Magento Development: A Role Model for Ecommerce Store

An ecommerce store isn’t just about a few products showcased, their prices mentioned and a payment gateway to facilitate payment. It needs to be a proper synergy between visual appearance and technology. This is where Magento development serves as a role model for ecommerce stores. Magento ecommerce development is a dedicated platform for creating robust ecommerce store. This open source application is powering more than 30000 online stores globally which speak volumes about its flexibility and versatility.

Magento has been built using the Zend Framework making it the most powerful ecommerce shopping cart platform.  Magento developers have mastered the art of providing need based solution to customers to increase their sales and revenue using online commerce. It comes with exception features which make it easy to manage an ecommerce website and keep it updated with new products and offers. It is ideal both for businesses running large online store selling a variety of products to those which are engaged in selling niche products.

Advantages of Magento Development

• Feature Rich - The standard version of Magento ecommerce solution encompasses all the features required to implement a good ecommerce store. It comes with advanced shopping cart, catalog management, search, checkout and administration solutions.  The basic architecture of Magento is very strong which helps you in achieving highly functional ecommerce websites.

• Cost Effective – It is an open source solution which reduces the cost of starting and owning an online store. You won’t have to incur any expanse on this powerful platform. You can also make use of hundreds of third-party plugins which help you make highly functional website at an affordable budget.

• Search Engine Optimization – In the highly competitive world of ecommerce, your website needs to be extremely search engine friendly. Magento lets you achieve that as the clean coding technique used in development allows search engine crawlers to easily index the website on the result pages. Apart from this it also allows you to optimize the URL, Meta Description, Title and the Keywords to attract more traffic to your website.

• Higher Conversion Rate – The conversion rate decides the success of an online store and Magento helps you in increasing your conversion rate significantly. The user-friendliness of the platform guides users right from product selection to making payment adding to the conversion rate of your store. You won’t see users quitting in the middle of a purchase with Magento.

• Security – An online store needs to be high on security and shielded against external threats such as hacking, virus attacks etc. You will deal with a lot of customer data need to ensure complete security to the customers. Magento ecommerce development allows you to have a secured and encrypted payment gateway which protects customer data. 

• Multiple Payment Option – With Magento you can offer a lot of options to your customers when it comes to payment. It offers support for payment using Credit Cards, Internet Banking, PayPal and many others which adds to the convenience of the customers.

• Active Community – Magento has an active community of developers and users who exchange ideas and solve each other’s queries. You can post your queries on these communities and you will receive solutions from some of the top Magento developers in the world.

Being a relatively new platform you need to be choosy while hiring a Magento developer for your online store. You need to make sure that they have sufficient experience and expertise to deliver you customized solutions. One of the best ways to judge this would be to take a look at their past projects which will give you a fair ground to judge their capabilities. 

Article source: http://pixelcrayons.blogspot.com/2011/12/magento-development-role-model-for.html

Empower your Business With Magento Development

Magento Development is open source software which helps to create a website with ease. It is the top-notch option for any ecommerce companies and it is easy to build and secure online business as well. With the help of magento it is easy to manage product browsing, catalog, shipping and many more other facilities. Modules, interfaces and themes are the three important extensions in Magento. Magento Integration is one of the most imperative platform for every ecommerce business on the Internet. The Magento is the right ecommerce solutions for small business and enterprise business as well.

There are heaps of website development companies are providing the best magento development services for the various ecommerce ventures. By opting the right magento developers you could able to get the flexible and optimum services like Magento Integration, Magento Support, Testing, Maintenance, Magento theme and template design, Customize modules and many more. To make high profit on your business products or services it is vital that you need stupendous ecommerce solution. With Magento it is simple to import an enormous products or customers list.

By using Magento you could able to turn your terrific business ideas into reality. There are many features and advantages available in Magento that helps to grow your online business and turn more profit in your business. Various high quality plugins in Magento helps to make your ecommerce site user-friendly. Some of the important Magento Plugins are Canonical URLs for Magento, Dataflow extensions, Magento EasyLightBox and many more.

The Magento website is also helpful for the marketing purpose. Nowadays through online marketing you get more sales and online conversion. So making your site search engine friendly helps to rank better and get more traffic to your site and it is feasible with the magento website development. There is a high competition within the ecommerce business so it is important to be unique. With the attractive layouts, various themes and templates you can customize your site and make it impressive. To Create a best magento ecommerce solutions you need a high quality service, advanced functionality and features, flexibility, technical support and many more.

Article Source: http://ave-nir.blogspot.com/2012/01/empower-your-business-with-magento.html

Magento VS Xcart

Seems that 2012 year is a good time to move to Magento platform, and here are some reason why you should migrate from Xcart to Magento.

First of all, eCommerce is a such a field where success depends not only on your business skills, it’s also depends on technical things, such as what eCommerce platform you will choose for your business.

Choosing of the right eCommerce platform is important not only for current business you have. It will also help you to avoid a lot of problems and pitfalls in the future.

Choose Magento if you are looking for modern & robust eCommerce platform with 100% clear future.

We extensively used both Magento and Xcart systems for several years, most of our stuff worked in Xcart company and that is why we know what we are talking about. In 2012 Turnkeye.com will not take new Xcart projects (except migration projects from Xcart to Magento), from now we are completely focused on Magento platform.

Future of Xcart and Magento

Xcart is not OOP product, it is based on PHP functions, just like outdated osCommerce.

Current Xcart branch is the last in history of the Xcart, so if you will purchase Xcart today, it means that in several month/years (the date is unknown) you will stay with completely outdated, “zombie” product and it will be needed to migrate to “LiteCommerce/Xcart 5″ platform (which is not exists yet).

You can get all this information in official Xcart 5 FAQ here.

Here is some most important statements from this FAQ:

Will you release new X-Cart 4 versions?
Although we will release new X-Cart 4 versions, the releases will include bug-fixes only, no new features. The reason is that we are working on a brand new e-commerce platform (also known as “X-Cart 5″) and it doesn’t make sense to develop a feature for two platforms at the same time.

When will you release “X-Cart 5″?
If you are referring to the future X-Cart solution based on the new platform, there is no release date yet.

Will X-Cart 4 themes and modifications work for “X-Cart 5″?
No, the new platform has a completely different architecture and is not compatible with themes and custom modifications made for X-Cart 4.

Will I be able to upgrade my X-Cart 4 store to X-Cart 5 later?
Since the platforms have a completely different architecture, there will be no automatic upgrade scripts. However, a data migration tool importing your product data from XC4 may be released later.

Does “X-Cart 5″ have less features than X-Cart 4?
Technically – yes, the new platform itself has less features than X-Cart 4.

Will there be a Pro version of “X-Cart 5″?
Unfortunately, in the near future we don’t plan to release a “Pro” version of the new platform. Perhaps, it will be released as a module later either by us or by a third-party developer.

So as you see, in any case you will need to migrate all your customizations, designs, customers, orders history, products reviews, email templates and URLs structure (important for SEO) in the nearest future to the new platform with limited features.

Why wait when it happens? It is good time to migrate and enjoy Magento solution.

Magento is supported not only by PayPal & eBay, Magento have giant ecosystem of developers, designers and modules vendors. There are more than 4500 modules for Magento in MagentoConnect marketplace, and 30% of all these Magento modules are free. The future of Magento is bright and clear for everyone. More and more online marketers choose Magento as the platform for their eCommerce businesses.

Magento VS Xcart Comparison

Architecture
Magento: Modern, modular architecture based on Zend Framework.
Xcart: Obsolete architecture, functions based and not modular.

Multi-store capabilities
Magento: Stable multi-store solution.
Xcart: Not supported by Xcart 4 and 5. Xcart 5 will not have Pro version, which means that it will have no milti-vendor capabilities as well.

Upgrades & migration to the new version
Magento: 100% upgradable architecture. It is easy to upgrade Magento and Magento theme design.
Xcart: Upgrade procedure is almost manual (.DIFF files application). It will be not possible to upgrade to Xcart 5 from Xcart 4.

Future of the product:
Magento: Clear roadmap and clear release dates. Investments from PayPal & eBay.
Xcart: Not clear strategy of product development. No release dates available at the moment. Development of current Xcart 4 product is frozen.

Conclusion

Today over 100,000 merchants worldwide use Magento, including such big brands like Olympus, Nokia, Samsung, Lenovo, Ford, Tool King, FOX, GoodYear, Ford and many others.

Choosing right eCommerce platform for your business today, you invest money in your company. Magento is right solution, you will avoid a lot of troubles and pitfalls in the future with Magento.

Article source: http://turnkeye.com/blog/magento-vs-xcart/

Creating Color Schemes for Web Design

The color-concept terms I discussed in “Understanding Color Theory,” my previous article, will come in useful here while learning about color schemes in website design or website redesign.

The standard color wheel is helpful when analyzing different color schemes.

First I am going to cover some traditional color schemes.

Analogous

Analogous color schemes are one of the easiest to create. They are created by using three colors that are next to each other on the traditional 12-spoke color wheel as the base of the scheme. Analogous colors can be adjusted by manipulating their tone, shade, and tint.

Analogous colors: orange, red-orange, and red.

Monochromatic

Monochromatic schemes are based off a single color. The hue is always the same, but the scheme will contain different tones, shades, and tints of that hue.

This monochromatic scheme uses various shades and tints of green.

Triadic

Triadic color schemes use three colors that are evenly spaced throughout the color wheel. Picture an equilateral triangle intersecting the color wheel at three points to create the three base colors for this scheme. Like the other color schemes we’ve discussed, the tone, shade, and tint of these colors can be changed to adjust the scheme.

This triadic scheme uses yellow, red, and blue.

Complementary

Complementary color schemes are made up of colors that fall opposite each other on the color wheel. Picture a straight line running through the color wheel at any point. Colors along this line can make up a complementary color scheme.

Blue and orange: a complementary color scheme.

Split Complementary

Less common than the complementary color scheme, split complementary schemes use a base color and the two colors adjacent to the base color’s complement. These, again, can be adjusted by tone, shade, and tint to modify the scheme.

Split complementary scheme: Yellow-green vs. red and blue-violet. The base color is the bright green.

Tetradic

The tetradic color scheme is similar to the triadic color scheme but uses a rectangle instead of a triangle to pick the base colors from the color wheel. Using a tetradic color scheme provides two pairs of complementary colors as the base colors for the scheme. Tetradic color schemes usually work best if one color is more dominant than the others.

Tetradic schemes: Blue-green and blue-violet vs. red-orange and yellow-orange.

Making Adjustments

Even using a traditional color scheme, it is still possible to end up with jarring or ugly color combinations. This is where customization and the human touch enter in and adjusting the tone, shade, and tint becomes important. For example, the following analogous color scheme doesn’t break any “rules” per se, but without any contrast, it isn’t very visually appealing.

Low-contrast analogous color scheme.

Compare that with this analogous color scheme using the same hues but with different tones, shades, and tints.

Analogous color scheme adjusted for higher contrast.

As you can see, this color scheme is much more appealing and has the necessary contrast for using in web design.

Custom Color Schemes

Not all color schemes are based off these traditional models. In fact, some of the most striking color schemes simply use a neutral palette with one bright accent color. Sometimes using human intuition and starting from scratch results in more striking color schemes than the traditional models could have provided.

Neutral custom color scheme with accent color.

Often, a good place to start when creating your own color scheme is with one of the traditional models. Set up a base scheme using one of the models described above and then make changes to the hues.

Also, you may have noticed all the example schemes I’ve shown thus far have each contained five colors. While this isn’t an ironclad requirement, it is a good general rule to follow when starting a color scheme. Once you have five base colors, add or subtract as many colors as your site calls for. This is another place where human intuition plays a big role.

Adobe Kuler

Adobe Kuler is a helpful online resource for creating color schemes. For starters, you can use “Rules” to visually create color schemes based on the traditional models described in this article. Kuler also makes adjusting each color in the scheme simple with sliders and text entry fields

Kuler also allows you to create swatches using an image, which can yield some interesting results.

Use Adobe Kuler to pull color schemes off of an image.

Once you have your color scheme created, you can either copy the HEX codes for each color in your scheme or sign in to Kuler and download a swatch file for use with Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.

Contrast

One last thing to remember when creating color schemes for web pages is contrast. The comparison between the two analogous color schemes I provided earlier is a good example of the importance of contrast. Creating a color scheme with hues that all have the same value produces a very boring site design. So when creating color schemes, keep contrast in mind.

Article Source: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3273-Creating-Color-Schemes-for-Web-Design

10 Web Design Tips for Boosting Your Credibility

For the most part, web designers are not very knowledgeable about marketing techniques. In order to promote yourself and your business, it is important to build up your credibility as a designer. Your business website is essentially your business card – the first impression you get to make on potential clients.

That is why it is important to know about the various elements to include when you design the website for your company. When you focus on these elements and not just on the aesthetic qualities of your site, you can boost your branding power as a web designer.

Here are ten web design and website redesign tips that will help you create a website for your business that will impress customers and give you more credibility in the industry. When combined with the stunning look of your design, you will be sure to generate more clientele for your business.

1. Create a professional logo. An important first step in building a successful brand is having the right logo to fit your business. Your logo needs to communicate to the client what you do and what sets you apart from competitors. If you are not confident in your own ability to design logos, seek the help of a professional.

2. Include a video greeting. People like to have a face that they can associate with the brand, so think about having a professional video done and adding it to your homepage. You can keep it short – only a minute or two – and give a quick greeting and explain what you do. This will help build trust between yourself and your clients.

3. Be social. Social media is a great way to build your brand and connect with customers. You want to make it easy for them to communicate with you on various social networks, so choose a few and maintain an active presence on each of them. Include links on your website so that visitors can follow you on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

4. Include pictures of the office and employees. Customers want to know that your business is real and that it is operated by real-live people. Instead of covering your site with stock images of models, take some shots of your actual staff members. If your office staff consists of you and your dog, then add a few pictures of him as well!

5. Write a great “About Us” page. Too often, you will look at a business’ “About Us” page and it will be almost as creative and compelling as dry toast. Jazz it up! Give a little personal background information. Why did you decide to go into web design? What inspires you? Who are your heroes? Where do you see the business in five or ten years?

6. Include real customer testimonials. Nobody wants to be the first one in the pool, so let your customers know that others have tried your business and were pleased with the results. Ask some of your clients that have completed projects with you to write up a short paragraph about what they thought of working with your company and add it to your website.

7. Display logos for any organizations or affiliations. If you belong to your local chamber of commerce, are rated with the Better Business Bureau, or are affiliated with any industry groups or charities, let people know by adding those logos or badges to your website. If you use a specific brand in your business, include those logos as well.

8. Display what payment methods you accept. Not every business can process credit card payments, so displaying to customers that you accept them will show
that you are a company with an established financial track record. Have the logos of all the credit cards you accept as well as any other payment methods, like Google checkout or PayPal.

9. List your awards and certifications. Let potential clients know what your list of achievements are along with any industry awards you may have received. Showing them that you have earned recognition and certifications in the web design field will help bolster your credibility.

10. Link your blog to your website. With your web design blog, you should be writing content that demonstrates your knowledge and expertise. This will show that you are a leader in the industry and that clients can be confident in your ability to handle any project. By linking your blog directly to your website, it will be easier for potential customers to find you online.

Article source: http://www.learnwebdevelopment.com/2012/01/10-web-design-tips-for-boosting-your-credibility/

The Long Haul: Choosing Magento Over WordPress

When you are a web developer, there are three questions that you hear every single day. The first is: “A friend told me you build websites, is that true?” The second is: “How much do you charge for a website?” Finally, you hear: “What is the best website for me?”

This article is written to help answer that third question, when you are speaking to someone who is considering building an e-commerce website. With so many platforms out there, its hard for someone to decide whether Zencart, Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, or Magento is the right solution for them.

Zencart and Joomla are things that I try to steer my clients away from. Zencart as a platform lacks many of the customizable options that business owners are looking for; and Joomla is not a robust enough architecture to handle large CMS systems or in-code checkout processes for thousands of users. Drupal is a very robust platform, but it is designed with a programmer in mind, as the visual interface in the back-end is very sparse, and most of the time is spent on the command line.

For their money, I always recommend that business owners looking to build a site choose WordPress or Magento.

WordPress: A Review

WordPress is arguably the most popular content management system in the world. Almost every website on the net is built on a WordPress platform. When it was first released, it was the system of choice for blogs. The stability of the code combined with a very visual back end was perfect for opening the web to the world.

WordPress opened the door for developers to create a template, on a dedicated and standardized system, and sell those plugins and themes. Everyone with knowledge of PHP, and the proprietary system known as hooks, started putting together fully functional themes for those that had little programming experience, and extremely customizable themes for those who could take advantage of extra features.

Of course, as the Internet started taking more and more market share as a percentage of total sales, those same developers started creating commerce themes. These had shopping carts, customer management capabilities, and ways to contact authorize.net.

The only drawback is a fairly obvious one; WordPress was not originally designed for commerce. It is open-source, and if you have knowledge of PHP, it is also infinitely customizable. However, it is very rare that a programmer is also the business owner, and most owners spend their time taking care of their customers and not learning computer languages.

Enter: Magento

Magento is what the World Wide Web came up with when confronted with the problem of easy commerce. Like WordPress, Magento is open source, and with knowledge of PHP, is infinitely customizable. Unlike WordPress, it was designed explicitly with commerce in mind.

When I explain Magento to clients, I almost always have to evoke the name of WordPress in the explanation. It’s pretty easy to see why when you put them side-by-side. Both platforms are immensely stable, and neither require you to learn mountains of proprietary code. Magento Developer have an easy time picking up Magento, and because of this there are hundreds, if not thousands, of developers creating plugins and themes for Magento.

The major difference that I point out is in what the platforms focus on. WordPress can be made into a commerce site, and there are themes out there that do it quite well; but at it’s core, WordPress is a content management system. At Magento’s core is a client management system, and they focus on that aspect incessantly. So in terms of collecting and storing client content, Magento can’t be beat; furthermore, there are many extensions out there to help make your site PCI compliant almost overnight.

If you want to give your customers the option to store credit card information, and still want to be PCI compliant, there is an extension for that. Want nightly backups to prevent hacking, there’s not only hosting solutions, but extensions for that as well.

All in all, Magento is the commerce wave of the future, its just wondering when you’re going to get on board.

Article source: http://discusstech.org/2011/12/the-long-haul-choosing-magento-over-wordpress/

Website creation - Joomla Vs WordPress

WordPress if famous for its search engine optimization advantages. Automatically WordPress is se friendly together with webpages often rank on top of Google. On this Joomla desires some customisation in an effort to target the whole benefits from google. With an appropriate customisation nevertheless, Joomla web-sites are equally efficient at ranking on top of search engines like bing. Any skilled Joomla beautiful will design an online site to end up being SEO helpful.

Joomla is without a doubt easily scalable. Joomla enable you to design small to medium sized websites also for getting complex functionality on websites online. WordPress is fantastic away from box all of which will work excellent generally if the only aim of the websites was to write informational articles and other content. WordPress is fantastic away from box however limited relatively for getting complicated world-wide-web applications.

Picking an appropriate clothing to get a specific occasion is compared to ought to be colors, artwork, and various embellishments for web development company website you may be designing. Grooming flowing hair so all strand is at place is compared to going more than every word of your respective content to be able to weed through errors and ensuring every hyperlink leads where it will. Brushing any teeth which means you don’t stink is compared to going more than your web site design to ensure it will not send unwanted message for the viewers.

The manner in which your websites looks concerning first shows will have an effect on how others look into you or your online business. Skip too a large number of basic web site design steps rarely are one will need to stick around too much on your internet site. Your targeted visitors are primarily your boss where they will not care the best way great your project is if he or she get any sloppy primary impression.

 Editorial-style layouts- this would optimize the room of your site and will certainly leave several content which have been useful within your website. This will certainly add viewers coming to your website because rue. be difficult so they can find data anymore.

 Minimalist floor plans and shade schemes- that should take lesser number of resources for your site to become maintained, can also be used by all who have minimal content on the sites.

The second aspect in creating this brand is without a doubt positioning. Positioning is essential because it all creates this emotional tie Spearhead Sales & Marketing product for your consumer. It’s created through many things, including the well-known, the symbol, the provider standards, the goods guarantees, the packaging and therefore the delivery process. A company which includes a strong company will combine the exact same ideas thru all portions of their enterprise. Therefore, a promoting agency is required to be willing to utilize the business proprietor to establish you are able to send position.

Your third element with creating this brand is without a doubt well-balanced transmission. For the brand new business, the primary challenge is to locate the company company established during the minds within the target crowd. After social media services brand happens to be established, then this brand can be used to develop you're able to send personality. A fantastic web promoting agency really should be chosen to because of this concept as their intended purpose. Sometimes, this needs to even be made at the expenses of quickly profitability.

Source: http://mandalamagnets.com/website-creation-joomla-vs-wordpress/661/