The Necessity of a Responsive UI

So important has Responsive design become today that the demand for responsive designers has surged. Any website today has to be responsive not only to attract the customer but also to compete with the rest in its category. The main reason why responsive design has grown is because of the increase in the use of mobile by young and old alike. In this article, we look at what other benefits are driving businesses towards responsive web design.

1. Better User Experience

Customers today access pages from different devices. This means that your web page should be highly adaptable so that the customer finds it convenient to use it the way he or she wants to irrespective of the device. Responsive websites fit the bill here as they have more call-to-action buttons with customized scrolls enabled for faster and better viewing.

2. Single URL

Your website can no more have one URL for your desktop and another for your mobile site. Responsive

web design works with a single URL. The content, images and video on your mobile and desktop will be the same, just that the whole of your website now adapts to the device that you’re using. This also means that you need to upload your content just once, and it gets automatically updated on all the channels.

3. Target Multiple Channels

With a responsive web design, you get to target multiple channels. Across different markets, you can target customers with not two or three, but a single website. This is a unique advantage that you get with a responsive website as it is mobile-friendly and multi-device compatible.

With a responsive website, you also get much higher revenues than you would normally get with a website that is not responsive. This obviously means responsive websites have higher conversion rates and in turn, attract more customers. Now this also means you get noticed by search engines and are ranked higher.

Building the Complete Payment Solution

If you are planning to build a payment solution for your business, then i need to make sure that it satisfies all the requirements of one. Building a payment solution is different from building an app or a solution for the entertainment or the travel industry. This is because to use a payment solution, a customer needs to trust it more than the established players out there.

This means that your website needs to have the right security credentials for it to be taken seriously by the user. This brings us to the first requirement, namely the PCI-DSS certificate. PCI-DSS is short for payment card industry - data security standard and is the security compliance that is accepted and recognized by almost all payment card users as a benchmark for security. It provides a framework for the prevention, detection and proper reaction to security incidents.

When you make a payment solution, you need to ensure that the user has multiple options to make his or her payment. Does your payment solution offer support for all debit, credit cards? Does it support Cash cards, netbanking and mWallets? Does it support email invoicing and IVR payments?

Your payment solution needs to provide the user with the ability to make fast and secure payments without a website. This is made possible with email payments where you can just send an email to your customers asking them to click and pay. Also make sure that your payment solution has mobile payments integrated with intelligent APIs that determine your handset and browsing in real time.

MPI Integration is another important feature that you need to enable if your online payment solution is to attract customers. The MPI feature enables your payment solution to run on any technology or platform. And once you incorporate validation functionality with the merchant web pages and make password authentication and cardholder verification integral to your payment process, you can well claim to have a complete payment solution.

For all us Ecommerce Experts! How do you Improve your Conversion Rate?

Ecommerce businesses differ only in the size of their stores, the priority remains the same: to convert new visitors into buyers. This might seem easy at first but is easier said than done. Even the best known ecommerce brands have a conversion rate of little above 4% and a shopping cart abandonment rate average of 67.4%, we are looking at how lesser known brands and SMBs can increase consumer trust and ensure better conversions.

Why do People Abandon Shopping Carts?

More than 50% of the respondents of a survey (Getelastic) said they were saving items for later when asked why they were window shopping. 55% said the shipping costs were too high and 40% said the shipping and handling costs were revealed too late. The well known axiom of consumer psychology is “higher the AOV (average order value), lower the product page effectiveness “. For those of you thinking what product page effectiveness may mean, it is the number of add to cart visitors to product pages.

The Most Common Reasons of losing Customers are:

1. Unclear navigation

2. Too many products on a page

3. Ads, pop us and other elements that distract the customer

Here are Some Effective Conversion Strategies:

1. Checkout Experience - The first thing to do is to ensure that your checkout experience is completely linear since 92.6% of the people say that visuals are the top influential factor affecting their purchase decision. This is because products are assessed within 2 minutes and a judgement is made whether to make a purchase or not.

2. Avoid Distractions - The next step would be to make sure that during the checkout, objects have not been made clickable, making the visitors to get distracted and leave. Other confusing things that confuse customers and therefore must be avoided are, ambiguous words such as ‘proceed’ , ‘continue’, ‘apply’ buttons that aren’t optional etc.

3. Clear Descriptions - To streamline the process for the customer, you could have descriptions for form field labels with clearly worded messages on the landing page to facilitate well defined choices for the user. Also, make sure that fields for expiry date, credit/debit card details etc have visually reinforcing design techniques.

4. Ensure Product Videos - 57% of the respondents said they were more confident when they watched a product video in advance and 52% said they were willing to stay on a website longer because the retailer made product videos available to them.

5. Product Reviews- 85% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase and an almost equal number trust the reviews to make a purchase according to them. So, make sure your product gets good reviews online.  

Grow your Business with Magento

If you are running a business in your city, then you must be knowing that the easiest way to popularise your business and take it to the next level is to make it accessible for everyone. But how is it done? Through ecommerce of course! Ecommerce makes it possible for your brand to be known just as well in Kuala lumpur as it is in Karachi. Just that you need the right platform for it, namely Magento. So what are the advantages that Magento gives you?

1. Magento Themes that Facilitate Responsive Design

If you want to develop an ecommerce website that attracts the attention of the consumer, you need to make sure that it has a design that is responsive and image-rich. But many ecommerce websites have designs that are full of images, do they sell? Well, visuals alone won’t do. They need to be aligned with your core business functionality.

2. Integration with Catalogs and Payments

Building an ecommerce website is more complex than building any other website for the simple reason that it needs to be integrated with a lot of associated modules that vary in their functions like catalog and inventory management, product pricing and payment integration.

The last part is particular important for you to be able to build trust with your customers. Magento over the years, has built a reputation for being reliable, secure and efficient in terms of payment integration. Social media integration is what enhanced the reach of your website and Magento does a fabulous job here too.

3. Easy Customization with Visibility

Now how do you ensure that your ecommerce website has more functionality and add-ons than the rest? This is made possible via customization options. Magento enables easier cloud and payment customization options giving you the ability to build the website that is perfectly aligned with your requirements.

As for visibility, you can heave a sigh of relief as SEO tools and features are fully integrated into the Magento framework to help you optimize your website and enhance the product and category pages as well. Well, with all this, why would you look for another platform?

The Essentials of Mobile App Success

If you are thinking of building a mobile app for your business, then you need to analyse your business and its competitors, see how a mobile app can build returns for you and then choose the right partner to build the mobile app. This article looks at what you need to ensure in order to cement your position in the league of top 10s in the app market.

Why is an App Recommended?

With more than two-thirds of the world accessing the internet via their mobiles, it has become imperative for businesses to target this market aggressively. Firstly, what is an app? It is an application that is downloaded and installed on a mobile, rather than being rendered by a browser.

  The advantage with an app is that it is user experience-oriented and your app gets identified exclusively with your brand. And when you build an app that really reflects your business and what it does, the reach is even more profound.

So, what are the essential’s for app success?

1. Get your Objective Right

What are you exactly looking for when you build an app? Is it sales, increasing brand value or opening a new advertisement front for your company? As a business, you are obviously targeting multiple points when you are building an app, but make sure that your app is firmly aligned with the core message of your business.

2. Integrate your App and Make it Feature-Rich

Every potential user is looking for an app that is rich in features and makes a seamless transition from one function to another. Integrate your mobile app with modules with functionality that is closely related with it. Social media plays a great role in widening your reach and you need to make full use of it in order to maximize your gains.

3. Build a Bond with the Customer

Incentivize the subscribers of your app by creating simple loyalty programs that are easy to use. This gives your users a reason to stay on your app and use it more often, This also creates an intimacy for your app from the user’s pt of view.

How you can Ensure the Best UX for your Mobile Website

Any business that wants to increase its sales or meet its ambitious sales targets looks at capitalising on the mobile market today. This has only increased with the surge in mobile usage across Asia and the developing economies. But not all websites that are released taste success. Even those that see increased customer traffic in the beginning are not able to maintain their numbers consistently.

The Way Out?

So, how does one beat the insane levels of competition that exists in the mobile website market, be it Android or iOS? This can be ensured only by focussing on developing the website that offers a wholesome experience. This is possible only if your website offers something noticeably different in terms of design, functionality and user experience.

So How do you Ensure a Better Experience?

Only websites that offer something radically different on terms of user experience can expect to gain traction in the market. So, how does one ensure a better user experience? A better UX and responsive design are closely intertwined.

When you ensure a responsive design for your mobile website, you’re automatically creating an experience that adapts itself according to the resolution and size of the device that the customer is using. Without a responsive grid, this would not be possible.

Tools and Developers Matters

To build a mobile website that is truly responsive and guarantees your users a better user experience, you need to focus on building your website with the right tools available in the market. For this, you need to make a thorough study of the UI design tools to build a mobile website.

The second thing is about the choice of your developer. Only a developer who has expertise and experience in building mobile websites across platforms can give you a user experience that is on par with or better than the best in the business.

What we’ve seen is but a small part of ensuring a neat UI/UX for your mobile website. For more, watch this space!

The Elements that make a Great Web Design Culture

The importance of a website to your company’s presence and brand appeal cannot be overstated. It would be apt to describe the website as the online face of your organization, albeit one that builds your brand name a thousand times more effectively than any advertising strategy, when done properly.

User Experience Matters

What experience the users get when they use your application determines the image that they will have of your company. This is why it is important to do something that creates an instant chord or an impact with the user, without hurting about the user’s common sense of course. This means that you’ve got to be as

responsive as possible, because only responsive design provides you with the environment that gives wings to your creativity.

Getting the Basics Right

Having a good web design is all about getting the basics right. And by basics here we mean

• Uncluttered front-page
• Neat layout
• Brevity in content and
• Clear and unobtrusive icons

Sometimes, the smaller things matter a great deal in web design. When you don't give them the attention they deserve, they can break the much valued customer-relationship which is the bedrock of your business. And concise content, neat layout and proper icons in their place, all fall under these basics that are so essential to ensuring customer ‘non-dissatisfaction’!

Is your web Design Self-Explanatory

Your site design and navigation should be intuitive. In other words, the user should not be in a dilemma as to what to choose or do. If the user automatically doesn't know where to go from point A to B, then that means your site is not structured properly.

This also holds true for content. It has to be absolutely clear as to what it implies. Make sure there are 0 question marks for the user.

Embrace White Spaces and Test as often as Possible!

White spaces are great for the eye. A neat visual experience is what you should aim at and white spaces serve this purpose like no other. When you have sufficient white space on your web page, the user is in a much better position to receive the information that is on the screen. It also reduces the cognitive load on the visitor.

Why it’s Time you Chose the Magento Store Manager

When you want to choose an ecommerce store you always want to go for the one that guarantees you ease of use, responsiveness and security. Ease of use is emphasised because that is on top of the mind of every user when he uses a particular app. Magento guarantees this to you but you need to have a complete understanding of all its functionalities coupled with solid programming skills. (if you’re developing the application yourself)

Magento does have a lot of extensions that simplify the job for you but can you pay for all of them? This is obviously doesn't seem a very sensible option. So what’s the way out? Magento store manager, of course.

The Store Manager

Magento store manager is a windows-based software that makes administration of your online store very

easy. What the Magento store manager does is, it simplifies a lot of the tasks that you find difficult. Whether it is handling your items, organising them in a single category, adding and editing product attributes, or order management, Magento store manager does the job in seconds.

What’s the Advantage?

The real benefit with the store manager is that it doesn't require you to have any knowledge of programming whatsoever. Just a basic knowledge of computers would do. The installation being quick and easy, all you need to do is to buy the license.

Order Management in the Store Manager

With the product and category management sections, you can create, change and delete products and categories (through which you can modify existing labels and create new ones).This, along with customer management helps you get all the details of a customer in one spot.

But where the store manager scores really high is on the order management front. It lets you arrange all

orders, by date or by the customer name or by the category of goods that were bought, and export them neatly to a .CSV file. You can also filter the orders by any attribute or time period and the store manager would give you a neat excel report.

With the store manager, you get a device that truly takes Magento to the uninitiated, stripping Magento of all its complexity and giving businesses and customers just what they need. Not only do you save time and energy in the process, you also enjoy the whole process of building a fully customized ecommerce website!

Why Responsive Web Design is Indispensable for your Business ?

Responsive design has now assumed such importance in business that it has become indispensable. Any website today has to be responsive not only to attract the customer but also to compete with the rest in its category. The main reason why responsive design has grown is because of the increase in the use of mobile by young and old alike. In this article, we look at what other benefits are driving businesses towards responsive web design.

1. Better User Experience

Customers today access pages from different devices. This means that your web page should be highly adaptable so that the customer finds it convenient to use it the way he or she wants to irrespective of the device. Responsive websites fit the bill here as they have more call-to-action buttons with customized scrolls enabled for faster and better viewing.

2. Single URL

Your website can no more have one URL for your desktop and another for your mobile site. Responsive web design works with a single URL. The content, images and video on your mobile and desktop will be the same, just that the whole of your website now adapts to the device that you’re using. This also means that you need to upload your content just once, and it gets automatically updated on all the channels.

3. Target Multiple Channels

With a responsive web design, you get to target multiple channels. Across different markets, you can target customers with not two or three, but a single website. This is a unique advantage that you get with a responsive website as it is mobile-friendly and multi-device compatible.

With a responsive website, you also get much higher revenues than you would normally get with a website that is not responsive. This obviously means responsive websites have higher conversion rates and in turn, attract more customers. Now this also means you get noticed by search engines and are ranked higher. So multiple channels -> more visibility -> greater conversion -> higher revenue!

What You Should Know to Build Traffic for Your Website

Before you start a website, there are a few things you should ask yourself. This is because there are too many websites out there that cater to the same audience and it is of no use if your website simply repeats what the others have done in the same way.

Analyse the traffic potential

Firstly, you should know if your website has traffic potential. Use a keyword tool to check the monthly

search volume. Search multiple niche keywords and know that a low search volume often indicates a low traffic potential.

It is also important for you to know if your venture is profitable. Are people buying products and services? And can your product or service fit in the demographic?

Evaluate competition

Search keywords in your niche to see who and what is ranking. Pay attention to the URL structure. Short descriptive URLs help users know what to expect from the page and search engine too, understand ‘what the page is about’ better.

To evaluate your competition, use a backlink checking tool to get a closer look at the links to the competition. Some of the good tools here are Opensite explorer, Ahrefs and majestic SEO.

Selecting your domain

Is it brandable?

Your domain is an important tool for generating marketing buzz. Build domains around popular words with mass appeal.

Domain Bot: Enter a word or phrase and it will find available domains.

Domain hacks: Get creative suggestions to help you find a domain name.

Brandable domains help with word-to-mouth marketing. Finally, make sure your domain name is short and memorable.

Focus on Content

Content is an asset that provides value to your customers and make you money. Is your content helping your audience solve a problem or fill a need? If visitors don't find the content useful, they won’t do anything with it.

Your content also has to be timely. Guiding your audience through new market developments helps increase your popularity. Use Google trends to find hot topics to develop your content around.

Social presence

First of all, do you have a social media presence? A feedback page and a twitter account for your website is a must. Join other networks you know your target audience is involved with. Build an active fan base by asking readers to like or follow you to continue reading your content.

Make your content easy to share. Place share buttons on every piece of content on your site. Place buttons above the fold so people don't have to scroll to get to them.

The 5 Key Indicators of a Quality Web Page

Today, the visitors of your website do not look for lengthy write-ups about any topic or product, however important it may be. They come looking for quality content. Now, the question that arises is, What do you call a quality content? Quality content is original, purposeful, and correctly optimized information that people and search engines are driven to read, view and share. This article looks at some of the elements that your website should have to be the best.

1. Context and Relevance

The era of keyword monopoly is over. Google is moving towards analyzing topics and context, not just keywords. Today, the search engine understands the meaning of the words and how they are related to each other.

Also, according to Search metrics, Google’s algorithm recognizes high quality, relevant content and rewards it with higher rankings. So, your focus should be on developing content for users, not search engines.

2. Responsive Design with Images and Video

Study after study has found that users prefer blog posts with images and videos and find them more engaging. This results in web pages with more images ranking better. In fact, web pages that rank at the top have an average of 7 images.

3. Length of the Content

It has been found that top ranking sites have around 900 words of content per page. For a blog, the content shouldn’t be too short either. An ideal blog post length from a reader’s perspective is between 1500-1600 words long. So, focus on developing a longer content.

4. Readability

Readability is the ease with which your text can be read and understood. The key here is to use shorter sentences, paragraphs and active verb forms. Remove all clutter, unnecessary words and limit the use of adverbs/adjectives.

To judge the readability of your text, you can use the Flesh reading ease formula.

5. Expertise

Google quality guidelines state that high quality pages and websites need enough expertise to be authoritative and trustworthy on their topic. Here, it is important to note that the expertise of the author is a critical factor for any content to be considered high quality.

You definitely don't expect people to spend their time reading content that they already know, right? People want to read posts from experts who can dig into a topic and explain it in a way that they can easily understand.

Payment Solutions- What You Need to Know

You need to accept different forms of payments if you’re running a e-business. If you turn down a customer because you do not accept their form of payment you’re just going to end up completely losing the sale and the individual is likely to take their business elsewhere. There is no reason you should lose this kind of sale and the best way to avoid this is to have different payment gateways. With the different payment gateways it is always going to drastically improve your ability to land a new client and to increase your chances of improving the way you do business, regardless what you sell or what kinds of services you offer.

In Store Payments

Of course, it is very important for you to accept in store payments. When you are able to do this it is going to improve your ability to make as many sales as possible the payment gateways are going to run through your point of sales system, as this is very important for everything to run through the same account. When everything runs through the same account it is going to improve your ability to monitor everything properly and to see whenever you make a sale or receive a payment. Having multiple accounts is going to make it very difficult to do this and you might not know when certain sales are made.

Mobile Payments

The payment gateways also work while on the go. Mobile payments are an excellent way for you to make money while on the go through sales. The mobile equipment connects directly through a Smartphone or a tablet computer and allows you to swipe credit cards anywhere. With this feature you'll be able to travel for work and even take vacations without having to worry about leaving your business at home. When running your own business it is important to have as many different payment gateways available in order to take payments from individuals inside your store, on the road or over the Internet.

Internet Payments

With more and more individuals making sales and purchases over the Internet it is incredibly important for you to have an Internet store and offer products and services online. This way, someone who isn't even in the same city as you can purchase your material while over on the Internet. The Internet feature will greatly help you is going to help you out with this and it also expands your services to even a completely new region.

6 Design Essentials to Modernize Your Website

With huge completion between companies on the web, it is essential that you have what it takes to ensure your company finds its rightful place at the top. For this, it is important that you design your website in accordance with the preference of the customers. In this article, we look at what your website needs to have to attract visitors.

1. HTML5

HTML5 is the now and the future of web development. It is the new standard for coding. It is very good at cross browser compatibility and also extremely mobile friendly. It is cleaner and smarter than other mark up languages and gives you a better experience and faster loading time.

2. RESPONSIVE DESIGN

Make your design responsive to the resolution of the device your visitor is browsing with and make it applicable to the screen size

3. FONT

Font, font size, spacing between letters and line height all have a big impact on how your visitor feels when reading online. Larger font makes your site more clear and easy to look at. Sans-Serif fonts are best suited for digital content while you want your font size to be 16pt at a minimum and should go even more to 20pt+ for best results.

4. FIXED NAVIGATION

Many websites now fix their navigation menus to the top of your browser window so that the navigation follows you as you scroll down the page. This helps the visitor easily navigate your site at any time and gets

them to explore your content deeper. For this to work best you should think about what pages or posts you want to put into your navigation in order to best present your site

5. LIVE SEARCH

Much like how Google works, upon starting to type a search query your visitor will get a dropdown of different options and search results. A couple of simple plugins are available to get this functionality. Ajaxy live search and Dave’s Wordpress live search are good examples.

6. SIMPLICITY IN DESIGN

Simplicity rules in modern web design. It gives your visitors a better web experience when browsing your content as it puts more emphasis on the content itself and makes your site load faster. Think twice before putting more things in your sidebar.

If you keep in mind the above when you design your website, and can implement them with efficacy, the visitor stream won’t abate any time soon!

The Many Plugins of Wordpress

A plugin is a program or a set of one or more functions written in the PHP scripting language that adds a specific set of features or services to the Wordpress weblog. Plugins can extend the functionality of your blog in almost every possible way. In this article, we throw light on some of the most essential plugins for your Wordpress site.

Cache plugins

These plugins increase site speed and prevent server overload. W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache are some examples of good Cache plugins.

SEO plugins

SEO plugins allow you to optimize your tags, site structure, and much more to make your website more search engine friendly and improve your site rankings. Wordpress SEO by Yoast handles your SEO titles, meta descriptions, XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs, and import functionality for the Headspace2 and All in One SEO plugins.

Social bookmarking plugins

Social bookmarking plugins allow your visitors to spread your content on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. Sharebar is a powerful toolbar that adds a floating set of social buttons to your site.

URL management plugins

URL management plugins redirect the old URLs to the new ones and keep track of the outgoing links. Redirection keeps track of URL changes and automatically adds a 301 direction when the URL of a post is changed.

Login protection plugins

Brute force hacks can be nasty if your website is not properly protected. These plugins stop hackers dead in their tracks. Limited login attempts limit the number of times people can try to login before being locked out and notifies webmasters of suspicious activities. You may want to try WP Login Security.

Maintenance plugin

All webmasters need to take time to maintain their web properties. Vaultpress is a service that maintains Wordpress sites for webmasters. It covers disaster recovery, theme and plugin scanning, migration assistance and other services.

Security analysis

These plugins can identify and notify you of security threats. Better WP Security applies common security techniques to your website and can patch many holes in one shot. You may also want to try WP Malwatch and Ultimate security checker.

Creating a Mobile-Friendly Website

Today, it is not enough to just have a website. Gone are the days when just having a website would guarantee you visitors and inquiries to your office about your products. Today, there are roughly 30 million pages being indeed by Google every day. So you need to compete with a million other websites for eyeballs and critical user attention. And where are the users doing all of their browsing and chatting now?

It’s invariably on the mobile. The mobile is not just a means of communicating with someone any more. It is your window to the world. In this scenario how do you ensure that the website that you’ve built for your business, is tailored for the mobile?

The primers

1. Firstly, you need to stick with the basic HTML tags, images and tables. This will go a long way in ensuring that your testing is hassle free and smooth.

2. Keeping your layout small can help a lot when you design for mobile websites. This not only gives you a better view of your design on mobile, but also avoids clutter.

3. Focus on graphics because you’re most likely to go wrong there. Now for graphics:

Graphics

Graphics on desktops are not the same as graphics on mobile devices. Mobile browsers invariably have lower resolutions than a personal computer. Devices generally resize the images that fit the screen, making your images look rather ugly.

Content

This is the most important part of your website. Your website is only as good as the content it carries in it. The content should neither be bulky nor incoherent. It has to be crisp, clear and polite. Give precedence to clarity and try to cut down on length wherever possible.

What we’ve seen are just some of the many points which go to making your website perfectly adaptable for the mobile web. For more, watch this space.

How Php Helps Your Data Security Strategy

 One of the questions that is most important to web development but often not given adequate attention is how the platform or language that you are using to build your website with helps you secure your data. This question becomes all the more important in the present scenario where we have threats to private data from all quarters. In this article, we look at how PHP helps you secure your data.

Data Validation

This is the first thing that should be focused on while trying to secure web apps with PHP web development.

The first thing that should be done is to filter and validate the incoming data as that will prevent a hacker from entering any bad input. The data should be validated in the PHP code. This is one of the sheer advantages of using a PHP web development over Java because users can always turn off the javascript in their browser and prevent an app from validating an input. So, the first kickass way of securing a web app is to hire PHP developers.

Protecting Session Data

A session information gets automatically written on a tem directory. When it comes to a shared hosting server, anyone with whom it is shared can write the script and also read the session data quite easily. Hence, it is advised that one should not retain sensitive data such as credit card information and passwords in the session. An easy way of safeguarding the data is to adhere to encryption. However, that too isn't a completely secured way.

Guarding Included Files

A lot of PHP files are often included in PHP scripts. These scripts contain things such as code for connecting to a database. In some cases it has been found that some developers include .inc extension. However, files with such extensions are not analyzed by PHP. This can be a safety issue as hackers might get an easy access to the data in the app. The safest thing to do is to use the .PHP extension.

What You Should Know About Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is the latest fad among web developers. Having grown in popularity over the last few years, Cloud hosting is now being sought by every major business to streamline its processes. This article looks at what Cloud hosting really is, how it works, and the issues involved.

Cloud hosting

So, what is the principle behind Cloud hosting? The crux of Cloud hosting has been the concept of ‘divide and rule’- i.e. the resources you require to maintain your website are shared across servers and are rendered on a need basis. This reduces the chances of downtimes even in case of server malfunction.

Cloud hosting also allows you to manage peak loads easily without bandwidth issues as the servers are shared and another one can pitch when one faces a problem.

The best example of Cloud hosting is the Google search engine. Ever faced downtimes on Google? Unlikely. This is because Google spreads its resources over hundreds of servers (in the cloud, of course) and the chances of all of them going down are almost nil!

Enterprise Cloud hosting, dedicated servers and VPS

Quality comes first when it comes to providing Enterprise level services. This is why enterprise cloud providers do not look beyond reliable cloud providers such as VMWare. So, that’s about Enterprise Cloud hosting. What about dedicated hosting?

                                   

In a dedicated server, as the name indicates you’ve got only one server to deal with. So, if there are problems, you just need to sort out the one server. But, if there is an increased burst of traffic, you can do little about it.

It is here that Cloud takes the cake providing your website with reliability though you need to bear higher costs as well.

In a Virtual private server, a single server is partitioned to appear as multiple servers and also provides you with greater security. The cost here is extremely low, but so is its reliability. So, a cloud hosting arrangement is actually a good tradeoff.

Here again, you needn’t be bothered too much about the cost as cost has consistently been on a downslide in the past for to 5 years. So, it’s a win-win for you!

The 3 Maxims of Ecommerce Design

Websites require practical and thoughtful design in order to achieve their purpose. But, websites that have shopping carts require an added level of planning and expertise that is unique in the field of design. As designers, there are rules and techniques that drive what we do. We know that visual elements can entice users to click or to scroll. Some visual elements are used to simply draw the user's attention to an area of the page. So, how does this differ from the techniques used in e commerce website design? Well, here are 3 design rules that are unique to the world of e commerce design.

                        

1 Less is more. Really, it is.

You might think that this rule applies to all design. It does. However, in e commerce website design, there really needs to be far less on the page during the process of ordering. The fact is, on an e commerce website, designers need to eliminate any and all distractions from the page. Have just one or two buttons. Show only the most important information. Allow for only a few choices at checkout. And, never show animations or any movement that might make someone want to leave the site.

2 If you design it, they can't build it.

Unfortunately, unless you are designing with a development team right there to make suggestions, you're likely to get a negative response from your developer. Also, if you're using a pre-built cart or some other popular cart software, there will be limitations to the layout and complexity of template customization. If you're part of a talented development team, you will have no issues as they can direct you while you're designing for the client. Overall, the main thing to remember is that your direction needs to be mindful of e commerce website design restrictions.

3 Testing is better than planning

Sometimes, we painstakingly fret over every design element, layout, color scheme, and font before handing

the work over to the developer. This process makes some sense. However, your web users will always amaze you. You may think that your large, impossible to miss, yellow button will convert the visitor into a buyer. You're probably wrong. So, when you are in the design process, ask yourself if you need to spend time on one element or move onto the next.