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Arpatech Website
Jan 07, 2025
Application Modernization Strategies: 5 Best Practices Explained
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How to Set a Budget for a Website?
The most frequently asked question we get from the business owners is “How much my website will cost from scratch?” The answer they usually get is, “It depends.”
The real cost of building a website varies from the specifications and functionalities required by the client. Can it be a hundred dollar? Maybe. Can the cost escalate to hundreds of thousands of dollars? Probably.
It’s essential that you know where your hard-earned money is going. It can really help you being responsible with your spending. Don’t let someone else make that decision for you. Grab the bull by the horns and steer it in the direction where you exactly want your finances to go.
Budget forecasting can help you with that.
To provide an accurate estimate, we are sharing down here some guidelines for creating a website budget so you can develop a great looking website without exceeding your finances that much.
Before going down in details, let me share the basic necessities of a website development process:
Basic & Compulsory Website Components:
Before starting a website project with questions like, “What should my new website look like?’ Ask yourself first that what are my objectives?
Determining your business specific needs is a must-to-do thing. It is a better to list down the most important requirements and think about it to get a clear image of your website which will help in calculating the exact amount required to build it.
The right answer to these questions will end up in delivering the best-looking website with better results in a more efficient and less expensive process.
Maybe you need a basic site with fewer pages that gives a detailed overview of the products. In that case, it won’t cost too much on your pocket. While on the other hand, a highly customized website with lots of bells and whistles can give you a blow on the budget. If you are making an e-commerce website, you need to consider…
The average cost for a professional looking website varies from hundreds to thousands. Start with a grand total including other things like content development, site architecture which covers your entire project. Break it down to see how much it will cost for an individual part and stick to the basics if you are on a tight budget.
Interface designs refer to the visual design or the site looks & feels. The interface is usually an iterative process. Don’t assume that if you have a pre-made template, you won’t require any images or layouts re-done. In fact, it means that the website development agency or a developer would show you several options and then modify them according to your requirements on an approved design.
Don’t skimp on the interface designs, if you do so then you’ll regret because today’s sophisticated visitors won’t ever give your website a second glance if they don’t feel attractive towards it or satisfied by the looks initially.
The best designs are responsive means it should be mobile-friendly or in a simple way designed in a way to automatically adjust their layout and function easily on multiple devices like laptops, desktops, tablets and on smartphones. Creating a website design can cost around 20 to 30% of your entire website budget.
When it comes to creating the content, the design firm either create all the content on their end then insert it through CMS or deliver a blank design template that the client would populate it as desired.
It would be great if the end result of your planning matched with your desired budget perfectly. But it’s even smarter to plan for some unforeseen expenses. Whether it’s time for some last minute touch-ups or paying for additional functionalities.
Planning would provide you some wiggle room and minimize the potential for the setbacks and if you have some money left over, you could utilize it in enhancing any feature on your website.
Websites don’t just get maintained by themselves. Besides all the initial investments, a considerable amount of money is required for the site maintenance.
Imagine if you delete an entire page of your website by mistake and loose hours of sales while trying to recover it, you will wish you would have spent some extra money on a maintenance contract.
The best website upgrades its strategy with the current trends and updates itself from time to time. If the website is using an e-commerce transaction platform or an email service to publish newsletters, you will be typically charged on monthly basis.
Maintenance costs vary depending upon your expectations from the firm or the developer.
Some Other Important Factors to Consider In Your Website Budget:
Additional Things to Consider in your Budget:
Bonus Tip: The budget should be based on the strategic needs of your business. If you are tight on the budget, then you may want to consider drag & drop website builder to get started. Don’t forget new sites often costs more than the redesigns.
Arpatech Website
Jan 30, 2017
The Holy Grail For Magento 2 Technology Stack
While using Magento technology, developers may find some of the most advanced tools and techniques to build best Magento websites or upgrade their existing site.
Magento is an open source ecommerce platforms, there are some things that Magento developers need to learn before they start utilizing the tools provided by Magento. Some of these tools are new, with enhanced development methods and technologies that developers would choose to utilize in their websites.
This article is all about the Magento 2 technology stack requirements. Because some new features are introduced in the new version of the popular e-commerce platform. Some of the most important Magento 2 technology stack requirements are mentioned below:
The below diagram shows the components of Magento technology, like the layers and tiers of all components, the 3rd party libraries and the supported databases.
Magento 2 technology stack requires PHP 5.5 and 5.6 as by default.
But as the new technology arrives it now supports PHP 7 as well. The new version of PHP makes the Magento technology much faster and significantly simplifies a coding routine.
Magento 2 platform uses different frameworks which include Zend Framework 1, Zend Framework 2, Symfony, etc.
But it doesn’t completely rely on ZF as it has its own adapters and interfaces. These interfaces and adapters tunnels call to ZF 1 components. It would be highly beneficial for Magento developers to use the APIs that are provided by official Magento Framework so that they can avoid problems that are directly related to the platform’s internal changes.
PSR-0,1,2,3 and 4 are some coding standards. Magento 2 technology stack includes these coding standards too.
PSR-1 is the most basic coding standard, but it is marked as deprecated therefore PSR-4 is the new replacement. While PSR-0 is the default autoloading standard, and PSR-3 allows the Magento developer to write any code that is independent of any logging implementation.
The composer is the Key Magento 2 technology stack requirement, and it supports whole Magento. The main benefit that Magento developers can get using Composer, is that it introduces a dependency management package for PHP.
The Advantages that Composers give are:
A. Your Project will only depend on some libraries.
B. Some of these libraries depend on other ones.
C. You declare the things you depend on.
D. The primary job of the composer is to find out which versions of a particular package that needs to be installed, and then installs them by downloading them into your project.
The structures and presentation of front-end components are handled by HTML5 which is a markup language. Being Magento 2 technology stack requirement, HTML5 simplifies the development and introduces new abilities.
Magento 2 uses LESS and CSS instead of using Bootstrap in the theme core. The LESS preprocessor and LESS PHP adapter enable the use of LESS in the Magento 2 platform.
To read more about Magento UI library, read this post. And this post discuss why Magento uses LESS instead of SASS.
JQuery is incorporated in Magento 2 by default, and is very fast in speed and lightweight, making it speedier and feature-rich which helps Magento 2 platforms to become more functional.
Another important component of Magento 2 technology stack requirements is RequireJS. This file and module loader is optimized for in-browser use to improve the speed and quality of code.
Symfony- a PHP framework and the most important component of Magento 2 technology stack, used to make best Magento sites.
Symfony is a set of reusable PHP components that helps to speed up the e-commerce website platforms because it avoids repetitive coding tasks. One of the serialization standards that is introduced among Symfony components is YAML.
YAML is the best format for your configuration files because it makes them readable as INI files and as important as XML files. For further visit the github site and devdoc site.
The most important and essential Magento 2 technology stack requirement is Apache 2.2.x or 2.4.x. According to Netcraft, about 60% of all the worlds’ websites, are using Apache server.
If you want more information about Apache in Magento 2 check out dev docs site.
Nginx– is another Magento 2 technology stack requirement.
Nginx is a reverse proxy server for protocols such as HTTPS, HTTP, POP3, SMTP, and IMAP. It does not only provides your Magento platform speed but also provides low usage of memory by balancing the load, providing an HTTP cache and an origin of web server.
MySQL is an open source database, and many websites rely on MySQL, but now Magento 2 also uses it to make best Magento websites.
Magento supports MySQL database reindexing but does not support MySQL statement-based replication. MySQL provides an advantage to many Magento developers by saving their money, time and power up your high-volume Magento 2 project.
Some experienced developers recommend using Gulp instead of Grunt which is a contemporary JavaScript task runner used in Magento 2. Gulp provides Magento technology much faster building processes with streamlines deployment. Developers developed Gulp with an idea to connect community-developed micro-tasks, but Grunt only relies on a set of commonly used tasks.
Last but not least, another important Magento 2 technology stack requirement is Twig, which provides the Magento websites fast, flexible and secure PHP template engine. It simplifies your work with themes and templates. It does not provide any .twig template files. Therefore, it uses additionally .phtml files. Check out GitHub official site to find the Twig template engine for Magento 2 technology platform.
The Magento 2 technology stack is impressive as we can see. Don’t wait more to utilize all these Magento 2 features in your further ecommerce projects. The native support of Redis, Varnish, and Solr compared to 1.x, are the new opportunities. You can see the official Dev docs to see all the Magento technology stack requirements.
Did we miss something? Do you have some other features that you think is the best one for you? Do you have any questions related to the technologies we just discussed? Mention them in the comments section below.
Arpatech Website
Jan 26, 2017
The Importance Of Storytelling On Your Company’s Webs...
Storytelling on a company’s website. Sounds interesting, right?
Well, just close your eyes and think about the top brands in the world. They all have a story. An interesting premise which their users, consumers, and evangelists can relate to since the inception of the brand till today.
Well, humans are emotional creatures and stories are impossible to be resisted by anyone…if you hear a good one!
Similarly, storytelling on the website is also important because it is effective in showcasing your brand or the company’s image to make people remember it; and also it gives the visitor on the website some visual cues to remember about you. Ideally, storytelling should be at the heart of your overall web development phase.
Considering this, the story told on your website should be interesting enough to evoke a positive emotion about the products or services offered in your visitor’s mind.
Now, for a fact, we encounter different stories in our everyday life. A group of protestors march by or some people doing a rally for their rights. See, every single person, animal or an object has its own story to tell. The stories are not that complicated as they seem.
The key part of a successful website is to build a communication bridge between the company and its potential prospects which can be done through the storytelling. The story should be the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of your organization.
In the terms of Digital Marketing, “If the content is the King then the Queen rules the visuals.”
Like in the game of chess, the king can move one space at a time whereas the queen can make some real power moves. This tells that losing the king means losing the game but without your leading lady, there are no powerful moves to make and you will be handicapped.
The client always expects of something bigger than just a “website” or a “brand”. They expect an appealing story from you.
We are sharing down here some important story-telling tips which will help in representing you and your organization in the best way:
Having the information written verbally on your website is simply not enough, so, display it in a manner that people can enjoy and understand it.
When a story generates, it doesn’t only move people emotionally but they retell it many times over, ultimately, clarifies the message conveyed in it.
Visuals are highly important for a website. One can use pictures to tell stories all the time.
Images and videos hold more power over the audience than words. Well-told visual stories can really move, mold, or melt the reader’s, heart. Compelling visual stories will develop strong engagement by evoking emotions, instilling connections with the viewer.
Typography is a much more expressive medium because just like images, words also tells a different story depending on the way they are written.
The stories and the art of storytelling plays a major role in content marketing today
Sharing the mission and vision of your company in the manner of storytelling will more likely to be remembered. Create appealing content to help in achieving the business goals. Your audience will prefer to purchase a product/service you are offering if you associate a story with the content of your website.
Ensure the clarity and the consistency in your content throughout the website by using a central story.
Use props, visuals, and videos to ignite the feeling towards your cause or business in the reader’s heart. Write blogs on tips, benefits, and history of your business while telling examples that people can relate to.
Storytelling on a website isn’t really a marketing tactic, instead, it is their history which they share with the world.
Don’t let your users know verbally as why your brand or company’s product is necessary, applicable and effective, in fact, use the chance of visual storytelling to let them know.
Display and video are the two primary purpose for the fastest growing digital marketing. So, the way your brand is seen, will be the most critical to the decision process and buying cycle.
Storytelling can be beneficial to any profit or non-profit organization.
Test different content types, analyze their results and evolve with the rapid change in the interests of your customers.
Show. Don’t Tell!
Remember, people don’t necessarily first look for the skills, they look for your ideas, your vision, and your dream as to how far they can take themselves with your company, organization or brand. So, create a story about your brand on your website that compels your potential prospects into believing that you can take them to the height of success and assist them in accomplishing their personal goals through you.
Bonus tip: The more specific, clear and concise the stories are transmitted, the more likeable and memorable your business will be.
Arpatech Website
Jan 25, 2017
9 Things You Should Need to Know About PHP 7
If you are a web developer or a website owner, and you love to use CMS that are PHP-enabled like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or Magento, you should rejoice to hear that according to official PHP timetable, PHP 7 which was released on 3 December 2015, is now ready for the production use.
Yes you heard it right! PHP 7 is out to use. We are going to tell all the great things you need to know about PHP 7.
As soon as the PHP 7 was released, many developers and programmers started downloading the beta version and start playing around it but found it full of bugs.
They reported it and that is how the PHP 7 went behind the curtains until it become fully bug-proof.
PHP 7 is a platform that can deliver powerful app, all from cloud to enterprise applications and from mobile to the web Applications. Almost everything comes under the umbrella of PHP 7. This version has the most powerful impact as it decreases the memory consumption with extreme improvements in performance.
Let’s take a look at what PHP 7 entails:
The version PHP 5.6 renamed to PHP 7. As PHP 6 already existed, developers tend to do some experimental project but this version of PHP never reached to the production phase. After some dispute, the PHP official development team came to a conclusion and they decided that they will name this new version to PHP 7 and will omit PHP 6 name completely.
The decision helped the users to stay away from mixing up the previously attempted experiment with the latest development.
After the release of PHP 4 in 1999, the platform was powered by the Zend engine till now.
Zend, the Zend Framework, which supports PHP 7, is an open source execution engine and is written in C language. It is used to interpret the PHP language. The PHP 5.X uses the Zend Engine II that was used to enhance the functionality of the previous engine.
Whereas the PHP 7 uses the Zend Engine with a code name of PHPNG (Next Generation).
There are many improvements which can be seen when it comes to new PHPNG Engine, but the most significant feature is the improvement in the performance. The PHPNG is the new structure of the Zend Engine thus, we can see optimized memory usage.
By using PHP7, you will need fewer servers to serve the same amount of users with the increased time of execution of code. The below graph is the performance benchmarks that Zend Performance Team provides.
Handling the catchable fatal errors is not an easy task for PHP coders and never have been. The only solution to handle these fatal errors is to use Exceptions.This new Zend Engine provides the facility for the PHP developers to handle the errors easily without the system failure at the run time which is quite unprofessional.
The new EngineException objects in new Zend Engine don’t extend the Exception Base Class of previous versions. This object shows that the new system is using the interfaces and data from earlier versions but producing the different kinds of exceptions in error handling: the Traditional and the Engine Exceptions.
PHP 7 enables PHP programmers to catch both types of exceptions by introducing the new Parent Class Called BaseException.
The code and the result emerged because of the fatal errors due to the previous versions is shown below:
The new changings are:
Native environment of PHP is Linux because the PHP is a prominent member of the LAMP stack. But it is not impossible to run PHP to run on Windows system. There are two types of bit systems of Windows X86 and X64. The PHP 5.X don’t provide the support to X64 bit version of Windows. So PHP 7 introduced the support to X64 bit Windows system.
PHP 7 now allows you to run the language on your 64-bit Windows system. Both 64-bit integers and large files are supported by PHP 7.
The official name for Spaceship operator is Combined Comparison Operator. The notation of this operator is like a simplified spaceship like this <=>.
This operator gives result 0 if both left-hand operand and right-hand operand are equal, returns 1 if the left operand is greater than right operand and -1 if the left operand is greater than the right operand. This three-way comparison operator not only exist in PHP but also in other programming languages like Perl and Ruby.
The Null Coalescing – denoted as (??), used to check if the value exists or not, if the value does not exist then it returns a default value and if the value does exist it will return the left operand, and right operand returned if the value doesn’t exist or may be any other case.
The below code snippet shows how this new operator reduces the time spent on basic declarations:
The new PHP 7 allows developers and programmers that they can intensify the quality of their code by using the correct return type declarations so that the unintended return values can prevented.
The image shows a simple use case foo() function. This feature is supposed to return an array. There are more complicated examples which show the return type declarations.
PHP 7 have introduced four new types of declarations for scalar values to increase the features even more. The types are – int, float, string and bool. These new scalar types allow the PHP developers to denote the integers, floats, strings or booleans to get returned.
PHP 7 enables the developers to use OOP concept and to use anonymous classes. The concept already exists and used in many Object-oriented languages like C# and Java. The anonymous class – as defined by the name- are the classes with no names. But the object that instantiates has same functionality as an object of a named class.
If we talk about the syntax which is same as what we were using in traditional PHP classes the only difference is the name, which is missing. The advantage of using anonymous class is that it can increase the speed of code and execution time as well, if and only if these classes used in an excellent way. And in the case when a class doesn’t need to be documented.
The Group Use Declarations– is indeed a bless feature for the developers who want to import many classes from the same namespace when required. This new syntax helped the developers by cutting the babbling of words, makes the code neat and clean and easier and save the typing time.
Using Group Use Declarations makes it easy and clean for you to read through and debug codes as it helps the developers to identify the imports of the same namespace in a module.
PHP 7 has been introduced with a goal to free up space which leads to improvement. It was crucial to get rid of many deprecated functionalities , old and unsupported Server APIs and extensions to increase the speed and free up space.
This clean up provides more security by removing items that have deprecated for a while in PHP 5 and not in use for a long time. PHP 7 can break the code if your app is running on older version of PHP.
This article helps you to get to the conclusion that how advance the PHP 7 is. And in next versions, you will see more enhancements and new improvements which would be more exciting for the developers and programmers who love to play with PHP code. You might then come across some bugs but wait! That’s how the system tested and that’s how you will learn more and more and can become PHP champ!
Like! Share! Subscribe! And tell us in the comment section below any cool feature that you love about PHP 7.
Arpatech Website
Jan 25, 2017
The Ultimate Drupal Prelaunch Checklist for Developers
There’s a saying that “Think before you speak”. Similarly, test before you launch.
Website testing is a necessary step to take. Cross-browser testing, checking for dead links, proof-reading these are the things that should get tested before making the site live. This article is all about the steps that are required specifically for starting a Drupal site. Some of the recommendations of Drupal Pre-launch Checklist for developers are:
Drupal do have extendable number of Cron jobs that are scheduled to run at different intervals, some of them are to re-index the search mechanism and some are to check for updates. You can make custom modules in Drupal just like other CMS with their defined Cron jobs.
These Cron jobs can vary from searching the latest Twitter feeds to processing message queues. Without doing Cron jobs, you can run your site, but I would highly recommend that this will let your site to maintain the security by Update status module.
If you can go through the official documentation you can see the whole process of the setting up Cron job, or else do have a look at Poor Man’s Cron. It is a functionality offered in Drupal 7 which is a simple back port of automatic Cron-running functionality.
If you want to allow users to upload large files such as MP3 and MP4 files on your site, then make sure to configure the server first. Allow your server to upload up to an approximate size.
And not just uploading, take a look at the max_execution_time setting also. This time setting will get increase if you are uploading large files.
Before launching the Drupal site first make sure to double check that either all the forms, modules, and other things are sending to the correct email addresses or not. Most of the developers forget to update these, once the site is ready, change your own addresses to the client’s one.
The security is the first concern of any website, so before launching your Drupal site make sure that you correctly configure the security permissions on your file systems. This would help in securing your site from any malicious hackers. Make sure that all files are saved in their particular folders, and also ensure that settings.php file which contains all the information of database connections, is also secured.
Make sure that to facilitate for uploading functionality, your files directory needs to be writeable by the web server. We would recommend you to ensure that your installation must be configured with access to a writable temporary directory. To check the whole process of how to give files permissions and ownership and how to install the files directory, check these two official documentation.
Typically during drupal development, you have to develop your site using an admin account. Make sure to secure that account. This account has all the information and the access to your website. And not just the access, but the havoc which could be wrecked by a hacker getting access to this account which the network security is not permitting, and to be carried out using a web browser.
While building the admin account, choose a secure admin account username instead of just choosing admin, make something difficult to guess. And also make sure that the password must be secure enough. You can use a Drupal module named AES so that you can tighten up the security more.
Some of the new modules introduce new kind of permissions that are restrictive. These type of agreements have to be manually enabled for many other roles. These include anonymous, registered or custom. One of the main advantages is that only the root user can access the part of the site but not a regular user, hence more security. Before launching, it is highly recommended that you should test the site with each role.
Ever witnessed any error messages of Drupal live sites? I have seen them often. These errors are not only Drupal-specific messages. Drupal renders many PHP errors. You have options to either display them or not.
To configure them, go to Site Configuration -> Error Reporting. Now set the option of the same name to write errors to the log. Doing so will not display errors.
Before launching make sure that the 404 errors (or missing pages) are catered in as helpfully as possible. There is a built-in feature of Drupal in which Error handling page is displayed on pages where there is no block configured. For that, you can use Drupal module named Search 404 or you can use 404 block. This module guesses what the user wants or what user tries to search. It helps the user by feeding terms from URL into the search engine.
Don’t forget to check robots.txt before launching. And even before that, ensure that the relevant sections of your new site are excluded from crawlers. To further understand, see the documentation on Drupal official site.
First install a module called Global Redirect with an existing module Pathauto module. You should use these modules on your Drupal site to generate “friendly” URLs automatically. It works by performing a 301 redirect to aliased path or by analyzing a visited link.
You must be thinking, why is this important? The answer is real simple, if a single page is accessible from multiple URL’s, for instance, contact-us is an alias for node/123, some other user visits node/123 directly what Drupal will do is that it will redirect back to contact-me page on your site. By doing so, it can impact negatively on your search ranking.
Make a custom maintenance page for the users who would visit your site during the time when you are upgrading or maintaining your site. Make it more user-friendly and professional. It’s pretty easy to create a custom maintenance page from Drupal 6 onwards. Check out official documentation for further information on theming Drupal 6 maintenance page.
Caching is the most important part. Before you launch, check your site’s caches are fully configured or not. By doing so, Caching will deliver significant performance boosts, particularly on high-traffic sites. Make sure to check if views module has done any pages or blocks or not, because they have to cache switched-off by default. Make sure to configure them as well.
You can compress the CSS and JavaScript files by switching on on the end of the development process which is usually turned off during the entire process. Having CSS and JavaScript files more means increasing the number of HTTP calls for every page significantly. You can “squeeze” all the CSS and JavaScript files. To-do-so, compress them at the same time.
Normally a developer forgets to check the status of a node before displaying any custom code for creating a view. That is why draft work could appear after you launched the site. So make sure to check that by checking the filters on your views. Check that any custom SQL includes a test of the status column.
RSS feed of your content is generated as a by default on your Drupal site, which includes the feeds for your taxonomy terms. You could use Views RSS module in Drupal, this module allows more tight control over what content or stuff should go into your RSS feed. It is critical to take care of that because, in Drupal, the published nodes are promoted to the front page by default. You can deny this access to rss.xml whenever needed.
If your sites have a favicon, then make sure that it’s displaying correctly. If it’s not, then you have to unselect the option for Drupal’s default favicon in your theme settings to display on your site.
Not only security and reliability of a site are a big concern but monitoring is also a big job to do. You can use core statistic module to do the job. Using Advanced Statistics settings companion module or you can use any service such as Google Analytics to monitor the site usage is a better option to do.
Did we miss anything? Make sure to let us know in the comment section below. Like! Share! Subscribe for more!
Arpatech Website
Jan 24, 2017
Why You Should Choose Magento 2 For Your Ecommerce Stor...
As an Ecommerce store owner, you would always want to develop an Ecommerce site that is flexible as well as secure with many advantages. PHP-based open-source CMS platforms are a blessing. By using them, you can quickly develop attractive eCommerce store. Talking about Magento 2 Development, Magento 2 makes ECommerce development easy for you.
Magento 2 Process is same as compared to WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. There is a lot of ECommerce growth in 2017 with Magento 2, which shows that how much Magento 2 advantages are there. Magento 2 usability is one of the benefits that merchants can use, by using Magento 2 plugins and extensions. To develop a full-fledged and functional site one can use Magento 2 extensions and plugins.
You can make user-friendly eCommerce store with Magento 2. These are some Magento 2 advantages that will help you to understand why you should choose Magento 2 for developing eCommerce store.
Magento also takes steps to get improvised as new technologies arrive. You can now track shopper’s behavior, their preferences and previous history using Magento 2. This is the first Magento 2 advantage. That’s how Magento 2 makes ecommerce development easy. By collecting all this data, You can offer them highly personalized experiences while they shop from your store.
Many of the users are tech savvy nowadays. Thus the users love to use the search features. You can take advantage of this habit of your users and can suggest them a search page or content that they love to see. Magento 2 makes ECommerce development easy. Now you can use filtered search and faceted search to provide ease for your customers.
Magento 2 now have the new process to streamline the checkout process that tells us that the future of E Commerce is Magento 2. Magento 2 have cut down the shopping cart abandonment rate more easily as compared to the previous versions. So the checkout process has to address the deal rapidly without any hassle to achieve a high conversion rate. This is one more great Magento 2 advantage. E-commerce growth in 2017 with Magento 2 is increased just because of all these benefits of this great platform.
Usability is one of the advantages of Magento 2 that can help you out why you should choose Magento 2 for building up an eCommerce site. All the tools at the backend like automation and management of order, sales, and shipping, the inventory of products and the reporting of the products and orders all provide the ease of use to the users and make the experience useful for backend users.
Doing SEO on your site is the most important thing to do to make sure that the customers can reach to your site. Magento 2 do come with features that can optimize the SEO and SMO parameters with the modular approaches. Choosing it, let you use the drag and drop visual merchandising for product optimization.
Among many other Magento 2 advantages , the best in Magento 2 Development is the internationalization. This Magento 2 feature allows you to go beyond the national limits. So that international customer also has your services. Magento 2 makes eCommerce development accessible by providing the functionality to support other languages and currencies of different regions of the world.
Nowadays the customers prefer to buy online things using their mobile phones. If you have a site that is not mobile friendly, it can cause you a lot of trouble. By having responsive design feature, you can develop attractive eCommerce store with Magento 2 so that your customers can access your sites on their smartphone gadgets.
Magento 2 development provides cross-platform compatibility with cross- browser compatibility and device form agnostic compatibility for your website is an ideal platform for this era.
Magento 2 development has made in PHP which is an open source programming language. That means Magento 2 is an open source platform which makes the ECommerce development easy. It allows the developers to use every kind of templates with proper extensions and modules with widgets. You can have documentations, training and consult regarding any situation by the Magento 2 community. the future of ECommerce is Magento 2 because it provides a program that is user-centric ECommerce storefronts.
Now is the era of big data with NoSQL- like databases which mean that the integration of the store with the database is a significant conflict. Magento 2 makes eCommerce development easy by providing easy integration with the variety of databases that includes web/cloud services and third-party tools.
Magento 2 development is done on PHP framework including Zend that provides compatibility with latest versions of PHP. Also, Magento 2 works fine with databases including MySQL, Oracle, and Hadoop whenever there is a requirement.
You can quickly build User friendly Ecommerce Store With Magento 2 which provides 20% more speed as compared to Magento 1.x. Speed is the primary requirement that user wants from a website thus by having a feature to increase the performance Magento 2 is the most favorite platform used by many eCommerce store developers all over the world.
Magento 2 has JavaScript library as a default jQuery library which makes it a hassle-free CMS to use. That is why developers love to use it, and Magento 2 makes e-commerce development easy. By having default JavaScript library avoids jQuery and Prototype problems while developers create innovative features and functionalities.
Because of the changes structure of directories in the source, Magento 2 is more secure than the previous versions, and we can say that future of eCommerce is Magento 2. The earlier version had nine folders in the root, but Magento 2 only have 5, and it has removed skin folder from the root directory.
The JS, SKIN, ERROR, etc. folders shifted to a new directory called “Pub.” This changes structure have made the Magento 2 more secure and more tough to steal or hack code directly from the root folder.
“View in Module” – the new concept provided by Magento 2 development. The benefit that Magento 2 gives is it have removed complexity and reduced development time considerably, and e-commerce growth in 2017 with Magento 2 is growing. It helps in the creation of view that can start work immediately after the developer defines the configurations.
Magento 2 development offers the component based structure of modules. Modules provide the developers the freedom so that they can enable or can disable the components that they want or that they don’t want. This structure enhances the flexibility and performance of the Magento 2 based website.
Modern online business nowadays is becoming more and more challenging and more sophisticated. Mobile internet is accessible. Thus online stores are more trendy everywhere.
All the new and modern E-shops needed to get equipped with all the modern equipment so that the Online shops can meet the increasing expectations of the new generation shoppers. Magento 2 have accomplished many of them. Many features including flexibility, performance, security, exceptional shopping experiences, Magento 2 makes e-commerce development easy. And we can say that eCommerce growth in 2017 with Magento 2.
Lets us know the Magento 2 advantage that you considered while choosing Magento 2 for developing eCommerce store. Have we missed something? Comment in the comment section below and show us your love.
Arpatech Website
Jan 23, 2017
Is Your Website Communicating Your Brand? Let’s Find ...
The world is becoming a digital jungle, and your website is your biggest business asset in this online universe. With the right strategy, design and content, you can utilize your online space to attract the ideal customers, establish credibility and can convert visitors into buyers and raving fans.
Whether you are looking to garner leads, provide information or interested in selling stuff online; be dead-sure about the actions you want your visitors to take on your website. Once you are clear about it, it’s time to start thinking about what elements and communication channels makes the most sense for your website.
We are going to outline few ways which can tell the visitors your brand story and help the customers to understand what makes your business, products, and services unique:
Be very clear about who your audience is and what you want to communicate with them. Your website has less than 5 seconds to impress and engage a new visitor with it. It’s all about the battle for eyeballs. Make your domain name and the homepage of the website instantly clear about who you are, what you do and what the visitor’s next step would be.
Stay true to the brand. When looking at each element and component of your website, do ask yourself this questions “Does your website looks, feel, sound like your company?” The design, usability, font, color, language, tone of your site and the content you created will either develop credibility, increase conversions or might invoke a negative perception in your visitor’s mind which can make them leave the site and never return. You simply can’t take that risk. So, be very clear with your communication.
Having the “About Us” page on your website gives a better understanding of your customer whether you are right for them or not. It is also a great opportunity to amuse the customers with your unique story, explaining to them what sets you apart from the other competitors. It can be a brief introduction about your company or a complete timeline of what your company’s achievements have ben this far; but whatever is your brand’s story, make it worth reading.
Since a website has to be engaging and should offer more than just your company’s information, Blogging is one of the best ways and a key tool to attract new visitors to the site. You can establish your feat in your industry by sharing information which your target audience is more likely interested in knowing about. So, provide valuable information through a blog and generate a loyal audience.
Enabling social buttons on prominent places on every page will make things super easy and will help to promote your business. People will easily follow through your social profiles and keep themselves updated and connected with your business.
Live chat can be extremely effective for getting instant feedback from your audience and converting visitors into buyers and subscribers. Though it’s not suitable for every business, live chat can be a great tool for your website. It’s the effective two-way communication that can be a real game changer.
FAQS or Frequently Asked Question page helps your customer in finding the answers to the most common questions they could have regarding your product or services. It not only helps your customers with the little issues that need answering, but it has strong benefits in terms of SEO too. It can be a great opportunity builder for internal linking and reduces the number of questions you received by email.
Meta descriptions have seldom to do with the direct visitors but it communicates an important message to someone coming to your website through Search Engines when they are trying to search something specific. Search engines use description on the SERPS, so it is the perfect opportunity to tell people about that particular page of your website before even visiting it.
A brand can tell their story using photos and videos. Humanize the content on your website through the photos of employees (if permitted) or an engaging video about the product or services that your company is offering.
Videos can be a powerful communication tool. Instead of uploading promotional videos on the site, add some creative videos such as employees talking about why they love working here or the customers talking about the products and services they are receiving.
The layout of the website can communicate in a way as which part of the website is important to consider. A layout is important for many reasons and among them is, communication. Typically the site is laid out in a way so that the most important content will be given the most important attention.
A well-designed logo will help in communicating your brand or services with the customers. In terms of branding, a message is being communicated through the logo whether it is professionally designed or some simple text in any website.
Colors are capable of communicating subtle messages to the visitors. Colors scheme are the most critical aspect of any web design, not just because they display how your website looks like but more often they have subtle impacts on the visitors and readers too.
The website is a digital extension of any brand, therefore, you need to understand what exactly your website is communicating to the visitors. Is it doing the right job of telling your brand’s story to the targeted audience? Does it reflect brand’s image, values, and goals?
To get a better idea, as how and what your website is telling visitors about the brand, look at some above few pointers to increase the communication of your brand’s story to your core audience.
Arpatech Website
Jan 13, 2017
Can You Get A Website Developed In 3 Days? Is It Even P...
Creating a website seems like a daunting task because maybe you are not sure where to begin.
So, in this article we will assist you in planning, creating and most probably launching your website within 3 days.
You don’t need to be an IT geek or a professional website developer to learn how to build a website in 3 days from now. And it’s not necessary that you should know how to code or manage host/servers. A lot of websites are built through drag and drop website builders.
First, you have to get the notion aside that you can’t build a website. You can do it!
A lot of website creation platforms have emerged that enables you to build websites without knowing how to code. You just have to use your mouse and drag a boxful of things instead of coding and creating them. Insert your texts, videos, images and click publish. That’s it.
If website builder tools are not cutting for you, you can always hire a professional if your budget permits it. There are 3 main factors to look for before hiring a professional website design and development company:
It completely depends on the individual or the company and their current workload. The best approach is to share your needs in detail with them and then let them tell how they will solve it and in what timeframe. You can then select a service provider based on many factors like quality of past work, timeline, and cost.
There should be a three stage approach in any professional website design and development agency. The process begins with defining the solutions they’ll be providing. Then it’s the design phase where they mock up as how all pages of your website would look across all devices and finally the last stage, development, which includes the building of the website.
The website is then sent to the client for the review.
This is the final phase for you as well as the development company. It is called the “modification period”. This typically includes change requests for minor bugs and content entry. Any professional web design and development agency doesn’t limit the website launching to a long number of weeks but it can take as long as you need to perfect your website.
Typically websites can take around 14 weeks from start to launch. But you can easily cut down this long period if you’re prepared with the proper planning. By following the proper protocol, you can spend less time building your website and more time building your business or flourishing your company. Ready? So let’s do this.
But before that, you need to keep in mind some basic items which are required to make a website.
1: Domain Name
2: Business Email Address
3: Website Building Software
4: Website Hosting
5: Template Design
6: Content and high-quality images
7: Google Analytics
Sit with pen and papers. Draw out the plan on the paper and decide the end goal in your mind. Making a plan is very essential. If you have a great plan, you will end up with a great website. A solid plan includes the structure of your website. Do some research on the competitors’ website and get ideas from them. Brainstorm the following questions:
Your website is not just about you. Write as many details as you can to reach the desired outcomes.
The website is the home of the business and domain is the homes address and your hosting account is the land on which the website files will be stored. You can purchase the domain name from a couple of websites. Select a name which is easy to share. Try to use .com or any other relevant TLD available.
You can even purchase the domain name and host from the same company.
Hosting Companies offers easy and one-click installation option of website development platforms like WordPress and Magento etc. After successful installation, select the built-in themes available or the premium themes. After getting done with the theme, install and activate it. Add your brand identity in it, make changes, add content/products, add widgets, and upload logo. Make your website chic and unique. It is the phase where you can let your imagination and creativity run wild.
Two days down, One day left.
Congratulations! It’s the big day for you. Finally, it’s the day to launch your website. But before doing that, make sure your website is mobile-friendly and SEO optimized. Once you are done with the building and optimizing, make your site live on the domain.
Now it’s time to tell people about it. Create your social media brand launch strategy, start a conversation within your field or industry, ask friends to share the words, build awareness for the brand and boost your website’s traffic.
There are some key points to remember:
Just follow these easy steps and you will be able to launch your own website within 3 days (if everything went smooth) by yourself or from any professional website design and development agency. We understand that the idea of building a website in 3 days might seem utopian but it’s not impossible. So, get started now!
Arpatech Website
Jan 9, 2017
What Technologies Are Needed To Build An E-Commerce Web...
Over the last many years, ecommerce has changed how people buy and sell online. The Internet offers a quick and easy way for people to buy things without having to visit a real store. An online store can reach customers anywhere in the world. Online businesses are rapidly developing an ecommerce website to face times of economic adversity by offering greater discounts, flat-rate delivery, loyalty programs, and other incentives. There are many popular ecommerce platforms that make it easy to run promotions and keep your customers happy. Finally, although the boom in online sales has also opened a potential avenue for fraud and scams, site-builders have managed to stay ahead by offering top-of-the-line site protection and payment security to keep the online marketplace as safe as possible.
Building a successful ecommerce site has become one of the most popular business trends. It may seem like a herculean task to set up an online business (not underestimating it either) or the actual e-commerce website development, but in real it isn’t that big of a hurdle as you’ve probably been hearing from most of the folks out there.
Doing online business means trades of goods from your Webstore to the customer, and trade means transactions. The idea of creating an online store raises few questions in everyone’s mind like ‘how’ and ‘who’ can build my e-commerce store? On what platforms can my ecommerce store be built? How can I find products to sell on my online store and how the transactions will be handled?
Like all business requires proper planning, discussion, backup plans, contingency plan, similarly before building any e-commerce store, you need proper planning about everything. Before starting, you need to think and list down all the possible aspects repercussions regarding online business.
Write your e-business plans. The e-commerce plans start with website goals. Who will be your targeted audience? What kind of products and services you want to offer. How much time and money you need to make your online presence. How will you handle shipping and payments?
Although there are many ecommerce and website hosting platforms, you must choose a perfect platform where your ecommerce store can be built.
It all seems difficult at first, but with every step, you will grasp things easily. A lot of the things which didn’t make sense at first would probably start resonating with time. Here’s a rundown of everything which requires opening an e-commerce store. Let’s get down to business:
There are many ecommerce tools and technologies required to build an e-commerce store and operate a successful online business. Both software and hardware technologies must be included in your e-business plan.
A web server is used to host an e-commerce website. All the Html, JavaScript, PHP files, databases, media files that make up the entire website are stored on this server. The web server runs on Windows or Linux operating system. Managing a web server is a very specific job. The website development companies host the site on their own web server or pay a hosting company to provide space on a secure web server.
When a user visits any website on a web browser, the web server knows the client is requesting some specific information. So it processes that request and serves the correct files to the client. The web browser then displays these files to the user.
There are many types of server software available including application software, database server, file server software, and cloud computing software. The popular web server software includes Apache and Windows IIS. Server software can either use on a physical server or on a virtual / cloud server.
A web authoring tool is used to create the front end of an e-commerce website. They range from basic HTML text editors (like Notepad++) to more complex graphic authoring tools and CMS (content management system) with built-in frameworks and debugging tools.
Html files are created by Dreamweaver along with the CSS (cascading style sheet) which enhance the visual appearance of the site. Another web authoring tool would be Visual Studio .net that can be used to make the sites which have integrated databases in it. Graphic design packages are also web authoring tools which design the skin for a user interface.
A database is an integral part of an e-commerce website. The database is used to store information about the products and services of the website such as pricing, description, image, details, and sales. In addition to this, the customer details are also stored in the database like what they ordered, their payment details, shipping details, and contact information.
It is necessary to program the website to connect securely to the database so that all the orders are processed correctly and your business runs smoothly. Technologies like PHP and MySQL are the communication route between the website and the DBMS (database management system).
TCP (transfer control protocol) and IP (internet protocol) defines as how computers should connect with each other through the internet and how they share information. Common TCP/IP protocols are HTTPS, HTTP, and FTP. We use these protocols to access the website without even realizing it. FTP (file transfer protocol) used to download files from a browser.
HTTPS (where the “S” stands for security) responsible for the secure communication between a server and a browser like an account information or personal information.
For an e-commerce website or online store, it is considered essential to provide a secure connection. SSL (secure sockets layer) and TLS (transport layer security) are the protocols associated with trust and security of any e-commerce website.
A web browser is a software application that is used to locate, receive and display content received from the web servers. Popular web browsers include Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari. Web developers and Web development agencies test the website see how it displays on multiple browsers across multiple devices and screen sizes before launching the website.
The Tip: To analyze website traffics, use tools like Google Analytics to get an idea as what browsers people are using and which one is the most popular.
Ports allow one device to connect with the other through a different and unique IP address. A device can have more than one port.
Port 25 (SMTP) is usually reserved for email. It is used to transmit data from remote email servers. If that port is blocked no emails can be sent. Some other common port numbers are 80(HTTP), 443 (HTTPS), 21 (FTP), 22 (SSH). Firewalls can often block a port to tighten the security.
Domain names link to a company or a brand. Successful e-commerce companies have recognizable domain names. If you have any smaller business then it is best to select the domain name as per your business name. This would help to rank highly in search engines.
If a business becomes successful online, it is important to protect the brand by doing multiple registrations of domain names such as .com, .net, .uk, .org, .co
Doing this ensures that no one can steal your business by copying your business model.
Here is a quick recap that will help you put everything into place.
1: Front End: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ajax, JQuery
2: Server Side Scripting: PHP, ASP
3: CMS: WordPress + Woo commerce, Magento, OpenCart, PrestaShop
4: Database: MySQL, MSSQL
Business development is a relatively vague term with a purpose and responsibility that differs from company to company. While the definition has been infinitely discussed, the ultimate objective of business development is to find strategic opportunities that create long-term value.
Websites and apps have become crucial for businesses and organizations to showcase their services, goods, and brands. To this end, you need a website that is well designed with feature-rich apps. Modern ecommerce web technologies have acquired a status where it’s not mandatory for businesses to develop e-commerce websites or apps right from scratch.
Here are the ten latest web technologies for e-commerce web development that will help you make a practical decision.
Till date, Magento is the most famous and reliable e-commerce platform when it comes to B2B & B2C customers. Magento is a powerful SEO friendly platform with multiple features that can be readily customized. Magento’s ability to integrate with third-party products & services makes it a favorite among the customer community.
For an e-commerce website, Shopify is a very popular SEO compliant and constantly evolving web technology. Besides an impressive professionally designed template for your storefront, there are several add-ons with responsive checkout being one of them. Another excellent feature is that Bitcoins can be used by your customers to make payments.
WooCommerce is undoubtedly an amazing choice for problem-free setups. It is a free e-commerce plugin that can integrate with WordPress enabling store owners to sell their products rapidly and easily. It is estimated that around 30 percent of online store owners rely on WooCommerce plugin not only to sell their products but also to ship them and collect payments.
BigCommerce is quite popular because it has several new features and functions like built-in blogging, improved SEO and customer support round the clock. Its primary benefits are a user-friendly interface with a comprehensive knowledge base.
OpenCart is a practical and easy open source CMS endorsed by outstanding developers for e-commerce. Its features include several simple back-end plug-ins. You can edit CSS within the admin. But OpenCart’s support system is not very detailed compared to other systems.
Drupal Commerce is an exceptional online content marketing platform for open-source content. It guarantees an excellent customer experience using the e-commerce website. It can easily incorporate SEO strategy and blog integration as it can integrate seamlessly with the Drupal CMS framework.
Volusion is commonly used owing to several features, one of which is an easy-to-use interface. Although Volusion’s add-on shop is not as big as Shopify and a blog setup is not available, but account experts provide you with personalized services. Opposed to a responsive layout, the mobile site is used by Volusion stores.
OsCommerce is one of the first open source systems available with a big support database and an active forum. Its prominence is due to its easy installation and user-friendly interface. Although some consumers consider OsCommerce’s design and software update to be a little outdated store owner have complete control over their store and database.
SimpleCart is best suited to small online stores ‘ needs. It operates on HTML having a small footprint but supporting multiple currencies.
Squarespace enables you to design attractive websites with images and rich templates. With Squarespace, customers have complete control over inventories, product variants, coupon generation, and shipping setup. Squarespace inculcates all the essential tools to create a universal e-commerce store.
Regardless of the maturity of your ecommerce presence, you need to keep looking ahead to guarantee future success. To raise your ecommerce efforts in 2019, you should benefit from these three evolving trends.
Effective marketing is about enhancing your messaging to appeal to your target audience, but messaging won’t matter if the audience never sees it. It’s important to meet your audience members where they spend most of their time. In other words, if your customer base is online, it’s on social media one-third of that time. Therefore, you’re missing a great opportunity if you are not selling on social media.
Although diverse reality technologies have yet to see conventional adoption, they have made huge efforts to that end. Just as the internet, augmented reality and virtual reality will be a total game changer for retail. While augmented reality might not be everywhere yet, ecommerce retailers that effectively integrate AR capabilities into the shopping experience tend to gain a substantial advantage over their competitors.
Compared to conventional retail shopping, ecommerce stores have virtually no personal interaction. Online stores have no personnel who can endorse products based on your interests, sensitivities, and predilections. To imitate this experience, ecommerce businesses influence personalization opportunities through the shopping drive. Just as online course providers are substituting the need for in-person teaching, ecommerce is swapping the need for in-store retail experiences.
There are multiple e-commerce tools and technologies. It’s always good to know what resources are actually required to build an ecommerce store from start-to-finish. Professional ecommerce website design process is a documented outline of the steps needed to be taken from start to finish, which divides and categorizes the work and then breaks these high-level sections into tasks and resources. But once you have gone through the complete guide to the technologies needed for building an e-commerce site, things will become easier and systematic and will make your ecommerce development process smooth and fluid. While there’s been a lot of work on the growth and development of ecommerce, there are aspects of the technology that needs to be unearthed.
Arpatech Website
Jan 6, 2017
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