Strategic Website Design: 10 Ideas to Grow Your Business

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STRATEGIC WEBSITE DESIGN

10 ideas to

GROW YOUR BUSINESS

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INDEX CONTENT

PAGE

1.

Introduction

2.

Reasons why your business require website with responsive layouts

02 - 03

3.

An overview of bootstrap framework

04 - 05

4.

Useful guidelines for getting google to index a new website instantly

06 - 09

5.

Taking a reverse approach to design with mobile-first strategy

10 - 12

6.

Top 10 tips to create a mobile friendly website

13 - 14

7.

Effective landing page design - 5 crucial factors

15 - 17

8.

The importance of white space in website design

18 - 19

9.

The importance of search functionality in website design

20 - 21

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10. Shopping cart application - 12 fundamentals to make it a success

22 - 29

11. Popular e-Commerce platforms in 2017

30 - 32

12. WebGuru services

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INTRODUCTION The user interface of your business website should have an aesthetic feel meshed with advanced functionality. The website design should embody your brand image and convey the organizational vision to your target audience. It should help you to accomplish the organizational goals such as decrease in the bounce rate, increase in the conversion rate, minimize cart abandonment and much more.

Here we elaborate on a collection of topics such as responsive layout using a bootstrap framework, mobile first strategy that leads to mobile friendly website design, advanced landing page design with search functionality, and building the best shopping cart platform using Magento, Woo-commerce and others.

Implementing the style and techniques in your website design should be intelligent and focused. We recommend various strategies in website design that will help you achieve your organizational goals.

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Reasons Why Your Business Requires

Website With Responsive Layouts Every business requires a website for ensuring its progress and resultant success. But, today it is not just about looking good on the monitor of a desktop computer. Swift progress in the extensive field of Mobile Technology has led several portable devices including Smartphones and Tablets etc. to become the inseparable parts of modern-generation lifestyle. In this fast-paced modern world, people do not wait to go home for going online, since these advanced portable devices can do everything that a computer can do.

It is obvious that the screen resolutions and aspect ratio would vary while using these portable devices. Often, the Tablets and Smartphones fail to showcase the web content in a proper way. This design has appeared as a knight in a shining armor to fix this issue.

Today, Responsive design has reared its head as a very common feature in most website themes and templates. Websites with such design are developed to automatically fit to any screen size, giving the visitors an optimal viewing experience no matter which device they are relying on. Here are a few important reasons to consider making the switch.

Have a look-

Search Engine Advantages: Search engine is intended to return results that allow a good user experience. Mobile and Tablet friendly search results always stand out in the overall ranking. Most of the users tend to switch to another site, if they find a poor performance of a website on the mobile devices.

Such designs offer a better user-experience and subsequently, ensure improvement of the search engine optimization. Moreover, the latest update of search engine giant Google says that the mobile friendly websites will have a better chance to rank in the search results.

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Consistent user experience: This design is flexible and would adapt its layout depending on the size of a user screen. It ensures that your website will always proffer the best possible experience to its viewers. Plus, it does not take too long to load. Thus, it determines a better user experience by enabling the internet users to get their information in no time. In a nutshell, Responsive design is all about providing a consistent and an enriching user experience regardless of whether the users use a Laptop, a Smartphone or a Tablet.

Increase sales: User-friendly Responsive websites do a better job in converting visitors into customers. By eradicating all the barriers to your website, this web structure will lead to a quicker intake of the customers. Aside from increasing the sales, it helps analyze a website’s overall performance.

Research says that most of the users who visited a mobile-friendly site have a tendency to get back to the same site in future for making a purchase. By providing a unified experience, easy navigation facility and consistent usability, this site always ends up boosting the sales.

Information is accessible: Responsive Design has projected to the screen after the content layouts are calculated according to the screen size and resolution of a portable device.

Armed with this optimal approach, the web pages are always displayed better as well as faster, with ideal font size. Hence, the device capabilities never become an impediment to the desired information or ideal display.

Responsive design has spread like wildfire in the last couple of years. Today, every blooming business tends to get a leg up on their rivals by switching to responsive website designs. With loads of impeccable functionalities, this web design can really help your business stay ahead of the competition always.

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An Overview of

Bootstrap Framework The Web nowadays, is not something that can only be seen on desktops, rather we now carry it in our pockets. This is now a global trend, which is more to grow in the time to come. So, the odds are that many people may have not seen the desktop version of certain websites, as they access the web only through their smartphones. Hence, to cover all potential consumers, a website needs to be scalable across varying screen size for the best experience, both through looks and functions. Further, the content needs to be trimmed down to its most vital elements.

With desktop versions already existing, the main area of concern was what is to be trimmed and what is to be slid down. Two approaches available – one was to build a responsive design targeting specific devices and viewport sizes; whereas, the second being starting out with a design for the mobile first, with gradual enhancements for larger platforms with fewer constraints.

The Bootstrap framework provides an easy way of crafting website designs and allows to create greatly optimized mobile designs. It efficiently scales up the website and applications with a single code base. Bootstrap includes a responsive, mobile first fluid grid system that appropriately scales up to 12 columns with an increase in viewport sizes. This Grid System is used for creating page layouts with the help of rows and columns. In simple terms, the content in bootstrap can be divided into a maximum of 12 columns. Then, depending on the device accessing the site, the content is condensed down to 6, 4, 3 or less.

This also works in portrait/landscape/orientation of the devices. Here, the app detects the pixel size of the accessing device and adjusts the columns accordingly.

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With a mobile-first approach at its core, the Bootstrap grid system builds mobile first, responsive websites, for small screens and then scales up the designs from there for the devices with larger display screen. It uses a mix of HTML5 markup, compiled and minified CSS Styling and JavaScript. With Bootstrap, one can create transition effects, drop-down menus, cover pages, image galleries, dashboards, sticky footers, progress bars, buttons, pagination and the ScrollSpy plugin. Its template designs include features like tables, forms, navigation styles, typography and more. To use JavaScript add-ons with Bootstrap, it is sufficient to refer to the jQuery library in the HTML. It also has its own jQuery plugins that can be individually used and compiled. Furthermore, BootstrapWP, is a downloadable version of the framework which can be used for designing WordPress sites.

Using Boorstap does not mean your website needs to look like Bootstrap.

Designs can be customized to an ultimate level using innovative techniques and color illusions that can make your design stand different from generic looking designs. Bootstrap lets developers design front-ends with little knowledge of HTML or CSS. Hence, Bootstrap is extremely flexible whether it is being applied to static HTML, custom PHP-coded site or a CMS.

Conclusion: Bootstrap has finally turned out to be the trendiest front-end design frameworks. The main reason for its success is the huge number of resources accessible through it. It holds a very big online community and help is easily available. It is always kept updated and is presently available in GitHub for download.

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Useful Guidelines for

Getting Google To Index A New Website Instantly Having a well visible website for a start-up business is imperative for ensuring its growth and resultant success. A website plays an important role for shedding a light on your company/services/business. After you set up a website, you need to make people find it over the internet. It is possible through prudent Search Engine Optimization.Search engines are the gateways for information on the highway of internet and Google is the undoubted king of them all. Only by giving a ‘search’ in Google one should discover your business in the extensive arena of internet. But it may take some uncertain time span to find your website in search engines.

To facilitate the presence of your business in Google, there are certain processes to be followed and the process begins with including your business website in the database of Google. This inclusion is what is called “Indexing Of A New Website With Google”. For indexing, Google scans your website with a computer program called “Crawler” and eventually includes the site with its database. The entire process is indeed a time-consuming one. With the help of some strategies one can ensure a faster indexing of a new website. These strategies are enlisted below: Get an XML Sitemap: A XML sitemap refers to a XML file, which lists all the URLs of a website. It is the XML sitemap that stays responsible for informing search engines about the pages of your new website and for instructing the search engines to crawl and index your new website at a pre-defined interval of time. For instance, you may want Google to crawl your web site on a regular basis for latest products or content updates. In that case appropriate instructions will be given to Google to crawl and index your newly added products by the XML sitemap file.

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Robots.txt: Robots.txt file is a simple text file which is usually placed in the root directory of a website. Robot.txt files are responsible to instruct search engine crawlers about which directories or files to index and which to skip.

Create a Google Webmaster Tool Account: “Google Webmaster Tools”, presently known as “Google Search Console” refers to an array of tools that monitor and help make your website spruced up and fit for Google, so that the website appears at the beginning of the first page of the SERP and gets properly visible to new prospective visitors. Google Webmaster Tool is the place where you have to submit the XML sitemap for giving indexing instructions.

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Fetch as Google tool: “Fetch as Google” is an option available with “Google Webmaster Tools”. The users are required to submit the URLs of the modified or newly added pages of their website to “Fetch as Google”. This enables the website to be crawled and indexed instantly with Google. Submitting your links to the “Fetch as Google” tool and indexing it is an extremely easy task to accomplish.

Good quality inbound links: Another useful technique for accelerating the indexing procedure is to get good quality inbound links from websites. There’s no denying that the more popular a website is, the more indexing attention it receives from Google. Hence, it is essential to jot down effective inbound linking methods. Search engine crawlers tend to find or index your website when popular and indexed sites link to it. In order to make this work, you must build quality links to your website from other popular websites.

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Share link of New Website in Social Media: Once you are done with adding the links of your new website to a recently made or already exiting social profile, proceed further by sharing it in a status update on those networks. These links would alert the search engines that are responsible for tracking the social signals. A video clip can be made as well for shedding a light on your website. The link addresses can be shared right at the video’s description box.

Off-page Contents: In order to empower the link building procedure, you can add more links to your new site by making off-page contents. Your contents should be submitted to quality article directories. You can also publish press releases for any news updates for quality inbound links. It is necessary for every content to be 100% original and unique. All these above-mentioned strategies seem like extremely useful for getting a new website indexed by popular search engines. Abide by these steps, and help your newly formed website get indexed on Google.

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Taking a Reverse Approach to

Design With Mobile-first Strategy If you are of the opinion that mobile is the future, you are living under a rock. This notion was valid until about, say, 3 years ago; the world has moved on quite a bit in the past few years when it comes to internet usage and web interactions.

Looking at a few statistics, we can see that there are more than 1.2 billion mobile web users around the world and 25% of the entire population of the USA browse the web using mobile ‘only’. With this kind of mobile usage, it would be more justified to say mobile is not the future, but the present. And such insane levels of mobile interaction inherently calls for a paradigm shift in design strategy.

Responsive design, although still prevalent, is gradually becoming a thing of the past and “mobile-first design” strategy is taking over.

As the name suggests, “mobile-first” means designing for mobile first and gradually magnifying the web elements with respect to the desktop. It is opposite to responsive design, where the focus primarily rests on the desktop, and websites are regressively adapted for tablets and mobile devices.

The approach is quite different here, not just in terms of the workflow but the use and presentation of different web elements as well.

Content is the Primary Center of Attraction When designing with a mobile-first strategy in mind, it is the content that takes the steering wheel. All the clutter with the buttons, imagery, animations, etc. take a back seat, thus stripping down the website to the bare essentials. As a return, the user gets a much cleaner and sophisticated look and feel of the website with faster loading times and an improved overall browsing experience.

The content is the top priority here and it should be extremely engaging for the users. Some are of the opinion that long form content is not suitable for mobile

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viewing, which is not true at all. People like to read on the go and it would be biased to state that you should only use short forms of content in a mobile-first design strategy. Studies have, in fact, suggested that people enjoy reading more on their mobile phones than on their desktop screens. One advantage, here, is that the design is centered around the content, instead of having to adapt a pre-existing design to a long form content. Moreover, some people believe that different devices require different content structures and sizes, which is partially true. The best way to settle is to create context-specific content, meaning the content can be of any size or structure based on what it is about.

Why Progressive Enhancement Trumps Graceful Degradation On one hand, there is graceful degradation, which implies building for the bigger screen and thereafter cutting it down for smaller devices. On the other, there is a progressive enhancement, which refers to designing a website in its simple and minimal form and gradually building on it with more advanced elements. While it might seem that both the processes are strikingly similar in terms of the end purpose, they have vast differences in reality. In the case of graceful degradation, you start building for a desktop and the capabilities associated with it. This includes a full-fledged development process with all the functionalities of a desktop, which might not even be possible in case of a mobile device. When a design is created with respect to a desktop, the designer has a lot of room to play around with the elements. This space gets limited when the same design perspective is shifted to a mobile device. As a result, a lot of the elements which would perhaps make the website stand out, get eliminated on the mobile version and the website loses its charm completely. On the contrary, progressive enhancement starts with the bare minimum for the small screens, where the designer can use only the content and the minimal design elements to provide the user with a smooth and clean user experience. When moving up to a bigger screen, the more attractive features such as Flash elements can be displayed perfectly. Hence the design does not get compromised in any way and the website looks equally good on both the devices. And any designer would easily agree that it is easier to add more than to cut down on what is already present. With graceful degradation, there is a chance that after cutting down on design and features, the end product might not look as appealing on mobile as on desktop. It often tends to half-baked or even non-functional. But when enhancing progressively, it is easier to focus on the mobile experience and provide the very best of what the small screen can offer. If anything additional has to be added to this already attractive experience, that can be easily done by then focusing on the potential of desktop computers.

It would, therefore, be quite normal to say that progressive enhancement is a much better choice than graceful degradation, which often does not turn out to be as graceful as it should be.

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Is Mobile-first Design the Best Strategy to Follow?

Like every other technological enhancement, mobile-first design scheme does come with inevitable hurdles. Responsive design is the way to go in today’s world. And it is essentially built to go hand in hand with a mobile-first strategy.

But here the constraints are far more pronounced. First, the screen size is a big issue with most designers. After years of playing around with the real estate of a big screen, they now have to deal with a diminished screen size and it can be frustrating. The scope for variety is also limited. But what the designers fail to fathom is that a mobile-first approach is not about the design and the aesthetics, but instead focuses on the end user experience. With more and more people using their smartphones to browse the web, it can be a huge step forward if this strategy is applied. If looked at from a strict designer’s point of view, this might not be the best strategy to follow, but that is just a matter of time, practice and adoption. It is never about the designer or what he is comfortable working with. It has never been. Anything they do is for the end user and the success of the mobile-first strategy lies exclusively in the fact that ‘their’ mobile experience is not hampered. After all, as Steve Jobs has famously said – “Design is not how it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Looking for mobile-first design for your business website? We can help.

Contact us today!

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Top 10 Tips to

Create A Mobile Friendly Website

The expected growth in the number of global mobile users for the year 2017 is around 4.77 billion. By the year 2019, it is expected to surpass the mark of 5 billion. This figure will be equivalent to 67 percent of the global population.

Going by these predictive statistics, we can assume a simple fact that mobile devices are growing in popularity and the trend is not going to lose intensity in the coming years. This is why development of mobile-friendly websites is high on priority. Below mentioned are top 10 tips to create one: 1. Be Responsive: Choosing a responsive framework is the need of the hour and Bootstrap is a popular option for the website developers. No matter how the users are approaching your website (via desktop, smartphone or tablet), a responsive technique will let them have a similar experience. It has SEO benefits, could be easily managed and you need not have to separate the mobile URL. 2. Think with your Index Finger or Thumb: The site should be completely navigable using the index finger or the thumb.

Users should be able to browse your site with their ‘phone hand’ only. In addition, the font size should be optimized so that the users need not pinch it to zoom in.

3. Keep a Simple Design: The short attention span of net users is notoriously famous and uninterrupted attention span is just 1.0 second. Thus, it is better to keep a clean and simple design and web content, which can instantaneously convey the core message.

4. Keep a Short and Attractive Web Content: The main thing is to present your story in minimum words and in an interesting manner. To engage the users’ attention, add only the essential copies to keep them engaged till the last sentence.

5. Focus on the Icon Design: Keep your site uncluttered and instead of using words, use conventional mobile icons to convey the instruction messages like ‘to make a call’ or ‘connect socially’.

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6. Enhance the Speed with Optimized Images: The speed of the mobile web is slower than its cable-powered cousin. In U.S., it is 6.5 Mbps in general. Thus, it is better to strip down your site with heavy media files.

Replace the bulky libraries such as jQuery Mobile with standalone codes of JavaScript. Replace the retina-ready images of desktop version with its lower resolution version.

7. Balanced Utilization of Java Codes: It is better to avoid too much JavaScript because it runs in different manners across different devices and browsers.

8. Easy Access to your Contact Info: Objective of a mobile website should be clearly portrayed at your site. For example, when you are running your business from multiple locations, your priority should be to provide the users with the addresses of your multiple stores; its opening and closing hours; booking or contact numbers and nearest location of the business.

9. Wise Addition of Videos: It is a good practice to add videos to mobile websites. This is because the mobile device users are 3 times more likely to watch video clips in general. The video player must support HTML5 version so that the clips would run on most of the devices.

10. Mobile Friendly Form Designs: Best practices of HTML and CSS will help you to make your contact form mobile friendly. CSS styling allows for sufficient wiggle room around the form input fields and helps design button elements which are finger friendly for smart phone users.

The different attributes of HTML5 aids in mobile user experience. For example, the placeholder attribute guides the user as to the kind of data that must be filled in the form. HTML5 comes with autocorrect and autocapitalize features that help to capitalize the data in the form entry field. Additionally, HTML5 form features are supported by different browsers used in Andriod phones and iOS Safari. Using these simple HTML and CSS codes can help to design mobile friendly forms for websites optimized for the mobile experience. You can compensate the number of form fields with the inbuilt technology of mobile devices. For example, as GPS is easily accessible through a mobile device, it is useless to ask for the city or state name and the ZIP code. Keeping in mind the aforementioned 10 tips, you can develop a wonderful mobile-friendly website. However, you can add more features to enhance the user experience.

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Effective Landing Page Design

5 Crucial Factors

A landing page is also termed as “lead capture page” in the extensive arena of internet marketing as it helps capture a new lead or attract a new customer. It refers to a web page of your website where a visitor arrives after clicking on an online advertisement or an SEO search result or a promotional e-mail. The prime objective of a landing page is to ensure goal achievement amid your prospective audiences online. This goal can be materializing a product sell or can be signing up a form or downloading a mobile app. Hence, every aspirant online marketer should make a point of setting up a proper landing page for a successful net biz.

Additionally, a well-established landing page is attributed with the responsibility for establishing a brand’s identity. Let’s look into some essential elements of creating a winning landing page.

1. MAKE IT SHORT AND UNCLUTTERED: As its name suggests, a landing page should only contain all the necessary data that must benefit the viewers. Too much clutters or unnecessary pop ups going on a landing page usually end up compelling the visitors to abandon the page.

Hence, the goal is not to create an unnecessarily long landing page; rather, it must be a page that is apt for achieving the goal.

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2. HYPERLINK SHOULD NOT DISTRACT VIEWERS: When a viewer arrives on a landing page, it is your responsibility to make him/her stay. Presence of multiple links on a web page can confuse and distract your visitors. Too many links may call for lead generation friction that resultantly hinders traffic building on a specific webpage. Hence, links should be given in a way that the viewers are not deviated from the main content of the landing page.

3. MAKE EYE - CATCHING HEADLINES: Eye-catching headline seems to be the asset of a landing page as it gets the audiences acquainted with the ongoing offers. Adding a sub headline is a must for more explanation or value proposition. Sub headline being an extension of the main headline, helps viewers get every detail about the ongoing offers. For an instance, if “free Facebook marketing E-book” is the headline; then, “learn how to get more Facebook likes etc. from our marketing experts” can be the perfect sub heading to follow the pivotal one.

4. MATCH THE HEADLINE TO ITS “CALL TO ACTION”: The main motto of the perfect landing page should be to encourage visitors to take a specific action. Therefore, ‘call to action’ is a crucial element on a landing page. Generally, call to action aka CTA comes as a button/ link/form on a page. It is extremely important to keep the main message consistent in both your ‘call to action’ and the main headline of a landing page. If the headline seems to be different from the CTA, it might lead viewers to confusions and they may wonder if the CTA is annexed to a wrong page. To avoid such circumstances, make sure that the landing page always reflects the promise in the ‘call-to-action’. It’s undoubtedly an integral step for forming an ideal, compact landing page.

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5. GET A SHORTER FORM: The viewers seem to be reluctant to spend a long time on filling up a mere form.

Audiences have a tendency to back out from filling out a long and stretchy landing page form. A short form is easy to go through. If your form needs a lot of fields, better try making it appear shorter by adjusting its styling. A short and simple form must be evaluated as a key element of a landing page. Without well-structured landing pages, business owners would be restricted in their mission of converting website viewers into the leads. Above-mentioned factors truly contribute to designing a high converting landing page.

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The importance of

White Space In Website Design In terms of website design, whitespace is the space left between graphics, texts, columns, margins and those components that make up a design. It is that space which is intentionally left blank for the better readability of the website. White space does not mean the space should be white. Technically, it can be referred to as empty space or blank space and can be of any color, provided, it does not contain any design element / pattern in it. It generally allows users to organize different elements of design for creating a clean content.

Whitespace is important because it can improve the readability and usability of the website design. Viewing and following through a website needs to be as easy as relaxing. A balanced use of empty space in between design elements along with its sensitive use in the typography can create a sophisticated and elegant look for upscale brands.

These white gaps can be active or passive. When it is used to lead a user from one element to the other it is known as active space, whereas the passive form is the unconsidered space between elements. Passive space creates a breathing room for the eyes. Both these types can be manipulated by the designer.

The usage of white spaces can differ as per the context of the web design. An E-Commerce website will have a different layout as compared to a photography website or a blogging website which is more text oriented. Whatever be the context of the website, whitespaces are important to keep the navigation smooth.

One of the examples we are familiar with is Google. The homepage has abundance of white space with minimal design which naturally focuses our eyes to the center of the page rather than top left where our eyes generally start.

White spaces have a remarkable ability to guide the eyes of the users, break continuity and catch attention. Blocks of continuous contents can be easily managed by slightly changing the color of whitespaces. Too much of it makes the design look empty, too little makes the design a colorful mess. Hence, ‘Consistency’ and ‘Balance’ are the most important considerations while using white spaces.

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Readable texts need more gaps between letters and headers. Text size is also important in this regard. Too small a text shrinks the whitespace in between and needs eye squinting. Larger text sizes consume more whitespace than required.

Instead of using up all the space available and stacking tons of information, designers can use it up for innovative spacing and featuring what is really important. Whitespaces should be used wisely after a good technical understanding of what content is to be shown, how much of it is to be shown and why it is being shown. Therefore, it is advisable to finalize the actual content that would be on the website prior to finalizing the design.

Conclusion Whitespaces does not mean just keeping a distance between the elements or components of the design. It should just be enough to create an invisible interdependence of independent elements and sketch out a complete picture as a whole.

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The Importance of

Search Functionality In Website Design Organizing information is a science in itself. We always rely on finding information resources on the Internet. It seems to have endless information with very sophisticated technologies to access it. The most fundamental way of finding the required information on the Internet is the Search Function.

The simple search box seems to just be a very small component in the website design, but this simple functionality when implemented with great efforts, can enhance the usability of the website extensively. It is a strategy implemented into design to help the users find relevant content. Users can find content by specifying keywords or phrases without navigating through the entire website structure.

The search functionality can be included as a simple form on the web page. It can be an input box followed by a submit button. For more specific searches, there can be a link to a more advanced search form in a different page. However, only including a simple/advanced search form is not enough. It requires to be functional and provide relevant results. A search module, to be effective, should be easily accessible from any page of the website, and be able to find any content that the users is looking for.

Categorized search is a concept used in websites with categorized products. It narrows down results with the use of a sidebar filtering options. This sidebar further filters the generated results.

The design of this simple component should be functionally relevant to the content it is searching for. The input field should be long enough for users to see what they have typed in. A sample text may also be put in the input box by default that disappears when the user types in. Extended functionalities like spell check, auto-correction and auto-suggestions can greatly enhance this module.

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The submit or the search button should be relevant to the overall design of the page. Creativity can be applied, but the user’s perspective should be kept in mind.

The user should be easily able to locate the submit button. This submit button should also be different than any other button in the web page.

The results displayed are of equal importance as its functionality. When a result page is generated, following a few guidelines can engage the user better. Design a result page that is easy to understand. The matching keywords can be made bold and larger in size than the rest of the text. The generated records should be clickable/expandable as per website context. The clicked records can be given a ‘visited mark’ for the users to know they have already seen the product. The input box needs to be featured on the results page with the specified keywords in there, so that the users are able to change the keywords whenever they want. Last but not the least, the ‘No Results’ page should be avoided as much as possible. Instead, a page with ‘similar’ results can be generated.

Conclusion Several websites now send newsletters based on the user’s search history. This is a very effective marketing strategy which provides users with updates on products they are interested in. This implies that a user’s search history is recorded and monitored. Youtube.com generates suggested videos based on recent views. A well implemented search function has a great potential for the success of any website. The search feature of google.com is a great example to understand this fact.

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Shopping Cart Application

12 Fundamentals To Make It A Success The basic goal for a shopping cart is to sell – that may be a product or a service. Let us refer to the word ‘product’ for simplicity. Search Engine Optimization and various other marketing campaigns can lead a visitor to your shopping cart, but it is not definite that he or she will buy products from your online shop. So, what are the deciding factors those can convert that visitor into a buyer? Trends change, but the basics and the fundamentals do not. Implemented correctly, fundamentals have a very strong and natural effect.

1. PRODUCT LIST VIEW: Here the buyer will be able to go through different products of a particular category in a single view. A product list view may contain 1) a prominent image of the product, 2) price of the product, 3) name of the product, 4) rating of the product, 5) an “add to cart” button etc. Do not make the product image too small as the user will not be able to get an overall idea. Do not make the image too large also, as this will limit the number of images in a single viewable screen. Every buyer has a budget, hence displaying the price of the product in the list view is very important. Thus, the buyer will be able to decide instantly whether to view the details or not.

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2. PRODUCT INFORMATION: Since the buyer is unable to talk directly to the seller, so, a detailed product information is very important for the buyer to take the final decision to purchase. It is imperative to provide detailed, high resolution, multiple images of the product from all possible angles. Additionally, a zooming feature of the image, which allows the users to have a closer view can also be considered as almost mandatory.

Referring to textual information, all possible text information should be organized and laid out in an easily perceivable manner. The information should not be such where the visitor gets bored reading a huge paragraph to find out a required detail. 1) Mention the SKU code of the product, so that buyers can refer to it if they wish to inquire with the customer care executives about the product.

2) Mention the salient features of the product in bulleted manner,e.g, a) for books: name of author, name of publisher, ISBN No., number of pages etc, b) for smart phones: the OS, screen size, camera resolution, processor, storage capacity, RAM etc.

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3. PRODUCT REVIEW: Product Reviews also serve as a very effective factor triggering sales. Encourage buyers to post reviews on the product. Do not discard negative reviews.

Although this may affect the sale of that particular product, it will build the user’s confidence on the website and the product information provided.

Amazon or Flipkart have very good product review feature. Negative reviews hinder the sale of that particular product, but does not affect the user’s confidence on the website.

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4. PRODUCT SEARCH/FILTER: If you have a huge collection of products, it is advisable to implement a very efficient product search and a product filter feature. This enables the user to view the products of his/her likes. Displaying a product count beside each category and sub category is also a very polished practice. It gives the user an impression of your seriousness regarding the business.

5. EXCHANGE AND RETURN FACILITY: We live in an age of ‘Ctrl-Z’. People always like the idea of having control over their money even after it is spent. The exchange and return feature gives exactly this sense of power to the buyer. This feature is a very significant factor in triggering buying decisions – simply because it assures – ‘if you do not like it, you can always return it.’ This also encourages impulse buys. However, having this feature for namesake is not enough. You will need to ensure an efficient customer care support to effectively manage this section. This brings to the next important aspect which is Customer Support and Contact Details.

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6. CUSTOMER SUPPORT AND CONTACT DETAILS: Things may go wrong anytime and for any number of reasons. Hence, it is important to have an efficient customer support and a valid contact detail. This will let the users know where to contact if they have any query or if anything goes wrong. If there is no contact number mentioned, users will eventually reject the website.

7. SECURED PAYMENT PROCESS: This is the most important aspect of a shopping cart application.Variety of payment options should be present and all the online payment options must be secured with 128 bit SSL security indicating “highly secured payment systems�.

In present scenario every customer is scared of being duped in terms of payment. So, a secured and established payment system creates the trust of a customer on the website. An unsafe and sloppy payment processing can both result into angry customers as well as ugly lawsuits. If you do not need to store the information, there is no need to store it. Choose among most of the popular PCI compliant payment gateways, even if you need to invest on it additionally.

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8. IN-STOCK INTIMATION: Whenever a product goes out of stock an opportunity should be given to the customer to leave his / her email address with the website. Hence, after acquiring the inventory of that product the website should be able to inform the inclined customer to come back and happily buy the product.

9. NEW ARRIVALS AND OFFERS: In this digital era of high competition it is indispensable to dedicate a section announcing the arrival of new range of products with latest technologies, fashion in vogue and everything innovative to stand out in the crowd. And to mention the last but not the least, presence of the unputdownable lucrative offers must be kept in mind. When customers browse internet to buy a product, he or she always compares and opts for a cheaper but reputed site for shopping.

So, more alluring discounts are offered, more the chance of conversion remains.

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10. ORDER TRACKING: When a buyer pays online to purchase a product, he or she always stays worried about the delivery of the product. An order tracking facility gives the visitor a status about the present position of the purchased product. It also gives a confidence to the buyer about receiving it.

11. PRODUCT COMPARISON FEATURE: When a buyer chooses a product to buy he or she always has in mind the information of a same product of a different brand. So, this sometime leads to dilemma as which one to choose finally. A product comparison feature helps the buyer to compare these two products with respect to their features, prices, reviews etc, and that makes the purchase decision easier for the buyer.

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12. ABANDONED CART RECOVERY: After adding the products to shopping cart and following the check-out process a buyer can log out from the shop without buying the products. To recover this abandoned cart, the website should be equipped to send a reminder e-mail to the buyer to come back and complete the purchase. This can increase the sale manifold.

CONCLUSION: There may be a lot of fancy animations and sophisticated features going on in the market. However, to start with, choose the fundamental ones and get them implemented with utmost efficiency. Every online feature in the website is a reflection of your offline effort. The success of a shopping cart does not depend on its size or reach. It actually depends on the consistent efficiency of its involved processes.

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Popular

E-commerce Platforms in 2017 In the E-Commerce world, there is no single solution that can work for every kind of business. E-Commerce platforms help host business online.

They also offer a B2B (Business to Business), B2C (Business to Consumer), C2C (Consumer to Consumer) solutions as well.

The advancement in technology, consumer demands and intensifying competitions have raised the need for light-weight, powerful, innovative functionalities. Now a days, offering only an easy set up with standard features is not enough. Additional features such as mobile friendliness, Membership Accounts, Monthly subscriptions, Order tracking, Cancellations and Returns, Product Reviews, Analytics, Search Engine Friendly etc., all now forma part of the standard E-Commerce fundamentals. Based on the diverse requirements, you need to select a platform which will offer you the maximum Flexibility, in terms of access devices Scalability, in terms of functionalities Efficiency, in terms of performance Simplicity, in terms of admin panel operations Cost effectiveness, in terms of your budget.

There is no universal winner in this case. You will need to choose one based on your requirements and the degree to which the platform can cover and implement them successfully. Sometimes, it also depends on your familiarity with the platform.

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Some of the most popular E-Commerce platforms to look for are as follows:

Shopify Shopify has consistently evolved itself with the changing needs of E-Commerce processes. It provides the following key features: • Business specific subscription plans.

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Free and paid themes

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Free and paid mobile apps

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Shopify’s own payment gateway for all credit cards

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Shopify’s POS (Point of Sale) for selling products in person

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Shopify’s online store with an extensive order management system Other online channels of Shopify – Shopify Buy Button for Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter

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Shopify Plus – it is the enterprise version for high volume merchants. It is cloud based, fully hosted platform which provides enterprise level selling capabilities. It mainly focuses on design, marketing and manufacturing.

Magento •

Magneto provides developers a complete code visibility. It is an open-source platform and enables code customization for unique features.

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Its enterprise version provides an incentive feature for repeated purchases, in turn building customer loyalty.

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It automatically generates Google SiteMap and create metadata p r o d u c t s , categories and content pages.

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Magento provides 24/7 dedicated technical support.

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The Magento Enterprise Edition comes with the Magento Mobile SDK, which provides native shopping apps in iOS and Android that can be customized as well.

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It can control multiple websites and stores from one admin panel. It can manage multiple country sites from the same store or environment.

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Woo-commerce • It is also an open-source platform, that allows code visibility and customization as well.

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Built as free WordPress plugin, woo-commerce is one of the most popular open source communities.

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Woo-Commerce allows you to convert your woo-commerce store to Mobile App by using a few third party plugins.

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It has a number of free and paid extensions that helps to extend the website functionalities.

Big Commerce • Big Commerce claims to enable merchants to sell more and scale up faster than any other solution.

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You can use custom designs as well as choose from their stunning design templates.

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It boosts conversion by simplifying checkout through PayPal One Touch.

Square Space •

All of the Square Space Templates are designed as per the standards of modern browsers and mobile devices

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It has a variety of customizable settings and configurations which helps to make every website look unique.

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It allows the installation of multiple templates onto a single website and work on all of them per page basis.

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It has a unique mobile experience for every design.

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It has a fully responsive and interactive graphical charts.

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Each design has a customizable content area.

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Custom CSS can be applied to any built in design templates.

CONCLUSION: It is clear that each platform has been built to support some standard and pre-assumed features in the best way the developers felt fit. All your requirements may not be covered by a single platform, at-least not in the way you planned them to. That does not make it in competitive. You will need to assess the features you need to retain and those you can let go for the best possible business results. The best way is to consult with professional E-Commerce design and development companies and compare their expert opinions. Hence, outline your vision with your requirements, with room for adjusting them to the future market demands and select your E-Commerce platform accordingly.

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