Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Creating your online store using Shopify

Here is your choice to attract customers like never before. With Shopify, an online store builder, you can build an attractive online store based on all your specific requirements. You can organize your products, customize your storefront, track and response orders, accept credit card payments, and do many more with no hassles at all. Shopify is absolutely an easiest way to sell online!

Shopify has become the platform of choice for businesses ranging from small to mid-size organizations those who are looking for an effective e-commerce solution. With its proficient and easy-to-use templates, you can build an online store in a matter of minutes, and also have your website up and running in no time. 

How to create your online store with Shopify?
  • Sign Up: When you are planning to sell your products online, then don’t try out something big right away. Shopify consists of three main plans, and especially a starter or a beginner plan for less cost. The cheaper the plan, the fewer the features it provides. Initially, you can choose the basic plan, and later on, you can easily upgrade your plan based on your requirements. Moreover, Shopify provides a large number of options to meet all your needs no matter what your budget is.
  • Customize Your Online Store: As you are setting up your own online store, you have the facility to customize any of a Shopify theme of your own choice, by using a wide range of customization settings. Also, by using Shopify’s new Theme Settings Editor, you can preview your website in real-time to view the changes that you make. Also, Shopify’s Liquid templating language makes everything simple for you to change any aspect of your website.
  • Add Products: Shopify allows you to add your product by simply clicking on the button “Add a product”. If you add a product, then you will be asked to provide the information about your product such as product description, product title, product type, product’s Barcode or SKU, etc. After filling the basic details about your product, there will also be some options like “tags” and search engine options. No issues if you don’t have much knowledge in SEO, because Shopify automatically fills the SEO related information.
  • Other Settings: Shopify gives you with their own sub-domain, however, if you purchased your own domain, then you can set it up now. Next, you need to set up your shipping rates and tax rates. As Shopify was already configured with the tax rules of almost all countries, the shipping rate will be automatically configured for you by default. So, you will not be required to make any changes here.
  • Setup a Payment Gateway: In earlier days, accepting credit card payment was very difficult for any e-commerce website, as the process required the customers to fill so many forms and bank related information. This drawback is completely eliminated in Shopify, as it provides a large variety of payment options to choose from. If you want, you can choose to use a different credit card processor or simply accept “cash on delivery” option.  Other option that you can provide your customers is allowing them to create their accounts on your store or just do guest checkout.

If you already have a website for your business, then you can integrate the Shopify storefront into your current website to provide a seamless experience for your existing customers. You can also customize a standard theme to capture the look and feel of any of your particular product.

So, start selling your products online with Shopify. Just choose a website design, add products, customize your store, add a secure shopping cart, and now you are ready to sell online. 

Monday, February 17, 2014

Benefits of ASP.NET websites for your company

In the early days of the web, the contents of web pages were largely static. And these web pages must be permanent, but changed manually. Hence, there was an urgent need for the enterprises to build websites that are dynamic and are updated automatically. During that time, Microsoft’s Active Server Pages or ASP was delivered to the market to meet this requirement.
Basically, ASP runs on the server-side, and sends its output to the user’s web browser. This enables the server to generate dynamic web pages based on the actions of the users.

Thus, ASP.NET has greatly captured the web development industry, and it is now among the most favored technologies to build dynamic websites, feature-rich web pages and web-centric applications.

Following are the benefits of using ASP.NET websites for your company:

Fast Web Applications: 

The two main things that make ASP.NET fast is caching and compiled code. In previous days, whenever a visitor views your web page, the code was interpreted into “machine language”. But with ASP.NET, the code gets complied into “machine language” before a visitor views your web page. On the other hand, caching stores all the data or information that can be used again in future for faster access. Also, ASP.NET allows the caching of the data from a database, therefore, your website is always faster even after frequent visits to the database.

Fixing Crash and Memory Leaks: 

 ASP.NET automatically recovers from errors and memory leaks. This helps you to ensure that your website never gives an error message to your website visitors, and also ensure that your website is available to them whenever they require.

Stability and Reliability: 

It is important for every business to have no downtime, no matter it is just for few minutes or several hours a day. Because even a simple issue may leads to serious losses, and this may impact the reputation of the business. This is the main reason why a huge role in the website plays its reliability and stability. ASP.NET technology increases the degree of resistance to various types of malicious attacks and hacking websites built on it. Therefore, if you use ASP.NET to build your website, then your website will always be secured.

Integration with Other Apps and Information Systems: 

Microsoft .NET platform consists of several embedded technologies for the integration of information systems and other applications, such as XML, JSON, WCF, remoting, service web, and so on, with the ASP.NET exists as a part of it. Because of the availability of these multiple solutions, this optimum technology is probably selected for each individual case. This will make sure flawless performance, scalability, and mostly security.

Supporting many languages: 

Using ASP.Net, developers can able to write their code on more than twenty-five .NET languages such as C#, VB.NET and Jscript.NET, and this provides the developers ease of use of language that they are expert in. This way the developers can able to build or customize your website based on all your business requirements.

Thus, ASP.NET web development has emerged as the de-facto standard in developing dynamic websites and feature-rich web-based applications on a global basis. This is mainly due to the robust framework of ASP.NET, and also the strong support base that this technology has been able to build over the years.

You may be developing a small enterprise website or a huge corporate web application distributed across various networks, ASP.NET will provide you all the features that you could require for your business, possibly at reasonable costs.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Developing Hybrid Mobile Application for Your Business

It is evident that the mobile world has been growing rapidly these past few years. With the boom of internet, the usage of the handheld devices, such as smart phones, iPhones and tablets, is also growing day by day.

Due to the increasing demand and sales of smartphones and tablets, modern businesses cannot ignore the benefits of mobile apps for their customers. It is a difficult task to create an app with the perfect mix of features and platform support at reasonable cost.

In general, these are the three technologies that are used for mobile application development: native, web and hybrid mobile app development. A hybrid application leverages both native and mobile web technologies. The development process of hybrid apps includes the qualities of both the web and native application development processes.

The hybrid app development is basically built with the native programming languages such as Java, Objective C, and web technology such as HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. It is developed based on the concept WORA or Write-Once-Run-Anywhere, which is nothing but it supports all mobile devices of different operating systems.

Using this hybrid app development approach, developers write important portions of their app in cross-platform web technologies, whereas, they maintain direct access to native APIs when needed.

The native portion of the hybrid app uses the operating system APIs to build an embedded HTML rendering engine, which acts as a bridge between the device APIs and the browser. This makes the hybrid app to take the advantages of all the features that the latest devices have to provide.

A hybrid application mostly uses native features of any device such as geo-location, calendar, notification, contacts, camera, and offline storage. It also supports various features that are supported by touch screen display devices.  For graphics, a hybrid app can use HTML, Canvas and SVC. Also, a number of hybrid apps support offline work such as an online game has an offline game practice features.

The hybrid mobile app development is accessed effortlessly through the internet without using any web browser, as it uses web view control to display HTML and JavaScript files on a screen. The web view control covers WebView on Android, UIWebView on iOS, and so on.

Advantages of hybrid mobile app development:

  • Uses of open source technologies such as PhoneGap, Sencha and SproutCore
  • Flexible for both multi-platform and cross-platform development
  • High-performance and cost-effective
  • Easy to download and install features
  • Highly interactive and impressive user interface
  • Great access to device features
  • Re-usable code base for various mobile platforms

Why a hybrid app is important for your business?

From a business viewpoint, developing a hybrid mobile app is the best idea, because this app development doesn’t require you to develop a full app for every mobile platform.

A hybrid app is cross-platform by design, and also it resolves some of the problems that some experience with web applications. From iOS to Windows Phone to Android to Blackberry OS, hybrid apps provide across-the-board functionality.

Some of the benefits of hybrid mobile apps are as follows:

  • Standardized branding: Developing a hybrid app helps you to have an app that is basically standard on all mobile devices. This gives a great user experience for your customers who use your app on their mobile devices. However, if you want to update your app, then a single update will fix the app on all platforms. So, if your customers change from one mobile platform to another, the user interface of the app will remains the same.
  • Better Integration: Similar to native mobile apps, hybrid mobile apps use the own code of mobile device to keep it in sync with other mobile applications. Hence, it works well with GPS, messaging, cameras and other device information to offer best service to your customers.
  • Better Speed: Hybrid apps are not faster than native apps; however, they are comparatively faster than mobile web apps as they support various best features. Unlike mobile web apps, the hybrid apps will not require network communication which can be the main reason for slowdown.
  • Accessibility: To ensure that your customers can able to easily access your products or services whenever they require, you need to have your app available for download in various mobile stores. Hybrid apps ensure that your app will be accessible across almost all app download platforms such as Android Google Play store, Apple App store, Windows Phone App store, and so on.
  • Offline use: Similar to native apps, hybrid mobile apps use the device’s API, and hence they store some data offline. So, your customers can able to use your hybrid apps even though they have the problem with network connectivity.

So, it is important for every business to enrich or improve their mobile applications by adding the native device capabilities. To do this, it is time for you to race ahead and develop a hybrid app for your business.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Create Facebook apps for your company and increase the brand image

Facebook marketing is a great, easy and affordable way marketing opportunity that helps you to promote your business. It is a huge business and recently there have been enormous changes occurring in the way Facebook pages for businesses are handled.
You can increase your brand image by having a Facebook page specially created for your business, and enhance it by adding few good Facebook apps. These Facebook apps will engage your customers and generate traffic to help you achieve your social media marketing objectives effortlessly.

So, are you having a Facebook page that works for your business? Have you ever considered using Facebook apps to enhance your business?

In this article, let’s have look at the most popular Facebook apps, the different ways to use the Facebook apps, and how the Facebook apps generally work on your Facebook page.Using apps is a best way for a business to create a Facebook page that makes the best impression on new page visitors. They enable you to do all sorts of things on your Facebook Page without scripting your own code.

Some most famous Facebook apps that enhance your brand’s Facebook page are Heyo, North Social, Pagemodo, ShortStack, Static HTML – Thunderpenny, TabFoundry, TabSite, Woobox, Aweber Web form Tool, YouTube for Pages, Networked Blogs, Sweepstakes, etc.

Before you get started, let’s analyzed create Facebook apps and use them on your Facebook page.
You have so many easy ways to get off the fence on app creation and move towards the direction where the social web has already headed. If you don’t have a Facebook app, then definitely you will be disappearing in the competitive online marketplace.

Facebook apps or custom tabs on Facebook are manually installed on your Facebook page. You can show up all those apps underneath the cover photo. Suppose, if your Facebook page has more than four custom tabs, then your user must click the down arrow on the right side of the tab cover photos to reveal all the apps.

Generally, every Facebook page consists of four standard Facebook apps. They are Photos, Events, Videos and Likes. Other apps are basically created by a third-party developer, not by Facebook. Most apps are designed on the app website and later installed on the Facebook page.

At a time, you can install up to eleven Facebook apps on your Facebook page. But, only four apps are visible in the thumbnail images directly under the cover photo. While Photos always appears as the first app, you can choose which apps must be displayed in the remaining three spots.

Some users may not have any idea about how to reveal all the apps. Hence, make sure that you include your most important Facebook apps in the top row of visibility. This is very important to be remembered when creating and adding the Facebook apps on your business Facebook page.

Here are some of the ways to use the Facebook apps to increase your brand image:

  • Integrate other social media channels: 

Besides using Facebook, some people think of their various social networking websites too. So, to cross-promote content from various other social media such as Twitter, Instagram and PInterest, you need to use a free app like Statigram on your Facebook page.  However, Tabfusion and Woobox are the other two Facebook apps that enable you to integrate various social media channels on your Facebook page.

  • Publish your blog to Facebook:

If you have a blog, then you need to repost blog entries to your Facebook timeline. On your Facebook page, share new posts in the news feed and house an archive of your blog posts. RSS Graffiti and NetworkedBlogs are the two most popular tools used for blogs to integrate with your Facebook page.

  • Run contests and promotions:

In addition to hosting the promotion on your Facebook timeline, you can also manage your contest by using a Facebook app. There are some Facebook apps that help you to get your contest out to your fans and start increasing traffic to your Facebook page. Offer-pop is an app that provides a huge variety of contest app types to choose from.

  • Add email subscribers:

Do you want to directly communicate with the people who like your page, through email? Constant Contact and Mail-chimp are the online marketing service providers who offer best sign-up apps for your Facebook page. However, Tab-site is a third-party app that offers an email sign-up app as part of their free package.

  • Enable e-commerce:

Besides selling your products on your website, you can also offer your products through your Facebook page. Heyo is an app platform that provides good templates to build out commerce-oriented tabs and add product links to increase sales.

  • Provide customer support:

Nowadays, most people are using social media to post feedback about the products they use. You can use apps like Get Satisfaction and Parature to get feedback and help support users right from your Facebook page. Using Facebook apps, you can collect the information you need and respond to people appropriately.

On the other hand, when running contests, promotions or more distinct marketing campaigns, it can be consoling to know that you are working with a preferred marketing developer. They ensure that you are complying with all the guidelines of Facebook, and get the most out of the platform.

If you want to get more out of your Facebook page, you must provide more convenience to your fans. Suppose if you want to have multiple tabs or apps on your Facebook page, it is recommended for you to look at the professional companies, which provide a suite of apps to determine what meets your requirements and fits your budget.

Monday, February 3, 2014

How to enhance your business using social media?

As there is an increased competition in the market and spread of Internet facilities, it becomes mandatory for business people seek different kinds of media that help them to increase traffic on their websites and grow their business sales.

One of the most effective ways to promote your business online is to harness the power of social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and YouTube. If you want social media to have a positive impact on your bottom line, then you must have a planned approach that is resourceful and consistent.

So, do you know how to use social media to enhance your business? The following tips for using some of the most popular social networking websites help you drive interest and customers to your business.

  • Create a business page on Facebook, and post the offers and special discounts to all the people who like your page.
  • On your Facebook page, post polls to your customers asking them hilarious or quirky questions related to your products or services.
  • Request your customers to share pictures of the products that they bought from your website, on your Facebook page.
  • Expand your marketing efforts on Facebook by allowing subscribers on your personal Facebook page. Subscriptions enable you to send public updates to your subscribers such as vendors, customers or others who view your public posts.
  • Use Twitter to tweet some interesting facts about your products or services, and give a link to that particular page on your website.
  • Provide short tips on how to use your products or services via Twitter.
  • On Twitter, tweet pictures or images related to your products or services to your Twitter followers.
  • Create a YouTube channel, especially for your online business and frequently add interesting and useful videos. Also, encourage your customers to view and share your YouTube videos with others.
  • Encourage your customers to create videos that show how they are using your products or services, and have people vote on their favorite videos.
  • On your YouTube channel, frequently post short videos that demonstrate how to use your products or services.
  • Request your customers to submit video testimonials and post those videos on your YouTube channel.
  • Create a LinkedIn profile and add links on your website. Also, update that LinkedIn profile with the information about your products or services, so that this information appears to all the people connected to your network.
  • Join the LinkedIn groups, which are popular among your customers, and regularly add comments or questions about your products or services.
  • Request your customers, vendors and other business associates connected to your network to give a recommendation for your products or services in LinkedIn.
  • In the Answers section of LinkedIn, look for the questions that are related to your business and provide answers for them on a regular basis. If your answers are rated highly by other LinkedIn users, you will get the title of Expert for that specific topic.
  • Launch a Google+ profile to make it easy and simple for your customers to find and follow your products or services.
  • Create circles in your Google+ profile, which are set up particularly for your customers, vendors and others who are interested in your brand.
  • Start a Hangout in Google+ to request and get feedback from your customers. 

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Why do you essentially need a mobile app for your business?

In today’s mobile world, mobile apps have become an integral part of almost every business, irrespective of their industry and size. Nowadays, mobile apps are no longer just games or entertainment programs. You have so many mobile apps available in the market certainly used for eCommerce, finance and management.

Mobile apps help any business to improve efficiency and productivity. While most companies have their own website, it is undeniably more profitable for them to also develop a mobile app.

These are some of the reasons why you essentially need a mobile app for your business:
  • Capture mobile commerce: One of the main reason your business requires a mobile app is to capture mobile commerce. Because, the number of customers using their mobile devices to make purchases has been drastically increasing over the last few years. A mobile app can frame the purchasing experience in a way that is reliable and consistent with the brand. Also, it allows for various kinds of sales such as micro payments from anywhere in the world.
  • Customer engagement: In order to increase customer engagement and drive conversions, you need to have a mobile app for your business. You can work with a professional mobile app development company to create a program that becomes a valuable resource for your customers. 
  • Better customer service: It is a fact that a good customer service will help a business to increase retention and keep customers away from the competition. A mobile app, specially developed for your business, helps you to provide a fast and easy way for your customers to contact you about customer service issues from any of their convenient locations. 
  • Local business: Generally, a business with a storefront must have a mobile app to increase visibility and sales. A mobile app can use geolocation or other similar technologies to search customers who are a certain distance from your store. It also provides information about your products, coupons and discounts that you provide to your customers. Hence, by using the mobile app that interacts directly to people residing nearby, local businesses can overcome the competition in their area.
  • Extend the reach of the business: Today, consumers are looking for products and services through mobile devices while they are on the move. So, to remain competitive and to extend the reach of your business, you need to have a mobile app to connect with these people.
  • Manage scheduling activities: In the app store, some planners and other organizing applications are readily available for mobile devices. Those applications help you to manage your schedules and other business activities, and hence make you to avoid conflicts in your business.
  • Promote business: Mobile apps greatly help to promote any business efficiently and inexpensively. As almost all businesses start to build applications and endeavor to custom their marketing strategies to fit mobile devices, you can easily expect an increase in mobile advertising through mobile app development.
  • Financial management: Having the ability to monitor and manage your business’ finances anywhere around the world is very efficient indeed and is very handy. Today, mobile applications are available in the app store help you perform well-organized financial management. Using mobile apps, you can easily monitor the financial standings of your company and react accordingly in order to quickly solve any problems. 

As mobile industry is booming and continuing to grow, it is advisable for any business to develop mobile apps to promote their products and services. Mobile is undeniably the way all communication is headed nowadays and so, adopting this technology is ensured to produce the perfect results for your business.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Do you want to make your shop online?

Starting an online store has many benefits over simply having a physical storefront. If you have an online store, you can avoid paying rent for physical stores and, as well, you can reach millions of customers from the comfort of your own place.

In order to have a shot at success, nevertheless, it is a good idea to put as much thought into making an online store as you would any other business. You will need to have a valuable product, a user-friendly website and a good marketing plan.
How to get start an online store?

* Developing your product and marketing plan

  • Decide what you want to sell
  • Offer something truly original, expertise and a user-friendly purchasing process
  • Try selling your products on a small-scale before taking the plunge and starting an entire store
  • Make an effectual business plan 
  • Register your business according to your state’s law

* Building your own online store

  • Register a domain name
  • Choose a best web hosting service
  • Design your website
  • Choose an effective e-commerce software
  • Set up a merchant account
  • Use a comprehensive e-commerce service

 How to set up your own online store?

* Gather information about what you will require before you get started building your online shop. You will definitely require

  • A domain name
  • A web host
  • A dedicated IP address for your site and private SSL
  • A shopping cart script
  • A payment gateway

* Set up your website
* Install your shopping cart system
* Customize your online shop

How to choose the right shopping cart software for your online store?

Once you develop an effectual marketing plan, the next step is to choose the right shopping cart software to use for your online store. Choosing the best ecommerce software can be difficult due to the amount of choices you have in the market. You need to choose the best ecommerce software, which has right features and tools for creating, maintaining and running your online store.

You can choose the best ecommerce software for your online store by looking at its price, features, bandwidth limits and overages, transaction fees, product limits, payment processing, ease of use, technical support and assistance, and so on.

Some of the famous shopping carts that are available in the market are Magento, OSCommerce, Prestashop, Zen Cart, OpenCart, Shopify, 1ShoppingCart, Shopping Cart Elite, CoreCommerce, Volusion, CS Cart, King cart, ShopSite, FoxyCart, 3d Cart, Lite Commerce, Pinnacle Cart, Bigcommerce, WP eStore, InfusionSoft and many more.

To find the best ecommerce software for your online store, first you need to determine whether you are technically savvy or not. If you are, then choose open source that will give you more flexibility and then configure the shopping cart based on your business requirements.

If you are not technically savvy, then use hosted shopping carts or website builders to quickly and easily set up your online store and start selling your products.

How to make your online store more successful?

The challenge here is not so much in how to make your online store up and running, instead it is all about how you are attracting your visitors and converting them as customers. Fortunately, the things that make the big online shops that are already available can be applied to your online business too.

The following are the things that make your online shop successful:

  • Product reviews – Allow your customers to review the products they have bought from your online store. 
  • Quality images – Allow your visitors visualize how the product looks like and how can be used.
  • Easy payment process – Make the payment process hilariously easy for your customers to pay you.
  • Fast loading times – Provide smooth shopping experience for your customers by optimizing your online shop speed.
  • Quality design – Get a professionally designed online shop that adds credibility and shows your brand personality to your visitors.
  • Related products – Show visitors other products people have bought together or products that are complimentary to each other.
  • Easy store navigation – Make your online shop easy to navigate through with an effective category, filter and search system.
  • Good product descriptions – Provide proper descriptions about your products to convert people into paying customers.
  • Excellent customer support – Always be ready to deal with disgruntled customers anytime.

So, build a successful and highly profitable online store! Happy Selling Online!

Friday, January 10, 2014

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.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Moodle – An ideal Learning Management System for Online Educational Institutes

Today, technology is changing our lives on a daily basis. Obviously, the things that we considered impossible few years back are actually being made possible with the help of technology.

In earlier days, we had to be present at school to learn and gain knowledge. If you miss a school day, then you will not get back the missed syllabus. But, this has completely changed due to technology.

Using latest technologies, you can able to study from whichever corner of the world you are in. Nowadays, you have so many Learning Management Systems that brought education closer to you whether they are for business or just for education purposes.

Moodle

Moodle is a Learning Management System that helps educators to create effective online learning websites and internet-based courses. It is open source software, which is also known as a course Management System (CMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

Using Moodle, developers can create plug-ins for specific new functionality. The different types of plug-ins that are supported by Moodle’s infrastructure are

  • Activities
  • Resource types
  • Question types
  • Data field types
  • Graphical themes
  • Authentication methods
  • Enrollment methods 
  • Content filters

Features

Moodle consists of several features that are considered typical of an e-learning platform. It can be used in various types of environments such as education, training and development, and business settings.

The typical features of Moodle are discussion forum, assignment submission, moodle instant messages, files download, online calendar, online news and announcement, online quiz and Wiki.

The major new features of Moodle are

  • Open Badges integration
  • Add-on installer
  • Themes
  • Forms improvements
  • Enrollment
  • Assignment activity
  • Database activity
  • Glossary activity
  • Quiz activity
  • Workshop activity
  • Resources
  • Repositories
  • Course listings
  • Performance improvements
  • Security related improvements
  • Automated functional testing

The latest version i.e. Moodle 2.6 consists of a lot of exciting new features for students, teachers and administrators. Some great new features of Moodle 2.6 are as follows:

  • Add a single activity course format
  • Streamlined course and category management
  • Bulk course creation tool
  • Enhanced marketing workflow and allocation
  • Automatically notify new users of login details
  • Access files from Microsoft Skydrive

Moodle customization

Moodle customization enables developers all across the world to build custom online course management system for their customers based on their requirements at affordable prices.

Hence, a large number of organizations and educational institutions have already started using this effective Learning Management System. This e-learning software solution is widely used by a huge number of primary and high schools, educational institutes, universities, government institutes, private classes, coaching classes, companies, educators and many more.

Moodle is an effective e-learning software solution for beginners who want to begin their training institutes or coaching classes and provide their students best training using modern technology. Also, it becomes beneficial for organizations to provide their employees with business related training in a contemporary way.

Moodle has a great community support of developers all across the globe. Its support team members and other freelance contributors provide a great contribution in the advancement of this development framework.
Hence, the developers get the benefit of all new features and latest versions of Moodle absolutely free. They can implement all the available features and customize e-learning system for their customers based on their requirements.

Moodle CMS Integration

Moodle CMS integration allows developers to integrate other CMS with it. By using its modular design, the developers can able to create modules and additional features. Also, the developers can use the customizing features and design highly interactive, robust and scalable Learning Management System.

If you are planning to establish your own online coaching class, then Moodle is an ideal Learning Management system. To get a professional e-learning system, hire an experienced developer, who can provide comprehensive services, such as Moodle Customization, Plug-in Development, Custom Themes Installation, CMS Integration, Database Integration, Payment Gateway Integration, User Management, Layout, Custom Designs, Template Designs, Migration, Testing, Maintenance and Support.

Moodle is a successful and valuable Learning Management System that gives global reorganization to your online business quickly and profitably.

Friday, January 3, 2014

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.


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.