As an online entrepreneur, you must have definitely tried hands on almost every available online promotional tool. Well, if you aren’t receiving the expected results from your web-based business website, then it’s time to create your very own mobile app that can enable you to reach out to a wider group of target audience. Do remember that your business growth is actually interdependent on your key ability to tap on multiple resources.
What you’ll find in this post?
Fortunately, today, we have a quick access to some of the finest tools that can allow us to come up with our kind of Magento mobile application. With mobile commerce being on the forefront, paying less attention to the concept of mobile optimization for your business is something you should avoid as a whole. In today’s post, I’ll be offering you some interesting insights on using Magento Mobile for creating an iPhone or Android mobile application. This app would enable you to sell products from your Magento setup.
Magento Mobile App Development – knowing the key pros
Marketing your products/services to all possible platforms serves as a viable option for increasing your business profits. Choosing to take your Magento store to a mobile platform will enable you to drive maximum benefits for the store audiences. Have a look at few of the most talked about advantages of Magento powered mobile business apps:
- Quick and easy to set up
- Can be quickly integrated with other mobile apps
- Empowering customers to shop online even while on a move
- Backed by multiple device and multiple store support to drive in new customers for your business
- Optimum use of popular M-Commerce marketing features like scanner, barcode, push messages, integrated mobile coupons etc.
Magento Mobile – A quick overview
Considered as world’s most popular Magento mobile app extension, Magento Mobile allows you to build apps for iOS and Android using a single extension. Here are the steps, which mark the working of Magento Mobile:
Step 1– A backend code will add different things to the cart, in addition to fetching products, categories etc. from the database.
Step 2 – The execution of this backend code is being handled by an XML rendering system
Step 3 – The resultant XML is then sent back to the smartphone device
Step 4 – The binary application residing on the smartphone will process the XML and ensure that the pixels on the device look and function similar to the Magento powered e-store. It is the XMLConnect module, which allows Magento to do the same. It will create XML requests/responses.
Some more useful insights on Magento’s XMLConnect
Well, Magento’s XMLConnect is an extension that comes pre-installed in Magento CE 1.5 and all the higher Magento versions. As a fantastic extension that serves your Magento mobile application, XMLConnect has been immensely used and recommended by Magento mobile app developers across the globe. The basic purpose of XMLConnect extension is to serve your iOS/Android application with all the requested data such as product information, product category listing etc. followed by executing the desired actions like login, buy, check out etc. As a summary of the entire process, it is your application which sends a request like a plain HTTP GET/POST request to the Magento store(installed with XMLConnect) and responds with a particular XML result.
XMLConnect extension – In Action
Now, the steps associated with creation of a new Magento mobile application are listed below:
Step 1 – Setup your Magento store on the chosen web server along with some sample data (for e.g.: images, video etc.)
Step 2 – Login to your Magento admin dashboard and go to Mobile-> Manage Apps and click on ‘Add new mobile application‘ link.
Step 3 – Next, install Magento Mobile on your chosen device
Step 4 – Now, start Magento Mobile on your device using the Magento e-store’s URL along with the app code of the Magento application you created using Magento admin -> Mobile (as already stated in step no.2)
Here, you also need to keep a vigil eye on the activity log file to view exactly what your newly created Magento application is actually requesting from the web server. Here is an example:
Below is the application configuration request:
/xmlconnect/configuration/index/app_code/defand1/screen_size/460×800
In the above request, an app code i.e. “defand1” has been recognized along with the device’s screen size i.e. “460×800”. Now, to check the result of this request, simply head on to the browser and navigate to
http://magentoivica.loc/xmlconnect/configuration/index/app_code/defand1/screen_size/460×800
In the above URL, don’t forget to replace “magentoivica.loc” with the name of your web server. The end result of this would be an entire configuration (similar to the one set in the Magento admin) of your new Magento app in the XML format.
Here’s hoping the above example would have enabled you to explore multiple capabilities of XMLConnect. I recommended digging deeper into the code of XMLConnect so as to master some additional contemporary actions like the checkout process etc.
Conclusion
Magento e-commerce mobile apps have always turned out to be the right tools for result-driven promotion of business products and services. Here’s hoping the details covered in this post would have enabled you to get familiar with creation of a truly stunning Magento enriched mobile app.
