Top Ten Reasons To Choose Magento As Your E-Commerce Platform

Why is Magento the best choice for your business ?

Boost Your Online Presence by eCommerce Web Development

In the age of technology and internet, having an online business for your company’s online presence in mandatory. There are plenty of people who are going to tell you how important an online presence is, which is why it is important for you to understand the concept of eCommerce website development and the need for such a presence. Once you understand the concept behind eCommerce website development, you can understand why its presence is such an important deal. There are plenty of people who are looking out for a good company to hire eCommerce web developers and get all their needs fulfilled.

Advantages of eCommerce Website Development

There are certain characteristics that a good website needs to have. With the latest technological strategies, you can now hire the best web developers who are going to construct a website that will market your product and service online. This is perhaps the best type of eCommerce website development till date. Since there many things to keep in mind it is good to know that a website developed by the best E-Commerce Web Developers in the market is going to help you to get a website that will be friendly to the audience and easy for you to manage. It is also important that you get a website design developer who is going to keep your best interests in mind. Since there are many companies who offer eCommerce website development solutions, make sure you take your time and only hire a company or hire eCommerce Web Developers who are fully qualified and professional. They should keep your return on investment and your ideas in mind, before they implement a project.

Characteristics of a Good Online Website

1. The website should be search engine friendly, and should be constructed in such a way where your website is caught by the important search engines.

2. A big part of eCommerce website development is to make sure that you have a website that is appealing and informative to the audience. This includes several things such as being user friendly, having good content, quick to load, and many more.

3. The eCommerce web developers should also make sure that the website they design are easy to maintain and update by you and your staff.

4. Gives you the required reports that are going to help you to explore other opportunities, measure your performance, and optimize your business needs.

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Bloggers Vs WordPress: What you need to know?

Most of us have heard of both these blogging platforms: Wordpress and Blogger. But how much do we know about each of these? In this article, we take a look at the positives and obstacles in each platform these platforms and compare them on the parameters of flexibility, customization and ease of use.

If you want to customize your blog, you get added freedom with Wordpress (something Wordpress doesn't offer) as Wordpress is Open Source. When you choose Wordpress, you gain full access 2 the database and all the image files in the Wordpress platform including the PHP and CSS files. Now what happens when you can access the entire Wordpress system?

When you have access to the whole of the Wordpress CMS, you can be as creative as you like with the effect that your blog will have functionalities that normally won’t be a part of websites built on other platforms. A small caveat here: you don't get this functionality if your website is hosted on Wordpress.com. But you will still be able to host files other than images like PDFs, Office and Word files. 

 

Where Wordpress Scores

One of the difficult things to do when it comes to Blogger is manipulating your XML schema. Here, most users choose customized templates. But the problem with Blogger is that their documentation is sparse though some of Blogger’s tags are indeed documented. 

 

Wordpress scores here with the advantage of greater flexibility when you categorize posts. Users do not have sub-categories with labels on Blogger. On the other hand, substitute-categories are an integral part of the Wordpress environment.

Usability

Wordpress gives you free hosting for up to 3GB of space in comparison to Blogger which gives you only 1. But apart from that, it is Blogger that scores on the usability front. It is very easy to start if you are a lay user. On a Wordpress self-hosted blog, you need to download the software, upload it to a server, configure the database settings and run the installation program included in the software. 

 

So, Wordpress does emerge stronger though Blogger is easier to start with. We’ll look at more on these platforms in our upcoming articles!

The Two Principal Approaches to Redesigning Your Website

The question that occupies everyone that wants to redesign his or her website is will entail a complete overhaul of the website’s design, layout, content and user experience? Most companies go for the jugular when redesigning their website, ending up with budgets overshooting but conversions plummeting. So what is the right website redesign strategy? Will a mere redesign lift your sales and revenue? That’s what we’ll be looking at in this article. 

 

Traditional Website Redesign

The first step in website redesign is to analyse risk. Risk analysis involves enumerating the number of changes that you make in redesigning the website and also the scale and impact of those changes. Let us say that you propose to change your home page title and layout as also the navigation bar. Now the first two fall under the category of sweeping changes as their reach and impact on the customer’s mind is more pronounced. 

 

Some of the most common changes that people do in a website redesign is:

• Changing the home page title(s)
• Changing the images and icons
• New graphic designs with headlines
• Changed call-to-action buttons
• New navigation and forms
  
  

The Right Approach

The right web design approach would have a mechanism in place to measure the changes in web design against user traffic on the website. The key is to undertake a redesign that improves user experience while conforming to the same objectives that your business is built on.

This can be done only with the help of a correct conversion optimization strategy. Formulate proper test cases with timely executions and separate them from one another to make informed inferences about user preferences. This would mean getting the right alpha and beta tests to mitigate risk.

Evolutionary Site Design

A much better way to redesign your website would be to undertake what is called Evolutionary Site design (ESR). This approach posits continuous improvement in place of a complete overhaul in website design.

In ESR, you need to separately list out all components of your website in order of customer preference. From home page titles to product page templates to service value proposition statements, you need to measure and test every component step by step against customer traffic.

This way, you not only bring about a more gradual and well thought out design change that can be fully measured and also rolled back in parts. So, which way are you going to go?

5 Steps to Success in eCommerce

If you are planning to build an ecommerce website for your business, then you must have a clear idea of what you’re going to do at the start. What is ecommerce? It is simply the process of transacting business, namely the buying and selling of goods over the internet. But with maddening competition and rising customer expectation you need to ensure you have the right strategy in place to take you to the top. So, what do you need to get right?

1. Unclutter The Sales Process 

 

When you design your website, look at how many clicks a customer has to make before he eventually makes the purchase. Study after study has found that the primary reason why people abandon a shopping cart before making a purchase is due to the number of stages that they need to pass before finally making a payment.

2. Are Your Customers Aware of Product Availability?

The customer needs to know beforehand whether the product he wants to buy is available or not. Customers get annoyed when they make the effort to order the product, add it to the catalog, and get until the ‘purchase’ button only to find that the product itself is unavailable. The customer will go, in this case never to return.

3. Make Your Site Compatible Across Browsers

Cross-browser compatibility is essential if your business is to reach customers across boundaries. Browser preferences vary across the world, and though Chrome has become the numero uno in that category, other browsers still hold sway over large populations and you need to ensure that your ecommerce website is perfectly viewable in them.

4. Use Graphics, But Make Them Simple

Images are better than words and Graphics do play a positive role in enriching the overall customer experience. But make sure you don't have too much of them so they take a toll on your website performance. Optimize your graphics for the web or otherwise your website may take too long to load and kill the very purpose of attracting more customers.

5. Move Towards a One-Step Checkout Process 

 

However responsive and well-designed your website may be, the customer will not make a purchase on your website without your payment system being secure and efficient. Host your website on a secure server and make sure your payment system is PCI-DSS compliant, has email and multi-payment options and is customized for your website.

5 Steps to Sucess in #eCommerce - http://t.co/Oujsaf8OgK

— Lydia Shah (@Lydia_shah) September 8, 2015

The 5 Top WordPress E-Commerce Plugins

Wordpress might be simple, but it is certainly not short of functionality. Many people are of the opinion that it is a platform to build blogs. This view does a great injustice to the immense capabilities of Wordpress especially in fields such as ecommerce. Its versatility is evidenced by its wide range of capabilities that allows customers to go live with a well-designed and secure online store while saving much on costs as well. 

 

This article looks at 5 of the top Wordpress plugins and their specific functionality, including area they could improve upon. 

 

1. WP eCommerce

Though now surpassed by the Woocommerce plugin, WP eCommerce still offers a wide range of features and is used by a large number of people all over the world. That WP eCommerce has a huge community and is led and driven by it is a great advantage though some of its features still have limiting conditions.

2. Woocommerce

The official No.1 in the league, Woocommerce has cemented its position as the default plugin for Wordpress. The Wordpress themes shop WooThemes maintains Woocommerce and the plugin ia actively supported by its developer community. The only disadvantage of this plugin is that it is priced quite high with just a 1 year license. 
                                                                     But people still think it’s worth paying for its sheer 
                                                                     ease-of-use!

3. Shopp

Feature-rich and packed with immense configuration capabilities, Shopp combines a free plugin with paid support. Almost all of its features have strikingly different features from what you would have seen elsewhere. Coupons is a case in point. With a good add-on price and a detailed feature-set, Shopp is definitely up there with the best plugins Wordpress has on offer. Now, if only it had a few more payment providers!

4. Cart66

You must have heard of this plugin owing to its price. But do you know that it also offers features free for which others charge a fee? Cart66 (Pro, not its Cloud counterpart) is a Wordpress plugin that gives you total value for money on the security front. On the payment front too, Cart66 stands head and shoulders above the rest. Its compatibility with almost any Wordpress plugin and its rich-feature set have fuelled its rise to the top.

5. MarketPress

MarketPress is a Wordpress ecommerce plugin that differs from the rest in that it allows you to run multiple stores yourself. With stock notification for different products, coupon tracking facility, and even giving third-party vendors the power to run your store, MarketPress is a plugin that is immense in its versatility. Coming to the price tag ($19), though it might seem very low, you actually need to pay much more for supports and upgrades!

A Look at How B2C is Influencing B2B eCommerce

With businesses looking to get a share of the mindspace of the customer, it is B2C ecommerce that attracts the most attention in the eye of the media. But across the world, it is B2B ecommerce that is driving sales. But the explosion of B2B ecommerce has meant that some quintessential B2C characteristics have spilled over to the B2B market as well. This article takes a look at both these models and some of their commonalities.

The B2B space

In the one to many B2B ecommerce business model, companies have their own online B2B store in which customers can purchase goods. This is a simple model but requires a well-oiled, sophisticated supply chain infrastructure to back it. 

 

B2B online sales isn’t going anywhere, it is here to stay for the long run. And the growth of B2B ecommerce is mainly going to come from the surge in mobile phone buying across the world. This has set off a race among companies to put out mobile versions of their products as the smartphone era has got people buying and selling with abandon at the touch of a screen.

The B2C impact?

In the many-to-many model, many companies join to form an extensive private network, or a marketplace that is open to suppliers of all hues. Now, this is administered by a third-party who has the expertise necessary to see it through. 

 

Studies have shown that B2B companies can greatly reduce their costs if only they guided customers to an online ecommerce environment that is self-service oriented. But the crucial difference between B2B and B2C comes with fluctuation of prices. With customer-specific prices and discounts that vary based on who is selling how much, B2C has much more of unpredictable price changes than its content counterpart. 

 

So how exactly has B2C influenced B2B ecommerce? Well, in many important areas:

• Customization
• Making catalogs more attractive
• Inventory availability in real time

With facilities like real-time inventory availability, B2B has made itself more attractive to the lay businessman because it does away with unnecessary third-party links in the supply chain. Add customer reviews to customization and personalization and you get an almost B2C-like environment!

A Peek into Magento for the Uninitiated

Magento has remained the No.1 ecommerce platform ever since its inception in March 2008. Robust, flexible and Open Source, it is built on the Zend framework and delivers just what the customer wanted. The leader though it is, it’s not difficult to learn for all you need is sound knowledge of HTML and CSS and you will learn the rest with the Magento environment itself. 

 

The Building Blocks of Magento 

 

Now, to build an ecommerce website with Magento, you need to be familiar with the MVC pattern. The MVC (Model-View-Controller) design pattern is used to separate an application’s concerns with the model representing an object, the view representing the visualisation of data and the controller acting as both, essentially controlling the data flow.

But there are many other components apart from the models and the views in Magento. When you look at the code of Magento, you will find many modules without views. On the other hand, you will find additional modules such as ‘sql’, ‘helper’ etc. What you need to understand here is that Magento has its own set of modules each having their own M’s and V’s and C’s. These modules create the separate portions inside a typical Magento page replete with the headers, links, footers, mini-carts, and so on. 

 

The Magento code structure is extremely well-designed in the sense that there exists a clear distinction between the ‘core’ code and community ‘third-party’ code. What does that mean for you? This means that you can install third party extension and modules without any fear of it impacting your site’s essential look and feel.

Now, with this Magento is able to achieve some great features such as product comparison, CMS system for static pages, layered navigation, multistore feature and much more. It is able to achieve all this with its superior API integration that other ecommerce platforms still have a lot to learn from. As to how Magento does this, wait till the next article!

Multichannel E-Commerce and The Issues Involved

Ecommerce is no more an alternative. It has grown to become ‘the’ thing for those in the retail sector. In fact, normal store business has become a second option for many businesses that are actively looking at furthering their customer base in the ecommerce sector. But still, the gross B2B revenue is hardly a tenth of the total B2B revenue volume. 

 

Now, what does this mean? This means that while the sector continues to experience high growth, the potential for B2B growth in the online space is extremely high. This has to be seen in the backdrop of the huge rose in demand for mobile devices. The surge for the mobile has in turn, pushed B2B ecommerce prospects further up. 

 

What does a multichannel ecommerce website give you?

A multichannel or a cross channel ecommerce platform gives you the opportunity to sell your products and services not just in one channel, but in every available channel. In effect, you’re having multiple ecommerce websites while you have only one in reality. Inventory management, sales orders, customer details, payment integration are all integrated in one centralised location.

This brings us to our first problem: Database systems and process integration. Now the backend of your ecommerce website includes the modules like order to cash, inventory management, supply chain, finance and payment integration. Now, to make all these available in all channels such as Amazon, ebay, or even the traditional MOTO or EPOS is quite a difficult task. This calls for an expert ecommerce architect and developer (or a team of developers). Do you have one?

The second issue is Content. No matter what mode of ecommerce you are in, the consumer looks for quality content. It is based on the description of a product that a customer selects it. And you need to ensure that your content is not needlessly elaborate while at the same time not missing out on any essential details. Try to keep your content as crisp as possible as users will most probably log in to your website through their mobiles.

The third issue is the paucity of expertise in digital marketing. Today, if any business wants to be a step ahead of its rivals, it needs to make a success out of its digital marketing campaign. But lack of experts contributes to a dearth of knowledge here. A B2B ecommerce platform will greatly help address the paucity of expertise in digital marketing by spawning research and new methods that help businesses increase their foothold in their respective spaces.

Why Magento Continues to Dominate?

Today’s customers expect nothing short of a complete website experience when they enter an ecommerce website. Ecommerce has diversified greatly in the last few years. It started as a sector that catered to the online buying and selling of particular niche products in the market. But over a period of time, as users began to see the inherent advantages of buying products without having to move out of their comfort zones (along with increased competition leading to lowering prices), the ecommerce scene began to explode.

 The Specifics Behind its Eminence

Even in this highly competitive environment, one platform continues to dominate the scene. Yes, that is Magento. As we mentioned in the beginning of the article, customers are looking at websites that satisfy all their expectations. That means delivery on security, user-centric design, ease of use, hybrid functionality and overall user experience. 

 

While other platforms perform exceedingly well on some of these parameters, Magento delivers on all these fronts and that is the reason for its continued success in the ecommerce scene.

Easier Customization

One of the principal advantages with Magento is that it provides for easier customization than its competitors. With a large number of extensions, you get to truly customize your ecommerce website according to your business requirements. 

 

It is the look and feel of your website that first attracts the user. And what decides this look and feel? It is your design. Now, add hassle-free theme design and integration in Magento’s list and you get to see why it remains attractive. 

 

Easier Payment Gateway and Social Media Integration

The best and most profitable way of promoting your website or attracting visitors to your website today, is to drive social media promotions. And Magento does this wonderfully through its integration with different social media platforms like Google+, facebook, twitter, linkedin etc.

And speaking of payment gateways, this is the most important part of your ecommerce website, one that decides whether customers are just going to visit your website or are they really going to make a purchase there. And, Magento makes the job much simpler with its payment customization standing out for its simplicity and ease of integration.

What we’ve mentioned here are just some of the advantages that go into making Magento the numero uno platform in ecommerce. For more on Magento and how it compares vis-a-vis the rest in its field, watch this space!

Exciting and Effective Magento Extensions

If you are one of those ecommerce merchants who never tire of adding features and exciting functionality to your ecommerce website, this piece is for you. Now you must be knowing what modules are. They are a bunch of XML and PHP files that allow the system to extend its functionality apart from its defined core functions.

Over the past few years, Magento has emerged as one of the leading ecommerce solutions that is constantly pushing the boundaries of innovation by coming up with new tricks and extensions every now and then. This article looks at some of the exciting Magento extensions from the Magento Community Edition and Enterprise edition.

6 Great Magento Extensions That You Should Know 

Better Store Search : It is found that about 70 percent of shoppers say that store search plays an important role in shopping cart development. When that is the case, a good site search is extremely important and this extension provides you precisely that with plenty of search control.

Udropship : Drop shipping is an ecommerce store’s inventory expansion key. In other words, include items that might otherwise be too expensive when shipped to a warehouse only to be shipped again to a customer.

GoMage Light Checkout : This is one of the fastest and most efficient extensions you can find for your checkout. While it brings all the web pages to one single page, all it requires is that customers can simply click “add to Cart” and instantly move on to the checkout page. So you can tell yourself, No more repeated clicks and wasting time”

Sweet Tooth : One of the best extension appreciated by online merchants as it supports loyalty points and rewards for customers who buy products consistently. This ecommerce solution thoroughly integrates and has been shown boost sales.

FishPig’s WordPress Integration : WordPress is among the best open source blogging and content management systems on the market and this extension seamlessly integrates into Magento.

AvaTax : across the U.S new tax laws in jurisdictions can greatly complicate your sales tax collection. Using AvaTax extension will help you easily integrate with the core Magento functionality. Despite the fact that this extension is free, it does require software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution.

A Brief Look at Magento, X-Cart and OsCommerce

There are a plethora of ecommerce platforms that colour the ecommerce market today. But, which one you choose could well determine the prospects of your business five or ten years from now. Whatever may be the differences of opinion on other issues, there can be no disagreement that Magento, Oscommerce and X-cart are the 3 leading ecommerce platforms of the day. This article looks at their features and advantages briefly.

Magento

 Magento is the undisputed leader of the shopping cart market in the world today. It is an Open Source shopping cart that provides you, the user with enormous flexibility and control over the look and feel, content and functionality of the store. The other major advantage of Magento is that it is extremely feature-rich. Some of its top features are:

1. It provides you with targeted promotion and merchandising

2. You get product suggestion tools, with ratings and reviews

3. It provides you with useful customer segmentation

4. Search engine optimization

5. Multiple payment and shipping options among others

X-Cart

Second to none, this is an ecommerce platform based on PHP smarty templates. Feature-rich, secure and flexible, it actually combines all the characteristics that you look for in an ecommerce platform pretty neatly. If you’re looking to build a multi-functionality ecommerce website with lot of products on offer and huge user traffic, you should seriously consider X-Cart. Let’s look at its top features:

1. Highly customizable, flexible and scalable ecommerce platform

2. Multiple product and multiple language support with maximum flexibility

3. Complete integration with all major payment gateways

4. Fully search engine friendly which improves your visibility greatly.

OsCommerce

If you need a platform that offers you multiple functionalities but still can be setup quickly with considerable ease, then you must go for Oscommerce. Your web server needs to support PHP and MySQL to run Oscommerce. Some of its features that stand out are:

1. Broadened customization with an OS that is easy to administer

2. One of the best ecommerce platforms with extensible multilingual functionality

3. Minimal risk of corruption of files as all content is stored as reference files in text format

4. Made for mobile, with product comparison features and multiple currency support embedded

The Key Security Essentials For E-commerce Websites

Ecommerce security is one of the most important topics being discussed by programmers and business owners alike. Now as a business, you would definitely want your ecommerce website to be as secure and integrated as possible. But what is the modus operandi that you would adopt to make it happen? This question assumes all the more importance given the fact that cyber warfare and threats are increasing in their complexity and efficacy almost every day.

A great example of this is the latest security vulnerability of ecommerce websites that is being exploited by all and sundry, the ‘Poodle’. This is an SSL3 vulnerability that only requires you to disable SSL3 both on the client side and the server side. So, what is the way out? 

• Ensure SSL and PCI certification
   

If you’re a business owner, make sure that the solution that your service provider gives you has SSL encryption. The SSL (Secure sockets layer) encryption is a must if you want to ensure a secure communication channel between client and server. 

 

If it’s a payment portal or gateway, then a PCI-DSS (Payment card industry data security standard) certification is a must. Trusted solution providers will generally only provide solutions that are PCI-DSS certified as they know users won’t even look at making payments otherwise.

• Store only the customer data required 
   

Most payment websites today offer what is called the Storecard feature where the website’s database stores the customer’s card details, wanting the customer to enter nothing other than his CVV and password. But this also has a vulnerable side to it. You may end up storing details of customers who visited your portal ages ago making your site heavy and vulnerable to attacks.

This is why you must regularly purge your website of customer data that you no longer need. Store only a small amount of customer records, just the data you need to process the funds.

• Be updated about the latest security patches

 

The Security requirements of every web application change continuously. When new threats and vulnerabilities emerge, it also spawns newer and better responses in the form of security patches. This includes everything from Wordpress to Magento updates to PHP to SSL patches. 

 

Be on the lookout for any security updates that come up from any or every corner. You never know who or what could strike you next.

5 Exciting Extensions in Magento

There are plenty of ecommerce platforms available in the market today that give you security, ease of use and responsiveness. The why does one platform seem to tower over the rest? The reason why Magento is the platform of choice for so many budding entrepreneurs and big businesses alike, is that it is easily customizable and extendable to suit your business objectives. 

 

This article looks at some of the extensions in Magento that greatly enhance your website’s functionality and usability.

Smart Menu

Every customer who visits an ecommerce website wants a simple and quick way to filter products. Magento enables this in its normal functionality itself through its default filter and categories menu. The smart menu extension simply extends that by integrating the category buttons in the sidebar of your page. With a collapse or expand feature and drop down support, it’s got all you asked for. 

 

Product Image View

Impressing your visitor or knocking him off often starts with simple things. Say your visitors want to zoom the image of a product they want to view. In many websites you can do this but when you’ve clicked it you realise that you have come out of the list or catalog list in your e-store. This extension allows you to directly view the magnified image of the product without having to leave your current page or catalog.

Enhanced Product Review

No customer today buys a product without going through its reviews and analysing threadbare its advantages and shortcomings. This is why you find certified buyer reviews becoming more and more popular across ecommerce sites. To this end, Magento has the Enhanced product review extension to help the customer read all reviews of the product they’re searching for, in a single page. Magento does this using its pagination support feature.

Easy Banner

Getting outstanding banners for your website is no more an issue thanks to the Easy banner extension of Magento. Slide any banner on your home page and attract visitors with exciting features for banners and content management. With a variety of gallery modes to choose from, Easy banner makes Banners and templates truly easy!

Gallery Pro

Ever wanted to create your own albums replete with categories and comments? Well, this extension allows you to do precisely that. It lets you create your own albums and sub-albums and organise them based on the topic or any criteria that you choose. You also have many options to view the photo in that particular category. Time-saving and easy to use, this extension has truly caught on amongst the users!