Is Magento the right eCommerce platform for your online buisness?
By Sam Pascua
When Magento was released in early 2008, it was met with excitement and interest from e-commerce site developers around the world. It quickly became the preferred software option for mid-range ecommerce sites due to its powerful administrative features and functionality. As Armando Roggio states on www.practicalecommerce.com,
“Magento’s feature list is clearly the result of years of ecommerce experience. The platform includes features like a built-in product image zoom capability, advanced pricing rules to support special promotions, a landing page tool to help with marketing campaigns, inventory management, side-by-side product comparison tools, and more.”
If you are in the market for a new platform on which to run your ecommerce site, here are some reasons why Magento may be the right choice for you.
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Client Focus: Baby Bunting
By Sam PascuaIt has launched, after some late night work, Baby Bunting new website finally went live this week.
Using the wonderful open source eCommerce solution Magento, the new Baby Bunting website is streamlined and simplified.
Magento, with has an integrated Content Management System, eNewsletter system, integration with a Payment Gateway and seamless integration with Minder Stock Control system the new Baby Bunting website will act like a hub for prospective and current customers allowing easy access to a larger product range, helpful tips for future and new mothers plus a range of other helpful features.
You can visit the website here or visit our case study here.
If you have an iPhone handy check out how well the site works with the standard Safari browser.
Baby Bunting
By Sam PascuaTo sell such a wide range of products online, Baby Bunting needed an effective ecommerce system that could be fully integrated with its marketing efforts. The website design and development experts and Melbourne based Design Industries knew just what to do and tackled the project with unbridled enthusiasm.
The Delivery
First and foremost, Design Industries made sure that the new website kept the look and feel of Baby Bunting’s well thought out brand image. Underneath the inviting pink and blue graphics, the Design Industries team modernised the online brand by focusing on improving and enhancing the website’s core functionality.
The team chose to build the new site around Magento, which is an incredibly powerful, fully integrated ecommerce system. The talented web developers customised Magento to meet Baby Bunting’s unique needs, identifying which combinations of features would provide the strongest ecommerce system for the growing company. The new website is fully integrated with powerful reporting tools, full SEO-friendly text, a payment gateway, and optimisation for the iPhone and other mobile devices.
But the team didn’t stop there. Baby Bunting was also given a complete content management system, making it easy for Baby Bunting employees to update site content and add, modify, and delete products as the company’s product offerings change over time. The site is also fully integrated with an e-newsletter system, making it easy to communicate with current and prospective customers.
Managers at Baby Bunting can access user-friendly reports on all the website statistics with a few simple clicks. This allows the company to analyse site visits and identify ways to improve the shopping experience both now and in the future. The flexibility and strong performance of the new site have ensured that Baby Bunting maintains a strong position in the competitive market for baby products.
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The Case for CMS / eCart Upgrades: Benefits for Website Operators
By Sam PascuaThe Case for CMS / eCart Upgrades: Benefits for Website Operators
It’s a familiar scenario: your web manager is diligently working away at his computer when a pop-up notification appears, saying it’s time to update to a new version of the CMS (content management system) software or e-commerce software. Instinctively and without giving it a second thought, many users click “ignore” or “remind me later,” and continue on with their work. That’s understandable, because upgrading software can be time-intensive, frustrating, and expensive. However, the benefits of upgrading far outweigh these comparatively minor inconveniences. As explained below, operating a website or an online shopping cart with outdated software can lead to potentially disastrous consequences for your business and even for your customers.
Read moreConfederation of Australian Motor Sport
By Sam PascuaCAMS was ready to take the next step forward in engaging motor sport enthusiasts by harnessing the power of the internet. The organization wanted to completely revamp its website, creating and incorporating an extranet and intranet for its members and employees that could help to streamline the organisation’s processes and procedures. This was a hugely ambitious undertaking, but Design Industries was up to the challenge.
The Delivery
The professional teams at Melbourne-based Design Industries tackled this large, ambitious project one step at a time, completely redesigning the site and reworking the underlying infrastructure. The talented and creative designers created an ultra-modern design that met all of CAMS’ requirements within the specified time period.
Meanwhile, developers used Sitecore, which is arguably the best content management system (CMS) available in the market today, to create a new, powerful, and flexible framework for the CAMS website.
The backend is based on fast, intuitive edging, which uses the same ribbon-style interface as Microsoft Office 2007, making the editing environment comfortable and intuitive for the end users – even for CAMS employees who have little or no experience in web-editing.
The web development work also accommodated multi-site deployment, meaning that CAMS can now manage an unlimited number of sites, sharing information and backend code across sites with ease. In addition, Design Industries focused on search-engine optimization (SEO), using Google-friendly URLs and other techniques to instantly improve the site’s organic search results.
All this work resulted in an exciting, compelling website that speaks directly to Australian motor sport enthusiasts. The state-of-the-art CMS supports a fully functional intranet and extranet, with many possibilities to accommodate and support ecommerce functions in the near future.
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Piranha Off Road Products
By Sam PascuaAlways striving to be the best company in the market, Piranha wanted to update its website with a striking, memorable design and a great backend. The new site would have to help connect customers and suppliers while strengthening Piranha’s unique brand. The development and design team at Design Industries seized the opportunity to apply its technical expertise to the project.
The Delivery
Design Industries created a striking, modern design that conveys movement, speed, and the thrill of off-road adventures. The site strengthens the Piranha brand and leaves a lasting impression on site visitors. In addition, the new site meets or exceeds all industry standards and is fully compliant and compatible with web 2.0 technology, ensuring that the site displays correctly when viewed through all the most popular browsers.
With a few simple clicks, Piranha can get user-friendly reports on all the website statistics, thereby analysing the flow of visitors throughout the site and indentifying how to improve the end users’ experience.
Design Industries also gave the site a full user-friendly backend complete with e-newsletter functionality for communicating with clients and suppliers. Finally, Design Industries provided a fully integrated content management system (CMS). This allows Piranha employees to manage the website’s content from a single, user-friendly control panel. Even with little or no knowledge of HTML, Piranha can create, modify, and delete website content quickly and easily, no matter how rapidly its product offerings are changing to reflect trends in the 4WD industry.
Read moreCommon Mistakes in E-Commerce: Part 3 of 3: Promotion & Marketing
By Sam PascuaPart 3 of 3: Promotion & Marketing
The classic saying, “If you build it, they will come,” unfortunately does not apply to e-commerce sites. Millions of e-commerce sites are accessible on the internet, but unless you’ve directly contacted prospective customers and informed them of your site, they probably won’t ever know it exists. Therefore, e-commerce sites need well-developed marketing plans and carefully targeted investments that are aimed at increasing site traffic. A strong search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy to attract customers to your site is also a necessity. In this final part of our three-part series, we explore the common mistakes that new e-commerce sites make in creating and implementing their promotion and marketing plans.
Read moreCommon Mistakes in E-Commerce: Part 2 of 3
By Sam PascuaPart 2 of 3: The Customer Shopping Experience
Previously, we explored the common mistakes that e-commerce sites make in e-commerce store/site design and which may prevent customers from completing their first order. But site design is only half the battle. You also have to analyse the customer shopping experience from the customers’ perspective. Are they satisfied with the service and products? Will they order from your site again? Be sure to avoid the following common mistakes in the customer shopping experience so that you can increase your retention rate and attract repeat customers.
Read moreCommon Mistakes in E-Commerce: A Three-Part Series
By Sam PascuaDeveloping and operating an e-commerce site opens your business to millions of prospective customers and a potentially unlimited stream of income. But simply adding a product catalogue and a shopping cart to your website won’t guarantee that viewers will actually click the “checkout” button.
To be successful, an online store needs to be a professional, functional and trustworthy website while providing great service and products. Think of brick-and-mortar stores: if you dislike the service or staff, or feel that you got a bad deal, then you probably won’t be spending your hard-earned money there. E-commerce works in the same way. Customers need confidence in your company, site, service and products in order to make a purchase and, ultimately, become repeat customers.
This three-part series explores the most common mistakes made today in e-commerce. Readers will learn about creating a proper store/site design, evaluating the customers’ experience and ensuring good customer relationships, and managing promotions and marketing campaigns. By avoiding these common mistakes and pitfalls, you’ll be on your way to a successful and profitable e-commerce site.
Common Mistakes in E-Commerce:
Read moreHow to Increase Your Online Sales
By Sam PascuaIn this sluggish economy, it’s more important than ever to optimize your website and maximize sales. Fortunately, it’s easier than you might think. First, focus on making sure your website attracts the right potential customers. Then make it as easy as possible for customers to find what they’re looking for and complete the transaction. Finally, offer incentives that make customers want to come back again and again. Let’s consider these tactics one at a time.
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