Tuesday 26 August 2014

DotNetNuke CMS Development- How Does It Benefit Web Application Project


Based on Microsoft, DotNetNuke (DNN) is an open source web content management system used for developing powerful websites and web applications. Currently powering over 700,000 websites across the globe, it stands out to be an IDEAL choice for developing websites to develop, publish and manage the content of a web application with flexibility and scalability.



Here Are Some Of The Reasons To Choose DNN:

1.       Simple Installation: There are various DNN Hosting Packages available along with tools and support which makes it very easy to install and integrate.

2.       Easy Website Administration: DNN is easy to work with which makes this framework a desirable choice clients can generate, supervise and publish web content without knowing any technical skill.

3.       Easy–to-Use: Equipped with user-friendly features and feasibility, the website administrators, content managers, designers and developers can manage website with more ease and comfort.

4.       Feature-Rich Values: Its advanced features help in web designing, security, content management, User management, email marketing, document management, multi-lingual ability, blog management and more etc assuring success for businesses of all sizes.

5.       Flexibility & Scalability: DNN is highly flexible and scalable while developing any web application and supports number of websites from a single installation. Besides, it provides extensible framework leaving administrator to manage unlimited number of websites along with its own content.

6.       Enhanced Security: When compared to other CMSs DNN emphasizes more on validation, encryption, “bug” tracking and potential threats in order to build secure websites.

7.       Open Source Advantage: DNN is widely recognized among software developer community as they keep on adding new features and enhancements at frequent intervals.

8.       Open API Integration: Equipped with Open APIs, the core framework makes integration simple and easy.

Starting from small websites to large portals, hiring a CMS Development Company can help you through all kind of web applications.


5 Crucial Mobile Web Design Mistakes That Will Dump Your Sales


Mobile websites are a very useful place to connect with your audience but with a great deal of responsibility. When we say so, it eventually means that it is the easiest place for marketers to make massive mistakes that will turn off a customer, too.

Here’s what you should be looking out for and what you can learn from those who have come before you:



Keeping Mobile Separate

Designing a “mobile site” is a trend, yes. But the problem is now that you have a separate site to maintain, content duplication is highly visible for the search engines to see. This is why your webdesign platform should be able to determine the type of device that your site is being viewed on and deliver the appropriate version.

Mobile Site vs. Responsive Design

Most often, a 'mobile site' is confused with a 'responsive site'. While the former one is actually a spate version of your actual website, the latter one adapts to the screen size of your website providing the same look regardless of how it's accessed.

Clickable Links are Too Close To Each Other

Touch screens are for control and navigation. Bearing this in mind, users’ fingers being a typical tool for navigation, consider clickable objects or targets in 30-40 pixels in size for ease of touch.

Third Party Management

Instead of creating a “mobile site” with a third-party who provides you mobile site on a separate domain and put your content in an easy-to-use mobile format but it’s still useless without buying the site. Having a mobile site managed by a third party is just a terrible idea.

Poor Forms

To fill out a form on a mobile device can be incredibly frustrating. Majority of us are turned-off by long, over-complicated, poorly labelled or generally badly designed forms. Make sure you only ask for details that triggers a call to action.

Create a simple and cost effective mobile website. See what percent of your visits are coming from mobile web browsers? Was your web site designed with mobile compatibility in mind?


Friday 22 August 2014

Trending Ecommerce Ideas To Impact Online Retail Market

Online shopping has shown a tremendous growth and became very popular among those who are frequently making online purchases. Many trends come and go which is why retailers innovate more E-commerce ideas that have never been used before or are very unique in nature.

In this article, we will see the impact of these trends forcing the marketers or the sellers to come up with innovative ideas to attract the customers.

Virtual Try-On

This applies when users are given a chance to try the product virtually. For instance, if it’s an eye-wear, using user’s webcam they can wear it virtually to find out the appeal. In addition, the virtual try-on application is optimized for social networks, so that users are able to share the image with their friends and ask their opinions about the cool frames they just virtually tried.

Socialize

This is a very intelligent strategy to promote products. Use home page for content marketing and attract visitors by offering customers more than just a product but also the entertaining and interactive content for their interest. It contains many “How to Videos” for better understanding about the product.

Introduce Product Specifications

While selling products is the nature of the business, introduce a smart strategy and optimize your website on iPad and create interface like a fashion magazine. This influences content marketing and it also shows that how easily you can integrate third party application to your Magneto website.

Clean Content Means Better Understanding
A clean website with many great features includes home page video and widget. These help the user to identify the paper, and the introductory video covers all the important aspects.

As a bottom line, unless you offer a comfortable browsing and positive user experience, it is highly anticipated that the user would hesitate to make a purchase online.  There are many others who revolutionize the eCommerce industry and making the online shopping more exciting and entertaining.

Wednesday 20 August 2014

4 Horrible Mistakes in Choosing Ecommerce Platform


Choosing the right ecommerce platform has always played an important role in success of a project. Many a times clients might end up getting locked-in with a platform that might not be the best fit for their need, but what the Web Designing Company is capable of providing.

1.Starting With No Budget

This is the most terrible mistake, i would say. We often underestimate the work that is involved in creating a functional and effective ecommerce store and go ahead of phrases like “flat fee” or “flat percentage”. If you’re buying ecommerce software, you’ll need to calculate:

 Purchase price 

Development fees 

 Web hosting fees 

SSL certificate fees




 2.The World of E-Tail Never Chances

 The fact is that world of e-Commerce changes and it  doesn’t mean that your e-Commerce platform is prepared  for the next big change on the horizon. With users  becoming more sophisticated, your platform needs to be  flexible enough to cope with changing demands and  expectations.




Open-source platforms like Magento Ecommerce are a good way to safeguard against this. Their committed development communities, rich-feature updates, popular features as a free or affordable add-on make them stand out.

3.Simply Trusting the Quality & Consistency of Service

Anybody selling an ecommerce platform will emphasize the speed and efficiency but are they honest? Give a thought and firstly do a research. Ask for client references and search for feedback from other business owners. If you see customers consistently complaining about the same issue, it’s a warning!

4.Hesitating To Request Demos

It’s always good to see the look/feel before you hire a ecommerce web development company.
Use your agency partners to create demos for you and run through the functionality involved in each eCommerce platform. Remember to use your free resources to help you understand exactly what you’ll get at the best price.

 As long as you take a systematic and methodical approach to creating and developing an ecommerce store these ecommerce mistakes are all easily avoidable. It all needs your time and effort to building revenue.

“Buy Now Pay Later” Option: Why Merchants Should Go for It


Online store involves a harsh competitive environment. Knowing which, chances of staying afloat, gaining profit share, grossing revenue requires a forward thinking. With the brewing exponential increase in traffic, there have been additional methods that have come to light in recent times.

And, one of the web development methods being offered to nudge a probable customer across the line is BUY NOW PAY LATER option. If your ecommerce business is in a question about integrating this feature, well, here’s a thought.

Img Source - http://m.123rf.com/

Benefits Of Using This BUY NOW PAY LATER option

Trust me, for merchants it’s another form of income. It acts like a credit card and any purchases made is collected and billed exactly the same way but without the plastic. Regardless of the high rates they come along with, customers like this option of buy now pay later for obvious reasons.

By offering it as a payment option, you may have a few customers choose it just because it is available when they could have paid by another.


Customer focusing on managing a tight budget finds this kind of method flexible. With 0% APR options available, offering finance on an ecommerce website really does add extra clout and boosts sales revenues.

The other point is that it can generate significant business that you may not have known earlier. Say for instance, if you are in the business of office supply- this option let customers pay later leveraging a cash flow downturn or to bulk up on supplies to get through a holiday season. So that creating the pool of potential purchasing options for customers that need it.

Competition is fierce in website development, and being a merchant, it is significant to enjoy the power of credit and how it can add to your bottom line.

Wednesday 13 August 2014

Factors to Watch For When Choosing The Right Ecommerce Platform


With so many ecommerce platforms comes and goes, specifically small and mid-size businesses have left 10,000 ecommerce companies reeling. In such a case, how can a company be sure they’ve found the right ecommerce platform to begin with?

There are a few key questions to ask before looking at the options available.


Who is Your Ideal Customer?

Rather than hop on board when a well-known ecommerce platform arrives, investigate its viability. Do a simple research to know how much it has provided excellent service to small online retailers. This helps you determine if the company can indeed meet your needs over time.

Magento has long focused on providing ecommerce solutions for larger and small industries alike.

Does it Offer a Room to Establish

When you’re deciding on a platform for your ecommerce business look for its scalability as in like even when it dissolves for any reason, the other products available from that particular vendor can accommodate your store’s needs.

Say for instance, Retailers who have been growing quickly using Magento Go, when shut down can seamlessly switch to Magento's Enterprise or Community editions. They provide excellent results for larger companies but moving forward they support plenty of products in place to help the little guys, too.

What’s Their Range of Integrations?

If you need to change your shopping cart solution just to integrate with your new ecommerce system- you are in serious trouble. Better to go with a cart that integrates with your current programs. Compared to the main Magento platforms the development capabilities for Magento Go and ProStores were so limited that its partners simply never built extensions.

Once you have narrowed down your ecommerce platform choices, recommended to signing up for a free trial with an ecommerce development company.  For these reasons and many more, we at Openwave offer a free consultation besides evaluating their wants, storefront feature requirements, required system integrations and much more.

Guidelines to Follow When Integrating PSD to Zen Cart


Every ecommerce owner wants to make his/her website more alluring and attractive so as to increase the conversion rates. And why not when online market is avenging in every nook and corner of the world? 

That’s why many site owners prefer to leverage different open source shopping cart platforms and Zen Cart is one of top most priority.

Whether you are getting into in an ecommerce business or starting a new project listed below are some of the important tips for PSD to Zen Cart integration.

Ways to Boost User Engagement

PSD to Zen Cart conversion is a fundamental step in the process of ZenCart web development that in which you need to convert Psd to XHTML/CSS and then, integrate XHTML to ZenCart theme, template or skin to create a shopping cart.



·         Intuitive designing is a great art and a professional designer can also make sure that your website can be used instinctively.

·         Ensure your website’s stylesheets don’t include any references to image files, especially the image files that don’t exist on your website server.

·         If current website is taking too long to load, so making your website load faster is very crucial. Large and uncompressed images can adversely be the cause and highly recommended to use fully optimized and compressed images for your site.

·         Choose “Apply Discounts Used by Product Special/Sale: No.” to minimize your website’s parse time.

·         A skilled PSD conversion developer can easily convert entire template and optimize it extensively.

·         Use jQuery scripts instead of a long set of codes. Not only that it is lightweight but alos cross-browser JavaScript library available under a dual-license – the MIT License as well as GNU General Public License.

PSD to Zen Cart theme/ template conversion is vital in order to build a complete ecommerce based online portal bundled with advanced functionalities and features. If you are afraid of coding and development work, it is always recommended to hire Zen Cart developer having hands on experience in PSD to Zen Cart conversion, HTML to Zen Cart Integration and Zen Cart development.

Tuesday 12 August 2014

5 Smart Questions to Pick Up the Right PHP Professional


Do you have a PHP project coming up and worried about seeking a talented professional? Whether you are website owner or webmaster- it is a daunting task for you to hire professionals who comprehends your needs, especially the offshore ones.

Yes, there are lots of PHP developers in the market who claim to be professional but how do get to see inside the mask? This article discusses some effective questions to help you find out experienced PHP programmers/developers for your projects.


Img Source : sketchwebsolutions.com
His Skills and Experience Counts:

The first most important question you should ask a developer is about his experience in various projects and in PHP. The more experience the better capability. Also, what type of unique features he can offer to you? Most of all, does he test your project at the end or not? Because final touches are playing very significant role in making your project successful.


PHP & HTML Programming Knowledge

Check with him about his knowledge capability and hands on experience in PHP & HTML programming knowledge as in-depth information is vital.

Previous Clients’ Listings

In order to understand his work quality, ask him about his previous clients’ list to whom you can contact and as about developer’s expertise and dedication.

Java & C Programming Information:

Thorough knowledge about Java and C programming can be an added value so that you will not get any type of disappoint from his side.

Communication Skills:
Trust me, three forth of project fail because the developers and clients don’t either communicate because language as a barrier. Understand his communicating process so that you will come to know how he is going to provide constant updates about your project.

As a bottom line, these are some major questions to hire PHP developer for your project. If I have missed on anything, feel free to share them under comments. 

Monday 11 August 2014

Insights on Web Content Management In 2017

                                                   
Compared to three years ago, how different are websites now than they were. Many of the experts mentioned the need for better experience management and content targeting. Combined together, we have compiled some fearless predictions on what Web content management will look like in 2017.

Here We Go...


Future Web Content Management

Building the tools that build other tools like websites is indeed fraught with the advancing technologies to make things murkier. What is this leading to? Yes, organizations need to have the most up to date tools given the state of Web technology today. Else they would really be no wrong way to manage content.

The future of Web Content Management is more about moderation capabilities than about content management. It has to help us control, filter and moderate our content feeds from different sources. 


Alongside, this requires strategic leadership and business skills from the customer perspective that has long been unnecessarily complex, confusing and crowded to vendors, analysts and customers alike.

Much Personalised Mobility

Picking and choosing the most relevant items out from someone's so called feed is only helped along by things like personalization and customized experiences. Adapting content, but also workflows for mobile audiences and producers act as a more abstract element.

Of the more far out ideas regarding CMS like Drupal, Joomla in 2017 will be totally revolutionary, and something we couldn't imagine. And, one who would allow content to be repurposed for a variety of uses without worrying about the format or any templates would basically complicate the usage.

And surprisingly, most web development companies predict that the back end site tree will vanish to nothing while users will have tasks and apps. Emerging in a new shape, Intranets will be big again leading to form virtuality as the driver, virtual meeting rooms and all imaginable social media features.


Thursday 7 August 2014

Factors to Watch For When Choosing The Right Ecommerce Platform


With so many ecommerce platforms comes and goes, specifically small and mid-size businesses have left 10,000 ecommerce companies reeling. In such a case, how can a company be sure they’ve found the right ecommerce platform to begin with?

 There are a few key questions to ask before looking at the options available.


Who is Your Ideal Customer?

Rather than hop on board when a well-known ecommerce platform arrives, investigate its viability. Do a simple research to know how much it has provided excellent service to small online retailers. This helps you determine if the company can indeed meet your needs over time.

Magento has long focused on providing ecommerce solutions for larger and small industries alike.

Does it Offer a Room to Establish

When you’re deciding on a platform for your ecommerce business look for its scalability as in like even when it dissolves for any reason, the other products available from that particular vendor can accommodate your store’s needs.

Say for instance, Retailers who have been growing quickly using Magento Go, when shut down can seamlessly switch to Magento's Enterprise or Community editions. They provide excellent results for larger companies but moving forward they support plenty of products in place to help the little guys, too.

What’s Their Range of Integrations?

If you need to change your shopping cart solution just to integrate with your new ecommerce system- you are in serious trouble. Better to go with a cart that integrates with your current programs. Compared to the main Magento platforms the development capabilities for Magento Go and ProStores were so limited that its partners simply never built extensions.

Once you have narrowed down your ecommerce platform choices, recommended to signing up for a free trial with an ecommerce development company.  For these reasons and many more, we at Openwave offer a free consultation besides evaluating their wants, storefront feature requirements, required system integrations and much more.

Wednesday 6 August 2014

3 Unbelievable Ecommerce Mistakes and Ways to Tackle Them


Today’s online shoppers are savvy when shopping around, compare prices in a few sites before making a purchase. Knowing which on competitor’s strands, on the other end, business owners are so concerned about a lot of stuffs when it comes to selling products online.

Sometimes, it’s only the silly mistakes that can ruin your great market value. Below we have compiled a list of 4 eCommerce mistakes that we see often, and what you can do to tackle them.


MISTAKE #1

Ignoring the Basic Web Standards

Being an ecommerce store owner, it is wise to pay attention to web standards because they have set the tone for the way visitors know how to subconsciously behave on a website. For instance, traditional website navigation menus are to be located at the top of a page.  If placing them at the bottom of the page you run the risk of disrupting the natural flow that a consumer is used to following when shopping online." Small disruption could result in a lost conversion".

ECOMMERCE MISTAKE #2

Giving Less Importance to Marketing

While the fact is that you have invested a lot of time, energy, and resources into your ecommerce website designing but if refusing to invest in your marketing means how are people going to find your website? There is not a one-size fits all model that can be followed to bring you guaranteed results and requires a professional guidance towards improving the ROI for your marketing budget.

ECOMMERCE MISTAKE #3

A Chaos in Organizing Products

There is absolutely nothing like walking into shop but not knowing where to find what you want. Online product organization should cater to as many of your customer types and navigating your store from the prospective of your top 3 to 5 customer types.

For instance, Instead of them looking for a kitchen accessories category, they can look for cookware, or they would like to use a search bar to type exactly what they are looking for.

Besides, while trying to setup an eCommerce store for success, make sure that there is clear direction for shoppers to navigate to the things that they want to buy; be true to your products and services; get your name out there.


How Do You Protect Your WordPress Website from Being Hacked


Top 5 Security Best Practices To Protect Your WordPress Site

WordPress, used by tens of millions of sites around the world, is known for being one of the most user-friendly website platforms available online, but out of the box often a target for all sorts of malicious attacks.

You may be wondering why anyone would want to attack your website. Many a times the hackers are not looking to steal your data or delete important files but to use your server to send spam emails.

Choosing A Good Hosting Company

Instead of simply choosing the cheapest one you find, look for a hosting company that places an emphasis on security:

ü  Supports the latest versions of PHP and MySQL

ü  Includes a WordPress optimized firewall

ü  Comprise malware scanning and intrusive file detection

Website Updating

With every new release, there contains patches and fixes that address real or potential vulnerabilities which is why hackers intentionally target on older versions with known security issues. Remember to keep an eye on your Dashboard notification area and don’t ignore those ‘Please update now’


Strong Password usage

WordPress administrator password is anything like ‘letmein’, ‘abc123’, or ‘password’- you are down to weak passwords. Recommended coming up with a good password recipe that’s easy to remember but very hard to crack.

Limit Login Attempts

The best way to stop attempting a brute-force attack to crack your password is limiting the number of failed login attempts from a single IP address. How long an IP will be locked out for after too many failed login attempts?

Stop Using free themes

Even though there are thousands of free themes, a thumb rule is to avoid using free themes, especially if they aren’t built by a reputable developer. It is important that you should only use those developed by trusted theme companies.

There are many preventive measures and it is not important to stick to everything on this list. However, removing the ‘admin’ username and start using stronger passwords can guarantee a little bit safer.

5 Kindle Steps to Strengthen Your Landing Page Design


There is no doubt that a landing page is a finely tuned sales pitch. Its intention remains the same: to convince viewers to convert, sign up for a newsletter, join the email list, register an account, etc. Despite the fact that there are many approaches in designing for landing page, the best ones are those where every element on the page speaks to the viewer and interacts with the rest of the design.

Knowing which, here are quite a few strategies that can be effectively employed in your next website design project building landing pages that eventually creates a smooth user experience and a higher likelihood of conversion.



4 U’s For the Perfect Headline

Combination of the four U’s: Urgency, Usefulness, Uniqueness, and Ultra-specificity define a quality headline. Even though there aren’t unique, it can still be very effective as long as it makes a good case for the product.

Strong Visual Hierarchy

It’s not only about colours but also arranging your landing page in such a way that guides a user from your selling point to your call to action with no abstraction. In Precise, your visuals need to be just as coherent as your writing.

Follow-ups to Convince

There are many who won’t need much convincing to give your product a go while others need a push to explore more.  Given proper time to consider before they choose to follow through by providing links, videos, or further information- you can satisfy half of your audience. You may wonder if you’re allowing users to move away from it the page how will they ever respond. One great solution is holding an eye-catching “Free Trial” button, always in site.

Meticulously edited Content

Copy on your landing page should be meticulously edited so it’s as simple and clear as possible. Meanwhile, it is compelling to describe how your product can benefit the user.

Nothing Beats As Trustworthy

If you would like to increase the conversion rate at a faster pace, provide evidence of your site’s dependability. How could this be achieved? Simple! Display testimonials from satisfied users and logos from respected businesses that use your product. Else, display badges, awards, or certifications from other respected entities.

The list above covers the most important things that you need to be aware of when designing for landing pages. Yet, try to look at it from the perspective of a customer. Now that brings conversion. 

Tuesday 5 August 2014

The Role of Mobile Website Designers In Boosting Your Online Sales- An OverView


In forth coming years, more people are expected to access the Internet with the use of a mobile device instead of a personal computer. This means your handheld device is no longer an essential tool to communicate but a fundamental channel for business-to-business appointment.

In such a case, failing to optimize your website for mobile users will result in higher abandon rates and fewer conversions.


Maximize Mobile Traffic To Increase Mobile Conversions

Hiring a mobile website development company can help you integrate mobile into your inbound marketing strategy. Here is what they do, exactly:

Mobile Ads: Mobile, being a new medium, needs ads to be placed in the right environment and make sure they are relevant, contextual and native to the mobile experience. Mobile designers ensure you are present in organic search results, mobile applications and premium websites.

Mobile SEO: Optimizing your website for local search means your search listing and ads will be pushed closer to the top of results pages for each geographic location.

Mobile Website Development: Focusing on responsive design or a stand-alone mobile version is the best possible way to convert more traffic from mobile devices.

Social Media for Mobile: With over 50% of users accessing their social media profiles via mobile devices, optimizing your profiles for mobile ensures an enhanced mobile browsing experience.

Mobile Analytics: A mobile website developer can create a mobile strategy for your business using advanced analytics techniques which will determine which keywords are suited for mobile vs. desktop. This ensures you don’t miss out on potential opportunities.

See what your website looks like from a phone right now. In case it doesn’t appear properly, it might be hard for customers to see your phone number, menu or list of services. Connect with a mobile website developer today and get a free sample.

Openwave Computing Services is one of the first to grasp the potential of mobile search and has developed exceptional strategies to help you increase mobile search traffic. Our team of experts focuses on web development strategies that enable your website to be viewed optimally on all platforms.

Monday 4 August 2014

6 Highlighted Reasons Why Your Website Traffic Doesn’t Bring Expected Sales

To conduct an online business to generate revenues using various techniques that drive traffic to your website. But however, once the traffic starts building how many of the visitors are converted to real shoppers which means getting your visitors to take a specific form of action on your website? High? Average? Low?

No matter whatever range you fall into, here are some of the areas to analyze hoping to turn this into a sale.

Img source - nodestudios.co.uk

Design: Did you know that the website design plays a major part in the whole conversion process. When was the last time you renovated your homepage?

Call to Action: Generally, it could be to sign up on the mailing list or buy something- simply an appeal to your reader to take some form of action on your site.

Hard Selling: It is not always about sales funnels, landing pages, SEO and call to actions. But rather focus on your audience, get to know them and gain confidence.


Traffic Quantity: Make sure you know how to interpret analytics. Why because there is a lot of difference between page views and unique visitors. Not all individuals who return more than once will buy.

Landing Page Optimization: When people land on your site what are they doing? Optimize is an easy way to test any number of hypotheses, variations, or tweaks to your landing page.

Branding: Does a visitor trust you as a retailer? Essentially, conversion can be affected by the way the visitor feels about the brand and image you project.

These are just some of the reasons that explain why website traffic doesn’t bring expected sales.

If you’ve expended a lot of resources to get visitors to your site, starting from excellent website design planning to content management to website maintenance. At Openwave, we help online retailers get more of visitors to admire, experience and feast at product buffets. Now that’s conversion!