The increased proliferation of the internet has given rise to the practice of electronic commerce or e-commerce, which has now become a common phenomenon of today. Internet based economic structures are the new business reality as individuals and organizations find it easier to purchase services and commodities online even from foreign shores. Most developing countries are investing more in e-commerce development as it plays a vital role in the growth of a particular business organization.

It is by reducing the trade costs that is associated with the physical distance, that ecommerce makes it easy to access the global marketplace and reach the broader network of customers and also allows them to participate in international trade. But while creating an ecommerce website, business owners and developers should always remember to add essential elements so as to enjoy long term benefits. In general, ecommerce websites have to engage the web customers as there is stiff market competition. You have to plan very carefully to sell online and for that you need to design and develop your store with some top elements.

Your ecommerce website should be perfect from the point of usability and it should be well optimized for conversion. There are various elements that can make a good e-commerce website and while planning to develop an e-store, you should include most of these. In this blog, I will discuss with you the most important elements that you should never miss out while creating an ecommerce website.

Easy to use:

There is an old adage about keeping things simple. Since simplicity often helps audience to remain engaged in the site, it should be the prime goal in creating a good design, but at the same time it is vital not to sacrifice the elegance to attain it. Research has stated that 76% of the consumers consider ease of use is the most important characteristics of a website. The prime objective is to help the consumers get what they actually want, faster without running into complexities that can clog the purchase process. So, focus more on the user experience by offering more shopping categories, filters and even comparison systems so that the customers can take faster decisions.

Compatibility with all screen sizes and devices:

With an increased rise in mobile shoppers, it has become important that your e-store is easily accessible from different devices having different screen sizes used by the consumers. Responsive design is a great means that helps the website to automatically scale up or down according to the site’s appearance on which it is viewed. It has become a standard for websites in the past few years and even Google gives special preference to mobile friendly websites as it helps the shoppers to purchase online easily. So, while choosing a theme for your e-commerce development, keep an eye for the word “responsive”.

Supreme quality images and videos: 

The trend of using old and drab images with bulleted points are now a passe. Today, it is all about offering a great look and feel of the products through images that are of high resolution. As per Adobe, if any image on the website stop loading, then 46% of the consumers usually switch to other devices and 39% often stop engaging with the content. So, creating eye catching images are not just pretty, they also direct the visitor’s attention to the call to action. A beautiful background photo having a clear call to action can help you sell an item from the very first second of attracting your visitor.

Size and dimensions: 

Many buyers often complain about buying products from e-stores that are much smaller or larger than they wished the product images had shown. Customers wish that the product images had shown someone using it or it had some object for scale to state the appropriate size and dimensions of the products. But one thing that you should remember is that, a numbered dimension is usually not that helpful unless you are selling furniture, TV or computers. Displaying the products showing a model using it is much more effective.

Making your site a trustworthy one:

People are usually very careful when they have to spend money on something. And it is natural to expect that they want a safe and secured website to know more about the product that they are going to purchase, its warranties, payment methods, delivery service and etc. that will help them to take a decision to make the transaction. So, while creating your e-store, keep in mind to add special features that will help to improve the credibility of your site and build confidence with the buyer. Social media often allows e-brands to show their authenticity and also associate an emotional connection with the services or products.

Security features: 

Monetary transactions are an integral part of ecommerce websites and so it is crucial to protect the customer’s information and ensure privacy. An SSL certificate can help you to establish secure connectivity between the user and the website. You can also use a firewall to protect two networks so that it only allows authorized traffic to the site. It is also important to promise your customers that your data will not be shared with any third parties.

Reviews, offers and wish list:

Before making any purchase, buyers often search for reviews of the products or services and 92% consumers read the reviews before taking the final decision. So, make sure that there is a review section on the website that offers both positive and negative reviews.

Mostly, e-commerce sites use special offers and discounts to lure customers to make a purchase. When shoppers find that they are getting special deals, it encourages them to buy and even spend more time browsing the site.

It is vital for ecommerce sites to use wish lists as it helps the customers bookmark the items they want and will most probably purchase in the future. It is a great remarketing technique.

News and popular products:

Whenever you launch a new product or there is any event in the company, you should inform your buyers about that. So, place such information on the home page and do not make it a tough job for the buyers to find exclusive deals and discounted prices. Repeat customers are more likely to have a view of the new items on sale instead of browsing the full inventory to find something new and trendy.

Efforts and finances are great resources that are needed to generate online business. Following some important tips may actually help you to become successful. I hope the above tips will help you to create a strong e-commerce website with a perfect go-to page for potential buyers.

With the daily use of internet increasing every day be it for leisure or business, the number of websites developed is increasing exponentially. From static to dynamic, PHP has always made it easier for the developers to create feature rich sites and this has become the prime reason of its extensive use across the world. PHP scripting language has enabled ecommerce site feature merchandising, searching and selling numerous products online. It is with a click that customers can view thousands of schemes and products that are available at just one stop. Here in this blog we will discuss about the points that make PHP so popular and also consider some of the most important PHP ecommerce development platforms.

Why should you choose PHP development for creating your ecommerce site?

• PHP is a server scripting language that is very popular and is one of the oldest web languages that offer various means to create an awesome ecommerce experience.
• The PHP script can be embedded into HTML and it works well with Oracle or MySQL open source databases. It offers veritable solutions that are related to ecommerce development.
• The efficient performance and rich functionalities have made PHP ecommerce development the preferred choice of many website developers. It enables easy navigation for the users and different packages are also available so that the business owners can choose one based on their requirements and future business plans.
• With PHP, website owners can enjoy the benefits of high availability and performance towards production. From simple websites to complex social networking and web portals, everyone can take the advantage of the PHP software.
• Since PHP is very easy to use, business owners can easily build or update their websites and help the customers to browse catalogues with key search words instead of searching for all the items.
• An amazing thing about the technology is that PHP has an innate memory building option and so the efforts to write the code is reduced and the cost is also maintained while creating a user friendly website.
• PHP has an online forum where developers can get any kind of assistance. The script written in PHP helps the webmasters to record the various activities that are performed by the visitors and gather essential feedback for further improvements.

Best PHP ecommerce platforms to consider:

Magento: This is the most versatile e-commerce platform and is used by more than 30,000 online merchants. This fastest growing platform is feature rich and offers completely flexible solutions, control over the content and functionality of an online store.

Open Cart: This is a very scalable, powerful ecommerce platform that allows the developers to build online stores of any size. It is easy to use, feature rich, search engine friendly and also has a visually appealing interface that makes easy to attain a good ranking in the search engine.

Zen Cart:  This is the best ecommerce frameworks in terms of simple and effectual framework that serves the major purpose of creating a strong online presence. Whether it is management or customization, it is easy to customize and integrate anything with Zen Cart framework.

X Cart: This a free, open source template engine and is used to provide X Cart store owners with multiple options for customization of layout and look. It offers an advanced HTML model that can be used to create the website. It includes all the essential tools needed to create a proper functional ecommerce site.

To conclude, it can be said that PHP is one of the best platform that helps website owners to build functional e-stores with specific features based on their needs.

Mobile app development has become the latest trend in online business as it gives you the power to market your product through various devices on the go. Users use cell phones like Android, iPhone and Blackberry. Presently most of the ventures are demonstrating great enthusiasm for developing mobile apps for the business in order to expand more customers and revenues for the business. Building native platform specific apps is still a highly time taking task that involves a huge cost. Cross platform development seems to be an obvious choice and many developers simply embrace it to target various platforms with single codes, shorten the development cycle saving development costs.

If you are a business owner, you must remember that mobile app development expenses are associated with the platforms that they choose to target in order to increase their market presence.  Developers spend their resources and time only once instead of reinventing the wheel separately for each platform. The savings that are made has to be maintained periodically, which offers even greater savings. Companies are presently moving to a more current and faster approach for creating mobile apps by using the cross platform development.

Some clear advantages of using the cross platform app development:

Reduced costs:  Developing cross platform apps will require developers who have expertise in varied platforms and leverages a single code base. Since companies can create an app without investing much on the technologies, tools and resources, the development team can be leveraged to work on other platforms without having to hire another team each for a specific platform. This in fact reduces the cost of the company.

Easy deployment:  Most cross platform frameworks offer a wide variety of modules and extensions that integrate seamlessly with other tools and helps to improve the functionality of the app and its look. It becomes easier for the developers to maintain the codes for the apps that can run across all the platforms. And the latest updates also get easily synced across different platforms and devices.

Speed: It is usually faster to develop a cross platform app for mobile devices. Since you can leverage one code base and also customize the same code for various platforms instead of creating new codes, you can fast track the app development and also deliver your services to the customer without wasting much time.

Easy access to plugins:  Another great advantage of using the cross platform app development is that it provides an easy access to numerous plug-ins and simplifies the entire development process. Appcelerator and PhoneGap offer an easy access to numerous plug-ins that developers can use. This means that common APIs can be used for different platforms.

Uniformity:  Another important consideration for a software is its User Experience. A single codebase used for building a cross platform app helps to maintain the overall look, feel and consistency of the apps on all the multiple platforms

Since the mobile marketplace is highly fragmented and has a variety of interfaces, SDKs, programming languages, creating one application for all the platforms can be a challenging task. Some popular platforms are PhoneGap, Sencha Touch, Xamarian, Appcelerator, Native Script and etc. Before finalizing on one of these platforms, a smarter approach is to study and analyze the varied parameters like coverage of platforms, customer interaction with apps, customer demographics and etc. to find out if the platform chosen is the perfect choice.