How to make a successful e-commerce store?

Today, the competition is huge! Literally, more than thousands of online businesses are started every day, and hence the competition seems to be getting tougher day by day. So, you need to have an outstanding online store design and a strong marketing strategy that helps you to stand out from the crowd.

The main challenge here is not just having your online shop up and running, instead it is very important to attract visitors and convert them to paying customers.

The following tips guide you to make your online shop really standout:

• Make your website simple: The most common mistake that is done when designing an e-commerce website is adding too much of content like flash animation, large graphics, videos and audios. These features may seem appealing to visitors, but will seriously affect the performance and the speed of your website. Instead, ensure that your web design is well-organized and your online store is easily navigable.
• Analyze your website: To run a successful e-commerce business, you need to analyze your website thoroughly. Your web design might be having a great look, but if there are no customers, then there is no use in having such a website for your business. Hence, you need to analyze the reason for this and find out the best solutions. Some free powerful tools, such as Google Analytics and Google Webmaster, provide you important information on your customer’s preferences and how they use your website.
• Track your competitors: Always check what your competitors doing and what customers like to do shopping around the best deals. And if your competitors provide a cheaper shipping rate than what you provide or if they have a monthly sale, then it clearly shows that the customers are shopping at your competitor’s website instead! So, always stay competitive and pertinent without losing your brand image, and also set up monthly sales, free delivery offers and competitions frequently.
• Have strong social presence: By having a strong social presence, you can increase your brand loyalty and sales right away. One of the easiest ways to make your customers engage in your business is opening a blog with frequent updates of your brand. Also, having social reviews of your products or services will definitely increase loyalty and conversion of your online shop. The social platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many more, are all free to sign up and they are all the most powerful online marketing tools for your online business.
• Provide good customer service: Always keep in mind that every visitor of your website is a potential customer. Suppose if you get customers’ query, then it is important that you have to get back to them as soon as possible. If you do not deal with your customers’ queries promptly and effectively, then there is a great chance to slip your potential customers, as there is a heavy competition in the online business. Also, make sure that you always have someone to deal with the customer service for you, in case if you are away or not available to deal with it.
• Encourage returning customers: It is apparent that returning customers will greatly benefit your online business. If you provide your customers with good products and services, then there is a high chance of coming back. So, set up exclusive offers or deals for returning customers or monthly sales on your social platforms. Also, ensure that you never over-sell your products or services, which will drive your customers away.
• Have a clear marketing strategy: Every good online business must have a clear marketing strategy. So, make sure that you have a perfect marketing strategy for your e-commerce business. Ensure that what customers you are targeting and what region is your market. If you are really serious about your online business, then have your website ranked well in all search engines with a good SEO campaign.

Why Mobile E-Commerce or M-Commerce is crucial for your business?

The success of your business depends on the ability to adapt the latest technologies and accommodate your customers in the best possible way. Nowadays, mobile usage has been rapidly increased due to the evolution of the internet and mobile technologies. Therefore, reaching customers via their mobile devices is very important to succeeding in today’s commerce landscape.

Mobile E-Commerce or M-Commerce is the best way to reach customers in this day and age. Mobile E-commerce or M-Commerce is nothing but the use of wireless handheld devices, such as mobile phones, tablets and laptops, to conduct commercial transactions online i.e. sale and purchase of products and services, bill payment, online banking, information delivery and so on.

In this present market, mobile commerce and selling products through mobile applications have become more and more popular among people all over the globe.

The two main factors that assist the growth of mobile commerce are

• Technological advances that have given wireless handheld devices, substantial computing power and advanced capabilities.
• The demand for applications from an increasingly mobile customer and consumer base. 

The way people buy products has changed since the days of going to a shop, buying a product and paying cash for it.  Most people are no longer drive hours to a shop to find that what they want. They use their handheld devices to find the detailed information, price comparison, review and many more about products.

Recent statistics show that online shopping helps you to save 78% more time when compared to do shopping directly in store, along with saving a lot of money in travelling to and from stores.

With most mobile phones now coming with 2G, 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi facility, people have started using their mobile phones to do online shopping instead of using their desktop computers. This change has provided seamless opportunities for business prospect.

Between the year 2012 and 2013, the traffic to ecommerce websites stemming from handheld devices and thus m-commerce has experienced a 254% increase every year and an average growth of 300%. Therefore, mobile commerce is becoming very important day by day.

So, mobile optimized delivery of your online business represents a momentous opportunity to increase relationship with your customers and maximize your profit. It is evident that mobile commerce allows your business to reach your customers closer to the purchase decision anywhere, anytime and anyplace. If you don’t have your business website tuned for mobile devices, then definitely you are missing major sales opportunities.

Considering the budget aspect, the development cost of a mobile ecommerce website is comparatively less than an ordinary ecommerce website. By having a mobile ecommerce website, you just opened a new sales channel for you. Having more channels for your business will help you to increase your branding and marketing possibilities.

So, to make your mark within shoppers, make sure that you have an m-commerce or mobile ecommerce website for your business. It is not only a competitive advantage, but a necessity for your business to provide a mobile commerce solution to your customers.

WordPress vs. Magento : Which Ecommerce Platform is Better For Your Website?

If you are having any idea about opening up a new ecommerce website, or if you are advising anyone, who is planning to build an ecommerce website, then the very first step that you need to take is making a wise decision on which ecommerce platform should be used.

Before choosing a best ecommerce platform for your ecommerce website, there are a few basic things that you need to keep in mind.

As both the ecommerce platforms have same functionality, it is very important for you to keep in mind the background. 

WordPress:

WordPress is a free and open source blogging platform created by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is a hugely popular content management system or CMS based on PHP and MySQL. It is the single largest ecommerce platform used for content creation. When compared to other platforms, more number of blog posts is written on WordPress websites such as WordPress.org and WordPress.com platforms.

Plugin architecture is one of the very popular features that enable developers to extend its abilities beyond the core installation. WordPress has a huge database that consists of more than 26,000 plugins, each plugin offers custom features and functions that enable developers to build websites based on their specific requirements.

Magento: 

On the other hand, Magento is also an open source ecommerce web application that is developed by Varien with the help from developers within the open source community. Magento was started as open source software; hence it was relatively very easy to launch and then it grew rapidly to a point that there is actually more money spent on Magento based websites all around the globe. That is definitely part of why eBay bought Magento now.

Similar to WordPress being a blogging platform that moved into ecommerce, Magento is also an ecommerce platform that added blogging as a plug-in.

So, which ecommerce platform is best?

It is a fact that there is never a perfect solution for any problem, but if you understand the background of the two ecommerce platforms, you can able to make the right decision on which one will be the best suitable for your ecommerce website.

You may want to build a website that is going to be strictly an ecommerce play, possibly with a blog attached just to enhance the website for good visibility, search engine optimization and user engagement. 

Or, you may want to create a website that is going to be a collection of blogs, posts, customer interactions and so on with an element related to that hoping to sell products that are directly tied to the content that is created.

Based on your requirements, you need to choose the best ecommerce platform. With a pure ecommerce website, Magento may be the best option. If your website is more of a content play, then WordPress may be the way you need to go. 

Magento Ecommerce Extension for Product & Online Sales Promotion

One of the most famous Magento Ecommerce Extension used by the majority of eCommerce store owners for product and online sales promotion is “MagentoCRUX Advance Shop By”. This Magento Ecommerce Extension is created by Maven Store. It is mainly created for eCommerce stores running on Magento.

MagentoCRUX Advance Shop By is primarily used by online retailers to effectively drive in the interest of visitors towards their most profitable or cost-effective products. It also helps them to boost revenues by arousing, attracting and capturing the interest of prospects in selected products.

By using this Magento Ecommerce Extension, you can make your visitors to spend more time on your website, as this extension reduces the chances of aimless surfing done by your visitors on your website.

MagentoCRUX Advance Shop By extension consists of a combination of effective and robust modules. Each module is used for performing tasks that are targeted to a specific online sales promotion approach.

MagentoCRUX Advance Shop By extension provides you several useful plugins such as

• New Arrivals
• Most Viewed
• Most Sold
• Most Reviewed
• Most Rated
• Most Tagged
• Absolute Free
• Editors’ Picks
• Clearance
• Great Offers

The tabbed block usage system helps you to easily place the plugins on the home page of your eCommerce website. Moreover, the labels of all features will appear on the product listing pages itself.

This Magento Ecommerce Extension also allows you to highlight your most profitable product with an icon that says whether the product is one of the “new arrival”, “most sold”, “most reviewed”, ”most viewed” and so on.

However, MagentoCRUX Advance Shop By is considered as a Magento Web Administrator’s amusement. This is because the Magento Ecommerce Extension is very easy to install and run, and it is impeccably integrated with Content Management System or CMS blocks also.

MagentoCRUX Advance Shop By allows you to enable or disable options or sub-modules instantaneously. Moreover, this extension is extremely scalable and however there is no limit to the amount of products that can be categorized or sorted by any sub-module of MagentoCRUX Advance Shop By.

As a Magneto Ecommerce Extension, MagentoCRUX Advance Shop By is being apparent on the distinct Magento web store. It provides a tabbed layout that categorizes or sorts out  various products by different criteria such as New Arrivals, Most Viewed, Most Sold, Most Reviewed, Most Rated, Most Tagged, Absolute Free, Editors’ Picks, Clearance and Great Offers.

Also, you can display the navigation choices on the header, footer or on the side panels of the home page of your eCommerce website. You can also make the navigation choices appear on the landing pages of your website as well.

In addition, MagentoCRUX Advance Shop By provides comprehensive back-end management settings. These settings allow you to emphasize the key products or the most important products on your web store. Besides helping online retailers, this Magento Ecommerce Extension also provides benefits to your customers and shoppers.

If you use this Magento Ecommerce Extension on your Magento eCommerce website, your website visitors can able to get a quick idea on

• Which are the top-selling products
• Which products have been rated and reviewed
• Which product is everyone buying
• Which product has offers and discounts

Hence, the attention of your website visitors will be directed to the products that have price discounts and clearance offers. Therefore, the navigation and checkout become easy and straightforward for your customers.

Amplify Your E-commerce Store’s Profit Dramatically With Customization

Have you ever thought about how important a custom designed website is to your online business?

The main objective behind any website for every business is to attract a large number of viewers and convert them as customers. To get noticed among the visitors, you need to have a website that is unique and appealing.

In the global market, the competition becomes very tough and hence most of the businesses have their own distinctive websites to sell their products or services online. To attract customers from all over the world, it is mandatory to have a custom website for your e-commerce store.

The following tips help you to get an attractive online e-commerce store for your targeted customers.

• The first step in the process of customization is finding your audience and classifying them as per their priority. Based on the classification, add right features to your website.

• Never forget to greet your targeted audience with a specific look and feel of your e-commerce website.

• Always be responsive towards your customers. To do this, you need to connect your website to other social networking websites and interact with your customers online.

• Before launching your customized website, test the website in order to eliminate unproductive elements. This helps you to remove all possible design related errors from your website.

• After customizing your website, try to keep inventing new design styles for your website. By doing this, you can able to enhance the look and feel of your website often to attract new customers.

Hire a professional web design and development company or a highly experienced web designer to add custom functionalities to your e-commerce website. Though, you have so many web design and development companies available over the web, first you need to define your business requirements, analyze your targeted audiences  and then hire the best company to develop your e-commerce store.

Starting Off On Web Design, Basic Suggestions That Could Move Things Upward - By K2B Solutions

So you have decided to become a web designer, but you don’t have any idea where to start off. Don’t panic! As you think, it is not so hard to design a website. You are just required to spend some effort and time - That’s it!

Generally, web designers build the visual elements of a website. You just need to have a very good grasp of design prerequisites and also learn how to use the chief design software. Also, you must have the specific field of knowledge and the technical skills.

As everyone knows, creating a good first impression is extremely vital. Therefore, it is mandatory to build best websites that help you to increase the number of visitors to your website.

Before start building a web design, you need to have a basic idea about the important things that have to be implemented in the web design.

The following suggestions are targeted at neophyte web designers that help them to create a web design:

• Use similar field websites as references: To get a general idea of what to do with your website, first you need to refer other relevant websites. You can use other websites as your references but at the same time, you need to make sure that you don’t copy the same. If you have seen any attractive web design, color, layout or scheme, then try to use it as the beginning point of your website.

• Build an inimitable web design: To gain more number of visitors to your website, you need to think something innovative and create a unique web design that attracts your visitors. You need to ensure that the web design must not contain too much of animations and graphics. 

• Create pertinent and utile content: Create a content that is relevant to your website and ensure that the content is useful for the website visitors. When creating the content, you should have the conscious that the content should not be too lengthy, which requires the visitors to do much scrolling.

• Use content supportive images: The graphic that you use in your website must not overlook the content. It should always give a great support to the content present in your website. Always avoid using too much graphics on your website because unnecessary dumping of graphics may disturb your visitors’ concentration and thus make them leave the website immediately.

• Ensure limited file size: So many factors are there affecting the website loading time but still you need to make sure that the large files are not the reason. If the file you use is less in size, then your website loads very fast in the Internet and thus results in high Google ranking.  

• Create your website that is easily acquired by visitors: Build your website that is easily reachable and acquirable by visitors across the globe. This makes the visitors to easily meander across the web pages of your website.

• Use good fonts, metaphors and backgrounds: Use very good fonts, metaphors and backgrounds in your website based on your clients’ preference and also make sure that these components fit well to your website. Also, ensure that the font you are using for your website is easily readable and easily obtainable by everyone.

• Don’t use shouting colors: Website color scheme, the tool used for building color combinations, is a very important component of web design. When creating your website, avoid using shouting colors like red, yellow, green, etc. Always try to use the most common color schemes such as Blue, orange and white – Red, yellow and white – Yellow, grey and white – Red, grey and white – Blue and white.

• Use the maximum existing space: Always try to utilize almost all the available spaces and also ensure that the website doesn’t looks congested as well. On the other hand, never leave empty spaces in your website. Instead of leaving empty spaces, you can add some relevant graphics in your website that attracts more visitors. 

• Ensure no white spots: In your website, make sure that there are no white spots left out as such. Always fill up with images and text on all the sides of your webpage. Every spot of your website must have its own things and they should not interrupt the website visitors too.

• Avoid broken links: Ensure that all the links in your website are working properly. A good website shouldn't have any broken links. The broken links give a bad impression to your website and also make your website valueless during the Search Engine Optimization process. As a result, the visitors may lose the chance of viewing your website.

• Don’t forget to add site search option: Site search option is an imperative option that has to be added in your website. Because, the clients generally use the search option when they look for something in your website.      

• Have clear and simple navigation: Ensure that you are using a clear and uncomplicated navigation menu. If you use intricate Flash-based menus or some other tiered menus, then the visitors will not know how to use those menus and ultimately leave your website.

• Avoid using excessive banner advertisements: Instead of using too many advertisements banners, give more relevant content and also its links into your website. Because, visitors don’t like to spend much time on advertisements. So, avoid using unnecessary advertisements in your website.

• Follow proper HTML standards: You should always follow the appropriate HTML standards to make your website HTML-compliant. So that your website will work properly in all browsers.

Hope, the above mentioned suggestions would definitely give you more confidence in tackling web design.