The 10 Biggest Web Technologies Every Developer Should Know

The World Wide Web has metamorphosed over the time from its inception and technology has been its vehicle to improvement. Given the availability of limitless resources and the constant competition to come up with better websites has made the job of a web developer much more difficult and challenging. Take for instance, the success story of YouTube. While other similar sites failed before, YouTube took the road to success riding on the Adobe Flash player technology.

They key takeaway from these developments is the fact that the only game changer for the web today is proper utilization of tech advancements and path breaking graphic user interface (GUI). But to be able to exploit the web technology advancements and to keep up with the latest user interface trends, web developers and web development companies have to be a master of all the upcoming and advanced technologies.

While there is no end to what you can learn, if you are passionate about web technologies, there are few technologies that any modern web developer simply cannot ignore. Here are 10 such technology areas.

1. Browsers

Web browsers are tools that create an easy to use interface between commands by the user and the results returned by the web servers in form of relevant web pages. Commonly used web browsers are Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Internet explorer etc. Each one of these offer varied functions to their users all of which should be mastered by every developer to make sure how his designed website is responding to different browsers. Cross browser compatibility is one of the most basic requirements of a website today. Users are more adept at using various modern browsers today. Internet Chrome is not the default option anymore. Nor is Firefox. Though developers continue to use Firefox as the standard browser, Chrome has more user base than any other browser.

2. HTML5

The main markup language since the very beginning, HTML provides structure of a website so that web browsers know what to show. With every version, HTML comes up with better range of capabilities. HTML5 is the latest version of HTML and is obviously the best till now. HTML5 had been able to bypass the problem of media plug-ins along with an array of useful functions and features. Acceptability of HTML5 across various platforms including major web browsers and mobile devices makes it an important technology which every web developer should master. HTML5 has made flash redundant and made it super easy to use video content natively in HTML.

3. CSS3

CSS3 is the latest version of Cascading Style Sheets which offers an assortment of features that determine how your web properties look – from colors, shapes to various animation and shadow effects. It has lessened the dependence on javascript and other web elements that were vulnerable to bugs, were time consuming to develop, and mostly not compatible across browsers. Web developers today are using CSS3 more and more in conjunction with HTML5 to create web properties that are less dependent on scripts.

4. Programming Languages

Programming languages are used to write the code. All languages have their own syntax and logic. Some, like PHP are more widely used than others. To survive the throat cutting competition, web developers must be efficient in using and understanding different programming languages. Some of these languages popular on different frameworks include Javascript, Python, Coffeescript, Ruby, Java, PHP, Go, Objective-C, etc.

5. Responsive web designs

With increased use of multiple devices to access the web, flexi or responsive web designing concept has become immensely pertinent. Today responsive designs make it possible for us to view web page across various platforms with ease, where the matter adjusts itself in length and width for better viewer experience. For flexible view of any portal on various devices, a developer must excel in developing responsive web designs.

6. Databases

Proper organization of data in digital format is what we know as Database. There are two types of digital databases namely SQL and NoSQL. The structure of SQL is tailored to make sure that all the data is correct and validated while NoSQL provides more flexibility for the building and maintenance of applications. Proficient knowledge of various databases like MongoDB, Redis, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MSSQL, etc. is a must for every web developer.

7. Frameworks

Frameworks are built to facilitate the development of proficient and dynamic websites, web applications and mobile applications. Working on various programming languages becomes much easier with the aid of these frameworks as you don’t have to start from scratch. The entire complicated and repetitive task is reduced by promoting code reuse for activities like database access, session management, etc. Some of the more popular frameworks that every web developer should master include CMS frameworks like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal; ecommerce frameworks like Magento, Prestashop; PHP frameworks like CakePHP, Zend Framework; Microsoft frameworks like ASP.NET, SharePoint;

8. Protocols

Protocols are a set of instructions on how computers and devices communicate with each other and process information. For example HTTP protocol works on how a website gets to the browser. It requests the server for the website and gets response with the HTML, CSS, or Javascript of the website. A comparatively newer protocol, DDP, creates a continuous connection between the client and the server where websites update without even refreshing the browser. Another protocol called REST is majorly used for APIs and uses standard methods to exchange information between various applications. It is very important for any web developer to be well informed about the technology behind these protocols.

9. API

An application programming interface or API is created by the developer of an application to allow the usage of some of its functionalities to a third party app or website without sharing the code. This makes it possible to combine multiple APIs to create new applications. APIs allows sharing of data between various web applications. Hence, a web developer should master the technology of creating good APIs. All the popular web and mobile apps today come with their own APIs that help integrate the app with various other services.

10. Data Formats

The organization and storage of data in the databases, according to their particular specifications, is defined by structures called Data Formats. When we talk of web development, JSON is leading the market as the most popular data format. XMS continues to be in use since the time web development was introduced. XMS format was used mainly by Microsoft. The format which is used in excel is the CSV format, which every web developer should be able to work with. Here, the formatting of the data is done using commas.

Everyone Should Know About Advantages And Disadvantages Of Open Source Crm System

A CRM or customer relationship management system facilitates developing and upholding meaningful relationships with the customer. Every company whether big or small can benefit from a well developed CRM system. But quite often the prohibitive cost of enterprise grade CRM systems (e.g. Salesforce.com) takes them beyond the reach of majority of the organizations as only a handful of companies with deep pockets can afford such advanced, feature rich systems.

But the scenario started changing with the launch of SugarCRM, the first major open source CRM system. SugarCRM democratized the CRM market. Even in its earliest versions Sugar was a decent system with useful features and freely available code. What this meant was you can have your own CRM system with as many users as you want and you can customize the system to suit whatever your organizational requirement was. The software was free, you just had to invest in the server infrastructure. But it was a one time investment and totally worth it considering the business benefits. Eventually Sugar ceased to be an open source software, but what it started was quickly followed by other CRM developers and now after more than a decade we have almost a dozen good open source CRMs to choose from.

But is free software the only reason why you should go for open source CRM software. And what’s the flipside? What compromises you will have to make with open source CRM. Here is a brief overview of the advantages and disadvantages of open source CRM software, so when you do decide to go for one, you take an informed decision.

Advantages of Open Source CRM

Free of Cost

The foremost reason why everyone considers opting for open source CRM is because, generally speaking, its free. Off course not all open software are free, but most CRM systems are. The source code is free which can be modified according to the requirements. New versions are offered time to time that too at no extra cost. The developer might charge some additional money for expert support but you can always save some money by modifying the codes yourself and saving on the license charges. It has been estimated that open source software saves around $60 billion a year for all businesses combined.

Customization

Anything that is customizable according to one’s requirements is a good thing. Especially a CRM software, because CRM deals with managing customers and customer management differs vastly from industry to industry. So it is very difficult to build a one-size-fits-all CRM software, unless you stuff it with all the features all industries will ever need. The power to customize makes open source CRM among the most sought-after software. The source code can be altered to whatever the user needs it to be. They need not have to deal with (and pay for) loads of irrelevant features which they will never use. And if can’t customize yourself you can always hire CRM customization services.

No ‘stuck-up’

Usually when you opt for paid CRMs, not only do you have to pay an initial cost, but need to commit to the license for at least a number of months. Open source CRM does not need that kind of commitment. You can use it till whenever it is suitable to you and drop it if it’s not working any longer.

Easy Management

Open source CRM is easy to manage and can be installed at multiple locations according to your requirements. You don’t need to keep a count or monitor it for license issues. You can keep as many instances of the software as you want without any monetary repercussions.

Continuous Improvements

Another great reason to go for open source CRM is the developer community behind it. Everyone has access to the source code so it is possible for anyone to fix bugs, if any, and add new features using collective experience. As a result the software keeps getting better and better as time passes by.

Resources

You do not need to exploit as much resources for the implementation of the system as is required in the traditional software(s). Your staff can explore the existing codes to understand the product better and can suggest various improvements which might suit your organization best.

So, these were some of the advantages of open source CRM which attracts you to consider it. But that’s not all. Every coin has two sides. Before deciding on anything, you need to be equipped with both its pros and cons. Now talking about disadvantages, let’s see why opting for an open source CRM needs consideration:

Disadvantages of Open Source CRM

Maintenance

Installing open source CRM can be easy, but CRM support and maintenance is not. The proper up keeping of open source CRM requires a lot of technical expertise. Little thought is provided to develop the user interface so they aren’t that user-friendly. You will need consultants and expertise to choose and customize the right CRM for you. The bugs can be resolved but generally take a lot of time for the same.

No central support system

There is no one place where you can go with the issues you are facing regarding your open source CRM. All of your solutions or support is going to be from various forums (community of users) which aren’t always accurate and can take a lot of time to respond to your queries. The other way is to get expert support which again adds to your expenses.

Limited Functionality

Open source CRM can almost cater to all the basic needs of your business, but it might not suit your business if you are looking for full fledged CRM solution. The functionality of open source CRM is limited to an extent and comes with its own shortcomings. However with additional investment you can either hire CRM developers to add new features or get readymade plugins for your unique requirements.

Not entirely free

Though it may seem to be, open source CRM is not entirely free. There are many hidden costs which keep on showing up. The source code is available to all but to alter the code according to your own requirements, you will have to incur developer costs and continuous upkeep costs. To run the CRM system you will need to invest in server and firewall infrastructure which may cost a huge amount of money.

Conclusion

Even with its limitations open source CRM is still preferred by many businesses to enhance their relationship with customers. Most certainly, open source software is one of the major trends in the software industry and it’s not for nothing. In spite of all arguments, to opt for it or not is entirely a decision based on the requirements of a business or entity. Therefore, if you are looking forward to decide on open source CRM for your organization, you must study all its advantages and disadvantages carefully to see if the advantages are more profitable to you or the limitations are bound to bring in more loses.

Why Have A Mobile Apps Reducing Time Spent On Mobile Web?

Smartphones are handy, easy to use and carry along, and can now perform most of the major functions which earlier only personal computers and laptops could offer. That’s the every reason people are spending more time using their cell phones. What do they do all the time glued to their phones? It has been found that now people are spending more and more time using mobile apps rather than the web, when using their mobile phones. Is it any wonder that mobile app development is one of the hottest professions around?

App Surfing Replacing Web Surfing

Studies have found that mobile consumers spend around 85% of their mobile time on mobile apps. Techcrunch.com states that out of this time, 84% is spent on just five apps downloaded from the app store. These top five apps vary from person to person depending on their interests whether it is gaming, social media, instant messaging, or e-commerce. Facebook, Gmail, Amazon, Twitter, Whats app, Apple, are a few among the applications which are used most by people all over.

With an estimate of 66% of the digital time being spent on mobile devices, and a major part of it being spent on mobile apps, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that “the app has become the dominant form of media in our time”, as stated by arc.applause.com. And it’s not forecasted to stop anytime soon. The percentage of app users is growing significantly year by year.

Why Mobile Apps Are Becoming Dominant

Ease of Use

Ease of use is one of the key reasons why apps have become so popular. With smaller screens, it’s much easier to use these apps specially designed for mobile use rather than to surf the web even with responsive websites dominating today’s web. Mobile applications has everything sorted out within the mobile screen with important icons placed smartly while surfing the web need zooming in efforts, not to forget the opening and closing of so many pages to do a small task.

Ease of Task Continuity

Other than that, there’s something more important that drives users to mobile applications. When they are using these apps, everything is sorted out in their devices. They can look at it and continue anytime; while saving of web pages is an obscure task. For example, if a customer is going through an ecommerce app and they like something they don’t want to buy immediately, they can just save it for later. As they are always logged in there, next time they open the app, they can easily reach the saved product and order it according to convenience. The same task on a web browser takes many efforts. You need to open the web page of the particular e-commerce, log in, and save, and again follow the same to look into your saved items.

Convenience and Connectivity

The increasing usage of apps is not only reducing the time spent on mobile web but on desktops as well. As people like to do everything on the go, they rarely leave something to be done on desktops except their official work.

The availability of internet is another issue that’s promoting the increased usage of mobile applications. While people have working internet all the time on their mobile phones, they consider it cumbersome to connect their PCs to a network. Also, the applications load much faster than web pages. From a teenagers to retired old men, everyone possesses a smartphone these days. But the same can’t be said for desktops or laptops. These are limited to only those who need it for professional/educational purposes.

To Conclude

From all the above reasons and statistics it can be concluded rightly that digital usage is gradually moving towards the use of mobile apps. It seems to be the need of the hour for businesses based online to buckle up and plunge into the app market to make sure their businesses do not suffer given the escalating trend of mobile applications.

7 Facts Everyone Should Know About Why Web Designers Are And Will Always Be In Demand

Web designing as a profession, has got a significant boost in the recent years, thanks to the explosion in the number of websites that are getting launched everyday, globally. But like all demands, will the demand for web designers will also subside. Maybe, someday. But not anytime soon. And even if the demand subsides and web designing isn’t a cool profession anymore, there will always be demand for quality and experienced web designers and web designing companies. Because new websites (or something similar) will always be build for new businesses.

Let’s have a quick look at the top 7 reasons why web designers are currently in demand and will always be so in the future.

1. Ever Expanding Industry

Looking at the statistics of the past few years, it can be easily concluded that mostly every industry has an online interface in the present era. Industries are as active online as they were in brick and mortar a few years back. When everyone one is moving towards a web interface, it is inevitable that the websites need to be designed by experts for unavoidable reasons. Hence the requirement for web designers can be forecasted to be growing day by day.

2. Web Knowledge Development

Web designers are designing web graphics and are actively developing strategies for web based advertisements and sales expansion for organizations. Since web designers have a close association and understanding of working of the web based systems, they are always in demand, providing expert consultation towards developing and providing solutions to web based business models. For example, the free online education platforms like Khan Academy who is now in partnership with Tata for developing an online learning interface based on NCERT for Indian students or Coursera collaborating with various Universities of international fame to launch their online courses.

3. Innovation and Technology

New web page making softwares like Page Cloud, wix and the likes where creating a web page is as easy as editing a picture on Photoshop. For long web designing has been a domain of experts who have in-depth knowledge of computer languages, a situation very similar to primitive computers where knowledge of command language to operate them was necessary. However, a GUI helped people without technical knowledge of computer languages become good computer users where backend programmes were written so that computer could understand commands in English language inputs.

Same thing is happening with web designing. Programmes are being written to make the user interface simpler for web designers without knowledge of computer languages, keeping in mind that huge influx of demand in this area with ever expanding web service users. It would also lead to better individual control over their web properties.

4. Esthetic Web Pages for attracting Customers

Better looking web pages attract more customers. If the web content is relevant along with creative web graphics design, it generates customer loyalty. Today glamorous web pages are in fashion and are needed to generate competitive advantage over hoards of similar websites over the internet. It helps websites to stand out from the clutter of hundreds of similar pages. So web esthetics today is a big selling point for better performing web designers.

5. Huge Increase in Web Based Entrepreneurial Ventures

Increase of entrepreneurs from non-IT background who are developing more and more of web based organizations or product selling models. For example, Amazon, which was initially a virtual organization without any brick and mortar outlets. The whole business model is based on neatly designed websites and apps by web designers and the maximum business conversion capability of these organizations depends on the glitch free running of these web pages and web applications along with the rate of web user penetration for the organization. Now we have virtual organizations and other hybrid models that heavily depend on their web base services and applications like ebay, shaadi.com, alibaba.com, flipkart .com, the aviation industry, continuing to a very long and exhaustive list. And it is not going to stop anytime soon. So, there will always be demand for web-designers.

6. Government Interest

Government is interested in generating web based information systems for hassle free transactions, payment of various bills, fairer disbursements of government aids to people who actually are entitled to such claim like those who belong to the BPL category claiming cooking gas subsidies, eliminate middlemen as in IRCTC, Passport, DL etc. having a central data source as in ADHAR will ensure fairer government disbursements. Making web based applications like Income tax payment portal, online cooking gas booking portal, online banking portal, telephone bill payment portal etc. All such endeavors would require more and more web developers for building and maintaining such web pages and applications for smooth functioning of various government departments and private service providing companies. Online data excavation would also be a time and labor saving process that in many cases would lead to prompt action of the legal and justice system of the country. Therefore, to manage all this at a large scale, the demand for web-designers will consistently be on rise.

7. Research & Development

More research and development investments in multidisciplinary aspect of web designing is needed to prevent unscrupulous people from developing fishing websites, hackers and other frauds since today we all bank online. Web developers are the people who are constantly working in this area and have the qualities to become champions for smooth functioning of day to day working of companies and government agencies through constant firewalling and online protection through updating of virus definitions and protection of online data. Web developers and designers, thus, seem to be moving towards a bright job future with the big bang of online data.

6 Tips To Grow Your Email Marketing To Boost Ecommerce Sales

The success rate of an ecommerce business depends largely on the marketing techniques being practiced by the company. Of all the popular marketing techniques, email marketing has often been found to be the second most effective marketing channel for e-commerce businesses. But this piece of information is not enough for the implementation of an effective email marketing strategy. It’s been more than two decades that we have the option of e-mailing but today we can personalize it to a significant scale. And it totally depends on how well we are utilizing this leverage and convert the humble email into a powerful marketing weapon.

Let’s have a brief look at the most effective ways in which you can use email marketing to boost ecommerce sales.

1. Customer Relationship Management

Though customer relationship is a much broader term, what we really need to study for efficient email marketing is the customer lifecycle or the different stages in which the customer is in relationship with the seller. Sending out generic emails to all customers barely does the trick. So, you have to personalize the mails according to their life cycle.

A. Abandoned Carts

Potential customers need an extra bit of attention from your end. There are probabilities that a significant part of these customers will abandon the carts after selecting the products of their choice. At this point, you are to study the pattern of abandonment and take steps accordingly. Within half an hour of the abandonment of a cart, a mail should reach them assuring that you are providing quality customer service. The e-mail should be prompting enough to urge them to revert back with their grievances. Even if there is no check out, you would know the shortcomings that led the customer to back out and take measures to fix it at the earliest. You should try at least 2-3 e-mails at appropriate time intervals to convert the abandoned carts into customers.

B. New Customers

An ecommerce business should immediately follow up with a new customer. A welcome mail is mandatory. You should also provide the links of social media portals where they can stay connected with you and get updates about new products and offers. One thing which is really important and should be included in the mail is the story of your business. That definitely helps in establishing a branding with the customer. Further, you can offer discounts for their next purchase and keep them updated about the products they might be interested in.

C. Existing Customers

There should an efficient e-mail campaign for the existing and returning customers. You can send promotion mails which also ask for a feedback and reflects how important their feedback is for you. For your regular customers, there should be a VIP campaign. Meaning, they should get a special treatment now and then. These can be the customers who purchased the most in the last month or have purchased three (or more) times. Let them know that they are one of your best customers and treat them with a discount or free shipping now and then.

D. Previous Customers

These are the customers who didn’t show any purchasing signs since a long time. You can try sending out a polite mail stating that they are missed or work on strategy e-mails to call them back. Study their purchase history and persuade them to check out the latest products which you have for them. You can also provide some incentives to call them back.

2. Reminders

You should always refer to your customer’s purchase list while customizing emails for them. For the products which need replenishments, you can send out reminders to your customers to stock their essentials. It can be beauty products like soap, shampoo, etc, or food essentials like oil, spices, and other home vitals. If someone has a purchase cycle of a month for such products, the e-commerce business should study the pattern and send a marketing e-mail when you can predict the supply might be coming to an end. The mail should be inviting and promoting similar products to the purchase history of the consumer.

3. Product Reviews

Provide incentives to your customers to reply to the feedback mails. Make sure to directly link it to the review section of the product bought by them. A product with reviews definitely gets more preference than the other with no reviews. So you can make your marketing emails a way to lure the customers to leave a review for the product they have purchased.

4. Customize Transactional Emails

The chances of opening a transactional e-mail are around 21% while it stands to only 3% for bulk promotional mails. Optimally utilize the information by promoting your products in the transactional mails. Whenever a customer opens a transactional email, there should be a catchy link that directs him to similar products on the website. You can also try showcasing some handpicked items in the mail, which might be alluring to the prospective customer.

5. E-mail Campaigns on Birthdays and Anniversaries

When a customer signs up as a member, maintain a database of the information about the important dates in their life. It can be their birthday, their spouse’s’ birthday, or their wedding anniversary. Make sure to provide some incentives to your customers on these particular dates. Send an e-mail a few days before along with the expiry date of the offer. You can be selective about the incentives; it can be a ‘free shipping’ thing or a certain percentage off on any particular products (that’s relevant to the specific buyer.)

6. Say no to ‘no-reply’ mails

Many of the e-commerce firms follow a pattern of automated mails where the customer cannot get back to the seller. That’s a strict no. You should always be open to customer enquiries and feedbacks. Keep this platform open and let your customer get in touch with you hassle free by sending the marketing emails from a personalized e-mail id where they can reply back.

The above are some of the basic things you can do to use your e-mail marketing to boost sales. Off course these will be effective only once you have taken care of all the ecommerce storefront development requirements and optimized your store for conversion. There are innumerable innovative ways in which you can call back your existing customers or allure some new ones. You just need to study the patterns and work a bit more when it comes to e-mails.

The 7 Best Things About Wordpress Website Maintenance

Keeping your WordPress website well maintained gives you a great sense of accomplishment. But it would require you to take care of many aspects of your website, some of them easy to accomplish, some of them not so, due to their technical nature. However you wouldn’t know what to fix if you don’t know it’s broken. So today, we will talk about the various elements of your WordPress that you need to take care of, to keep it in top shape.

This blog post is mainly a handy guide to WordPress website maintenance. Implementing these best practices and tips is guaranteed to keep both search engines and visitors happier.

1. Get Backup Of Your Website Often

It is one of the most important tasks that you are supposed to do regularly, and one of the most ignored one. Even though backing up does not keep your website clean and fresh, this helps if some trouble arises. So, always have backup of your WordPress website on a monthly basis. Not only this, you can also backup daily blogs, weekly news, etc. – these are good for corporate websites. You can take a backup of your website through hosting provider or by downloading local copies of your website through FTP. WordPress plugins marketplace has numerous plugins that automatically backup your website completely. If you don’t find any plugin you can get your own custom wordpress plugin developed.

2. Keep Your Website Updated

If you are keen to maintain your WordPress website, you must update it from core. You should update installed themes, Plugins – their latest versions regularly. Luckily, WordPress brings out its latest version often to offer their users more advanced features & security fixes. What you need to do is, login to your WP site at regular intervals and update WP Plugins, themes and core WordPress files.

3. Eliminate Unused Plugins

WordPress Plugins are an ideal way to enhance functionality of WP site. But using them excessively may affect the performance as well as the security of a website itself. If you aim to have successful website, you need to delete Plugins which you have not used so far and most likely will not use in future too. You basically have to turn off the plugins and then delete them; But before you delete any plugin, take a closer look at all the plugins to see which ones you are using and which ones you aren’t.

4. Optimize Your Database

Database is where all your website content is stored. This includes blogs, images, videos, pages, settings and many things. As your website grows, your database begins to get stuffed, which in turn slows down the website’s speed. If you want to enhance your website’s performance, then you need to optimize your database. Using plugins, you can easily optimize the database of your website and improve its speed. Using a combination of different plugins you will be able to remove spam comments, unwanted posts, unwanted post revisions, etc. You can use plugins to also optimize the underlying MYSQL database tables.

5. Focus On Your WordPress Security

Majority of WP users overlook the security factor of their website. Security is one of the central factors which needs to be taken care of. If you want to safeguard your website from other security threats and hackers, you need to install reliable WP Plugins that can protect your website from malware or virus. Apart from these there are some security best practices that you should follow – delete the user account with the default username “admin” and create a new admin account with a unique username, keep the password strong with a combination of capital and small letters, numbers and special characters, limit login attempts for users to avoid brute force attack, keep all the plugins and themes always updates, etc

6. Keep A Check On Your Website Speed

If you aim to attract more visitors, you must provide them fast loading pages. It is a wll known SEO fact now that the website speed directly affects the rankings of your website on search engines. Fortunately, there is Google’s PageSpeed insight which offers a tool to grade your site’s load time and then offers tips to augment it. You can use this tool to find out your website’s speed and improve the speed using the recommendations provided.

7. Manage Website Content Regularly

Updating and managing content is very easy with WordPress; after all it is a Content Management System. You have to create content on your own, share it with your target audiences and engage with people who are commenting and reading it. Three key elements you need to think about are, 1) Publishing regularly 2) Sharing Content 3) Managing subscribers & comments. By taking care of these three points, you will be able to encourage your audiences to come back regularly.

Conclusion

As you can see from the above points, WordPress maintenance does not need to be tricky or time consuming. Follow some of the maintenance best practices and use plugins judiciously wherever you have to. But no matter how you do it, please make sure that you take care of the above points as best as you can to avoid the shock of one day finding that your website has been hacked by some hacker group and you don’t even have a backup of your old site!

7 Easy Steps To More User Experience For Ecommerce Success Sales

One of the biggest challenges in the ecommerce industry is converting casual website visitors into paying customers. And whether customers will pay for your products depends not just on the quality of the products but also on the the way the products are presented. Excellent presentation increases the perceived value of the products and makes them more desirable in the eyes of your customers.

User experience (UI) design is all about presenting your products in the best possible way, to maximize their chances of being sold. Excellent user experience makes your customers come back to your store again and again. Given below are some important user experience best practices that you must follow to increase your store’s conversion rates and acquire more paying and loyal customers.

1. Don’t Make Your Customers Wait To View Your Website

Nothing gets your website visitors to bounce off it faster than slow loading web pages. Slower page loading is directly proportional to fall in conversion rates. Be it a small size store, or a big one, your visitors would not wait for more than 3-5 seconds. And making them wait longer is a surefire way to make them switch to your competitors. For fast load times and smooth checkout experience, you can trim down your code. Also compress image sizes, since larger image takes a lot of time to load. Use responsive design that adapts the designs of your website to look best on all devices.

2. Understand How Customers Read Information

To understand your customers better, you should put the most important parts of website pages across the top and down the left-hand side. Normally, visitors scan web pages in “F’ pattern. So bring their attention to headlines, headers by creating an appropriate ecommerce design.

3. Make It Easy To Find Your Products

For this, you need to create an algorithm driven system that shows most relevant products to customers when they visit your website based on their account preferences, product search history, and items previously purchased or added to cart. Predictive analytics is the next big thing in ecommerce and personalized product recommendations and personalized layouts based on predictive analytics will drive the future ecommerce stores.

4. Simplify Products’ Page Layouts

Experts say that, “Keep layouts as clean and sleek as possible.” Place the fundamentals – product code, price, brief description, size/color options, photo/video gallery in the right place. Also consider simplifying reviews, ratings and shipping options – all in a simple and clean layout.

5. Keep Color Focused & Under Control

Colors are a great tool to evoke emotions and put emphasis on something. However, the usage of too many colors might make the design confusing and unmemorable. So, always try to limit color options and limited color variations. Use your brand colors along with various shades and be consistent throughout the website. The more colors you use in your website, the more off putting it may appear to your viewers. Also, ensure the color palettes match your offerings. Keep a contrast between the texts and background so that people can differentiate both.

6. Ensure Text Is Large (Readable)

Ever thought that the typography of your website can have an impact on your conversion rates? If no then it’s time you did. Text on your website must be easily readable. Ensure they are large, clean and sharp with proper line spacing. Don’t forget that, the easier it is to read your content, the more likely customers will do so and the more likely they will get the information they require and will purchase from your store.

7. Use High Quality Images & Videos

Informative and quality images and videos matter a lot when it comes to providing a better user experience. You can display a range of images on your store, specially product images. The more information you provide, the easier it is for your customers to say “Yes, We want this.”! High quality videos and images give an exact idea about what you are offering to them.

Wrapping Up

The effectiveness of the above best practices depend on how best you implement them. But you will be able to identify the ideal way of doing things only if you try them out and experiment with different options (A/B tests) to see which option works best for you. What other UX best practices you think should be incorporated in any online store? Leave your views in the comments below.