Tips to Design Mobile Friendly Email Newsletter

Email marketing is the easiest and most effective way to reach out your audience. Though an old way of reaching out your prospects, it hasn’t lost its significance and popularity. In fact it has become more effective and less straining with compare to other marketing tips and strategies. Yes, it’s not new information, you are aware of this fact! But considering the current scenario of ubiquitousness of handheld device, it is imperative to make your email newsletter mobile friendly, your audience can access! This is new to understand and focus! It’s time to design your emails for mobile phones to reach wider spectrum of audience as majority of them browse email through mobile.

Crafting a mobile email takes right planning and efforts. There are certain guidelines and tips that you must consider while designing a mobile friendly email newsletter. Let’s have insight into the different factors that can help make your email design mobile friendly!

Stick to Short and Sweet

Simplicity still rules the roost! One-column format can work best for the mobile friendly email newsletter. Such format is easy to access for time-strapped audiences. It may compel you to tweak some of your standard design works. Such emails will also require a simplified header and clearer navigation. Smaller designs would work to display the start of the email message on the first screen.

Develop Customer-focused Content

Focus more on your customers and their needs rather than your company and its services. You can trigger interest of your audiences by offering solution to common problems that they might face. You can offer them tips to resolve the issues. In addition you can also focus on industry news and trends. Case studies could also be a great read stating how others have improved their functioning.

Stick to Larger Fonts

Readability is ideally one of the biggest problem audiences often face. You should use larger fonts. In addition, do not forget to turn off hyphenation. For making it a standard practice Apple’s iOS has a minimum font size of 13 points that can be automatically adjusted with anything less than that. It is important for mobile read, due to small screen size.

Make a Subtle ‘Call to Action’

Call to actions is also imperative in a mobile email. Every element should be designed in a way that user action is quite obvious. It could be either buttons or text like “Click Here, “Buy Now,” – that appears in the design.

Carefully Include Images

Not all mobile users can actually see images from a mobile email newsletter. It is only Apple’s iOS devices that can automatically display images in emails. So be careful and perform ample research before incorporating any image.

Dig deep into your analytics to understand the types of devices users are opting to view your messages. If you plan to add one, make sure of certain aspects. Just ensure the image is viewable without scrolling. Your message should be understandable even without seeing the image.

Split the Screen in Three Segments

Your mobile newsletter should be fragmented into three sections: Header and branding, introductory message and call to action. Each of the above part should have a space on the first screen of the email format to display the message in totality without the need to scroll.

Focus on Ergonomics and Touch

All the components that need to be tapped and touched with one finger should be easily distinguishable from other elements with ample space in between. It should be easy to touch. Go for the full-width calls-to-action, so it can be easily used by left or right handed audiences.

Leave ample space around the clickable button or text. Better add more texts to the link that need to be touched to make it easier to touch and restrict the number of links close to it. It will avoid the user from touching the wrong one. You must also use color and bolding for all links to make it easier for users to have an obvious visual cue that the text is meant for specific purpose.

Things to Avoid

There are a few things that you must avoid as these can ruin the otherwise awesome mobile newsletter.

1. Forget to Add Navigation: You must not forget to add navigation to your newsletter. It should have an extremely simple navigation to divert users to your website, but remember to optimize it for mobile.

2. Developing a “subtle” Color Palette: Users tend to adjust the contrast and color very frequently on their mobile devices. Do not create color palettes having soft hues or colors devoid of any contrast.

3. Using Small Type: This is a real turn off to your audiences. People scroll. Keep the type sufficiently large for your visitors to read easily. Else they will close it immediately without taking pain to zoom out to read it.

4. Buttons Overlapped by Standard UI Icons: Avoid placing buttons at the bottom of the screen; they will be hidden under the icons when users try to interact with them.

5. Clutter is a Disaster: Opt for a small single message for mobile and rely on it. Users cannot spend time or effort to filter a lot of data from a newsletter on their phones. Keep the design of your email newsletter clear and tidy without any unnecessary data!

Conclusion

Mobile email design is a unique perception with distinct considerations. There could be many a things you should consider are altogether different than with any other project.

Still it is recommended that all of your email newsletters or other related correspondence must be optimized for mobile. Develop and craft every message using the above tips and then contemplate about any smaller changes that are required for larger formats. This strategy will work as you will develop a single and unified message across all platforms with a focused vision. Your vision will be clear about what you want to achieve with the email before you go too far along and make necessary content decisions early in the process and won’t think that you are being compelled to cut down content for mobile users.

Maulik Shah lives in Ahmedabad, India and runs an IT company offering Web Design solutions to enterprises across the globe. Being a technocrat, he holds years of experience in IT sector, and acts as a mentor to his employees.

Quick Tips Fixes Slow WordPress Websites Issues

Do you own a website built on WordPress platform? Is it lacking better performance? It is possible that your website might get slow with the passing time. Your website visitors can get annoyed, by waiting for the web pages to load. According to the surveys, customers would leave the website if it does not load within 5 seconds. To cut down this issue, it is beneficial for website owners to check their WordPress websites on regular basis.

If you own an online store operated through CMS, and if its loading time exceeds than the usual, you might lose valuable customers. As they won’t visit such slow website again, though there might be quality products with attractive deals and discounts. As per a survey conducted, it was concluded that, a delay of around 1-2 seconds can decrease the customer satisfaction around 16-17%(figures may vary according to the time).

There can be several reasons like more images, excessive content etc. for your website having more loading time. Here in this article, we have listed some tips that would help you to speed-up your website.

Quick Tips for Speeding WordPress Website

Use Image Compression

WordPress web solutions with images can attract more visitors than the websites with no images. Use images in your website but don’t forget to compress it. Unfortunately, they are the biggest files on the website. If the images are used in their original size, it will affect the loading time of the website. There are several tools available for image compression. It is better to use them for compressing your files.

WordPress plugins like WP Smush.it, Tiny PNG, Image Lazy Load WP etc. are used widely by professional developers for image compression. You can speed-up your website by reducing the loading time with this technique.

Use Caching Plugin

Caching is the technique to store the elements of the website that requires one-time loading whenever a user visits your website. It is helpful when there are static images, CSS files and JavaScripts which will load only once when the user loads your website for the first time. All this details are cached and when the visitors return to your website, the web page with stored details, will load quickly.

Modify the Code Structure

Keeping the code clean and readable is the sign of a good developer. White spaces in the code structure makes the view simplified rather than making it complex. But what if, it decreases the loading time?

It is a good practice to write the code that other developers can easily understand. But removing the white spaces will help the browsers to load your WordPress website faster. WordPress plugin like WP Minify and W3 Total Cache can remove the white spaces without disturbing the code structure.

Simplify Tables in Database

Optimizing database tables will help your database run smoothly, without any error. Database tables can be optimized either manually or you can also use a plugin called phpMyAdmin. Other WordPress plugins like WP-DBManager and WP-Optimize are also helpful for cleaning the database and making your website load faster.

These are the quick fixes for the websites to retain its speed. Don’t let your customers leave your website without exploring it. Speedier the website, happier the customers!

What to Consider Before Hiring CakePHP Development Company?

CakePHP is the leading framework offered by PHP, which is an open source web development platform. It has gained much popularity since it was introduced in the year 2005. It is based on MVC architecture, so it complies prominently with the business logic, supporting website elements like designs, better performance and simple functionalities. Due to the huge range of features like open source nature, easy customization, simple integration etc., it has become the first choice of professional web developers around the world. They are either shifting to this framework or placing it on the top of their list of skills.

If we compare CakePHP with other open source frameworks, no other framework offers benefits and features as this framework does. Its popularity is more than any other PHP frameworks, thus it holds the peak position on the hit list.

You will definitely opt for CakePHP web development after reading the impressive details stated about this magnificent framework. We have listed some considerations that will help you select CakePHP solution provider for your required solution.

Does the CakePHP Service Provider Hold Fair Experience?

Choose a company having adequate experience in providing CakePHP web solutions. Don’t just ask them about their experience, but check the projects they accomplished till date. Review all the projects to check what type of work they do and what procedures they follow.

Who are their Clients?

A company’s credibility can be calculated by the list of clients it has served. Their core competencies can be measured by reviewing the testimonials and feedbacks given by their clients. You can even ask them their client’s details to ask them about their experience while working with the company you are thinking to approach. Once you are sure about the company’s services and its quality, you can proceed by consulting them for your web solution.

How impressive is their Portfolio?

Review their project portfolio. It will narrate company’s story about the work they accomplished. You can find how proficient is the developers’ team. You might check their creativity and can even relate it with your requirements.

What Work Procedures They Follow?

Well, if you have selected a web service provider, check their working model and the procedures they follow. It is better to be on a safer side by reviewing their method of project execution rather than getting dissatisfied. You can come to know about the work quality they implement in the web solution they provide.

Does the Company Fit in your Budget?

Budget is the factor that no customer can neglect. Ask the service providers for the quotations and select the company that fits in your budget. Don’t just compare the price, but also match the services they offer and time of delivery they promise. Read the documents carefully before accepting them to avoid any issues.

All these points will help you choose a reliable and trustworthy web solution provider. Thus, in turn you will receive a prominent web solution for your business.

Android L vs Android M

Google’s Android Lollipop, when debuted, was the biggest update till date. With the multitude of features and functions, it won millions of hearts of technology lovers. Simple yet attractive material design it offered was totally different than its earlier versions. Android also released its dotted version after the source version Android 5.0. After serving the world with a truly innovative operating system, Android is ready with it’s another version i.e. Android M. Its preview version is out currently and the main version is expected to hit the market by end of this year.

Quick Insights

Android Lollipop is the most liked operating system version offered by Google. Let us see, how well Android M would perform when it will hit the market in 2015.

Android L

Google launched Android L in the last quarter of 2014. After this release, Android received much appreciation holding the tag “biggest upgrade of Android” given by Sundar Pichai, head of Android. It has also received its first dotted version, which included some basic fixes. Earlier, only few manufacturers were able to acquire this version. But in the current scenario, almost all the smartphone manufacturers are able to offer this version to their customers.

It is a remarkable opportunity for Android app development companies as they can now implement fresh and interesting features in the apps they build. Android L apps offer great user experience.

Android M

Google has recently launched a preview version Android M, which is preceded by Android Lollipop. The full version is not yet made available for downloads. But it is expected to hit the technology market in the last quarter of the year 2015. It is expected that this new version will have myriads of new features and functions to offer. Android fans are eagerly waiting for this version as there are many surprises wrapped under the name “Android M”.

Android app solution offered by web service providers will be completely off beat as this version offers fresh and creative features. Let us see how it will impact the technology market when it will enter the market.

Attractive Gains

There are so many reasons why Android is the first choice of millions of hearts. It’s two different operating system version L and M offers excellent user experience.

Android L Features

• Lock Screen Notifications
• Secure Face Unlock
• Improved Quick Settings
• Attractive Material Design
• Double Tap to Wake
• Reduced Energy Consumption

Android M Features

• App Permissions
• Biometric Support
• Android Pay
• Direct Share to Send Stuff
• Text Selection with Floating Toolbar
• Simplified Volume Controls

Final Words

Whether you stick with Android L or upgrade to Android M when it arrives, Google will surely provide you an amazing user experience.

Should you Keep Android L?

Well, this question can be answered only when you have the next Android version i.e. Android M. Till then, enjoy your smartphone experience with Android Lollipop and stay tuned for more updates from Android M.

Should you Upgrade to Android M?

With the launch of preview version of Android M, it is expected that the user version will have many surprises packed into it. Let us wait for the launch of the complete version for answering the above question.

Well, keeping Android L or upgrading it to Android M when it is made available, entirely depends on your personal choice. But trying the new version might give a better mobile experience for sure. Let us wait for the version launch to review, if Android M can make the record breaking entry. Who knows?

Why Companies Tend to Enforce SugarCRM?

Customers are superior for any business. For building unbeatable strategies, sales professional study the customer-purchase lifecycle. This is how you can get the best out of your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software implemented in your organization. Studying purchase life cycle method can be used when the sales team has few customers to manage; otherwise following this method will make your organization less productive. When the customers’ increase in your organization, you will need a strong and powerful solution that will help you fulfill the challenges of managing number of customers and their data easily.

Implement SugarCRM application in your company to simplify the process of data management, business activities etc. It will help you, bridge the gap between the sales professional and remarkable CRM solution along with boosting the sales ratio.

Top web service provider offers SugarCRM development solution to the companies seeking profitable solutions. Consult professional web developers or hire them for building CRM solution that can help you generate revenue.

Here are some of the great reasons why huge enterprises are selecting SugarCRM solution as their CRM solution.

Reasons Why SugarCRM is much popular?

Here are few features that would make companies rely on this magnificent and beneficial CRM software.

Open Source – Easy Customization

The architecture of this leading CRM solution allows you to customize its features and functions to fulfill the requirements of the organization. The paid versions of SugarCRM solution like Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise edition will allow you to modify the source code. Redistribution of the source code is not possible with these paid editions. SugarCRM integration will make your business platform more flexible offering simple user interface to the employees and higher authorities of the organizations.

Seamless Functions – Smooth Workflows

Huge organizations have numerous tasks and several employees to work for it, thus, making and managing concrete strategies for smooth workflows becomes important. SugarCRM solution helps organizations to conduct marketing campaigns for enhancing sales ratio. With SugarCRM software solution, you can also setup alerts or reminders for tasks like sending emails, making calls etc. for simplifying business processes.

User Roles Management – Simplifies Task Assignment

SugarCRM solution offers flexibility in assigning roles and responsibilities to the employees of the organizations. It allows giving specific rights to the users, like managers can be assigned all the rights while employees can be given only the view-role. You can divide the roles according to the designation to simplify task management.

Sales and Marketing Strategies – Allows Business to Grow

With SugarCRM solution companies can build various marketing campaigns like emails, web, phone calls etc. for lead generation. The reports generated in your CRM software will give a clear view of your business performance. Thus, by considering these reports, you can make strong strategies to boost the revenue.

Here we have listed only few reasons, why companies are selecting and relying on SugarCRM application for better business performance. The feature list might be long. Thus, we can conclude that “SugarCRM is the solution that will bring a definite success.” Implement it to receive extensive success.

What Foils ERP Project Implementation

ERP is comprehensive software that runs your company efficiently. The biggest challenge is getting it properly implemented. But a great correlation has been found between the problems that result in frustration in the selection process and the issues that can foil the implementation. Some of the widely witnessed implementation factors that have often derailed the overall ERP project, leaving the business in lurch, have been discussed in this post.

Let’s have an insight what those aspects are that can derail ERP implementation.

•     Unclear Objective
•     Lack of Accountability
•     Improper Resourcing
•     Scope Creep
•     Inadequate Change Management

Unclear Objective

Clarity in the ERP goal is of the essence. It may lead to even more conflicts on the goals. Failure to streamline the objective prior to starting the project will ensure that you will fall victim to scope creep.

In case your vendor is professional they may lock down the scope early, ensuring that they know how to success, thus protecting you. You also need to terminate all the assumption that you may have made in the sales process about what could be included. Better get the objectives documented and well evaluated before you finally sign contracts otherwise there is always a possibility of scope creep as your expected scope will be wider than the vendor’s.

Lack of Accountability

Ownership of any project has to occur at every level of the organizational framework, but it must be taken forward in word and action both by the leaders who are at the top of the pyramid.

Understanding the executive ownership is very vital to every company for effective implementation of the project.

Improper Resourcing

After having your goals clear before you and once you have nailed down your project scope – what comes next?

Involving the right people in the project after relieving them from their regular work to devote time to the implementation is difficult but essential. The ground reality is that the resources you need to work on the project are the people who are running your business now and they are already damn packed with a full week’s work.

A methodology design workshop conducted in the absence of right people involved is an absolute disaster and just a waste of effort, time, and money.

Better do not start the project in the lack of right people to work on this project. Finally if your business is seasonal in nature or depends on repetitive boom/bust cycles you must draw a down cycle to keep your executive busy on a business morph projects. Earning enough revenue when times are good is very important, so that in the next down cycle you can keep your executive busy in ERP project.

Scope Creep

The scope creep can be your biggest enemy. You might have an undocumented variation to your project plan that can add a week and $15,000 to the cost impacting other stakeholders or the expanse. It is very much possible. It may happen anytime, if it is not aggressively managed initially.

Inadequate Change Management

People are usually averse to change, which is threatening at multiple levels. An accurate and effective change management should be in place to streamline the work processes before attempting to implement and automate them in the new system. Implementation of a brand new ERP solution is an excellent opportunity to terminate current business processes. Are your people and executives ready to digest this wider change in the day-to-day functioning?

To make your ERP implementation successful, you must ensure:

•     Be focused on results to understand what your goals are and what success looks like
•     Ensure each one of your team has clear vision of project goal
•     Make sure scope is efficiently and aggressively handled
•     Ensure that impact of change on the people and processes is planned and organized

Nonetheless, all these are not that hard actually when you think about it clearly. Aligning all the aspects and factors with the project goal is the core behind a successful ERP implementation. Having a great plan and right implementation process can create almost anything on it as your business evolves.

Websites are Acquiring Responsiveness. How it Impacts eCommerce Industry? – Part 2

Several surveys are carried out, which states that the invention of digital devices like smartphones, tablets, wearable devices etc. has boosted the access of eCommerce websites. This era of internet demands every digital device to support and offer easy access to internet ecosystem. Well, this trend has affected eCommerce industry immensely. Majority of the web traffic is generated from the internet enabled digital devices. With this study, eCommerce websites owners can observe the importance of online stores to have responsive design.

To compete with the current online market, store owners need to think over the type of features to add in the website to make it popular and better UX. Responsiveness is one such feature that needs to be added in the online store.

Hope you all liked the first part of this post, which was about the latest trend of websites acquiring responsiveness. This is the concluding part of the article posted previously. It will talk about how eCommerce industry is affected by this trend.

Let us have an insight about benefits of making your online store responsive.

Websites Access Regardless of Screen Resolution

If there would not be any barrier like, you require specific screen size to access websites then web traffic towards your website would increase notably. Consult web development companies for building responsive website, which would help your eCommerce business to grow seamlessly. Today’s modern buyers do not like conditions or limitations while satisfying their online shopping requirements. Giving them freedom to access your website from any device would help them access your e-store easily thus boosting your eCommerce business.

Be it a smartphone display, a tablet screen or a desktop resolution, the design elements like buttons, text boxes, icons etc. should provide similar view. The visual objects should adapt the screen size and adjust themselves with the display automatically.

Cost Effectiveness Balances Business Budget

Cost is the biggest factor any eCommerce business would look upon. Building responsive website costs too much, is just a myth. The reality is the development cost of a responsive online store is slightly more than the unresponsive website development cost. But, the cost does not exceed too much that it becomes unaffordable for companies to implement it.

A single website fits across the devices with varied shapes and sizes, isn’t it great? Just one solution for multiple devices would be the trend in the near future.

Enhanced Search Engine Visibility

Among myriads of development platforms available in the market, Magento development platform is the solution used by several eCommerce giants to get better search engine ranking.

Are you thinking – why only Magento? Well the answer to this question lies in the list of features packed in Magento platform. It offers your online store search engine friendliness, which helps your business get a vigorous push.

Responsive websites are crawled on the priority basis by popular search engines. Thus, Google will easily find your website, if it is well created. Optimize your eCommerce website and reach out your target audience faster.

Get new customers by implementing responsive design in your website. Every eCommerce business owners should follow this design strategy as soon as possible to generate sales. We promise to be back with some more such sequential articles very soon.

All about CRM System Used to Fulfill Business Challenges!

Does your company use a CRM system? Today’s business comprises of numerous challenging activities and effective strategies for flawless functioning. There are several CRM systems available in the market, but deciding which CRM solution suits the best, requires intense market research. List the requirements of your enterprise prior to choosing a CRM solution. Compare each of your company requirements with the features of CRM system you have chosen. Thus, implementing the CRM solution for managing activities can be beneficial for business growth.

SuiteCRM is the new player among the other CRM systems serving since years. If we understand it carefully, there is a thin line of difference between SugarCRM and SuiteCRM.

This open source SuiteCRM solution is advantageous for startups and small scale businesses, which are more concerned about the financial weightage of the CRM systems. Due to the unaffordable cost of implementing CRM solutions in their business, entrepreneurs avoid using a CRM system, thus it results in less efficient business processes. Implement SuiteCRM solution into the business system as it does not affect the company finances just because this CRM solution is available for free.

Any small scale enterprise or a startup needs a strategic solution to organize and manage their challenging business activities. Many organizations fail in achieving their desired sales levels and managing customer interactions. This open source CRM will help your enterprise to fulfill the sales target effortlessly.

How is Sales Related to CRM Solution?

Focus on the sales target you defined for your enterprise and select the CRM solution which can help you achieve desired sales. Buying a CRM system without having a well-documented and well-defined sales process, might not give you the expected outcomes.

If the sales process is not defined, choosing a CRM solution becomes difficult. Thus sales and CRM solution is directly connected to each other.

What Should your CRM Consist?

The CRM software solution you select should help you detect and reflect various stages in your sales process. These stages are defined as prospecting, qualifying, presenting and ending. There are few more steps that can be included along with these four.

• CRM solution you implement must be flexible. It is a crucial feature for simplifying business processes. It should not be difficult to mold your CRM according to the changing business standards. Thus, a flexible CRM would help your employees to use it easily and generate sales.
• Your CRM should be compatible with the latest technologies and existing apps. The applications used in your organization like Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. should be integrated with your CRM solution. It is advisable to choose a CRM system packed with features like Outlook addin, Office addin, SharePoint client etc.
• It should be accessible by all the devices you use at your workplace. Whether it is a smartphone, a tablet or a laptop, the CRM system you implemented should be easily accessible. Mobile CRM offers more flexibility to your employees and customers.

As you read above, CRM is the soul of any business. Thus use it in the way your business demands to fulfill challenging activities and get remarkable sales results.

Websites are Acquiring Responsiveness. How it Impacts eCommerce Industry? – Part 1

Ever changing technology trends have always been the game changers. In the current digital scenario, portable devices like mobile phones, tablets, wearable devices etc. are the next generation technologies, which are driving revolution in the digital era. Portable devices supporting internet interface are trending nowadays. We can observe that internet lovers are shifting their preferences from desktops to mobile devices for leveraging portability.

With this change, web development companies have accepted this challenge of transforming website development process to meet the change in internet access methods. Interactive and responsive website is the crucial requirement nowadays. Even Google has recently released an algorithmic update stating websites must be responsive. Even search engines are set to crawl websites that are mobile friendly.

To align with this new updates, responsive websites performs better over internet as compared to those which are not. Not only the screen size will be affected, but aspects like clicks will be replaced by touch, monitor will be replaced by mobiles devices with smaller screen size etc.

Why Websites needs to be Responsive?

The Mobile Era

Today, digital market is filled with variety of smartphone devices. With this small device, you can perform all the tasks efficiently for which you otherwise require a computer. Accessing emails, downloading content, viewing PDFs and many more were impossible to perform with just a mobile phone. The modern smartphone are capable of offering several functionalities as well. A smartphone has made our lives simple and easy. Responsive website design allows users to access websites through their smartphones. Thus, it bridges the gap between customers and businesses.

Development Cost is Reasonably Balanced

The development cost of a responsive website is somewhat more than a traditional website. But it does not cost much, which you cannot afford it. There is no need of making separate websites for every device. Responsive website can be accessed from all the devices, thus you can reduce the development cost as one responsive website works for all the devices.

Offers Great User Experience

You might get surprised that the responsive websites does not change its visuals like icons, images, fonts etc. Whether it is viewed through desktop or through a smartphone device, it looks similar. Only change you can observe is the varied dimensions of the website design elements like textbox, buttons, links etc. Users accessing responsive website through their smartphones receives improved user experience.

Do you think, in spite of making device specific websites, adopting responsive website approach would be a smarter decision? The next generation digital market deserves a modern approach to meet challenging and changing user requirements.

Stay tuned to check its effects over eCommerce industry in the next part.

Get More Features in Order Delivery Date Pro & Offer Improved Customer Experience

With great pleasure we announce new feature additions to our “Order Delivery Date Pro” extension, focused to boost deliver added value to our existing customers. In addition to having all the existing features like delivery date and time, adding comments, date and time while placing order, receiving shipping arrival time in confirmation email and much more, we have now added some premium features.

These features of Order Delivery Date Pro will not only improve your store management task but it’ll also offer better shopping experience to your online shoppers. A win-win situation for both you and your customers!

Have an insight into the added features to this extension:

View Delivery Date Calendar

Using this feature you can view the calendar from dashboard displaying all the delivery dates for that month.

This feature will display no. of orders being placed for specific days of that month along with the order ID, status, and customers’ name, order value, shipping arrival time and date and related comments, if any. This will give an overview of the entire order status to you for better order management.

Delivery Date in Calendar View for Customers

It will help the registered users of your store to have a complete view of their products delivery, as per date and month.

If the customer accesses the account on 29th of May, the delivery received before that day and delivery expected to receive after that day, both will be displayed.

Calendar or Timeslot View for Customers

This feature can be set by you from admin for your customers to view!

You can add calendar with date, day and time slot, which would be visible to your customers on their checkout page. It will help them select the day, time and date of delivery.

Allows To Show notes/info for delivery Date

This box will help your customers to make any related comment in this box for you while placing any order.

Your customer can review the comments made before placing the order in order review process.

Add and Disable Day-wise Time Slots

You can enable or disable the day-wise time slots for your customers to select from.

You can also add number of delivery dates and minimum interval of hours between the orders placed time and order delivery time.

Set Delivery Date and Delivery Comment Label

You can set labels for the delivery date and delivery comment for your customers.

Get the above added features and further simplify your order management system and offer improved user experience. This is a great deal to strike!

Note:-

Existing Customers within Upgrade Period: Pay a difference of $40 to avail all the above features.
Existing Customers with Expired Upgrade Period: Place order with above mentioned coupon code to get $9 less on total cost = $70 only.
Coupon Code: “HappyClients”

BUY ORDER DELIVERY DATE PRO!

Features Your Cloud-based ERP System Must Have!

The list of features and functions implemented into a cloud based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software depends on the organizational needs. In the current scenario, ERP software is not just a necessity of an enterprise, but it is a soul of every business. Not every ERP system contains the same set of features. Thus, by checking the features packed into an ERP software, helps you decide, whether it will suite your business or you should still search for a better alternative.

If you need an ERP system for a financial company, the set of features, you would be looking for would differ from that of the features required by a manufacturing firm. But there are some basic features, which every organization should look for. All such features are listed and explained in this article.

Must-Have Features of Cloud-based ERP

Simplicity – Easy to Use

No matter how big the cloud based ERP system you implement, it should be easy in use. If the cloud based ERP solution is challenging, using it can be a tedious task. If it would be so challenging, employees and top management would avoid, using it. Even accomplishing business activities would be difficult. To avoid such situation, your cloud based ERP solution needs to be simple and easy.

Scalability – Essential Feature

For the ever changing needs of organizations, scalable cloud based ERP becomes a feasible solution. This ERP feature will help businesses to grow, as it can be increased or contracted given the company demands. An organization appreciates a robust ERP system, as scaling a cloud-based application is quite simple and easy. Odoo ERP solution is one of the best open source software used widely by modern businesses. There are other such applications too, but Odoo’s feature list is much comprehensive and beneficial as compared to other ERPs on the list.

Customization – Must have

Customization is a must-have feature for every ERP solutions. Large firms having distinct type of processes and activities, which can be fulfilled by customizing the ERP software without spending huge amount of money. Building a new ERP system for new set of requirements is not a feasible solution, thus customization offers a solution with which you can make changes in your existing ERP system, rather than building a new one. This feature also helps small and medium sized companies to balance their revenue model.

Support – Round the Clock

This feature holds much significance. Customer support is quite essential for businesses to keep performing flawlessly. There are some Cloud based ERP vendors, who does not offer 24*7 customer support. Many organizations might overlook this feature, thinking it unimportant, but in reality, every cloud based ERP service provider should provide customer support round the clock. So that, whenever any issue arises, it can be solved quickly without affecting the working of business processes.

Do you own an enterprise? Have you implemented a cloud based ERP system for seamless business performance? Does your ERP application contain all the above features? If yes, you are on the path of success, but if no, change your ERP solution soon, as it can be a hindrance for getting success.

Social CRM: Answer to Brand Marketing

Today social media and content marketing are the major driving forces promoting business branding and lead generation initiatives. Social media is becoming an extremely controllable and cost effective platform for B2B and B2C companies – especially small businesses, due to affordable content marketing promoting brand engagement, client and even customer service.

Stretching Paradigm of Content Marketing

All the major customer engaging component like blogging, webinars, buyer engagement, white papers, videos, strategic landing pages, email newsletters and other related and supportive web content are driven by content marketing that shares the philosophy, methodology, mission and services of an enterprise. Effective content marketing is not limited to blogging or social media presence. Creating high end webinars is not enough. Today, business – of all sizes and nature – needs to explore diverse content platforms hitting on all cylinders to boost marketing campaigns, lead generation and the showcasing market-leading expertise.

Today’s Social Media

Simply updating published pieces and news capsules to social media platforms is not enough for getting the desired results. You need to have a well defined marketing structure to your social sharing – or else it will end up in social freakiness. It requires a consistent and concentrated content effort to design, strategize, and promote effective, timely, consistent and worthwhile social sharing. This has led to Social CRM for several start-ups to mid-sized enterprises particularly when it comes to social media efforts.

Social CRM enables you engage with your customers and other associates simultaneously across several core social channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. In fact social media is using traditional CRM software, which is meant to offer single central location to garner, store, process and evaluate present and historical customer data, and giving it a new look.

By deploying social media into your sales, marketing and customer service campaigns you can understand more about your customers’ interests and preferences. By leveraging the huge information available on social media platforms in a meaningful and organized manner, you can unearth several lead and enjoy an improved interaction with your customers and prospects, propelling the overall customer experience, adding to the bottom line business.

Businesses everywhere are leveraging the advantages of social media channels to stay connected more effectively with their prospects and associates. Combining social media activity with Social CRM can help connect and develop long-lasting, mutually-beneficial customer and brand follower associations.

You can also manage your social media initiatives to trigger brand engagement – and content marketing.

In addition, you can also streamline your social media campaigns to stimulate brand engagement – and content marketing.

How Social CRM Triggers Content & Brand Marketing

Social Media Optimization: Social Customer Relationship Management will give your social media campaigns a firm structure – real social media management. Social platforms should be organized like other vital marketing campaign of a business. This platform should be considered as an added bonus to marketing efforts. With Social CRM, your social efforts can collaborate flawlessly with other key enterprise initiatives, like marketing, sales, and customer service, what industry experts consider as a holistic approach to social branding – offering an extensive view of social media campaign successes and failures.

Delivering Customer Care: Social CRM unleash value in every social media interaction with clients, associates and brand fans. It helps a business readily engage with customers in a synergistic manner in order to drive sales, leads, nurture loyalty and catapult revenue. It catapults the overall customer engagement experience, adding value to your business – and trigger related marketing and sales drive.

Tracking Brand Coherence: Social CRM helps you ensure to keep track of your brand’s image across multiple social media channels. By mapping, scheduling and analyzing your social media content, you can make sure your brand’s message has been dispersed appropriately. Retaining brand consistency through social platform supports the branding efforts of marketing tricks and sales strategies – offering a closed loop approach to a centralized, synergetic branding initiative.

Social CRM is not going to fade away anytime soon. Leveraging its productivity and redefining your marketing and other related business efforts can propel your businesses to next stage of global ecosystem.

Unbeatable Tips to Grow your Email Subscriber List!

Email marketing has always been a tedious task for digital marketers. It involves human efforts in building effective strategies that can create a power packed impact on the readers. It is true that every email marketer does not get success in email campaigns they conduct. There are several aspects that should be considered while planning for email marketing. In fact, several surveys have also been conducted to help building effective email marketing campaigns to impress readers and generate leads.

Sending sms

This article is all about, how to increase your email subscribers list. We have tried to collect and mention all the tips that will help businesses to get conversions. Following the tips, listed below would boost your organizations helping it to sustain in the world competition. Once you check all the point, analyze your email marketing strategy and add the necessary aspects to your champaign checklist.

Highlight your Email Sign-up Button

Make sure that your email sign-up button is highlighted. No matter how interesting your articles would be, but if it contains a sign-up button which is hardly visible or if it placed in some corner where the readers might not check until they really want to subscribe to your emails, your efforts will go in vain. The subscriber button should be present on all your posts promoted through social media, which is the biggest marketing platform trending nowadays. All the branding touchpoints like social media icons should be placed and managed to allow users to subscribe your newsletter for notifications and the latest happenings.

Add Curiosity to the Communication

Stop thinking that people would read the whole article you sent through email. To make reader, pay attention to your articles, you have to incorporate aspects that make them think “what’s there for me”. But you should answer this question before they ask. Striking subject lines and interactive content will make your task easy. Attract them through your content and allow your readers to sign-up for more interesting articles. Add sentences like “Sign-up to check our exclusive articles” to make them curious about what’s more interesting for them inside.

Make the Email Template Design, Attractive

“Only content should be eye-catchy and interactive, all other aspects are not important”, is just a myth. Email template design holds equal importance as its content does. Template design offers the first impression of your business to your readers. Thus, it has to be alluring and enticing to make your readers delightful, with the look and appearance of your emails.

Make the Sign-up Form Short

Stop annoying your readers by asking too-many details on sign-up. You just need their basic details like first name, last name, email id, security questions etc. for registration, thus there is no need to ask for unnecessary details like their qualification, year of passing etc., which will give them a chance to leave without filling the registration form. Readers love short registration processes, so offer them a quick registration process, which includes not more than 3 steps.

Maintain the Email Frequency

Stop sending frequent emails; it will irritate your readers. Decide the time interval, which you should maintain between two consecutive emails. Frequently sent emails can make your readers less interested in your articles and newsletters. It is advisable to ask your readers about when they can be contacted at the sign-up stage itself. Get suggestions from them, implement it to retain your existing customers.

Try these tips and observe, how dramatically your email subscribers list will increase within short time period of implementation.

Innovative Change & Learning Initiative Supports ERP Implementation

Is your focus on the technical side of your enterprise systems implementation is so much that you’re neglecting to help your enterprise to adapt to the changes that the system brings into the way people work? IT sector is undergoing dynamic and dramatic change today, mostly by the evolution of cloud-based platforms and SaaS solution. Despite such ongoing developments, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems retain its relevance of being one of the crucial enablers of most of the world’s commerce and public-sector task. The most neglected aspect in this is dealing with the human and organizational implications of system and process change.

An ERP adoption almost always entails sweeping changes to the way work is done across any organization. It simplifies business processes, reporting relationships, roles, how customers are served, how data is stored and used, and much more. The organization also deploys some number of resources to train employees as part of the implementation, but such initiatives are often insufficient for several reasons. Training needs evaluation is often superficial. Training may be provided too late to pace with the workforce performance and is not reinforced at the right time.

Nonetheless, if deployed and implemented properly, an enterprise learning and organizational change program can entail a crucial impact on the success of the overall ERP implementation. Here are eight most prominent insights into how organization can make it work best by deploying a learning and change management program.

1. Deploy a Right Fusion of Skills to the Training Team: Enterprise learning requires a specialized skill set; not anyone can do it. Just ensure to deploy experienced learning professionals on board. In addition, have a combination of business function abilities and technology. Maintain a right balance of qualified and knowledgeable colleagues amongst the design, build, test and training team. Keep rotating systems and business function members in and out of the training and rotate initiative for stretch of time, while retaining a good team of skilled instructional designers.
2. Deploy the Training Team Early: Systems training is not a generic, off-the-shelf program. Each implementation process is unique given the unique needs of each organization. Deploy a training team since inception as an integral part of the development team. Start with small team whose members can become the experts for each functional area later on and stay with the project till the end. You should also have a mix of roles, like subject matter experts, testers, system developers to actively participate.
3. Initiate Training within a Wider Change Management Program: Apart from developing specific training program or web-based learning initiatives, organizations should think of enabling new behaviors, working associations and organizational structures. It should have a threefold initiated - training, change management and organizational alignment. This approach will ensure that specific learning programs are in harmony with the wider organizational change and that everyone gains right information and support.
4. Make an Iterative Approach to Training-needs Evaluation: Having the training-needs evaluation correct is necessary to the success of the project. The focus should be on the end-user’s performance needs and not just on the technical details of the program. It can be created during workshops with the design-and-build teams; their insights into technical details should be in alignment with the insights of others who understand the wider influence on the overall behaviors of users. Training is about learning the new program that the system supports. Iterative approach is required to define training needs rather defining it all at once. Keep changing the strategy to refresh the needs analysis with every release update of the program to keep it aligned with the system and business functioning.
5. Entail Innovative and Engaging Learning Initiative: Engage in more innovative approaches like online learning, collaboration systems, simulations, and social media. Dedicated intranet sites can be developed to publish news and support literatures, share information and to receive feedback from users. You can also use social media platforms to help everyone to contribute timely information along with user-generated content in text, audio or video form. You can use knowledge databases in wiki formats to standardize ways to accumulate very current perspectives from across the enterprise.
6. Assess Progress and Outcomes Rigorously: Do not limit your training evaluation programs to point-in-time temperature checks and understanding whether a few employees are satisfied with a particular program. Evaluate if the training actually has impacted the business. Engage in producing a more agile and extensive training analysis that assesses user analysis of relevance and impact on individual performance. It should also be assessed for user adoption, process performance and the effectiveness of the change initiative.
7. Align Cost-saving Practices with Value-adding Localization: Customized standardized training approach can be affordable and can enhance the positive impact on users within particular regional geographies. You need to maintain the right balance. Start collecting the crucial part of the training that can be reused. Once you are done, add the local specifics needed or business-driven sub processes. Training in local languages is also necessary. You may also rely on a trainer that can speak the local language and can translate instruction from the master documents, instead of translating complete project.
8. Make Sustainable Training Investment: Often the organizational changes and new ways of working are not sustainable after the initial training period. Data are not updated, accountability gets muddled and budgets dry up. Responsibilities are not well defined for workforce enablement and support, as time goes on. It is ideal to deploy an entity having the incentive and allocated budget to maintain the training programs and change initiative over time.

Gaining More from your ERP Program

ERP is a huge investment, with gigantic impacts on the performance of individuals and the overall organization. Deploying the right training and change programs, people can adapt to the new processes effectively. Organizations can expect to experience improved productivity on the system being turned on, and they can be quicker in exploring and grabbing marketplace opportunities.

Top 5 Website Designing Platforms

What You See Is What You Get – editor is the basic requirement of any web designer to implement his innovative ideas for building alluring designs for websites. Be it a CMS, eCommerce or any other website type, its design is its first impression, which can create a brand image for businesses. The same way, dull and unattractive design may impact your business performance adversely. Let us now check the top 5 website designing platforms which convert ideas into reality.

Top 5 Website Design Platforms

CoffeeCup HTML Editor

This software is a commercial product helping designers to craft versatile and enticing website designs. Its free version is also available, which have limited tools and features. Use the complete version to leverage its best features and make the design, highly attractive. With this software, designers can create versatile website designs. Be it a responsive or a website with a flat design, this software helps building great design. Using it does not require expertise as it is very simple and easy as compared to other HTML editors.

Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver is a proprietary design software served by Adobe systems. It was initially created by Macromedia, which was later acquired by Adobe systems in 2005. It is a remarkable tool for crafting HTML design, which is often used by website designers since years. It supports huge range of plugins and in-built features of HTML5 and CSS3 too. The pack of in-built website templates makes it reliable and usable.

Notepad ++

This software is a powerful editor for adding or modifying website’s source code with myriads of features. Designers can easily fix the errors in the code as this editor highlights the error. This feature even saves valuable time spent in coding. Features like code folding and auto completion helps designers to leverage its benefits like powerful search tool, bookmarking, document navigation, macro support etc. It’s simple and highly configurable user interface makes the designing process much easy.

Bluefish Editor

Bluefish is a free editor software, packed with several tools useful for web development and web / graphic designing. It supports several web development and scripting languages like ASP.NET, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, HTML etc. along with great tricks like syntax highlighting, powerful search, replace tools, code folding, auto completion etc. With the wizards present in the editor, objects like CSS, tables, forms, video and audio can easily be added to avail its features and benefits, while building enticing web designs.

Microsoft Expression Blend

This software is a user interface design tool, which was developed and retailed by Microsoft enterprise. It aimed helping the designers to create graphical interfaces containing features of web and desktop applications. Building interactive websites with this editor is an easy task.

This top 5 list might not be complete, but this list is made referring our choice and perspective. All the editors listed here are widely used due to its unique and comprehensive features. You can select any of them, given your design and development requirements. Get started by choosing a suitable editor and design eye-catchy websites effortlessly!