Top SEO-Friendly eCommerce Platforms that can maximize Sales

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial for your online business. Statistics tell us that almost 50% of all online purchases originate from a search query. By getting your online store to rank higher in search engine rankings, you will get more incoming traffic and ultimately make more sales every month.

What does Search-Engine Friendly design entail?

There are a lot of factors that affect SEO. Some of the top ones include:

• Independent navigational links
• Page titles
• Page URLS
• Meta descriptions
• ALT Tags
• H1 headings
• Canonical URLs
• Blogs
• Social sharing
• XML Sitemaps
• Domain names
• IP Address
• 301 redirects
• Robot Noindex

To maximize sales, you have to build your eCommerce store on an SEO-friendly platform. To help you out, here is a list of top platforms that align with the factors above and provide above average search engine optimization:

Magento

Over 500,000 businesses use Magento, and it has near perfect SEO scores. Magento is the platform of choice for big and small businesses alike.

Shopify

Shopify is a hosted solution, meaning you have to pay the developers a monthly fee to host your store. You can build beautiful stores on it, though, that always rank high in search listings.

PrestaShop

PrestaShop is used by over 250,000 businesses worldwide. The platform is perfect if you want to build a low-cost store with advanced features.

OsCommerce

With OsCommerce, you can build advanced stores with many features, but you need advanced programming knowledge to make it search engine friendly.

BigCommerce

The selling point of this platform is the ability to build megastores with no product limits at affordable prices. It also helps that the platform’s layout is easy for Google to index.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce stores rank very highly on Google. It allows you to turn a WordPress website into a high-performing online store.

OpenCart

OpenCart is a very cost-effective eCommerce platform. It is very cheap to set up and run a store on it, and they don’t impose limits on your products like some other platforms do.

You will need a fast-loading, attractive, easy-to-navigate store to convert a visitor from a search engine to a customer. You can hire an experienced eCommerce development team in Singapore to build a custom store with advanced features.

Simple Steps to Making a Wildly Successful Mobile App

The number of mobile users worldwide is growing daily – experts estimate that over 3 billion people will be using smartphones by the end of 2020. Businesses and individuals worldwide are attempting to take advantage of this trend by building a mobile application, so that they can sell products, provide useful remote services, and dominate their individual niches. 

Creating a successful app isn't easy, though. More apps fail than succeed. Here are some simple guidelines you can follow to make a wildly successful application:

Choose between native and cross-platform development

Most people have to pick between native apps that run on a single platform like Android or iOS or multi-platform apps. Native apps perform exceptionally well, but cross-platform apps give you more reach. What’s best for you will depend on your individual business and goals.

What is the goal of your app?

Are you building an application to make money, to provide services to existing customers, to boost your brand visibility or a mixture of all of that? You have to decide what your app is going to be about and how you’re planning to monetize it. The goal is to strike a balance between monetization and usefulness, and you must pay more attention to retaining users over finding new ones.

Put lots of effort into the development

All the most successful apps have brilliant user interfaces and great design. But, most importantly, they satisfy a need of a particular demographic. You need to put a lot of effort into the development of the app. Focus on simplifying it, make sure it has great graphics, make it clutter-free and easy-to-use and test it multiple times until you get it right.

Marketing is as important as development

Finally, the marketing aspect is as important as the development itself. You need to make your application easy to find on the store(s) with ASO, and you can use social media and other marketing channels to make your app more visible. 

If you’ve never built an application before and find the process daunting, you can consult with an experienced app development company for guidance. They’ll be able to take you through the process and even make you a custom-built app for an affordable price.

Make the Shift to Mobile-Friendly Design to Cater to Mobile Users

Everybody takes their smartphones everywhere these days. People often use their waiting time to browse their favorite sites, shops, or blogs. Statistics tell us that traffic from mobile devices has surpassed traffic originating from desktop PCs in 2016. By making sure your business can effectively cater to mobile users, you can keep your customers happy and improve your revenues this year.

Understand your customers’ attitude

Your clients or your visitors are going to want to surf your website or store on their phones and tablets, especially when they're on-the-go. If your site doesn't display correctly on their small screens – or if they have to spend too much time panning and zooming into your pages to click on links – they will probably abandon it and go to a competitor instead.

Test your existing site

How well is it doing when it comes to small-screen friendliness? Check your existing pages by browsing them on a phone or tablet. Is it easy to navigate on a small screen? Does it look right? Do you have to squint to view text anywhere? Make a note of problems and areas that need improvement.

Make a move to mobile-friendly design

The goal is to provide a smooth experience to mobile users. Your web pages should be easy to navigate, clutter-free, and display content in an efficient, clutter-free way on mobile devices. You can cater to mobile users in one of the three following ways:

• Create a single responsive website for both desktop and phone users. This option is cheap and efficient, but often slow-to-load.
• Create a mobile-only website and redirect mobile users to them. This option is a very useful but hard to maintain and update.
• Use adaptive design that makes your site compatible with the device accessing it.
• Create an app that will load much faster than a website, and will offer personalized services to users.

Every business is unique and has unique requirements when it comes to making services available to their mobile customers. For best results, we recommend you consult with an experienced web design and development team to come up with a unique solution for your business.

It’s Crucial for Your Business to Own an Official Website: Know why

So you don’t own a website yet, in 2016? We're in the midst of a digital revolution, with billions of people accessing the internet daily and using it as their primary information resource. People use the internet for shopping, to find local business services, and to compare products being offered by competing companies. By not having a website, it's almost as if your business doesn't exist!

Here are some undeniable reasons why you need an official website right now:

Make yourself more accessible to clients

You will be able to provide useful, relevant information in a single location. That will make it easy for customers to tell what you have to offer and make it more likely they'll work with you.

Find more customers than ever before

The internet has no boundaries. Organisations these days have a chance of doing business with clients from around the world. A website makes it easy to find customers globally that are interested in what you have to offer. 

Keep your business up-and-running 24/7

Unlike your real-world office, a website doesn’t need downtime. It can stay up-and-running 24/7. Consequently, you can sell your products or services all day, every day.

Credibility

Every entrepreneur knows that a business' reputation is as important as - if not more important than - the product they are selling. Having an official site tells your customers you are serious and you are running a successful business. 

Reduce marketing costs

It doesn’t cost a lot of money to market online. You can advertise for free by creating a blog or by offering newsletters to customers or clients. 

Save on upkeep

Customers will no longer have to visit you in the real world for some of your products or services (if you’re offering them online). Consequently, you will get less foot-traffic and can save on some operating expenses.  

There are over a billion websites on the internet at the moment. Your official site, if you decide to get one, will have to compete with them. To create a professional-looking website that can convert efficiently and stand the test of time, hire an experienced web development team. 

Five Festive Season Strategies to Help you Make Huge Holiday Profits

Statistics tell us that over 40% of all eCommerce sales are made during the holiday season. If you want to grow your revenues during the upcoming festivities, you have to plan out a marketing strategy in advance and ensure your website is ready to hook incoming traffic.

What makes Magento the Best eCommerce Platform?

Magento is the world’s leading eCommerce platform, with a market share of over 29 percent. To give you an idea of how popular it is, it run by over 250,000 web stores - including top global brands like Samsung, Ford, Lenovo and Fox Connect. It has been around for a long time and has managed to fend off competition from other platforms like Shopify with ease. 

Simple Guide to Develop and Launch your first iOS Mobile App

Smartphone sales are seriously picking up, and over 2 billion people are expected to own smartphones by the year 2019. The number of mobile app downloads is expected to increase two times over the next four years as more businesses attempt to leverage mobile technology in an attempt to increase sales and improve brand recognition. If you’re planning on launching an iOS application, we must warn you: it can be an uphill battle.