Author: byte-admin

The Importance of SEO and SEM in Search Marketing

In order to understand Search Marketing and its components SEO and SEM, it is important to know the impact of this kind of marketing in the web business world.

Search Marketing- You need to understand the terminology for this type of marketing before you can create a strategic search optimization strategy.

Search marketing relates to any process that helps a brand get attention by appearing on search engine results pages (SERPs). It includes efforts to get higher rankings and increase search visibility so you can drive more traffic to a website or specific webpages.

There are two categories in search marketing:

SEM or Search Engine Marketing uses PAID strategies to increase search and traffic results for a client’s website. It is generally considered a major part of your overall digital marketing strategy. It is a digital marketing process with the goal of increasing visibility in search engines either by getting organic traffic through SEO or paid traffic through PPC (Pay per click) advertising.

Through paid search advertising you need to purchase advertising space in the search engine results. So, instead of trying to rank in one of the top positions organically through SEO and get free traffic, you pay to appear in front of the search results.

The most well-known advertising platform for paid search is Google Ads also known as Google Adwords. With the help of Google Ads, you can get your ads to appear in the Google search results and you pay only for the clicks on your ads. The whole process is called Pay-per-click or PPC. There are other search engines that have a similar system but they are not as popular and successful as Google.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization uses ORGANIC strategies to appear in search. SEO is the process of optimizing your website for the purpose of getting free traffic from search engines. It is important part of setting up a website because an optimized web site is easily understood by search engine crawlers and this increases the chances of ranking higher in SERPS (search engine results pages). In the case of SEO, website owners don’t pay for placement on SERPs. Instead, they use a variety of methods that prompt search engines to show their content near the top of SERPs because the result is valuable and well-targeted.

The components of SEO

There are 3 components of SEO: technical SEO, on-site SEO, and off-site SEO.

Technical SEO is the process of optimizing your website for the crawling and indexing phase. With technical SEO you ensure that search engines can crawl and index your website without any problems. The strategies for this SEO relates to site speed, mobile-friendliness, indexing, crawlability, site architecture, structured data, and security.

On-Site SEO is rules and methods you can apply on individual pages and content so that they optimized for specific keywords. The strategies included in this SEO are keyword research, content creation, and keyword optimization.

For example, you need to have optimized titles, good descriptions, well-formatted URLs, optimized headings (H1, H2), alt text for images and many more.

Off-site SEO refers to the process of getting references or backlinks from other websites for the purpose of increasing your web site’s trust in the eyes of search engines.

This may be confusing for first-timers but it could be imagined like a ranking system wherein the website that has the most references, ranks higher.

References, in this case, are links coming from other web sites to your site. That is also the reason why off-site SEO strategies are referred to as link building.

Difference between SEO and SEM

The main difference between SEM vs. SEO is that SEM is a paid strategy and SEO is an organic strategy.

SEOSEM
It does not include any references to Ads as no paid search methods are used.Includes Ad Designation or marking.
Search results are featured as snippets.Search results include Ad extensions like additional links, addresses, and contact details.
Search results are organic and nothing is paid for clicking ads.Search results and ads are paid as PPC method and the brand is charged as per the set budget.
The target audiences cannot be selected.The target audiences can be selected as per age, gender, demographics, interests, etc.
The impact takes time as traffic is generated organically. It can take months to improve search rankings of your page.The impact is immediate as your ads start showing in SERPs and you can manage the visibility using filters or changing the allocated budget.
You cannot make changes or manage results as the updates are time-consuming.It is a flexible method where you can make changes or improvise your campaign as per the performance as the search data becomes available soon as the ads are clicked. Hence its flexibility allows you to strategize your campaign successfully.
It adds value to your website overtime hence it is beneficial in the long run.The ads and campaigns stop right away once the campaign ends or your budget freezes off. Hence it’s not a long term method.
You can get a higher click-through-rate (CTR) if your SEO is strong enough to land on top of the search. In that case, it will work better than SEM.SEM ads work better than SEO if your organic ads do not land on top or on the second page or lower. In that case, SEM achieves better CTR.

So, which is better depends on your overall digital marketing goals. If you want to get traffic fast then you can start with SEM (paid search advertising) and in parallel work on your SEO. If you want to create a long-lasting online business without relying on paid traffic, then SEO is your answer.

Does SEM help SEO?

Despite what many people think, SEM does not help SEO. If you use PPC to target specific keywords and get search engine traffic, that doesn’t positively or negatively affect your SEO efforts.

SEO rankings are decided after taking into account hundreds of factors and SEM or PPC campaigns are not a part of them.

How SEO and SEM are related to each other?

There are some common points and strategies which make them similar to each other.

The goal of both SEO and SEM is that they aim to help a brand appear in prominent positions on SERPs. The goal of each tactic is to help a brand show up in search results when users search for specific terms related to the brand’s industry, business, or offerings.

The goal of both is to gain visibility on SERPs, but more importantly, to drive traffic to a website. Each strategy employs tactics to increase click-through-rates (CTR) and get more users to click on the search results.

In order to succeed in both strategies, you must have a good understanding of your audience and how they act. By using buyer behavior and psychographic analysis, you can get to know your audience, discover what their needs are, and what they are searching for. Then you can create valuable content that shows up when they go looking for solutions related to your brand.

The first step for both SEM and SEO is performing keyword research to identify the best keywords to target. The research includes looking at keyword popularity to determine the top keywords or impact keywords that your ideal audience searches for. It also includes looking at keyword competition to see what other brands are targeting the same keywords and determining what you will need to do to compete with those other companies.

While performing SEM and SEO you will find out that neither is a strategy that you can set and forget. Both require continuous testing, monitoring, and optimization to increase performance.

SEO or SEM? What tactic would you choose out of the two?

To determine what tactic out of SEO and SEM will be better for your business following points would be worth considering:

Competitor Analysis– To decide which is right for your brand, look at what your competitors are doing and how they are performing in their search marketing before you decide how you can best compete with them. Research what search terms they rank organically for. Consider if you can execute a plan to top their SERP placements. Also, look at what paid terms they are using to drive traffic to their own sites. As you perform this research, look for gaps that you can fill and areas where you will be unable to compete in both paid and organic search.

If you have been in business for a while and already know what your customers want and how to best reach them, you may want to start to build a long-term SEO strategy that will provide value over time. If you aren’t sure how customers and competitors will respond to your offerings or content, you may want to consider an SEM campaign that allows you to test your ideas, products, and services.

Customer buying cycle– If your products and services have a short customer buying cycle, meaning your customers know what they want, search for it, and buy it, you may benefit from SEM ads that put your product right where customers will see it. Longer buying cycles, where customers research and compare for weeks or months, may not perform as well with SEM, as there isn’t an immediate buy after seeing one ad.

Cost per click average– Before deciding that SEM is right for your business, research and consider how much you’ll need to spend to show in paid search results. Keywords have varying cost-per-clicks based on competition. If your cost-per-click is low, it might be the right strategy for you. On the flip side, a very high cost-per-click might make you decide you’re better off focusing on SEO.

Timeline of your business– If you just opened your business and launched your website, it’s going to take time to develop your SEO and begin to appear organically in the search. While that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put together an SEO strategy, it does mean that you could benefit from an SEM strategy until you build your SEO. SEM is an effective way to drive traffic while building organic SEO.

Website analytics research– So before you launch a search marketing campaign, research your website to see where you may have the potential to grow an organic SEO strategy that is already working before putting money into an SEM campaign.

Summary

A successful search marketing campaign requires efforts on both SEO and SEM strategies. Some businesses may choose to focus on SEO. Others may choose to focus on SEM. But most of the time, the right approach is to implement a combination of both SEO and SEM strategies. It all depends on your unique business and goals.

But now that you know the similarities and differences between SEM and SEO, you’ll be better equipped to decide how each can help your brand reach its goals.

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How Digital Marketing Budget Plan Can Help You Improve Your Business.

Do you plan to increase your digital marketing budget? Still looking for ideas to make your budget effective? Well, you are at the right place then.

Marketing and promotion are related to each other and they are necessary to make things work for your business. Print, TV, Posters or commercials are some of the traditional ways to promote products or create a market for them. But these days, all marketing and promotions are done online. The smart devices and applications that are available these days, which will help you to market your business and find what is going on around. These days many small, medium and large enterprises are implementing a number of new technologies and research methodologies to grow their businesses using digital efforts. The aim is to target where your audiences without focusing anywhere else.

Almost all marketers are planning to increase their budget every year. Reports state that more than 90% of organizations have increased their digital marketing budget over the years. However, allocating a marketing budget is not an easy task. Every organization needs to make sure that its efforts in digital marketing are maintained specifically across the brand and its goals, and not anything else.

Here are some tips to help you plan a digital marketing budget:

How do you Allocate Your Budget?

It is important to allocate your budget in the right way. Set your goals based on your ideas on which of these strategies would work and eliminate the non-working ones. The focus should be on converting lesser money into more success.

There is a need to cut out on things that do not contribute to your strategies. The decision to allocate your money to a specific strategy should be based on the value generated by it. The best example is of social media which does not cost initially for you to create an account on social media and to post on it. It requires constant analysis and research to find out the audiences of your interest that are active across social media networking sites, such as Instagram and once done then it is important to raise your social media budget.

There are unending possibilities that your social media account can bring to your campaign. A few resources invested in this medium can bring you so much of profit, then with continuous investment, think of how effective it could get.
You would have to plan to invest your social media budget on the one platform or account that has a better conversion percentage of advertising cost of sale because sometimes, it happens that a particular social media network begins to underperform while another one becomes strong. Hence, in that case instead of focusing on something that doesn’t get your results plan on something that would bring you results. A lot of research goes into understanding the requirement of your audience.

How do you Define Your Goals?

Thinking about the digital marketing strategies and its implementation is the next step once you have your goals defined and laid out Software and manpower are two of the main resources that can help you accomplish your digital marketing goals. You need to plan out the resources you will need to fulfill these goals.

Think of it in terms of whether you want to allocate dedicated manpower or technology for each process and plan your budget accordingly such that you have placed them in your strategy. If you would like to dedicate staff or technology for social media marketing, plan the number of staff members you will need to handle social media.

If you want your tools to be really efficient – then you would need to spend a lot of money on it. For single-member investment would be less but as a team, it will increase.

In order to allocate a dedicated resource, it would be similar to creating a calendar and then ensuring that someone handles the posts on time. In-Depth analytics needs to be applied to make sure that your team is doing their job right while also finding out what works and what does not.

What Are My Goals?

A clear cut idea of your goals is required while you are planning on your digital marketing budget. Do not end up allocating budget for unnecessary things. Experimenting with something that will surely work is required instead of looking for what might work.

You need to be clear of what you want to achieve –

  • Do you want to enhance your brand’s visibility?
  • Do you want to increase the revenue?
  • Do you want to increase the engagement of your clients/customers?
  • Do you want an increase in the number of your clients/customers/followers?

Each of your business goals is important – so how and where you start is important. Make sure you implement ideas that will help you to achieve your digital marketing goals, which are directly related to your business goals.
Set your aim in such a way that by the end of it, you are accomplishing and getting what you wanted. This could be either a single outcome or short-term goals, based on your business’ requirements.

Planning Your Content

It is one of the most important aspects of any digital marketing strategies. The content you require depends and varies from business to business.

Hence, based on your business, its needs and goals, it is important to decide the type of content that you create. Create articles and blog posts that are in-depth, and make sure these become an important part of the marketing goals. These should be in-sync with service-related industries and here, you would find that consumers are looking for detailed information before they arrive at a decision. Here, your budget should be allocated for writing experts who will help you to write related content.

Sometimes, rather than just text content, certain businesses might benefit from video content as well. Though content is involved, it is a different side of the content spectrum that would need a variety of skill sets different from that of text content. So you would need to think of budget in terms of recording equipment, editing equipment, writers and even presenters in case you are seeking external agencies, vloggers or professionals’ help to accomplish this.

Where Are You Going to Publish this Content?

You need to know where you would market your business. Website, social media, blogs and various other factors need to be taken into consideration before you finally decide where you would allocate your budget. To have clarity of the platform is as important as any other aspect of your business.

The platform where you will publish your content can be decided based on your business, consumer or target audience and the market you focus on. For a B2B enterprise, your audiences would be from the management level. Your content would be centered more for consumption in office – accessed may be using a desktop or laptop device. This could be content that would appear across articles or even on websites.

If your business is more of retail or B2C focused, then the content that you develop should be something that connects with the people who would be accessing these through devices, such as personal computers, phones or tablets.

Your content would be posted on social media in the form of images or videos. Your budget can be adjusted accordingly.

Paid Advertising

You can think of investing in something like paid advertising where you could allocate your budget for digital marketing strategies. Depending on how much your overall budget is or how much you’d be ready to spend you can start planning your budget. It is important to think of what are the factors that would influence your target audiences and based on these factors you can split your budget between Google Adwords and other social media advertisement campaigns.

Social media ads mainly target social media networking sites, such as Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and anywhere where your audience is active. With Google Adwords ads, you can include search ads that will drive your customers’ attention or remarketing ads that will remind them of your brand’s name.

Email Marketing

email marketing

Email marketing is a major way of influencing consumers’ minds. You can always use email marketing as one of those important methods that would keep moving leads to your sales channel.

A number of email marketing strategies can be implemented but is important to introduce the one that actually works. Email marketing would need you to invest some budget.

Sending accurate follow-up emails are necessary to introduce consistency instead of email pop-ups and copy mails. A number of factors should be taken into account such as the size of your business and its target customers, etc. hence in the process, you should be able to decide how much you can allocate for your email strategy in the digital marketing budget.

Search Engine Optimization budget

seo

Your search engine optimization (SEO) is an important part which should not be ignored in the digital marketing budget. It is important to make sure that your website is able to attract consumers. Your content should be strong enough to attract search engines and people to your website. When you invest certain budget and time on SEO, there are all chances that your words and voice would reach the right customers at some point in time. So it is also important to have an effective SEO strategy for your business.

Every industry has different needs and every strategy needs to be improvised accordingly. So it is important to do your research well before you start allocating budget for your digital marketing plans.

Bytelabz Software Solutions is a renowned web design and web development agency in Trivandrum, Kerala. Our service includes web design, web development, SEO and digital marketing services will help to take your businesses to grow in the online world to the next level. For further information, please contact us today.

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Magento Vs WordPress: Which Ecommerce Platform Is Better for your Business

Both Magento and WordPress come with a range of features making it easier to design e-commerce stores. All these features make these e-commerce platforms so popular among the masses. Sometimes because of the large number of features they provide, it would become really difficult to choose one over the other.

It is understandable that there is no up-to-date information on which would be the ultimate solution for e-commerce. However, it would not be difficult to choose one, as a large number of features are already available.
These platforms are already being used by large a number of people around the world to power their e-commerce stores and all these stores are running well. Without any doubt, it can be said that these platforms are awesome. In this part, we will help you choose the best platform for your e-commerce store.

Once you go through, you will understand which is the best fit for your store.

Before we start with the pros and cons of both WordPress and Magento, let us take a look at their similarities. At a glance, you will feel that the architecture of both these platforms is almost similar.

Some of the factors that exhibit their similarities are listed below:

Content management systems.
It makes easier to add, edit, update and manage contents with ease and effectiveness.

Both differ in their core purposes as Magento is exclusively dedicated to e-commerce while WordPress has an inclination toward being more content-specific.

WordPress

Wordpress website

 

WordPress is a content management system as well as an open-source blogging platform. In fact, the first time, it was introduced to serve as a blogging platform. Of more than 50 million websites that are available in the world out of which more than 15% are powered by WordPress.

One of the reasons why WordPress is so popular is because though it is user-friendly and developer-friendly, it offers an easy-to-use and integrates plugin and template customization architecture, which cannot be found within many other systems that are available.

Though WordPress started as a blogging platform, it went on to be one of the popular content management systems and now, e-commerce platform. Thanks to the third-party integration facility offered by WordPress (WooCommerce plugin), which makes it a popular choice of store owners these days.

Though the website eBay owns Magento, still it uses WordPress for its blogs.

Magento

Magento is also an open-source technology like WordPress. This e-commerce platform is exclusively meant for e-commerce stores and is powering more than 120,000 online stores across the world. It is being trusted by some of the world’s well-known and popular brands, including small as well as large businesses.

It comes with a range of customization options along with functionalities that make it easier for store owners to set up their online stores based on their business requirements, while providing a number of features, such as:

With the Magento interface, it would be easy to create content pages, menus along with version control options, very similar to that found in WordPress.
Also, another interesting feature or difference between Magento and WordPress is that Magento is highly secure when compared with WordPress’s third-party extensions. After going through the overview of Magento and WordPress its clear that Magento would be the right option for your business hence we would like to provide further details on the two versions of Magento that are available:

1.Enterprise Edition

This is a paid edition. You can customize it based on your business needs. It offers a high level of performance and scalability, accommodating larger and fast-growing businesses. This edition also provides you with expert support that comes with a wide range of extensions along with features, which will help power your store and provide you with more control over your store.

2.Community Edition

This one is available for free download. It makes it easier for store owners with small businesses, who would otherwise hire developers to develop their store. This edition provides you with community support, along with the basic Magento functions, which include adding product categories, user groups, coupons, and others.

If you still want to go with one of these editions, go to Magento.com and choose the edition you prefer.

Differences Between Magento and WordPress

1.Flexibility

This is an important aspect that needs to be taken into consideration when choosing a platform to power your e-commerce site. In this case, WordPress would be a better option over Magento as it is not just an e-commerce platform, but a content management system as well.
When we take Magento, that is not the case – as it is an e-commerce site alone! You can easily extend a WordPress website to become an e-commerce site or a forum, as you wish. But with Magento, this is not possible – as it is meant only for online store purposes.

However, Magento allows you to add a blog to a Magento site using an extension. But its core code will always complement e-commerce stores.

2.Easy to operate

This is another foremost important factor that needs to be taken into consideration when designing a website. We might not be able to decide exactly which one is better over the other.

In case you have experience using WordPress, then it would be easier for you to use an e-commerce plugin extension for your online store and built it rather than having to learn Magento from the beginning.

But if you are ready to invest in creating your e-commerce store, then you can hire Magento experts who will be able to create one that fits into your needs. This will help to ensure that all products are easily organized and updated, and all other sections easily taken care of.

Though the learning curve of each platform might differ from the other, based on previous experiences; however, if you are selling more than 10 products, then Magento would be the best choice in long term.

But if you want to sell only a handful of products, then one of the best options would be to customize a WordPress website, using a high-quality e-commerce plugin.

3.Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Both WordPress and Magento are known to do great when it comes to search engines, provided they are optimally configured and optimized. SEO might not be as easy as it used to be in the traditional old days, because of the large number of sites that are being launched these days. The keyword competition is high.

It is important to have high-quality content that is unique and free from plagiarism on your website. This will help improve the search engine rankings. This is where a Magento-based website can perform great as it comes with a range of well-specified products. But be cautious about the presence of duplicate pages, also known as thin pages. This would give a wrong impression about your site to the search engines – most of the content is of low quality.

A WordPress website that comes with a few products, along with a popular blog is capable of performing well. However, even in this case, it is important to ensure that search engines are paying attention to the right pages along with URL parameters.

4.Security

Magento, as we discussed earlier in this article, offers a great deal of security. Thanks to its wide range of built-in features that make it possible to deliver that kind of security. This is why stores that are built using Magento would not need any extensions or plugins.

But WordPress, on the other hand, would need a range of plugins if it intends to provide added functionality, in the form of security. In case you are planning to transform a WordPress site into an online store, you would have to start looking for a high-quality e-commerce plugin.

This aspect of WordPress, where a number of third-party plugin integrations are happening leads to the inclusion of insecure code to a site. In case, during an update, if the developer happens to create a security loop within the plugin, then it would create security issues for the e-commerce site as a whole, which is dangerous.

Fewer plugins give better WordPress security. This is one point where we can trust Magento over WordPress. But then, it is always up to the store owner’s discretion.

5.Budget

This depends on your experience with Magento or WordPress along with the store’s requirements. These platforms are open-source, but when it comes to building an e-commerce website, it would cost you a fortune, possibly depending on your requirements.

But in the future, in case, you need to expand your business or store and plan to sell a number of products, then you would need to switch over to a platform, such as Magento.

Identify your site’s requirements and based on your budget and other factors, such as experience, choose the best one.

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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Website Builder

Your website is an important part of your work and business journey, in fact, it’s one of the most important just like any other part of your business. Whether you have a mom and pop shop or are thinking about opening one or want to stay completely online, creating a memorable online shopping experience for your customers is crucial.

In the fast-changing and innovating world of today, It’s not enough to have a nice-to-look-at website. If you want your customers to trust your site for shopping, it must have the functionality, design, and capability to create that noteworthy experience that customers expect from brands.

The difference between customers making a purchase or moving on to another brand depends on how well your eCommerce site is built.

Your e-commerce store should not only be cost-effective but also easy for your customers to navigate and above all, it should be capable of leaving a great and long-lasting impression on them. Now the question arises that with so many eCommerce website builders out there how are we supposed to know which one is right for our business. Investing in the right builder is the first step to doing what’s right for your business and help it grow. Selecting a platform that can scale with you will help reduce friction between your customers and your products, and bulk up your bottom line.

Benefits of having an e-commerce website

An e-commerce store is a must-have to increase sales, improve your customer journey, and to grow your online presence. That’s where online store builders become useful as they make it simple to create the perfect shopping experience for your customers. However, that doesn’t imply that all online store builders are created equally. The options may vary for your business depending on where you’re at and what you need.

 

Here are some of the businesses that would largely benefit from using an e-commerce website builder.

1. New businesses.

If you’re just starting out and are looking for ways to cut costs without compromising on function, quality, and performance, using an online store builder to help shape your website is a great option.

2. Growing startups.

Startups can’t afford to waste any time or valuable resources on things that aren’t going to help them grow. Ecommerce store builders provide both a platform to grow along with the features startups need to showcase their product. Additionally, the countless app integrations that are instantly compatible with your store make it work smarter for you. It helps your online store builder become a part of the team and will help propel the company forward if given the opportunity to do so.

3. Part-time work sites.

Even if you’re running an eCommerce business as a hobby or part-time, it doesn’t mean it’s unworthy of sleek, simplified shopping experience.
These builders offer convenience without skimping on quality. You can make adjustments whenever and however you see fit so your shop works best for you and your customers. Using an online store builder gives you the flexibility to create the shop you want even if you don’t necessarily have an eye for design or know how to code.

4. Dropshipping sites.

To successfully build and run drop-shipping business, you’ll need to build a store that is compatible with that business model.
Because you’re not managing your inventory and working with a wholesaler to purchase products, you need a unique solution that can help you do just that.

How to choose the Best Ecommerce Site Builder

The market is full of choices for e-commerce website builders, but not all of them will have exactly what you need. When choosing a platform, you have to think about your business goals, your product, and what is practical for you to manage.

Before choosing any option, consider the following points.

      • Pricing can be a major factor when it comes to e-commerce site builders, so you’ll need to consider how the platform’s monthly or annual pricing structure works with your budget. It’s a good idea to look for a platform with different packages so you can scale up your business and add more functionality as your needs evolve over time.

     

      • The time frame of your site depends on whether you require custom build-outs or developer work because in that case, you’ll need to consider the timeline for every work, as sometimes developer work can require several weeks or even months for proper execution. Make sure that your back-end work and site build-out will be wrapped up well before your launch date so you’re not scrambling at the last minute.

     

      • Explore the templates available on the eCommerce site builder you’re considering to be sure there are options there that you could see your brand using. If you don’t like the options the site currently has available, you may need to have a custom theme developed for your online store, which can be more expensive and time-intensive.

     

      • Integrations help you save time and simplify the complexities around running your online business, so be sure the eCommerce site builder you’re considering ties in with the software and tools you depend on. That means you’ll want to double-check that your tools around logistics, customer data, payments gateway, email marketing, etc. will integrate seamlessly with the eCommerce platform you choose.

     

      • As you build your store, you’ll want to be sure there are strong support options like customer care, chatbots or mails available to you that will make the process as easy as possible. There’s nothing worse than needing help and not being able to get any answers. Explore the site builder’s support settings and see what general resources are available.

     

      • If you’re not looking to hire a developer to help you build out custom elements of your online store, you’ll need to be sure the eCommerce site builder you select lets you do everything you need it to all on your own.

     

    Top E-commerce Website Builders

    Before considering a website builder it is important to know about researching the solution that best fits your needs and how it can make a big difference in the way you run your business. Once you have an idea of what makes an eCommerce store builder great, you need to take a look at the pros and cons of the top builders and put together a shortlist of the options that make the most sense for you.

    BigCommerce

    website builder bigcommerce

    BigCommerce is one of the largest eCommerce platforms on the market. BigCommerce provides business owners with the tools needed to run a successful business.

    WooCommerce

  • WooCommerce is an eCommerce store builder designed to work seamlessly with WordPress. This platform provides business owners with what they need to grow their business and strengthen their bottom line.

    Shopify

    website builder shopify

  • Despite it working outside the WordPress realm, it’s worth including Shopify on this list.

    Squarespace

    square space website builder

  • Squarespace is an integrated platform that’s widely used by businesses of all kinds, but mainly by creatives and artists. This builder is great for portfolio building and blogging, but it also offers notable eCommerce tools that can help businesses grow.

    Kibo

    Kibo Website builder

  • Kibo provides advanced eCommerce tools perfect for teams who choose to spearhead the design and building of the store themselves rather than starting with a template.

    Wix

    Wix Website Builder

  • Wix is a great option for those who are looking for an entirely customizable eCommerce store solution. This platform blends the ease of a drag-and-drop builder with powerful eCommerce features.

    Volusion

    Website Builder Volusion

  • Volusion is a comprehensive eCommerce store builder. New business owners can customize their storefront to fit their brand and start selling in minutes.

    BigCartel

    Big Cartel Website Builder

  • BigCartel is a unique eCommerce platform designed for smaller merchants or artists who do not need a sophisticated platform. But don’t mistake simplicity for a lack of features.

    Magento

    Magento Website Builder

  • Has your company already invested heavily in IT or development? If so, Magento might be the platform for you.

    3dcart

    Top website builder for e commerce Website

  • 3dcart‘s all-inclusive eCommerce store software can help business owners elevate their presence. This platform is excellent for businesses that use several tools to power their eCommerce store.

    PrestaShop

    Best Website Builder

  • PrestaShop is an eCommerce store builder that caters to business owners who are interested in implementing a cloud-based solution. It gives you the option to customize your shop in the exact way you’d like—whether that’s with an editable theme or with the help of a specialist to build your store for you.

    Weebly

  • With more than 50 million websites built, Weebly is a drag-and-drop website builder with 40+ mobile-friendly themes. In 2018, Weebly was acquired by Square.

    Advantages of Best Web Site Builder

    There are quite a few reputable eCommerce store builders to choose from.
    Some require no knowledge of website development or coding and others require a broad understanding of the technical elements that make up a website—not to mention a functioning eCommerce store.

    1. Easy to use.

  • You should be able to make changes to your store on your own time and as you require. Development teams are a major expense that not all businesses can afford to have, which is why selecting a store builder that you can use is equally important as it is necessary.

    2. A variety of useful features.

  • You want a platform that will help you achieve your goals. Picking a builder that has the right tools you need to grow your business will make a significant impact.

    3. Beautiful templates.

  • Just because you aren’t familiar with HTML and CSS or don’t have a development team at the ready to create a brilliant website doesn’t mean you don’t deserve one. Most eCommerce store builders have a variety of stunning themes to choose from and are categorized by function or industry.

    4. A reasonable price point.

  • You want to make an investment but you also want to be mindful of your budget and the additional monthly costs an eCommerce store incurs.
    Choosing a builder that has everything you need without hitting the budget is the goal.

    5. Secure systems for payments.

  • Your customers want to feel like their information—whether it be their credit card number or their mailing address—is secure while making a purchase. Be sure to select a builder that not only offers safe payment systems but offers customers multiple ways to pay.

    Summary

  • There are countless eCommerce tools available today and building a successful online business has never been more easily accessible.

Whether you’re selling services or products, your venture needs a website. But with so many options to choose from, it can be confusing to settle on the platform that works best for your business. Overall, website builders are great for beginners or small businesses.

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Is your website should be mobile friendly?

A mobile-friendly website is necessary for your business website? Does this question ever come in your mind? If it is “Yes” then you should read this blog.

India is the second-largest populated country in the world. According to the 2017 census, the population of India was 1.34 billion. The population is increasing day by day also increasing mobile phone users. Mobile phone users in India crossed 581 million users in 2014 and has been on a steady rise over the last decade. A recent survey shows that India has 1.17 billion cellphone subscribers. That means 87% of the Indian population is using a cellphone. People have consistently accessed the internet from their mobile phone more than from a desktop or laptop computer. Still, you might be wondering if having a mobile-friendly website is really important for your business??

The answer is a big “Yes” mobile-friendly website is necessary.

Mobile internet use is growing fastly. Recent studies show that more than half of website traffic comes from mobile devices.

Google says that” 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead. Google also using the mobile-friendly website as a ranking factor. People are likely to visit a website that provides a better mobile experience.

Mobile Friendly website infographics

Benefits of having a mobile-friendly website

Most of the visitors accessing your website on mobile devices. It is important to make sure that all of your visitors have a positive experience, regardless of what type of device they’re using. If your website loading time is not good then your client may move to the competitor’s website.

Having a mobile-friendly website brings with it many advantages, including:

  1. Improved user experience.
  2. It helps to build credibility.
  3. Reach more customers fast.
  4. Faster download speed.
  5. Increase search performance.
  6. More flexible and cost-effective.

 

A responsive website is good for business. Responsive web design increased search engine rankings and mobile conversion rate. By using mobile-friendly elements like the hamburger menu, they made the website easier to use on mobile and tablet, thus keeping more visitors on website longer, and ultimately generating more sales.

How to check your website is mobile-friendly or not?

There are lots of tools are available on the internet.

Mobile-friendly test -Google search console
Responsinator

Simply paste your URL and press enter to see how your page scores.

Do you need a responsive website?

If you are thinking about a mobile update or redesign for your company website, you will most likely need to coordinate planning with a professional web designer and web developer. We are one of the most prominent Webdesign and web development company in Trivandrum more than a decade of experience in website development. If you would like a complimentary assessment of your organization’s website, feel free to contact us. Our client-friendly professionals are ready to help you at any time.

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Top CSS Frameworks For Webdesigners

During the early days developing a website was hard stuff. It used to take long hours and lots of hard work. Web designers need to write more than 100 lines of codes for a single page. But now things have changed. Technologies are developing rapidly so everything is simple and time-saving. CSS frameworks emerged over time and took most of the struggles away.

Today web designers can’t imagine coding without their favorite CSS framework. With the help of CSS framework, they can easily create code and it’s saving their valuable time. Currently, there are wide ranges of frameworks available in the tech world and new ones are emerging. It’s difficult to choose a framework among them.

But how do you know which framework is suited for you? And how could you select a proper framework for your design?

First, you should understand about CSS framework and what responsive CSS frameworks do.

What is a CSS framework??

Wikipedia says that “A CSS framework is a software framework that is meant to allow for easier, more standards-compliant web design using the Cascading Style Sheets language“

We create applications to lessen our tasks hence the framework is built so that we code less. The main advantage of CSS framework is even a beginner can develop a website faster as it requires minimal coding skills and comes with many useful widgets. This type of framework not only helps non-skilled people but it also helps skilled people. Skilled people can save their time and they can build a website faster. A CSS framework that supports responsive web design will save you valuable time and you will be able to develop within a time range.

In order to build a website, many bypaths seem available for any designer and developer. Frameworks are enhancing the designing process which will in turn speed up the entire process. A CSS framework is said to be the one which focuses on delivering a package made of the back-end, structured and standardized scripts like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. This is often mentioned as a front-end framework. Their main aim is to assist people in structuring their pages. In this way, you save your time from cumbersome coding and you don’t have to redo the code from scratch every time.

A CSS Framework means to provide ease in the process of web designing. This speeds up the entire process of website designing.

In this article, I’m going to discuss the pros and cons of the top CSS framework. You can select the right CSS framework and complete your website development quickly.

Bootstrap 4

It is one of the most favorite CSS framework used today. The world’s most popular front-end component library was developed by Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton. This open-source tool kit is developing with HTML, CSS and JS. Using this popular framework we can build web applications, websites and even mobile apps. Bootstrap is a responsive CSS framework it contains components and utilities including Sass variables and mixings, responsive grid system, flexbox, carousels, and models.

Pros:-
  • It’s consistent and appealing UI, out-of-the-box.
  • Provides lots of free and premium themes, templates and plugins.
  • Supported by all the major browsers.
  • It easily fixes CSS compatibility issues.
  • It is easy to learn.
Cons:-
  • It requires a lot of rewriting of CSS file if you want to customize and get diverted from the structure of this framework.
  • Its complex style leads to heaps of not so semantic HTML output.
  • The JavaScript in Bootstrap is connected to jQuery.

Foundation

Another responsive front end framework is the Foundation. This responsive CSS framework helps in developing and designing beautiful and attractive websites.  Foundation is developed and maintained by ZURB. Bootstrap and Foundation are the most-used frameworks currently in existence. It is written in HTML, CSS, Sass, and JavaScript. It’s currently on version 6 and comes feature-packed with a ton of components. Foundation is mostly used with websites, however, it also offers versions of the framework which is optimized for email templates and application development.

Pros:-

  • Simple UI and more straight-forward design than other options.
  • No needs to define heights and widths because the foundation uses REMs by default.
  • It is built for a mobile-first approach.
  • Very clean markup without sacrificing the utility and speed.
  • Offers services for site’s apps and emails.

Cons:-

  • It is difficult to use for beginners they should have prior experience with vanilla CSS or other frameworks.
  • Design elements are not attractive.
  • Less popular compared to Bootstrap.
  • Lack of wider support like QA sites and forums for fixing issues.

Bulma

Bulma is a free, open-source CSS framework based on Flexbox. This stylish CSS framework is made by Jeremy Thomas. One of the main benefits of Bluma framework is it is purely CSS that means no javascript. Its box model is fully based on flexbox. So designers can easily add flexible layout with same-size columns is as simple as adding column class to your HTML element. The framework is lightweight and uses the mobile-first approach, so it’s optimized for vertical reading.

Pros:-

  • It is purely CSS, no javascript.
  • It is a flexbox based framework.
  • Fully responsive and mobile-first approach.
  • Clean form controls out of the box.
  • Tiles and layout options are extensive.
  • No bloating of code and styles.

Cons:-

  • Small online support community – However this is growing by the day.
  • Not as component-rich as some other frameworks.

Tailwind CSS

Tailwind CSS is a highly customizable and low-level CSS framework. It is different from other frameworks. This UI framework doesn’t have any default theme and built-in UI. Instead of opinionated predesigned components, Tailwind provides low-level utility classes that let you build completely custom designs without ever leaving your HTML.

Pros:-

  • Highly Customizable.
  • It makes CSS simple.
  • It provides more flexibility.

Cons:-

  • It’s just in alpha stage.
  • Lack of wider support in the community.

Semantic UI

Semantic-UI is the lightweight, simple and responsive framework. Semantic UI is packaged with more than 20 themes with a range of JS, CSS and font files. Since pages are built through a semantic method it means that designs can look great and feature a range of components and settings to use.

Pros:-

  • Semantic-UI offers many more personalization options.
  • The framework is much easier to use.
  • Semantic UI provides the ability to load specific components in the application as per needs and it reduces the file size as well as load time.

Cons:-

  • It uses Javascript customization and so it can be challenging to execute custom workaround of the framework as per needs.
  • The packages used in Semantic- UI are much bigger in size so a web developer one may need to use only specific modules of Semantic- UI.

Materialize CSS

Material UI is a responsive CSS framework which is rapidly growing in popularity among the website and app development communities. Materialize framework is basically built on google’s material design concept. They use classic principles of successful design along with new innovation and technology for building this framework. Using this framework we can create attractive, consistent and functional web pages and web apps.  Material-UI is perfect for designing user interfaces and dashboards. This UI is part of the React framework which is a front-end Javascript framework made for UI design.

Pros:-

  • Flexible capabilities
  • Attractive design out-of-the-box
  • Speeds up development as it offers default stylings
  • Utilizes the latest material design standards from Google
  • A large variety of components

Cons:-

  • Not a framework for beginners
  • Requires knowledge of React JS and JavaScript to implement

UIKit

UIKit is a lesser-known responsive CSS framework. it is one of the most powerful CSS frameworks. Overall, it offers a streamlined, modern look yet still packs a punch. Out of the box, it’s a lightweight and intuitive framework. This framework is perfect for beginners to advanced users. Currently, in version 3, UIKit offers a ton of valuable components out of the box including Grids, Modals, Off-Canvas, Slideshows, Scrollspy, Parallax, Flexbox, Animations and more.

Pros:-

  • Attractive modern design out of the box.
  • Huge variety of components.
  • Components won’t affect other styles.
  • Fast prototyping.

Cons:-

  • Great documentation, but more suited to experienced web designers.
  • Limited online support community.

All the framework mentioned here is the best. Different CSS framework brings different benefits. Each one has it’s own pros and cons. Bootstrap is best for beginner and UIKIT is for professionals who want to improve their skills. Choose the CSS framework based on your skill level and requirement of your website.

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The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Web development

Ever since the onset of the electronics and computer age, mankind has been fascinated and intrigued by the idea of achieving limitless and near to perfection capabilities in machine learning. The curiosity of man gave him wings to fly and blessed him with a better lifestyle and a longer lifespan. The next goal of man was to create, if not the best, but definitely a better version of himself but in order to achieve that, he must start with the most complex part of human anatomy, the one part that separates him and makes him dominant of all other species on the planet- The Human Intelligence.

The never-ending quest for excellence in the field of machine learning and continuous enhancements in the processing and memorizing abilities of computers in the last two decades ushered in an era of artificial intelligence. From space stations to play stations, the presence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology started to impact our lives gradually yet the one area where its contribution has been significant is in the field of web and mobile technologies. Assisted by the growth in internet data speed, the rise of technology in our daily lives has been rampant and phenomenal. The web and mobile technology stalwarts like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Apple have taken the market like a storm and are leading the research in the field of AI.

Artificial Intelligence has been precisely the next level in web development. With the advent of next-generation processors and a variety of applications along with fourth and fifth generation internet speeds, it is imperative that the systems do not lag behind their processing and computing abilities. Rather than being just a trivia box, we expect the systems to do learn, unlearn and relearn. We should be focusing on increasing the capability of a computer program or system to think and learn and create programs without any human assistance. As machines become increasingly capable, mental facilities once thought to require intelligence are removed from the definition. Artificial intelligence emphasizes on the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans. Some of the activities computers with artificial intelligence are designed for include: Speech and Facial recognition and cognitive abilities.

Why do we need Artificial Intelligence in Web Development?

AI technologies offer a major advantage in person-machine interactions. Without learning capabilities, applications will approach a problem in the same way time after time, and make the same mistake without modifying or optimizing the solution based on prior experience.

Machine Learning is an enabling AI technology that allows web applications to adapt over time by observing and learning from users’ habits, idiosyncrasies, and preferences. User experience improves as a result of the applications just being smarter.

AI and web development

More and more users prefer searching for goods directly through web platforms like Amazon instead of searching. Large e-commerce companies are changing our attitude to online purchasing and, as a result, website development is enhanced considerably. Successful e-commerce companies actively implement innovative technologies in their work such as chatbots, voice search and other AI solutions.

Some benefits of Artificial Intelligence implementation for website development are:-

  • Makes search faster with relevant results
  • Makes interactions with visitors better
  • Provide a more relevant customer experience
  • Provide a personalized store experience
  • Effective marketing to targeted consumers
  • Understands user behavior and consumer orientation

How does Artificial Intelligence integrate with commercial enterprises?

Modern mainstream website development has focused on the building of a customer-facing front-end presence on the Internet and the integration of the front-end with enterprise back-office operations. The AI toolkits offered by global industry leaders have made possible the adoption of AI in enterprise web applications. It’s no longer needed to hire AI specialists or researchers to empower your websites with natural language understanding capabilities.

Instead, mainstream web developers can integrate AI into chatbots on your existing web and mobile technology platforms. Developers do not need to be retrained to code in esoteric AI programming languages to take advantage of the technology. Instead, they work with APIs and tools which they are already familiar with, for instance, Python, Ruby, C++. Java, .Net, Node.js, JavaScript, CSS, HTML.

What AI toolkits are available in the market?

Google, Facebook, and companies of that ilk have come up with AI toolkits that enable the plugging of ready-made natural language understanding and machine learning features into web applications.

wit.ai and Dialogflow (formerly api.ai) are free services owned by Facebook and Google respectively. In contrast, Amazon Lex, IBM Watson, Microsoft LUIS are commercial paid services.

What is the scope of AI in natural language learning?

AI has made a significant impact in understanding natural language learning and can work not just in English but in many other languages. The average web user interacts with the enterprise mainly through web menus, buttons and text fields. Interactive tools such as chatbots are automated software agents which interact with web visitors, usually in a natural language such as English and perform tasks as requested by the visitors. Chatbots have been deployed in the enterprise, often to process customer inquiries, sales and support.

Without AI, chatbots can only understand a narrow set of language constructs which system developers have predefined. If a sentence deviates only so slightly from the known set of sentences, a chatbot will not be able to parse it. A personal digital assistant also works in the same manner and uses AI efficiency to understand user behavior and provides relevant content or services to them. Their commercial success is evident from the many recent AI-based personal digital assistants – Siri from Apple, Alexa from Amazon, Cortana from Microsoft, and the Google Assistant.

What are the current challenges in the implementation of AI?

Deploying AI using the above toolkits is not without challenges. Despite the toolkits’ best effort to hide the intricacies of artificial intelligence, developers still need to learn new lingo and concepts such as agents, intents, entities and actions. It is reassuring, however, to know that online documentation is readily available for bringing developers up to speed with the toolkits. Learning to integrate and customize the technology is very much feasible.

A more formidable challenge for integrating the toolkits is that the software requires additional customization in order for it to understand the specific concepts in your particular application domain. These toolkits are designed to be general-purpose starting points for understanding day-to-day language constructs, and may not be specific enough to parse the domain-specific concepts or the typical tasks that your web visitors may wish accomplished.

Consequently, human trainers must provide the software with a concept hierarchy that is specific to your application. In addition, to improve the accuracy of sentence parsing for your particular application domain, trainers must explicitly provide sentence examples of the typical requests that your applications are designed to handle.

This training component is very time-consuming and tedious, yet necessary in order to reduce the chance of errors in understanding customer’s requests.

To overcome the initial training hurdles and to jumpstart the adoption of AI toolkits, toolkit vendors have started to provide pre-built domain models that target specific industries and tasks. For example, Dialogflow offers pre-built agents that target industries such as coffee shops, restaurants, hotels, airlines, and common tasks such as product support, map navigation, web search, etc. Microsoft LUIS features pre-built domains for taxis, restaurant reservation, movie theatres, fitness tracking, etc.

The trend to provide prepackaged domains will definitely shorten the time to deploy AI functionalities in web applications.

Future of Artificial Intelligence in web development

The rise of AI-enabled software has the potential of revolutionizing how customers interact with online enterprises. It is not inconceivable that, in the near future, a chatbot is the first point of contact between the customer and the online enterprise. The chatbot will analyze the needs of the customer based on prior natural language interaction, whether it be for product inquiry, troubleshooting, or sales. The chatbot has self-knowledge of its own capabilities and limitations and will resolve all issues that are within its capabilities.

For those issues that it cannot resolve, the chatbot will escalate them to the appropriate second-level human analyst for a successful resolution. AI-enabled chatbots or virtual digital assistants can be the next-generation enterprise digital assistants of your brand on the Internet. The chatbot could be in the form of a digital application or maybe even a holographic virtual human assistant who would just pop out of the peripheral projector and guide you through the entire process like a live human agent. Your tech sci-fi movie scenes might soon become a reality.

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Step by step guide: Redesign website without harming SEO

So, it’s been a couple of years since you last redesigned your website. Is your website marketing strategy has changed? Whatever the reason, redesigning a website takes a lot of planning and hard work.

One of the biggest questions that come with it is how to redesign websites without hurting the current SEO ranking that we have worked so hard on.

Do you want to learn how to redesign your website without affecting SEO??

There is a wrong notion among website owners that SEO only needs to be done once. Well, to be precise, this doesn’t hold true. During the redesign process, a number of elements are altered which also includes codes and pages. They need to be properly handled failing which they can have a negative impact on the website’s SEO and can hamper the long-term growth of the website. Similarly, if redesigning is done correctly, they can also increase the SEO performance of the website.

Let us take you through a detailed guide on how to redesign your website without adversely impacting the SEO.

Check this out:

Step 1: Make a list of all pages from the old version

You need to download the URL structure of your website. A lot of changes take place during redesigning which can affect your basic URL-structure. A backup needs to be prepared to save your website from the risk of losing or downgrading its search and content ranking.
Plugins can be used to get the URL structure. Also if you are using Yoast SEO plugin, you can crawl the website and download the updated sitemap.

Step 2: Start redesign on a temporary URL

The redesign should not be done on your existing website as it can block visitors and might create problems in the future. The correct way is to copy the site and set it up through a temporary URL. Once you finish, you can alternatively switch the domain after making the required redesigning changes.

You can always take the guidance of your developer in case any challenges pop up. Next option could be of taking the assistance of a site hosting company. Always contact your web hosting provider to help with the setup to prevent any unwanted problems in the long run.

Step 3: Check the new website

Although it looks great once you copied your existing website into a new website, it is imperative that you do a full checkup of your website. Check for broken links, features, CSS, etc and track any loopholes in the web design.

Step 4: Look for 301 redirects

The next major factor is to manage 301 redirects between old and new URLs. Let us suppose if you have an “About us” page on the old website, and its URL was “www.website.com/aboutus.html.” but mistakenly your designer changed the URL to “www.website.com/about-us.html.” , it is important to implement correct 301 redirects to ensure that both URLs work properly and your SEO settings and benefits derived from your old website URL are also not adversely affected.

If it is not done correctly then the search engine will get 404 web pages not found. By doing 301 redirects, the previous URL will be redirected to the new one. This is the technical way to inform the search engine that the URL has been changed. Google will not downgrade your earlier SEO efforts.

If you don’t know how to do it manually on WordPress, you can also try out redirect plugins that let you do it by filling in a form.

Step 5: Jump to your new website

Once everything is done, both web designing and redirection, it is time for you to switch to the new website. You can also make a gradual change in stages if your website is big.

Step 6: Run Google Webmaster tools

The next step is to ensure whether everything has been successful so far. For this, you can utilize tools such as Google Webmaster. This tool will enable you to check if there are no broken links. If any broken links are found, it is advised to get them fixed quickly in order to avoid penalty.

Step 7: Check verification status and re-submit

It is common for web developers or web designers to stop the search engine to crawl the website. If that’s the case, then you will need to resume the crawler on your website.

Also, it is advised to check if the redesigned website is verified. You can do so by logging into the respective webmaster’s tool provided by Bing and Google. If it lacks verification, then redo it and claim your website.

Step 8: Robot.txt

During the redesign, there is a chance that your robot.txt file can get corrupted. To check if it has, you can use “robot.txt” option under crawl.

Step 9: Sitemap submission

As your website now has a new and modified structure, submit the website XML to Bing and Google. Once submitted, your new website will be crawled in the coming hours.

Step 10: Observe the changes

Finally, it is important to observe the changes and look for any potential growth. Keep a close tab on the rankings of your top keywords. There are many SEO tools available that enable you to keep track of these keywords. If there is a considerable change in your SEO, then make an effort to understand why this is happening and look to find a solution if your website traffic slows down quickly. You should monitor your website for at least two to three months.

Once you are confident there are no issues, loosen up a bit. You don’t need to keep such a close eye on these things. You can concentrate on promoting your website and carrying on with your growth and maintenance of SEO work.

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