Adobe Bronze Solution Partner, acknowledging their capacity to drive customer success with Adobe Experience Cloud solutions, and address customer needs through the design, development, and deployment of Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce.
Besides, major Magento extension vendors, including Mageworx, Amasty, and Firebear, also entrusted them as distinguished development partners with the implementation and customization of their solutions. Throughout the years, Staylime has laid hands on hundreds of customizations of varying complexities, ultimately partnering up with these extension builders to gain immediate access to their professional first-hand advice.
And that, in turn, helped them to start making better programming decisions when introducing changes to their products. All-in-all, their work is now held to an exceptionally high standard by these leaders of the ecommerce domain, something Staylime takes great pride in.
Staylime has also launched its first product for Magento 2 — Event Management Extension — which allows merchants to create, manage, and sell online events effortlessly. They’ll continue to move in the product direction: two more Staylime’s extensions will be available soon. Stay tuned!
Magento – For the Long Run
Staylime opted for Magento since it’s the most scalable and feature-rich platform on the market. Gartner named Magento a Leader in its 2020 Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce, recognizing the platform’s wide commerce scope, including advanced solutions for order management, shipping, and analytics. As they say, building ecommerce websites on Magento is like sculpting with clay: you can shape it into anything you like.
Staylime is set on staying with Magento for many years to come, citing the platform’s constant evolution and, under Adobe’s ownership, the expansion of its commercial capabilities. As far as Staylime is concerned, no other platform provides developers with the same flexibility and functionality as Magento 2.
Secret Recipe at the Laboratory
As Staylime says,
“We aren’t quite eager to share our secrets as these are the things that allow us to stay well ahead of the competition and we want to keep things that way.
What we can share, however, is that when delivering each and every store, we first build a solid foundation for an effective UX design. Through exploratory domain-specific research, deep domain analysis with industry-renowned tools, and the study of customer’s business requirements, we create a step-by-step action plan to deliver the best user experience possible and drive better customer engagement, ensuring higher conversion rates and more sales.
That, among other things, includes but is not limited to the analysis of the current digital experience of the customer’s target audience, the implementation of latest trends based on reports from renowned UX leaders, identification and prioritization of customer journey bottlenecks in other stores within the same niche to be able to develop a better UI and not make the same mistakes, and the implementation of UX patterns based on industry’s best practices, our own experience, and a comprehensive research of the customer’s business domain.
It is only after that that we align these findings with the aesthetics of the customer’s niche and wrap it in a beautiful and functional Magento-based store.”
Importance For Magento Hosting
With a platform as powerful and resource-intensive as Magento, choosing the right hosting solution is of the utmost importance. Magento-based stores require advanced hosting infrastructure to unleash the platform’s power and ensure flawless website operation. Failing to choose the proper hosting service might have a negative impact on site speed, scalability, and security and, as a result, hamper the entire ecommerce business.
Therefore, Staylime recommends their clients not opt for free Magento website hosting plans. Though free hosting might be tempting for those on a tight budget, it’s not capable of supporting live traffic and high performance.
To choose the best solution for our clients’ businesses, Staylime analyzes their requirements and available managed and unmanaged hosting options. They recommend unmanaged hosting to those entrepreneurs who want to have control over their server and its software components, whilst managed hosting is a better match for those looking for simplicity and ease of use.
Advice to Merchants
When searching for a reliable solution partner, Staylime recommends paying attention to their website.
“Stay away from the vendor whose website looks messy — that’s a sure sign of low competence and inability to provide you with the desired level of service. The vendor’s website content should provide you with detailed information on how the development company can help you with your project rather than be a pompous ‘we-can-do-it-all-just-get-in-touch’ self-description.
Also, browse through customer reviews on Clutch.co or similar resources to gain insight into the way vendor’s business processes are organized, their communication style, experience, strengths, and weaknesses. Don’t hesitate to ask past clients for references if you need more information. This will help you make an informed decision.”
What’s the Future for Magento
“Ecommerce systems with a traditional monolithic architecture are considered to be rigid and complex; therefore, we’re currently witnessing a shift to headless ecommerce. By decoupling the frontend and the backend that communicate via API, merchants can create an innovative shopping experience that increases customer loyalty and sales. A headless approach allows business owners to integrate their online stores with multiple systems like POS and ERP. Thus, they no longer need to be bound by the limitations of a single system. We believe that integrations will be even easier and faster in the future.
Magento is definitely a part of it. Adobe is currently focused on improving GraphQL coverage for B2C and is planning to introduce B2B coverage, which is a step forward to a headless future. GraphQL already powers the Magento PWA studio project, and Adobe’s focus on improving its functionality demonstrates their intentions towards making it the primary API for the Magento frontend.
We see a strong correlation between headless architecture and PWAs. Magento continues to invest heavily in PWA capabilities for its platform, providing its customers with a number of benefits: rich user experiences, fast performance, SEO capabilities, and push notifications, to name a few. With the increased adoption of PWA websites, the development costs will decrease, making them more accessible for merchants.”
Team Motivation
The ability to be part of a team with great professional and human values, while also staying on the edge of what’s happening in the ecommerce domain and Magento in particular, is arguably the best driver. But it’s not only that. Staylime commits to delivering decent results to our customers and not tolerating subpar output, undependability risks, and shared responsibility.
This attitude allows every member of the team to get involved in each project way beyond their own scope of work and makes them care for the overall outcome rather than their own part. This sense of involvement, in turn, motivates all of them to become better, and thus allows them to constantly take the company to newer heights.
“At the end of the day, what is a mechanism but a sum of its parts, right?”
Advice to Magento Ecosystem
“If you’re just beginning your journey with Magento, welcome to the community. You’ve already made the right decision to join over 300,000 developers worldwide, who constantly share their knowledge and provide answers to popular questions online — so you’ll never be alone. We know it’s hard to get started and compete with the veterans in Magento development, but if you’re zealous and ambitious, you’ll achieve the desired goals.”
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]
