Wednesday 23 July 2014

Planning Your Mobile E-Commerce Website? Watch For Design Factors


In USA average consumer spends about 15 hours a week looking for products on Smartphone or tablet of which 40% of them do shopping. So no wonder, mobile ecommerce has taken an important role gradually becoming one of the major sales tools for multichannel stores.

Ecommerce website design with mobile capabilities greatly affects shopping cart functionality. Before you decide which technology to adopt for your mobile ecommerce shopping cart, here are the basic insightful feeds for high conversion rates.



Design Factors In Mobile Ecommerce For High Conversion Rates

Responsive Layout

Whilst gaining popularity among iPhone, iPad, and Android OS, this ecommerce web development technology can change the attitude of your consumer towards online shopping.

Creating a responsive site means defiled to three characteristics:

1. A single URL to browse all website content.

2. A responsive web design template is user friendly

3. Responsive website layout suffers slow loading due to additional css codes

Responsive Themes And Plug-In

If you have an ecommerce website already running on Wordpress, Joomla, Magento, PrestaShop and wanted to establish yourself but on a limited budget, better opt with open source Wordpress responsive theme. This technology has some characteristics:

1. Activating responsive CMS plug-in is easy and fast.

2. CMS version should be tested with the WordPress responsive plug-in.

3. The theme or plug-in must follow web 2.0 standard to avoid loading issue.

Mobile Ecommerce Website Builder

Powered by Mobile CMS, a mobile website includes features like mobile shopping cart payment gateway system, content and buttons. The obvious characteristics include:

1. Creativity and the sense of uniqueness

2. Additional mobile sales features to enhance user experience.

3. Acceptable mobile website speed

4. Requires a sub-domain that re-directs desktop users to mobile phones.

To conclude, mobile presence always helps you generate more sales and leads. For all those planning to revamp your web 2.0 website, Give a thought to it soon.

Thursday 10 July 2014

What Should You Look For In A Payment Gateway Solution?


What’s payment gateway and how do they work for online business? This is a great question we get to hear from eCommerce businesses. Well...the answer is here. Read On
Image Source: webilop.com

In Ecommerce Shopping Carts, a merchant account collects the actual funds from customer’s credit cards while the payment gateway service uses the merchant account to actually collect the funds in the best secured way. It will transmit your customers’ billing information to your merchant bank so that payments can be deposited into your internet merchant account each month.

And the next question would be, “What Should I Look for in a Payment Gateway?”


Checklist to Buy a Complete Secured Payment Gateway Solution

PCI Compliance: Ensure the payment gateway has a good reputation and having PCI compliance is also a must.

Fraud Prevention: Undeniably, there are many frauds going around online, and if you don’t have the protection in space you could get cheated easily.

Integration with Existing Software: If your existing software is not built-in-house then check if the payment gateway supports it so as to save time.

Banks/Merchant Accounts Supported: Most payment gateways support a decent number of banks but still double check the bank you plan on using.

Token Payments: Incase of recurring payments, either you need to get PCI compliance yourself or you can use the payment gateway to handle the credit cards through a token payments service.

Multi Currency: This feature works great for ecommerce shopping carts these days as it lets you process payments in other currencies (say USD).

Price: Generally, per transaction fees is inversely proportional to your transaction volumes.

There is a ‘one-size-fits-all’ especially very finicky when it comes to talking custom development. Also finding a reliable open source payment gateway solution can be hectic if it’s not NOW. Does that mean you should build your own one? Well- give a thought to it and before you go forward consult a professional Ecommerce Portals Development company.

Openwave Payment Portal Solutions:
           Openwave, a leading web development company in NYC, offers reliable payment system development. Know More..

Monday 7 July 2014

Perks of Using Magento for Ecommerce Web Portal Development



The ecommerce web portals industry has revolutionized in a much rapid rate than others with the evolution
Image Source: eyemaginetech.com
of Magento - an open source ecommerce web application platform.

Considered to be the developer’s charm, this solid platform is well known for its high performance, enterprise-class components and scalability.

Let’s have a detailed look at why is Magento perfect for an Ecommerce Portal Development project plan?


Perks Of Using Magento Ecommerce Solution
ECommerce web portal development project plan requires several prerequisites to work for a long run, effectively. Starting from success strategy to managing a high lead-sales converting online store, portals have to reliable and trustworthy with their audience. How is it possible? Well, this is when Magento comes into picture.

Important Components Of Magento Ecommerce Web Portal


Catalog Management:

In general, a catalog management system involves catalogue and product browsing along with the crucial inventory management. Magento Ecommerce Web Portals provide features like navigation control; filters, product reviews and comparison study, and allocate different product attributes at a reliable cost.

Analytics:

Magento script supports Google Analytics which provokes to monitoring the inbound traffic, visitor locations, hot keywords and business goal conversion metrics.

Customer Management:

For ecommerce websites, Desktop Application Developers can provide with a comprehensive customer management suite to handle customer accounts and customer service systems as in like featuring order status history, shopping wish list, order tracking, and billing and shipping address.

SEO and Internet Marketing:

As mentioned before, Magento supports Google SiteMap and Analytics and therefore it has search engine optimization imbibed in its DNA. With its fully integrated design structure that supports different languages and multiple currencies- Magento web portals are replete with freebies, attractive discounts and other promotion schemes.

To sum up why Magento and not any other CMS for an eCommerce web portal? The answer is very clear. Magento is developed specifically for Ecommerce shopping Cart Development from ground zero. Furthermore, its themes and templates let developers to choose from according to their brand narrative and marketing strategy.

Tuesday 1 July 2014

Top 5 Mistakes Committed By Ecommerce Merchants


All wants to make money online, but how is it possible if merchants fail to look at the mistakes that merely could be avoided and make most of the way toward succeeding online.


If you have an online store and committing some mistakes in Website Development or other areas, avoiding them will greatly improve the experience of your customers and boots your sales.

Mistakes That Stops Your From Winning The Online Chase

Lacking focus: A small business has to have a sharp focus. In general, web giants like Amazon don’t aim for sharply defined niche. There are thousands of profitable niches that the big players don't have the time to focus on. For instance, organic seeds, skateboard wheels, antique watches, so on.

Choose A Niche That Is The Right Size For You.

Confusing Navigation

A distracting web design may not compliment the products and that’s why it is recommended to use two to three fonts and colours per page. Also bear in mind an ecommerce site with large images and many products measure slow loading pages.

Failing in Promotions

If you really want to succeed in online market, then you have to create traffic from search engines. Think of what sites your customers would be likely to visit. Hiring an Ecommerce Web Development Company with SEO sends you the most sales per capita.

Obstacles to Shopping

Most people who put an item in basket are still not buying it for the poor shopping cart structure. As simple as it looks, customers hand over their credit card information to complete their order and more the steps involved, it is more the opportunity you give them to leave.

Lack of Payment Options:

Having many payment gateway services, as in like adding a PayPal checkout option would deeply enhance choices your customers have, making them more likely to purchase from you.

The bottom line is that there are mistakes happening in eCommerce website development and if you are inclined to try your business succeed, don’t keep committing the same errors on and on. 90% of them can be avoided if you get to hire professional website developers team.

Thursday 26 June 2014

PHP Vs. ASP.NET- What Serves Website Application Development Better?


When it comes to comparing whether PHP or ASP.net is a better platform, most opinions are biased and their preference is typically based on promoting one programming language over the other.

Not to deny, there are periodic major upgrades and improvements done to both the platforms. In this article, we shall see how both programming languages are used in very large website and Web Applications Development upon certain considerations.

Scalability And Ease Of Maintenance

Whether you select PHP or ASP.net platform, Web Application scalability and ease of maintenance primarily depend on:

• A Developer’s Experience

• Programming Practices

• The Programming Framework

• Adhering To Programming Guidelines And Standards

Budget Friendly

Available for free LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) is more popular among hosting companies when compared to Windows hosting. Similarly, if you purchase Windows OS ASP.net and IIS are free but a substantial licensing cost is charged for Microsoft SQL Server and future upgrades.

Deployment Time

When it comes to .Net Web Development for complex features and functionality, it takes a large amount of code to accomplish when compared to PHP. Also, PHP is interpreted at the server which means there is no need of additional steps when changing functionality. But ASP.NET needs to be compiled each time the code is modified. Means, PHP website development is less time-consuming.

Platform Independent

PHP and AS.NET are very different. The former is platform independent and can run on any platform, simple Windows to complex Linux, UNIX, Mac OS X. But then, the latter one is built to run only on Windows platform.

Global Acceptance

When compared to Windows, The LAMP platform is much more popular. The latest Web Server Survey of website developers found among 205,714,253 sites, 112,945,968 (54.90%) are hosted on Apache and 53,217,620 (25.87%) are hosted on Windows. This infact reveals PHP Web Development has inspired many hearts.

Still Have Questions? Approach a prominent Web Development Company, one such is Openwave Computing Services, NYC for a free consultation before deciding on the right platform to meet your business needs.

Tuesday 24 June 2014

How to Combat Against Shopping Cart Abandonment


For many ecommerce stores, Shopping cart abandonment is a common problem. But then, ignoring the situation might let you run the risk of missing out on a potential honey pot of new and existing customers.

This article is all about a few guidelines to prevent abandonment in Shopping Cart Ecommerce and to complete the sale.

                                   
                              
7 Common Reasons for Shopping Cart Abandonment

• The price spikes when shipping and taxes are included

• Concerns on website data and transaction security

• Customers’ intent to purchase later

• No option for guest checkout

• Very least selection of payment gateway options

• Doesn’t provide a wide variety of shipping options

• Merchants payment option is not mobile friendly


Fighting Against Shopping Cart Abandonment

Pinpointing the above reasons, each abandoned Ecommerce Shopping Cart scenario should be approached differently to effectively push your customers down the sales funnel.

• Ecommerce merchants need to create exceptionally tailored shopping experiences to meet the increased competition and millions of existing distractions.

• Online shoppers who abandon shopping carts after being surprised of taxes and shipping costs should be dealt differently. Mail them with a discount code or free shipping can encourage consumers

• Online merchants should provide shipping costs on product pages itself before reaching the checkout process.

• Sent an email reminder with images of the items linking back to the product page including a sense of urgency that will prompt them to quickly make the purchase.

Unlike a B2B Open Source Web Development, where many human intuitions are involved to customize the buying experience and overcome objections- ecommerce companies have just one sales rep i.e. Shopping cart. This is why it has to be empowered to create a customized buying experience for thousands or tens of thousands visitors, each new day.

Now, are you looking for a User Friendly Shopping Cart Development for your Online Store? Visit http://www.openwavecomp.com/

Wednesday 18 June 2014

Should You Build a Mobile Friendly Site? But How


Of the 2.1 billion mobile web users in the world, 60% of them use it for shopping purpose, every day. This infact tells that you better be sure you are providing a good mobile experience. With options like Responsive Web Design, mobile app or a simple mobile site, figuring out how to optimize your site might seem confusing.

The right mobile solution for your ecommerce website depends on how your audience look at it. With that in mind, here are guidelines to help you decide on whether to build a separate mobile version or update your Ecommerce Website Design to a responsive.




Pros and Cons of Mobile Site

Basically a scaled-down version of your main website, a mobile website (.domain.com) works by redirecting smartphone and tablet users to the mobile version of your site.

• Dedicated images designed for a small screen will provide better results for the mobile visitor, letting more conversions.

• Uses modern front-end technologies like HTML5 web development without the need to code for backward compatibility with older desktop browsers. Thus enhancing the user experience and cut down on maintenance costs.

• Since the work is done on the server, mobile sites are almost always faster and better designed for small screens.

However, The Drawbacks Are:

• Spreading your content across two domains dilutes the SEO “juice” from both sites thus lessens organic traffic.

• Occasional redesigning your ecommerce website is a must but any errors can create a bad user experience.

So...What’s up With Responsive Design?

It doesn’t matter whether your customers are using a smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop- a responsive Ecommerce Shopping Cart can adjust to fit any screen size.

• With one website, it is easier to pull organic traffic for SEO purpose.

• Since the content simply adjusts to fit the size a responsive design will be compatible with the latest smartphone and tablet models. This guarantees a great user experience.

• Unlike mobile site there is no need to update every time which help you save on website maintenance services too.

Cons

• Compared to mobile site, designing a responsive ecommerce site is bit expensive.

Summing up, as you begin to think about how you might mobile-optimize your ecommerce site, be focussed on “target audience” and decide.