Ecommerce Archives - TODAY INDIA

Supercharge Your Ecommerce Store With Magento Extensions

Magento is a popular ecommerce platform that is used by most business organizations and enterprises for its varied and out of the box features. According to facts, there are about more than 1,50,000 Magento stores all over the globe and this framework is used by start-up companies as well as established brands. To make the ecommerce application even stronger, Magento developers customize the application and integrate various modules to enhance functionality of the app. But what are the most important extensions that you should consider.

In this article, we will cover a few important Magento extensions that can enhance your online store.

Fontis Secure Pay: Security plays a great role in ecommerce applications and online transactions are what customers are very concerned about. Any customer will not be willing to share his or her personal details or spend some more money on shopping from an ecommerce website. The site, in fact has to assure that the online transactions are done through highly secured environment. For this, Fontis SecurePay Plugin for Magento is an ideal solution that helps to complete online financial transactions in a secure manner with the help of SecureXML gateway.

Shipworks: Every business owner wants to capture the market by offering great services to the customers. But delivering the right product at the right time requires a lot of efforts. Shipping often becomes a big issue for online business owners, but to make the task easier, you can ask your dedicated Magento programmer to integrate Shipworks, which is a great plugin that offers great functionalities like labels creating, updating orders, sending emails to customers and etc.

Price Bargaining: People opt for online shopping simply to save their time and money. Price Bargaining is an important extension that a Magento ecommerce development company can integrate to your existing application so that the customers can get the best possible price either by comparing or by bargaining. The extension makes sure that the customers stick to the services or products once they are happy with the good bargain.

Daily Deal: Up selling is very important for your growing business and this marketing technique can be infused into your business by integrating the Daily Deal extension. The module helps to allure the customers through the daily deal concept and this can prove to be a great revenue enhancer. People who are looking for discounted price can be highly satisfied.

Yotpo Product Reviews: This extension is the most widely used because of its amazing functionality. Before making a purchase from any online website, customers usually prefer to evaluate reviews or feedbacks about the product over the web. Yotpo Product Reviews allows them to evaluate the items on your shopping website instead of searching it somewhere else where the customers can move away from your store. Positive reviews about the product help to drive more customers and increase business revenues.

So in short, if you are planning to create a Magento website for your business or already have an existing one, ask your Magento developers to include great extensions for support, freedom, resources and versatility.

Is Fashion Ecommerce Still a Financially Viable Business Model?

With the ongoing economic turbulence many sectors including that of fashion have seen significant global disruption. The fashion retail sector in particular has seen profitability move southward in the past number of years, we have seen many high street brands simply drop off the radar. This is derivative of two major factors namely, challenges by way of online technology and also due to the fact that fashion is an elastic sector and is duly affected by economic downturns.

In the last eight years we have seen an increase in the number of fashion e-commerce platform start-ups. Many have survived and many have simply “disappeared into the ether” yet this trend continues to grow exponentially? Ever since Natalie Massenet former CEO and founder of Net-a-Porter launched the phenomenal online luxury fashion powerhouse, she has set sail a thousand ships of fashion start-up converts.

Yet every other week there are whispers of fashion start-ups “blowing up”, that the Fashion E-commerce industry is simply a dead saturated market, too easy picking consisting of low hanging fruit. Furthermore, it is thought of as being very capital-intensive to maintain, innovate and even more expensive in terms of marketing requirements for customer acquisition.

So is there a magic formula? A significant number of fashion start-up firms flounder and very few survive without significant angel or VC funding. Each one seems to be looking for the next explosive formula. Perhaps there isn’t a grand design and maybe the answer is right here beneath our noses. It could simply involve keeping adept with the times.

We have seen the impact of social media on the bottom line in many industries maybe these methodologies need to be employed? It should no longer be about shopping it should be about social shopping. Women are the largest demographic in terms of online purchases and we all know that they are a “social species” when it comes to shopping! The advent of facebook and twitter have somewhat alleviated the strain of marketing overheads and some relatively new start-ups such as Farfetch.com have gained a significant proportion of their user base from facebook so social commerce seems to be one way forward.

The Fashion e-commerce sector is like any industry and will fluctuate with tastes, availability to credit and economic climates. There are still opportunities up for grabs; the market is set to grow to 380 billion USD by 2015. Over 20% of fashion purchases are done online by 72% of women. It is therefore, nonsensical to think that returns will consistently evade the voyeurs of this industry? Maybe, the answer is to potentially look at new and innovative ways of monetizing the industry as opposed to the pure rigid top down techniques that the fashion industry consistently uses. Additionally, to create models that allow for flexibility, that can readily pivot and recoil if need be, to be less virtual and more engaging and to enforce into action information garnered via customer feedback mechanisms.

Creating an Ecommerce Website

Selling products on-line requires a very different setup from your run-of-the-mill blogging site. Lets look at the things you’ll need to think about when setting up an eCommerce website and help to explain why they cost more to design.

First let me tell you what we’re not going to cover in this article.

We’re not assuming that an eCommerce website is a single web page with some PayPal button codes inserted onto it.

The PayPal buttons are great and work very well for those selling a handful of items, but we’re taking eCommerce to the next level and giving the customer a better on-line shopping experience.

Most modern eCommerce website are applications. They have a user interface, administration settings, store data in a database and follow a work-flow of processes. We’re going to touch on some of these areas.

The Basics

An eCommerce website can be thought of as a play with actors performing it’s scenes.

The main actors in an eCommerce website are:

* The Customer – buys products

* The Website Owner – ships bought products & gets paid

* The eCommerce Application – interface between all the actors

* The Payment Gateway – handles payment transactions (more on this later)

* The Merchant/Business Bank Account – Website owner’s business bank account (more on this later)

The main buying process of an eCommerce website (‘the play’) happens as follows:

1. Customer browses product catalogue

2. Customer adds product to basket

3. Customer buys product and enters check-out process

4. eCommerce Application contacts a Payment Gateway

5. Payment Gateway provides secure customer shipping and payment details entry form

6. Customer securely enters shipping and payment information

7. Payment Gateway contacts Website Owners’ Merchant Bank Account

8. Merchant Bank Account processes payment transaction and returns control to Payment Gateway

9. Payment Gateway returns Customer to eCommerce Application

10. eCommerce Application notifies Customer of successful (or failed) payment

11. eCommerce Application notifies Website Owner of purchase

12. Website Owner ships product to Customer

Of course there’s a lot more detail going on in each step, but hopefully you get the general idea that setting up an eCommerce application is a tad more complicated than your regular blog-style website.

Where Do You Start?

Sounds silly right, but the first step you need to do is think about the types of things you’ll be selling on-line.

Are these products?, i.e. physical items that require packaging and posting or services provided by yourself or another provider e.g. Professional Yak Grooming.

How may products or types of services are you going to offer? Local or International? Are some seasonal? Do you have a finite stock level for particular items? Do you plan to use special offers & discounts? Do you even like yaks?

This leads to customer and payment questions.

Who are your customers? Where are they? How are they going to pay; credit card, cheque, PayPal? Which bank account will I need to set up?

And then there are the support questions.

How do you handle returned goods? How do you refund payments? How do you handle complaints?

Having a think about the products and services you’re going to offer is vital because the first thing a web designer is going to ask you when you’re requesting a quote is “How many things are you selling and to whom?”

The reason is of course time and costs.

Selling 50 products to a UK only customer base using PayPal requires a very different setup and hence costs, to one selling 1000+ products internationally and taking credit card payments.

Lets look closer at some of the important eCommerce application areas.

The eCommerce Application

Essentially, an eCommerce application is a bespoke Content Management System (CMS). So as well as updating posts and blogs it specialises in updating products and services and supporting commerce functions.

Like any CMS, the application splits the eCommerce website into two major parts; the front-end or shop-front where the customer can browse and buy goods and the back-end where you login to an administration dashboard and manage the website options, including the product catalogue.

The Product Catalogue

This will likely be your most important concern and is central to any eCommerce website design.

The product catalogue is where all your goods-for-sale data lives. The product name, description, cost, stock level, pictures etc. are all stored in here.

We sometimes get people asking which files their products are stored in and they get in bit of a tizzy when they can’t find them on the server.

Usually, product catalogues are stored in a database, but don’t worry – you don’t have to know how to use a database. The eCommerce application does that for you through the product catalogue interface in the Administration Dashboard.

Being able to manage this yourself is vital, otherwise you’ll be going back and forward to the web developer and the costs will rack up.

Thankfully, the eCommerce applications that we use, Magento and WordPress e-Commerce, once installed, allow you to manage your own product catalogue from within the web browser.

The Magento product catalogue has advanced options and allows for things like adding discount codes, customer reviews, product videos etc., whereas the WordPress e-Commerce catalogue offers a simpler solution while still covering the essential requirements you’ll need to sell stuff on-line.

So how do you go about entering and updating all this product information?

The Admin Dashboard

Accessing a special web page on your site and entering a username and password will take you to the options part of your eCommerce website. This is commonly known as the Admin Dashboard.

Here, you will be able to update almost every aspect of the website including accessing the product catalogue, shipping costs, currency exchange rates, payment gateways, sales reports etc.

Whichever eCommerce solution you choose from us, we’ll setup some or all of your product catalogue and make sure that customers can purchase items and that you get paid through a payment gateway (more on that late

The Shop Design

Of course your shop will need a look and feel to fit in with your business brand.

Again, just like other CMS’s a web designer will be needed to develop a theme or template which will transform the default shop-front into whatever design you have in mind for your customers.

Themes can be bought off-the-shelf for both WordPress e-Commere and Magento and you can apply these yourself, however, you may prefer to have a design exactly the way you imagined it and different from any of your competitors.

Themes are applied from the Administration Dashboard. You may be able to change a few aspects of the theme, such as your logo, background colour, text colour, however, you’re not going to be able to move parts of the theme around to different areas of the screen. A web designer will need to do this by updating the theme’s code.

Domain Name and Website Hosting

You will of course need a domain name to trade with and a hosting plan to store the website files and databases.

It’s usually best not to purchase a hosting plan until you’ve spoken to a web designer and they have given you an idea of the best solution to implement.

Many of the cheaper hosting plans that are offered to you when purchasing a domain name, do not support databases or database applications. They may charge an extra setup and yearly fee for setting this up.

So try to avoid buying a hosting plan until you talk to a web designer and have an idea of the type of eCommerce solution you’ll need to implement your ideas.

Merchant Bank Accounts vs Business Bank Accounts

Certainly in the UK, you must have a business bank account to legally trade as a business.

Business bank accounts can be used just fine with an eCommerce application but you will need to setup a Payment Gateway service to handle the payment transactions and get the customers money into your bank account.

If you’re opening up a business bank account and your account manager knows you’re going to be running an eCommerce website you may be offered a merchant bank account which is a specialised version of the business account.

The merchant account gives you a Merchant ID number and access to a Payment Gateway service that the bank uses or owns.

It’s likely you’ll need to pay for the setup of a merchant account and it will incur fees, usually on a per-transaction basis.

If you have already setup a merchant account then you will need to make sure your eCommerce application can support the particular payment gateway your bank has given you access to, otherwise you won’t get your money.

e.g. Lloyds TSB uses the Cardnet merchant payment gateway. Royal Bank of Scotland uses the WorldPay merchant payment gateway.

If you were a Royal Bank of Scotland business customer with a merchant account, you would need to make sure your eCommerce application supported the WorldPay gateway.

You don’t need to use the particular merchant account that your business bank offers to trade on-line, but you do need a payment gateway of some sort to handle payments.

That leads us nicely onto payment gateways.

Payment Gateways

We’ve touched on this in the previous section. Essentially, a merchant bank account will give you a payment gateway to use, but you’re limited to just the one that your business bank is affiliated with.

A payment gateway is a service offered by a company.

It handles the payment part of the eCommerce application when a customer proceeds to the checkout to purchase an item.

The payment gateway collects the customers details and payment information securely and contacts your business bank account to complete the money transaction.

This is great for security too as your customers banking details aren’t kept on your eCommerce website, so that’s one less thing to worry about securing.

There are many different payment gateway services with different features and options. As a supplied service they all charge a fee for their use. The fees can include a setup charge and a % commission of the total price of a transaction.

Some payment gateways allow you to pay a monthly or annual fee if your number of transactions are high. This can work out more cost effective for you if your single transactions are high volume but low individual cost.

You’ve probably heard of some of the more well known gateway service providers and not known what they. You’ve also likely used them without even realising they are there. Some of the popular payment gateways are:

PayPal, Google Checkout, SagePay, WorldPay and ChronoPay.

It’s great that you have a choice and the services are very competitively priced so take some time to check out which is best for your business model. If you need some help, we’d be happy to meet up and walk you through the options.

Some payment gateways offer two types of general services; hosted and inclusive.

Hosted Payment Gateways

These options usually don’t require a set-up or monthly fee, however, transaction costs can be higher than an inclusive service.

The PayPal Website Payments Standard service is a good example of this.

Essentially, it limits your customers to having a PayPal account (they must register with the PayPal site) and when it comes to check-out, the customers are transferred from your eCommerce website to the PayPal website for the information gathering and payment transaction, then upon completion redirected back to your eCommerce website.

The downside of this method is really from a branding point of view. You have very limited control of how the payment gateway service, PayPal in this case, looks and operates before it redirects back to your website.

Some customers can be put off by redirecting to another site as confidence in security can be questioned (although PayPal in this instance has a very good reputation).

You’re also limiting the payment method to just those customers who are willing to use the payment gateway’s choice of payment. In this case, the customer must have a registered PayPal account.

A similar process happens if you use the Google Checkout payment gateway.

So what’s the other option?

Inclusive Payment Gateways

Inclusive payment gateways will allow your customers to go through the whole checkout process without (the appearance of) leaving your branded eCommerce website.

I added in “the appearance of” because in some cases your customers will actually leave your website and use the payment gateway service, however, the way it is implemented and embedded makes it looks as if it’s all part of your website and business brand.

So what’s the catch?

There’s usually a setup fee, a minimum subscription period (say 12 months), a monthly fee and of course a whole heap of conditions that apply.

Some particular conditions to look out for are thresholds on the number of transactions per month, or total monthly funds transferred. Payment gateway services can charge extra or insist you upgrade your service if these thresholds are exceeded in a similar way that mobile phone companies will charge you extra if you use up all your inclusive talk or SMS time.

The best benefit of using an inclusive payment gateway is that the whole customer experience from browsing to payment is hosted on your own website. This gives the customer a greater sense of confidence that their data will be kept safe and makes your whole business look and feel more professional.

A good example of this type of service is the PayPal Web Payments Pro.

Securing The Data

If you’re using a payment gateway then the good news is it’s unlikely you’ll be storing sensitive customer payment details on your eCommerce website.

Those types of data will be kept securely in your payment gateway account.

Of course you will be collecting a whole lot of other important and confidential customer information such as name, email, perhaps address, likes, dislikes, a username and password for your site.

All this information needs to be kept secure and your eCommerce application will help with that. The Administration Dashboard will have lots of sections that control who and what can see parts of the collected data.

But that’s not the only security you’ll have to think about. Do you know what happens when you fill out a form on a website and click on submit?

If you have a look at the top of the web browser in the address bar you’ll see the website’s URL address. Most sites will start with http://

(For those that want to know, URL stands for Uniform Resource Location and HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol)

Any web page starting with http:// is transferring data to and from a web server in Plain Text.

This means, that the web page contents, code, images, text, form data are all sent in a format that’s readable to humans. OK, it may not be that readable, but in essence all the information is there in English characters (or whatever language character set your website uses).

Now for some more techie stuff.

When your web page is sent to or received from a web server, there isn’t a 1-to-1 direct connection between your website and the server. The web page data is transferred through hundreds of networks across different countries and through thousands of routing computers and other network devices before arriving at your computer.

This means that at any point during it’s travel, your web page data has the potential to be intercepted and read by whomever.

There isn’t much you can do about the interception part but there is something you can do to make it a darn lot harder for somebody to read and use your eCommerce web page data.

SSL Certificates

Now we’re talking.

Let’s skip the techie bit and quickly tell you what these are and what they do.

You buy an SSL certificate from a web hosting company (annual renewal most likely), install it into your eCommerce website and it encrypts your web page data. Hooorah!

You’ll now notice that parts of your website, likely those that require personal form data to be collected and sent, now start with https://

The addition of that little “s” letter, standing for “Secure”, means that the web page data is encrypted when sent and decoded only at the two end-points; your computer and a web server.

Anyone reading the page in between will see garbled non-readable characters.

You may also see additional signs of a secured web page such as a closed padlock icon.

We would strongly advise you buy an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate and get this installed and configured for use with your hosting account and eCommerce website.

In Summary

Creating an eCommerce website requires a fair amount of planning.

You’ll need a good web design and web development team to implement your business venture.

It will cost you more and take longer to create than a regular blog or brochure-ware website because of all the design and setup.

You’ll make money – and that’s what’s it’s all about after all…

We hope this helps you start your eCommerce website journey. Of course there’s a heap of things we just didn’t have the time to cover.

Learn more about eCommerce at our website.

Paybacks of Having an Online Ecommerce Drop Ship Business

The present economy has more and more people thinking about the future and how they will achieve their financial ambitions. People are so much concern about their capability to provide the needs of their family for tomorrow. A rigid answer to ensure a prospering financial future is to start an online business. Establishing an online drop ship business can deliver the solution that everyone is looking for. There are many paybacks to own and operate your own business store.

Establishing an online store with passion in it is very essential to one’s business. Any line of business created could not endure the competition in the business world if the owner himself doesn’t have the drive to succeed in whatever endeavors that may come along the way. Having the time to do the activities he enjoys the most can lead to a very successful online business.

Aside from that, managing an online business gives everyone the ability to work from home. This can give the owners the opportunity to be with their family at all times. He can spend a lot of time with kids while also working at his business. This is a great advantage since the work doesn’t necessarily need anyone to travel away from home just to fulfill the tasks given.

In order not to put this business on waste is they have to partner with reliable wholesale suppliers for their merchandises. Although every item sold only gives them a little profit but come to think of it, the products being delivered by the drop shippers are in huge volume. This business has the potential to earn a substantial income as time goes by. This will give the owners the satisfaction of witnessing the fruits of their labor.

To make sure anyone can achieve this dream is they have to locate this wholesale drop ship directory from the web. I know this is hard but I know one site which offers the most reliable source of wholesaler drop shipper lists. All you have to do is to source out the most reliable suppliers who have the potential to make your business successful. These companies have the power to take your future wherever you desire.

Future of Ecommerce

A move that changed the way people went about shopping online, ecommerce solutions have come a long way since then. Right from the time when the dot com bubble burst, the web saw constant changes and revelations that started affecting our daily lives. One of them was ecommerce solutions that helped customers across the globe purchase their favourite products online without any hesitations or apprehensions. An initiative that was taken by web gurus for strictly business purposes, ecommerce has become a juggernaut that gets used daily by millions of users across the globe for purchase and other transactions. The terminology has become an industry and many wonder whether ecommerce would be able to sustain this sudden business explosion or not.

Ecommerce websites made by Offshore Outsourcing Company and web design India companies became the easiest way to shop. The online shops are available throughout day and night and also offer good discounts. Offshore outsourcing India service providers making these websites develop them in a way that they are well equipped to handle purchases of all types and also have provisions of accepting payments through cards. Business has been made easier and so have purchases become. The marketing space that it provides has become a pedestal for many companies to thrive and promote products. But the golden question still remains, where does ecommerce go from here?

The fact is, ecommerce is here to stay and progress. Ecommerce websites are helping organizations to make money and there is no reason why these enterprises will close their flourishing online jobs and look for something else. Offshore web development companies and web design India service providers are getting huge projects where enterprises are getting ecommerce solutions on their websites to register exponential sales. These solutions have taken organizations out of the dumps and have put them on the path to register reasonable sales. Offshore outsourcing India companies providing these ecommerce solutions have helped enterprises in talking the route to doing good business and subsequently, ecommerce is only going to grow from here.

Since ecommerce has gone onto become a colossus that cannot be subdued or packed into exile, there is no way that its growth would stop. The formula has become a globally acclaimed hit and the services are being sought after everywhere. Enterprises trying to establish a global presence are hiring ecommerce solutions so that consumers visiting their website get good facilities to make purchases on it and turn it into a revenue generating machine. Ecommerce also promises hope and positivity to all those enterprises not doing that well by adding a lot of presence to them on the web and styling them in such a way that they look like websites genuinely made to register sales.

More or less, ecommerce has brought in a lot of hope into the web world. It continues to flourish and along with it flourishes the idea of websites selling their products quite effectively and growing into enterprises, a possibility that might have not come true had ecommerce services not been there.

Things You Need To Consider During E-Commerce Website Development

Web development is complicated. In any project, there are a multitude of aspects to consider, from user experience to performance.

Here are a few other aspects of an E-Commerce site that developers will want to be sure to consider during the development process.

Things to consider during E-Commerce Development are:

1. Responsive Web Design:

For the most part, more customers are shopping whenever they choose and in the most convenient manner for them. However, if customers are able to, they will access your store via their tablet PC’s or smart phones which are where responsive web design India comes into play. Responsive design is going to make your site more accessible on a variety of platforms and devices. This will make the site usable to more people and that could potentially increase your sales.

2. Adding Guest Checkouts Options:

To be honest, people don’t always want to create accounts with every site they make a purchase from. The biggest reason is because of the amount of spam and junk emails they get through to their email accounts each week and it can become very much an annoyance. However, if you are able to offer a guest check-out feature, that may prove to be a hit with more customers. Custom web development can be varied but who’s to say you can’t add a guest check-out? This will attract more people and make them feel at ease shopping at your store too.

3. Site search is important:

it’s important to make sure the search functionality is available and easy to use. In addition, it’s a good idea to utilize features like autocomplete to help users find popular products or items related to their searches.

Faceted search is another important way to help users find products. This functionality allows them to narrow their search in a variety of ways, including by department, size, price range, manufacturer, etc. Providing this functionality gives users more power to find what they need, letting them limit their searches to exactly what they are looking for.

4. Security is essential:

This is especially true for credit card and payment information, but also any customer information like address, phone number, email, etc. Customers have an expectation that their personal information will remain secure when they make a purchase online, so ensuring that SSL is implemented is not just a good idea, but something that is absolutely essential for ensuring that your customers trust that their information will remain secure. In addition, security is required to meet PCI compliance for any business which accepts credit card payments.

5. Optimize Site Performance and Speed:

Have you ever been stuck on a website waiting for the page to load? For most, they switch off after a few seconds because it’s a waste of their time. However, if this happens on your site you’re essentially losing business and that isn’t good. Your E-Commerce web development really must deal with the site’s performance and speed issues. If these things are not optimized then users will look elsewhere.

6. Develop Wisely:

Too many website owners think development means getting more customers or expanding the site’s product pages but in truth, it’s so much more. The above are just five simple things to consider when you are developing your E-Commerce website. When you develop well, you get more customers. E-Commerce website development can be simple; don’t let it catch you out.

Keeping these aspects of an E-Commerce site in mind during development will help you ensure that you are providing the best experience for your customers, but there are many more elements to consider when developing your site. Almost every business owner has to deal with the challenge of E-Commerce web development. This is not easy no matter how experienced you are with the internet or how great your business ideas are. Since users will be coming to the site to learn about and purchase products, developers will want to do everything they can to make this process easy and intuitive. But alongside the considerations of usability.

What Are Actionable Tricks to Hire an ECommerce Developer in Budget?

Businesses are quickly moving online rather than sticking with the offline market. The reason behind it is, they experience the change; buyers find shopping stuff online way more convenient than visiting stores one after one. It also spikes the need to Hire Shopify Developer India for creating an online store.

If you’re also finding a good team of Shopify Developer in India, you should know why, when, and how it is important to hire an eCommerce developer.

No need to worry as we are here with some rock-solid ideas that will actually work whenever you need a helping hand to launch your online business.

So, let’s move ahead.

Shopify is definitely one of the most preferred eCommerce CMS platforms. It offers everything that a merchant wants to sell online and entices customers using various marketing tactics. However, the procedure of online marketing and business is quite tough to practice in a real life. There are lots of factors that any business person needs to consider such as evaluating the market trends, handle inventory, manage products, apply smart marketing plans, ensure shipping and return policies, and many more.

If this is your very first web store or you are completely blank about the online market, you should seek the best Shopify developer team around you.

Once you hire a Shopify developer, you will get enough time to focus on other important tasks of the company. Make sure that the Shopify developer that you are going to hire should have enough knowledge, experience, and skill in PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, website hosting, API integration, and usage of version control.

Apart from these all requirements, there are some of the most important factors that you need to consider before hiring any Shopify developer which we’ve mentioned below.

Include unique and innovative ideas
Detailed portfolio
Good communication skill
Trustable testimonials
Maintenance and support plan after development

Along with these aspects, one must have a few technical skills such as,

JavaScript, CSS, HTML5, Bootstrap
Third-party API integrations
Hosting and deployment
Version control
Programming languages such as Laravel, CodeIgniter, NodeJS, and ExpressJS
Project management tools such as Jira, Trello, Asana, and Slack

More than that, a full-stack Shopify developer should have a few qualities,

Experience working with frameworks such as NodeJS and Django
Experts in Mongo DB and MySQL
Can handle media queries and deal with single-page applications
Understanding of hybrid mobile app development
Can have a built-in multitasking skill

Above all are the most important aspects that you need to seek into any Shopify developer before you hire them.

Wind up,

If you are extremely stressed about which platform could be perfect for your eCommerce store as you do have not enough technical awareness, then Shopify is a safe platform you should rely upon. The only challenging part is to Hire Shopify Developer India, but if an individual fits into all of the above criteria then you can work with him or her.

Ecommerce Marketing Ideas

As more and more businesses take the ecommerce route to attract customers, it’s becoming increasingly necessary to build effective ecommerce marketing ideas. In fact, there are several online marketing strategies that cost almost nothing. The key behind marketing your ecommerce business online is to remain engaged. Once you begin online marketing, you’ll need to add updates to drive traffic as well as increase revenue.

Following are some of the ecommerce marketing ideas.

SEO content

Proper implementation of search engine optimization (SEO) content on your website would help in increasing your rank on the search engine result pages. Conduct research about the type of keywords web surfers are using to locate sites that are related to yours. Incorporate these keywords into your web content. SEO analysts often advise never to overuse the keywords but to use them according to the flow of the content. Keywords should never be forced into the content. Search engines usually reject websites that overuse keywords sans offering content that comprises useful information or grammatical structure.

Social networking

There are several social networking websites all across the internet that would help you to reach the millions of potential customers out there every day. Try to develop a presence on the web in the big social networking sites and make sure that you update your profile there every day. Add fresh information with regard to your company and you can reach out to the people with whom you are networked, by offering some pricing specials or some other promotions. Continue adding friends to your network and also remember to link the social networking sites to the main website of your company.

Article writing

A good way to drive traffic to your ecommerce website is by making people aware that you are an expert in your chosen field and that the website is a valuable and dependable source of information. There are numerous website on the internet that would allow you to publish your articles on your chosen field. These websites, often known as article directories, allow the writer to place a link of his website. Visitors to these directories can click on the link and visit your website. You can also consider starting a blog where you can write about your company as well as the industry you represent.

Remember that ecommerce marketing is a continuous process and it is not something done only once. Ecommerce marketing is pertinent to the success of your online business.

Best Ecommerce Platform for Your Online Business

The ecommerce industry has shown a remarkable growth across the globe. During the early ages of ecommerce, there were just a handful of online stores that would deliver at specific locations. But with the rapid growth of ecommerce, several entrepreneurs have converted their business ideas into reality. Along with the improved logistics and payment channels, the ecommerce business can now go beyond the border. If you are one of those entrepreneurs planning to step into the world of ecommerce, then you need to initiate by choosing an ecommerce platform. It is the first and the most significant step where you can’t afford to make any mistake.

Deciding on a suitable platform for creating an online store should be the priority. But how can you determine which platform is ideal for making your business successful?

Here is a set of few questions which you must ask before choosing a suitable platform for your online venture.

Is the platform scalable?

Your business can progress with time which means that having a future-ready platform is a necessity. Hence, it is always a good choice to pick a platform that can not just meet the current business goals but also turns out to be a good choice for the long run. The ecommerce platform should let you handle the demands of the growing traffic. A scalable platform prevents your site from getting slow or unresponsive when high volume traffic is present on the site. Hence, it is essential to ensure that the platform you choose is scalable to meet your business needs.

Does it provide security?

Security can be stated as the primary concern when it comes to online business. The internet is full of intruders trying to steal the confidential data. Ensuring the safety of the confidential details of the customers during online transactions is a must. The payment details like, like credit/ debit card number and passwords should all be encrypted so that it is of no use even if someone manages to get hold of these details. Any loopholes in the security provided by the ecommerce platform can make the customers lose their trust and affect the sales of your online store. Hence, you should go for a platform that maintains a secure environment while processing online transactions.

Does it provide shipping solutions?

When we talk about ecommerce, shipping is undoubtedly a part to consider. For making an online business successful, it is necessary to have strong supply chain management. While creating an online store, you should be aware of all the logistics needs and the entire supply chain management life cycle. An ecommerce platform that provides easy integration with a third party shipping partner is always a good choice. Simple and automated shipping solutions can reduce manual intervention thus reducing the pain of logistics and helping you in focusing on various other factors that may result in the growth of your online business.

It can be a difficult task to find a platform that can be a complete solution for all the mentioned questions.

How Technology Has Changed the Ecommerce Field

Technology is fast paced and the effect is something that we all are aware of. With so many changes happening due to the advancement in technology the e-commerce world has affected the most. Even the customers these days are tech savvy and prefer to shop online. The customers are much smarter than before where they could be befooled with the prices and the product quality. They know more than we think and know how to find the perfect store to place their orders.

With technology being so fast, it gets easier to track the orders online and they can also choose how they wish to communicate with their retailers online. The retail e-commerce sales have gone since 2014. In 2017 the sales went up to 2.3 trillion US Dollars by 2021 it is expected to grow up to 4.88 trillion US Dollars.

Increase in e-Commerce Sites

There has been a tremendous increase in the e-commerce sites. Almost every business is moving online today because they know their shoppers are waiting for them online. No one has the time to shop in stores because of their busy schedules, but with so many options online everything has become easy. Most of the online stores have started displaying offers & discounts to attract customers. There are offers like “Get 20% off on Your 1st Purchase”, etc. Today, there is nothing better than getting the time to sit at home and shop for your favorite dress from your favorite brand. And then it is delivered home. Who does not want this luxury? It also saves the money of the retailers, by not needing a store to display more than 1000s of products.

Some Facts

Average e-commerce conversion rates vary from 3% to 4%.
U.S.e-commerce sales reached $396 billion in 2016 and are predicted to grow to a massive 684 billion by 2020.

Increase in Mobile Apps for e-commerce

Every online business is moving to the mobile world. it becomes easy for them to do business even while they are traveling. And shoppers love using their mobile. 55% of companies have a mobile-optimized website, mobile app, or both. Every 1 in 4 e-commerce dollars is spent on a Mobile Device. Here is a glimpse of the 3rd Quarter of 2017.

It makes it easier to connect with your users through a mobile app. They can avail the offers while on-the-go and can directly complete purchases through the various payment options and payment gateways. Having a brand’s app on your phone tempts you to look into it for new arrivals or new offers, similar is the customer’s mind, hence mobile apps are increasing.

Online Payment

With the growth in e-commerce, there is an increasing demand for advanced and dynamic online payment options. There is also a growth in payments technologies through websites and mobile apps. This makes selling and buying of products easy and simple. There are international payment facilities also available that makes it easy for cross-border shopping with online payment solutions like PayU. With this customers can pay while on-the-go without the need to use their cards or other details. It saves a lot of time & money for both the customers as well as the businesses. Payment Gateways like PayPal have 70% higher checkout transactions than non-PayPal transactions.

Retailers take customers attention

Over the years email notifications are quickly being swarmed out by advertisers for mobile push notifications. With these features, marketers can get consumer attention like never before.

Promotional messages that were considered spam at one time can now directly be seen by the users on his mobile screen, updating them about the new offers or products.

Personal Shopping Experience is growing

Nothing has changed when it comes to personal attention while shopping. Every shopper wants a personalized experience with the growth in technology. Technology ensures that every shopper feels good with some personalized offers only for them. Making use of technology to send a birthday and anniversary offer gives them a feeling of being important and remembered.

Express Delivery & Huge Discounts

Who does not want a product at a lesser price without having to bargain with the shopkeepers? Who does not want their product delivered same day without going to the store. The competition and demand for both are increasing. This is challenging sometimes, but with stores offering a same-day delivery option with extra charges is getting popular among the consumers. Amazon is one such site that all consumers are fond of today.

Social Media

Social Media has played a huge role in bringing the customers closer to the retailers. Customers can directly send messages to the brands and get replies quickly to their queries. It has enhanced customer service to a great extent. In fact, brands have also started using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. for promotions. In fact, there is a direct call to action buttons like “Shop Now’ ‘Buy Now’ on these platforms that allow customers to buy directly from the page. They are giving the customers a chance to discover the brand and see what more it has to offer them

These are few ways technology has impacted e-commerce to a great extent. These are not the only ways but just a few of the popular means that have impacted e-commerce and the businesses online. These ways have played a major role in transforming e-commerce and making it this large as it is today. Offers, discounts, and multiple payment options have open doors for small businesses to start online businesses with little investment.

Conclusion

Mobile friendly websites and mobile apps have changed the way people look at e-commerce. It has become the most preferred way of shopping for most of the people. Along with social media mobile apps are helping businesses to get bigger profits through these platforms. In fact, some of them are starting their online businesses from home with little investment. In all technology has impacted in the most positive way to help in the growth of e-commerce and all online businesses.