Do you run a small business? Try Wordpress

Do you run a small business? And do you plan to develop a website for your small business? Developing a small business website can be a time-consuming and if not done the right way, a downright frustrating experience. People usually start looking for recommendations from their friends, business partners, and their immediate circle. But nothing can substitute first-person analysis. You need to do the search yourself, and find out the antecedents and track record of the web development companies on the list. Or you can take the risky route: designing the site by yourself.

To avoid this, many small business owners take matters into their own hands.

Designing a website yourself can be challenging. But with the right solutions and tools, it can be a fun. So, where do you begin? The first step is to choose the CMS you want to work with. The CMS will be the shelf and shell that holds and presents your website content, including pages, blog posts and the like. The most effective (and free) Content Management System on the market today is WordPress. WordPress is not only easy to learn and use; it also very search engine friendly and displays nicely on a mobile device. Using WordPress to develop a website will require a few hours of learning and tinkering but the end result will be complete control of your website and that is empowering.

WordPress comes with several design options. WordPress uses themes to create the look and feel for your website. It helps frame and layout the content you enter. There are two kinds of themes. The first comes free when you install WordPress and the second that comes with a premium anywhere between $25-$100. Most small businesses will fork out the extra money for a premium theme simply because it eliminates the "cookie-cutter" format and allows for increased customization to help make your small business website look clean, professional and trustworthy. The money invested in a premium theme will be far less than paying a freelance designer or website design firm.

Even if you decide to hire a agency or website design shop to develop your WordPress website, the costs associated will be much less than if they develop the website from scratch. In fact, most Web design companies will prefer to use WordPress anyway and will be able to quickly customize your website; shaving weeks of the timing to launch the new site.  

3 Do's and Don'ts of Designing an effective web page

Creating an effective web page requires planning, skill, attention to detail and some creativity. But far removed from the flashy logos and picturesque backgrounds are certain things that every developer must be aware of before he/she ventures into creating a web page. In this article we look at 10 do’s and don'ts that you should know to create the web page that you’re looking for.

THE DO’S

1. Structure your page

It’s essential to keep your page structured. Use a lightweight grid system and layout the information in a structured and easy-to-follow format. 

2. Keep it simple

One of the first maxims of designing attractive web pages is that it pays to keep it simple. People hate doing things that take a lot of time. Your website should be as easy to view for a for year old as it is for a technology junkie.

3. Make it easy to navigate

Take this: People are not going to spend more than 5 minutes to figure out what your website is and what it has to offer. The best way to do this is to make your webpage easy to scan. This means using proper heading tags, streamlining content, and focussing on the important items.

THE DON'TS

1. Don't place boxes everywhere

We’ve seen it everywhere. Boxes of all sizes, flooding the place, not lined up properly, and worse not grabbing our attention too! We invariably end up closing the whole window in disgust. If you’re a web designer, you must know how to place things in a structured environment.

2. Don't place irrelevant ads across your page

We all want to make money and we need ads for it. But wait, they shouldn’t eat up your entire page space. Many web pages have 70% ads and 30% content. That should not be the case. Don't make ads your No.1 priority. That must be reserved for your visitors, always.

3. Don’t overdo images and colours

Colours and images are important, but you must be careful not to overdo them. Use them judiciously and with an innate aesthetic sense. Your colour scheme must have not more than 5 colours and go to sites that have user generated colour schemes posted.

The freedom platform-Magento ecommerce

If you’re one of those planning to open an online store, the biggest decision you will have to make is choose which ecommerce platform to use. A variety of factors weigh into this decision including ease of use, pricing, and integrations. In this article, we look at the factors you need to keep in mind when choosing an ecommerce platform, along with the leading players you can choose from

Customisations

• Magento is fully customisable but you will need to be either technical or have a developer to make the customizations for you.
• Bigcommerce and shopify lets you customise its templates by giving you access to CSS and HTML but not change features or edit the platform code.       

Open source

• Magento is open source which means that you get more flexibility and full ownership of your site, you will not be locked into somebody else’s development cycle.
• However, the responsibility is on you to maintain and support and there is little recourse if there are bugs with the system etc. There is a large community around Magento that can help you.
• BigCommerce and Shopify are SaaS apps. They develop, maintain and support the software for you. It will continue to improve without you needing to lift a finger. However, you have little control over what gets developed and when.

Add-ons, features, transaction fees

• Magento being fully customisable has as many features and add ons as you are prepared to integrate but it is less ‘out-of-the-box’ than the other two.
• BigCommerce comes with a lot of features built in with the initial pay plan so you are ready to go straight away.
• Shopify is missing a number of standard features so you will need to but some add-ons and on lower tariffs a 2% transactional fee may apply.

Your choice of ecommerce engine

Remember that this is rough ride to get you started. All of these solutions have their fans and detractors and it is really worth trailing each of them.

• Magento gives more freedom in how you build it at the cost of requiring or hiring more technical talent.
• BigCommerce and Shopify take a more template approach, building beautiful options but at the risk of looking like another company using the same template.

Managing many channels

Each of these ecommerce choices come with plugins and add-ons and a variety of tools to help you list and manage each one. The problem for a business though is that when they grow and add channels or volume how do they manage all of them as opposed to each of them? That is the stage where it makes sense to technology at the backend to act as a central hub.

Wordpress plugins that lessen your burden

According to Wordpress, a plugin is a program or a set of one or more functions written in the PHP scripting language that adds a specific set of features or services to the Wordpress weblog. Plugins can extend the functionality of your blog in almost every imaginable way. Read on to find out more about the most essential plugins for your Wordpress site.

Cache plugins

These plugins increase site speed and prevent server overload. W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache are some examples of good Cache plugins.

Social bookmarking plugins

Social bookmarking plugins allow your visitors to spread your content on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. Sharebar is a powerful toolbar that adds a floating set of social buttons to your site.

SEO plugins

SEO plugins allow you to optimize your tags, site structure, and much more to make your website more search engine friendly and improve your site rankings. Wordpress SEO by Yoast handles your SEO titles, meta descriptions, XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs, and import functionality for the Headspace2 and All in One SEO plugins.

Login protection

Brute force hacks can be nasty if your website is not properly protected. These plugins stop hackers dead in their tracks. Limited login attempts limit the number of times people can try to login before being locked out and notifies webmasters of suspicious activities. You may want to try WP Login Security.

URL management plugins

URL management plugins redirect the old URLs to the new ones and keep track of the outgoing links. Redirection keeps track of URL changes and automatically adds a 301 direction when the URL of a post is changed.

Security analysis

These plugins can identify and notify you of security threats. Better WP Security applies common security techniques to your website and can patch many holes in one shot. You may also want to try WP Malwatch and Ultimate security checker.

Maintenance plugin

All webmasters need to take time to maintain their web properties. Vaultpress is a service that maintains Wordpress sites for webmasters. It covers disaster recovery, theme and plugin scanning, migration assistance and other services.

5 Mistakes to avoid in Drupal

Among the current crop of Content Management Systems (CMS), Drupal is certainly a leading player in developing impressive content that is well tailored to the web. Drupal does require in first place, some knowledge on web design and development (for novices, there’s Wordpress). Therefore, certain things need to be taken care of when you build a Drupal website. Let us look at what you should avoid when you build a Drupal site.

Mistake 1: Overlooking security during deployment

It doesn't take much time for a developer to take possession of production code and install it on their systems. Which essentially means it is free for use by anybody who wishes to use it. While you can let developers take a few snapshots and have other access to the development environments otherwise, do not allow access to the production environment except to those who are involved.

Mistake 2: Repair (is not) better than maintenance?

By all means, Drupal has gained the reputation of a well-built CMS that is expected to stay for a long while. However, keeping things updated ensures an optimum experience for your visitors. If gone unnoticed, chances are that the site may be hacked which of course, would cost you much more.

Mistake 3: Outdated code for Core as well as contributed Modules.

Some times, businesses do prefer outdated code thinking it will save them some money. But ask developers, they will tell you that keeping all modules and core as current as possible holds you in the long run.

Mistake 4: Outdated development and staging environments.

Let’s say for instance, that developers test only during production since the other environments have old data or no possible connection to an external service. Make sure that you maintain the testing environments as close to production as possible. By doing this you can migrate to production with ease and execute tests thereby assuring that code changes work when moved to production.

Mistake 5: Saving extraneous files in the VSC repository.

Image files, pictures, and database dumps are usually relegated to the repository which is an extremely unhealthy practice. You need to keep the VCS as clean as possible.

How should you test web applications

Security is of prime important in today’s digital world and new bugs and threats that arrive everyday are only making people more paranoid about it. That is the reason why you must evolve a sound process to test your web applications before they go live. For this, you should know how testing practices have to be adhered to and also why we need to stick to them. This article gives you a synopsis of the steps involved in testing web applications.

1. Develop test objectives

What are test objectives? These are ends developed with the end-user requirements in mind. But you must first classify your priorities. For this, you must first be clear about your project goals. If you find defects in your application, which ones are going to get priority? And which ones should be flagged as least important? The answer to these question must be decided beforehand.

2. Develop a reporting process

Keep reporting simple. Establish the necessary steps for defects or bugs to be reported and categorized. This is the key to efficiency. The reporting has to be in line with the project’s objectives.

3. Establish the test environment

Separate the test environment from development and production. That means keeping the web server, application server and the database server separate. This helps you simplify process and makes it easier to pin point such as to where issues exactly lie.

4. Have a professional tracking system

Testing web applications involves endlessly tracking issues and to track issues and resolve them to their end, you need to have the right systems in place. By this, we mean a tracking system that identifies where the mistake lies and how to resolve it. To prioritize the issue has already been dealt with. You need to set up a timeframe to resolve issues too.

5. Perform unit and usability testing

Well, you must be knowing this, but anyways, unit testing is where you test the individual portions of the application to see if they are functioning properly. In usability testing, the testing is performed with the end-user perspective in mind. In other words, usability determines testing evaluation.

5 key elements of a good website design

If you are a business owner, you must be knowing the importance of websites in reaching out to customers. A website is crucial to sales, brand building and familiarity with customers. But what should you keep in mind when you create websites? What are the critical elements that go into the making of a good, efficient website? That’s the subject of our article as we delve deeper into the question of the key elements in a good websitedesign

Good Visual design: First of all, the website must be visually attractive. It should make the visitor want more and entice him into browsing the website. The website must have enough photos and videos to make it look attractive while being informative. Also, encompassing all the necessary information such as logo, space, theme, font(s), layout, colours etc. must be taken care of.

Content: The content must be well written without any form of grammatical errors as it tends to put away a lot of people. A good content is bound to help you put across the information in a logical and coherent manner and easy enough to understand. The sentences should be adequately framed and readable. Also, the font size and pattern along with the quality of the content play an equally important role too. In simple terms, it should helps users understand what it has in store to offer them.

Navigation: Navigation, otherwise known as the GPS of the website are usually Nav Bards that help new visitors of the website reach the piece of information they are actually looking for. These bars guide the users reach their destination and are easy to use and simple to understand. It is important as it helps in sorting out data and streamlining the navigation for visitors and hence make the entire process simple for them.

Call to action: It is a smaller set of words that basically urge the website visitors to take an action immediately on your website. It is basically done to address your customers to own a set of the product/service you have to offer them. The usage of words in this call of action must be attractive and catchy enough to encourage the users to want more of you and your services.

Credibility: The website must be credible enough for the user to trust you and your services to wish to invest in it at a later stage. The resources must be legitimate and the links mentioned in the website must be active and verified and clearly mention who you are, your identity and you contact information.  

7 advantages of php for a web developer

Web development being a priority for everyone, requires the maximum focus and precision in execution. There are a plethora of technologies in this domain and India is among the most sought after places for business enterprises that seek economical and efficient web development services.

PHP, expanded as Hypertext Preprocessor is a scripting language that has been designed mainly for the purpose of web development. PHP applications are usually found on the Linux servers and use MYSQL as a database. This article looks at why PHP web development can be of great benefit to your business and what it can offer you in the future as well: 

Lightweight: PHP applications are known to be lightweight, and run faster on the internet. They also allow you to easily integrate latest features such as Ajax, Callback etc in your applications.

Popularity: You may have read many blogs or other reputed applications that have been developed with PHP with its efficient performance, and the fact that PHP is absolutely free makes it that much more popular among its competitors in the same category. It must be mentioned that there is another reason for its popularity which is the C++ syntax foundation, with which most programmers must be familiar.

Cross Platform Support: If you’re developing a PHP application, you needn’t think about issues such as compatibility of the technology on different operating systems, as PHP supports many operating systems, such as Linux, Windows, Solaris, Mac OS X etc.

Error Detection: PHP’s robust debugging engine make it easy for you to locate errors in your program. Additionally, you can also download commercial debuggers to find out the syntax errors in your code.

More Revenues: PHP is one technology that allows you to generate more revenues because it is free to use, and that means no worries about licensing or other fees.

Easy to Use: The syntax rules of PHP are not very complicated, so you can easily resolve the errors of your programs without spending much time.

Variety of Functionality: A lot of developers have already finished integrating their code libraries to PHP projects, thereby making it easy to perform a variety of activities such as creating PDF files, generating barcodes, copying content from other web applications, or other laborious actions within very less time and code as well.

Best Magento Extension

It has become a necessity for every business to invest in selling its products online. Everyone desires a platform that provides the best of sales and solves your problems. It must be noted however that there are many parameters to be managed here. The question is which platform is the best from the user experience point of view? If you start searching the answer to the question in right earnest, you will find it is Magento.

But even here, you have the mad race to be ahead of the competition. Ecommerce and associated web designs are changing faster than ever. With every online shopping site developing and adding new features for its clients, you cannot really differentiate yourself from the rest if you make do with just the basic version of Magento. For this, Magento has come up with numerous extensions. These extensions are but additional features that help you create a great shopping experience.

Magento has launched many extensions that are growing in popularity with each passing day. Satisfying unique requirements of business, each extension has a unique usage. From zooming the photograph of a product to multiple-currency billing, these extensions serve various purposes. This requirement can be as simple as zooming the photograph of a product to the visitor or can be multi currency billing. Here we have some popular extensions that you can use for your business.

Smart SEO Magento Extension: You can’t undermine the important of SEO in getting new clients. This extension works along with your store and brings new clients as well. In short, it allows you to target new clients.

Advanced Tabs Magento Extension: This extension helps you solve the problem of providing multiple products to clients. You can also place multiple products on single tab. This increases the usable space on your store and gives choice to clients.

Related Products Magento Extension: This tool is great at building up your sales. The tool allows store management to arrange for associated items for each product. Remember the extension has a track record of increasing your sales by 20 to 30%.

These are just few examples, while Magento extensions cover the whole world of applications. It also has a feature of developing an extension that is built for your specific business requirements. Just take a good look at the range of extensions and see how your client satisfaction goes up for each visitor. This will definitely result in increased volumes for your business.

Why should you focus on mobile-friendliness ?

‘Mobile-friendly websites’ The most repeated word in the industry today. With Google’s new update making it very clear to all stakeholders that mobile-friendliness would rank on top of their priority list when they index websites, organizations are scurrying to make their websites more responsive and hassle-free in a bid to fit them into mobile devices.

The past few years many businesses have emerged that meet the daily demands of the people, according to statistics. Mobile friendly websites don't mean that the websites should be clearly viewed on the mobile devices; it means that the designs, user interfaces, resolution, etc. are set keeping in the mind the number of users and mobile devices they use. A simple calculation tells us that the total number of mobile devices far exceeds the total number of mobile users.

It can be said that the usage of mobiles has certainly raised the size of mobile market and most of the mobile owners and consumers prefer shopping in stores from mobiles only. Proper product information, related catalogs, discounted rates, services offered, etc. of our business can be 50% more fruitful in its growth if websites support mobile devices, as more than 70% people access internet through their mobile phones. It has been pre-assumed that by the Fiscal Year 2017, more than 85% users will access internet for any of the business related matters through their mobiles.

Growing business with the greater impact of mobile friendliness websites reflect that the customers are satisfied with what they expect from the website. Through the surveys completed, it has been noticed that consumers buy the product on the websites that is mobile friendly. The phenomenal mobile experience encourages the users to grow as the business partners with the organization to carry on the future proceedings.

Here are some interesting facts and figures

-> More than 4.8 billion people use mobile phones across the globe.

-> 75% of the total people are connected to their business through the mobiles.

-> Business is set-up for more than 500 million users on Facebook, thus making usage of Facebook mobile.

-> More than 50% of the people are fond of only using mobiles for local searches rather than desktops/laptops.

The mobile friendliness of the website can also be checked through Google’s testing tool, mobile friendly. If you intend to take your website beyond its current target market, you better focus on the mobile segment.  

7 great Joomla extensions

Having the best content management system alone will not do. You also need the best extensions to help you accentuate the content and connect with the user. As one of the most popular content management systems today, you might be confused as to which Joomla extension to use as there seem to be so many of them. This is why we have listed out ten of the best Joomla extensions out of the many that crowd the place.

So, here they are:

Akkeba backup

Aan Open Source backup extension that helps you create website backups to be restored on any Joomla capable server. Akeeba backup lets you create a full backup of the site in a single archive.

Community builder

This is a very popular tool that enhances the user management system. It makes your site more social and facilitates visitor interaction. Community builder enables integration of extra files to user lists, profile, image uploading, establishing connection paths, extended registration workflows between users and integration with modules such as forums, galleries, and newsletters.

JCE

This is an expandable Joomla extension that helps you manage the Joomla pages of your site by fetching the latest editor.It has many good features like plugin support, image and file support, a good administration interface etc.

VirtueMart

This is an advanced realtime shopping solution, widely used by many store owners around the world. But you can run it in catalog mode as well as in your store.

JoomFish

This is an advanced extension that helps maintain your site in several languages with the help of a system. It comprises front end modules that select languages and various plugins as well as the router. It can also be used without the patching of crucial files.

JoomlaXplorer

This extension lets you create new files, folders, upload content, as well as rename, copy, search, erase and move them. This greatly extends Joomla’s core competency.

Googlemaps Plugin

If you need one or more Google maps embedded in your content or other components of Joomla, this plugins will help you. A Google-map displaying icon with a detailed pop up box, this plugin can be easily downloaded.

How joomla can increase your website performance

Joomla is hardly a CMS that requires introduction. One of the top Content management systems, Joomla enables small businesses create websites at very affordable rates. Joomla boasts great features such as Open Source, flexibility, etc. But, how exactly does Joomla better the performance of your website? This article looks at the performance aspect of Joomla websites and how it increases website speed.

Firstly, performance depends on a number of parameters like type and size of content, number of plugins and extensions used, code issues etc. So, how do you wade through this minefield on a Joomla site

?

1. Remove what you don't require

Often times, it happens that you have lots of plugins and extensions that you never use clogging up your website. This includes third party extensions too. Deleting these unwanted functionalities is the first step towards speeding up your website. 

2. Play with CSS and Javascript

You need to take into account the size of CSS and Javascript needed for the design of the website. You would do well to use some readymade tools to reduce the size as it could be a cumbersome process to do it manually.

3. Create copy of the visited pages

When the user requests a page, it is fetched from the database and displayed to him in the form of HTML. This would take some time as the requested page has to be searched for, fetched and displayed. Consequently, your site speed would go down. Creating page copies will help you get around this problem.

4. Apart from the above, you can keep in mind a few other tips to increase site performance listed below:

- Go for minimum sized files as far as possible

- Use animation only where necessary

- Use a coding style that optimizes performance across your site

- Clean up your database at regular intervals

10 reasons you should go for hosted ecommerce!

As an online merchant, you need to decide on your ecommerce software.  You may choose licensed ecommerce software where you download software and install it on your server.  Another choice is custom built software where you either write your software or pay someone to do it for you.  Your final choice is a hosted ecommerce solution where a third party hosts your online store.  Here are 10 reasons to choose a hosted ecommerce solution:

Security - Most hosted ecommerce solutions are PCI compliant, meaning that their data center has passed stringent requirements relating to protecting your customers sensitive information. If you utilize open source software, you will not be PCI compliant.

Support - With open source shopping cart software, there is typically zero support and you are on your own if the software crashes or you have to pay a premium to have the support.

Costs - With most hosted solutions, you can get started with less than $100.  When using open source solutions such as Zen Cart or OS Commerce, you have to pay get everything setup on your own server.

Packaged Deal - Hosted ecommerce solutions include hosting the website and a wide variety of management and store building options like a shopping cart and product catalogs.  Most companies will also offer support, in-depth analytics, shared SSL certificates, CRM software, and marketing tools.

Time - Saving time is a major consideration for most online store owners.  With pre-designed templates and design tools, you can typically get setup a lot quicker versus utilizing open source software.

Knowledge - How much programming and design experience you have will be a determining factor in your decision.  A hosted ecommerce solution platform typically has built in functionality so that you don't need to know how html or how to program.

Management Tools - Hosted ecommerce solutions come with a variety of management tools that allow you to easily input or export your information.

Maintenance - You will no longer have to worry about server maintenance, hosting maintenance, or bandwidth issues.  The hosting company will fix bugs and take care of all the maintenance and updates.  This will not only save time but reduce your stress.  

Third Party Integration - Hosted solutions typically provide 3rd party support for accounting, shopping engines, payment gateways, fulfillment and taxes.

Flexible and Easy - Although there are fewer options to customize than with other choices, there is a lot of flexibility with a hosted ecommerce solution.  Also, the store owner can access the back end of their store from anywhere they can get online.

Ecommerce trends for 2015

2014 has passed us by generating a whole lot of expectations about the year that we are in now. The general trends are expected to follow from what we saw in 2014, with a few novel ones. So, which of these trends gain prominence and which ones walk away into the sunset will be the subject of our article.

1. Mcommerce will grow

We all knew mobile traffic was going to overtake desktop traffic. But it was only in Aug 2014 that it formally happened. Hypes don't always turn true but in case of mcommerce, the hype is indeed, true. 2015 is the year of de facto mcommerce. As a developer, you have no choice but to focus on it because consumers have already made their choice. They’ve gone mobile.

2. S-commerce becomes reality

With twitter integrating the ‘buy’ button on its tweets from specific celebrity accounts and retailers, Social commerce could grow into the next big thing of 2015. With more social networks and platforms thinking of adopting S-commerce, developers will have to think of new ways to integrate payment portals with social media sites.

3. Increased role of Analytics

With big data already having gained momentum, it is only natural that analytics tools will follow in aiding decision making. This means a rethink on the role of big data analytics on customer behaviour by organizations.

4. Ecommerce apps for individual stores

Ecommerce apps have largely been avoided by customers (with the exception of big players like eBay) apps are ever more relevant as ecommerce vendors now offer special promotions via apps. This in turn will result in greater customization and the return of apps.

5. E-wallets

With behemoths Google and Apple getting their mobile wallets into play, it is expected that these wallets will have their capabilities expanded in order to work with ecommerce vendors. This is potentially great everyone as technology companies shore up their presence and vendors get an easier way of collecting payments.  

Top free and most innovative website analytics tools

What comes to your mind when you first hear the word analytics? Google Analytics, right? But what many of us do not know are the innumerable other web analytics tools that are equally feature-rich and innovative. These tools measure almost anything you need, from real-time tracking of visitors to tracking user behaviour and search engine traffic. This article looks at 10 such tools that make analytics easier for you.

Snoop

Snoop gives you real-time visitor tracking. This service streams the activity of visitors page-to-page straight to your desktop. Other advanced features of Snoop include name tag integration and audible event triggering.

Reinvigorate

The Reinvigorate tool provides real-time statistics tracking and alerts you when a visitor does a specific action on your website. Reinvigorate also features heat map technology which allows you to see where the visitors are clicking.

Clicky

Much like Snoop, Clicky’s distinctiveness is in providing real-time analytics. The user-interface is extremely intuitive and functional, along with a dedicated iPhone version just in case.

Piwik

This is an open source web analytics tool and has been built on the PHP and MySQL platform. To use Piwik, you need to install it on your server which is a simple process that takes less than 5 minutes.

Yahoo! Web Analytics

This one is a full-featured, free enterprise analytics solution with flexible and powerful dashboards, segmentation tools, and campaign management features.

Measure Map

This tool is aimed at providing easy-to-understand and free web statistics for bloggers and the like. The site is currently closed to new accounts but one can enter his/her e-mail for notice in the future. Measure Map is owned by Google and some parts of its technology were ported to Google Analytics.

CrazyEgg

CrazyEgg gives you the ability to track, evaluate, and customize your site based on your visitor behaviour. Overlays and Heatmaps provide quick perspective into user behaviour and habits.

FeedBurner

As the name suggests this tool is tailored exclusively for blogging. FeedBurner provides in-depth feed analysis and blog statistics in general in a slick, intuitive interface. It's now owned by Google.

103bees

103bees is a real-time search engine analysis and statistics tool. 103bees is highly focused on natural search engine traffic and analyses important keywords and terms for SEO purposes.  

How do Small Ecommerce Players Compete Against Giants?

Building ecommerce websites has now become a necessity, so much so that, even micro businesses are now looking at ecommerce to shore up their prospects. This is partly because ecommerce gives them greater visibility. But it is also because ecommerce allows you to reach customers at a minimum cost. This is of vital important at a time when costs of land, labour and entrepreneurship have increased manifold.

So, in this field of established giants, how do small and medium businesses compete for space in the customer’s mind? Here are 3 tips to help you do just that:

1. Create a Unique Identity

This is very important. You need to carve a niche for yourself among the successful ecommerce stores in order to gain distinctiveness. Otherwise you’ll end up remaining more of the same and be forgotten among the plenty of look-alikes that cloud the customer’s mindspace.

Think about your own product lines, take time and do some research on the inventories that your ecommerce competitors offer and find which areas could be most profitable for your business. Narrow your focus, and be selective about the product categories that you choose. Starting off slowly is alright in a niche that you’re confident about.

2. Mixing up your Marketing Efforts

Marketing, that too in ecommerce, can be a daunting task. But, you should make full use of primary channels such as organic SEO and Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertising. Work hard here, for this is what gives your business its much-needed oxygen of visibility.

All the channels have the same degree of potential though each channel is different in its own way. Use PPC to test which keywords are most profitable and invest in SEO as it is a long-term effort. A marketing strategy that is a blend of both would be the best for your organization.

3. Promote with Richness

Engaging, feature-rich is always appreciated by the web. Usage of icons and colourful imagery along with audio and video is a must for ecommerce marketing. Quality reviews are a necessity. Customers look for them, read them carefully, and click the ‘buy’ button only when they are convinced.

  So, record reviews and highlight products with the right description. Your product pages must have a wealth of images that provide the user what he or she needs. Use social media to promote your products and generate positive talk about your store. Building a brand is a long and tedious process, and you need to be patient and work to get better and better each day.

Why do people leave a website?

We fight hard to win a customer. Planning, analysis, design, execution...the whole nine yards. But still, the customer chooses to leave your page. Just like page visits have some solid reasons behind them, page exits too, have some underlying commonalities. We look at some of them in this article.

1. Bad navigation

This is the foremost among the reasons that cause user frustration. Complex or inconsistent navigation can cause users to feel confused, helpless, or worse, angry- something you do not want potential customers to be feeling.

The things to keep in mind are

• To not provide visual elements that are not clear in defining where the user is and what they’re supposed to do next

• Don’t scatter your main navigation links around your site. Your website navigation should be logical, intuitive and easy to understand. For this, you could try grouping navigation elements in a central area. For larger websites, you could add a sitemap.

• Finally, don’t make your link text hard to understand. “Other links” is generally not a good choice for link text.

2. Too many ads

Firstly, ensure that ads are not the first thing that a visitor sees. It is important that ads do not cover up the content that attracted the visitors in the first place. Managing space is very important as there are ads that take up more space than the website content.

3. Bad content structure

Bad content structure can destroy your conversion and retention rates. Here, it’s important not to complicate things by distributing content across multiple pages that could be easily communicated on one page. Outlining and grouping content so that users don’t have to fish around, bold headings, highlighting keywords- these are some of the things that go a long way in adding to the usability quotient of your website.

4. Obtrusive use of Audio and Video

Most people value their ability to choose what content to absorb. Having a video or audio that loads automatically can potentially drive visitors away. Which means it is important not to force users to view a particular content. Because sometimes, even a simple paragraph can convey the content of a video.

5. Poor legibility

Excessive typos, abrasive colours, bad typography choices- all of this make up a poor user experience. Do not use typefaces that are unnecessarily elaborated, pixelated or have poor contrast. Also, excessive use of bright, fluorescent colours can be distracting and abrasive.

If you could ensure this and some pun on the way, the user would be all yours.  

#12 tips for successful mobile website design

You must have noticed that mobile phones have become iconic with the proliferation of Android, iPhones, and Blackberries. They have greatly increased in number now and the question on everybody’s mind is how to tap this vast potential market. The answer is a mobile website. This article looks at the essential things that you need to remember to design a good mobile website.

Here are 12 tips for a great mobile website:

1. Mobile phones have a smaller screen space and hence you need to cut down on the amount of data that you can include in the mobile pages.

2. Mobile phones work on a much slower bandwidth (even if they are on 3G). Your site would load faster if your files are smaller, and have fewer graphics and other elements.

3. As the capacity of mobiles varies widely, using progressive enhancement is advisable. This way your website will work alright with the most limited browsers but would show great performance with more capable ones.

4. Attention span on a mobile site is very limited. Include your most salient points - the ones that count -and do not try to tell everything and confuse the reader.

5. Try this format – a powerful headline, followed by a paragraph of introduction text and a few bullet points followed by a call to action.

6. New page loads are taxing on the bandwidth, too much information on a single page is daunting. You have to strike a fine balance.

7. Advertise on the mobile networks. The clicks are affordable still. You can also set up campaigns on AdWords with the selected target as mobiles.

8. Always send the clicks to a mobile version of the landing page. Don't drop the ball by sending the clicks to a desktop landing page which won't show up clearly on the small screens.

9. Include a link to your main site so that they can see the whole story, if they are not happy with the limited information on the mobile site.

10. Mobile commerce (pay from mobile - PayPal and phone billing) is picking up quite fast. You must be ready latch on to take advantage.

11. Make your forms as small as possible. Users cannot fill up large forms with the mobile keyboard.

12. Include a touch-to-call or click-to-call button. They are working off a mobile phone after all and calling someone is the most natural thing to do.