Categories
Monetization

Shopping Carts and Online Stores

Setting up an internet shop can be very confusing and bewildering, especially if you are someone with very limited technical knowledge. With hoards and hoards of solutions available, offered by thousands upon thousands of website design companies and software developers, it is easy to choose a system that may not necessarily suit your business. Many companies have spent a lot of money on their ecommerce website solution, only to find that it does not work for their business. Unfortunately for them, this usually means a trip back to the drawing board, arguments with their developer and inevitably the need to spend more money so that  the site will work in exactly the way they want to.

So what can be done to make sure that the shopping cart solution you choose is the right one for your business? First of all, you must have a clear idea of what you want to achieve from the site. Spend some time to make good notes and write down a clear and concise plan and method of operation for your site. If will help very much if you take a good look at your competitor’s websites, especially the successful ones.
Visit your competitors sites, browse through the various sections, making notes about the  structure of the pages ,the site navigation and anything else of interest. Ask yourself questions as you check through the site. Are you able to quickly find the items you are searching for? Is the checkout system simple to use? These are just some of the elements you should be looking at. Compile as much information as you can, take the best constituents and combine them with your own ideas to create a well defined and structured plan of what you need. Once you have put together a well thought out site plan with all the required features, it will make up good a brief that can be worked on by a website designer.

How you go about turning your site plan into an actual website will depend on the budget you have to spend. There are many options that can be explored, from shopping cart software that will enable you to build your online store yourself through ready built, off the shelf solutions right up to completely bespoke programmed websites built from the ground up by a competent web development company.
What ever route you take, you should spend time researching the various systems and improving your knowledge so that you can make the right decision before committing  yourself to spending lots of time or money on your project.

Although you can spend a small fortune getting your on line store up a running, you really don’t have to. There are simple to use systems which use tried and tested technology to get you up and running in a short period of time. Many of these systems don’t require you to have any technical knowledge either.

To take credit card payment for goods online you will have to make use of a web based payment gateway. There are many to choose from but all of the payment processing solutions make profits by charging you a percentage of the transaction fee, so you must make sure to take this into consideration when calculating you profit margins.  Look for an  ecommerce systems that is readily configured to use the payment gateway you choose. This way, once you have opened your merchant, account all you need do to start to take credit card payments through your website is enter your merchant account number into a web page form in your site admin.

Categories
Monetization

Using Landing Pages And Why You Need One

All the products that you want to sell online are ready. You have already signed up with the Google Adsense program or with other affiliate marketing programs and you have already prepared the ad you want to post on your affiliate’s site. Your mind is now set to being the next most successful online businessman. But is there anything else that you might have forgotten to prepare? Maybe none. But how about your landing pages? Are they all set for your business?

Landing pages are simply web pages where visitors are directed to whenever they click a result in a web search or whenever they click a web ad. For affiliate marketing, landing pages would refer to the web page where you, as a merchant, would want your potential customer to be directed after clicking your ad on your affiliate’s website. Landing pages are, at most times, nothing really different from other web pages in a particular website, especially if the said website is an e-commerce site. Some online businessmen would even use the homepage of their websites as the landing page for their ads. Are these businessmen making a big mistake? Or should you follow their method in creating landing pages for their ads?

Well, you can always follow what most online retailers do, directing their potential customers to the homepages of their websites. But if you want to achieve something more from your online business, and if you want to earn a lot of profits, you better create a special landing page for your web ads. Why? Here are a few reasons why you need to use landing pages for your web ads. And take note, it would do you a lot better if you create a great landing page than a so-so one.

Reason no. 1: It is the only way you earn conversions in an affiliate marketing program.

There are a variety of affiliate marketing programs today, but most of these programs let the merchant pay the affiliate in a pay per click basis. Basically, all you have to do is sign up with the program and submit your ad. The program owner would then distribute your ad to various affiliates who would then place your ad on their websites. Whenever your ad is clicked, a visitor would be directed to your landing page and you would have to pay the affiliate for his service.

As a merchant, you earn in an affiliate program through conversions that is whenever a visitor that is directed to your site actually buys a product on your site. Without these conversions, you actually earn nothing from the program. Also, the more visitors that your affiliates have directed to your site, the larger would your expense be. And the only way that you can recover from these expenses is through conversions.

Now, you sure won’t get any conversion if you have posted an ad on your affiliate’s site without an actual landing page for the potential customer to be redirected into. It’s just like advertising a product without actually having a store to sell your product. Your advertisement may be enticing enough to encourage people to purchase a product, but without the landing page, how will they know how to purchase the product

It is therefore important to have landing pages for your ads because it is the only way for you to earn something in an affiliate program. Without landing pages, all you do is spend money paying your affiliates without actually getting anything in return.

Reason no. 2: Other web pages may just not be enough.

Many people make the mistake of making their website’s homepage as the landing page for their ads. The same is true for those who make use of other pages like a “contact us” page or a product page. Homepages are often designed to serve multiple users and contains a lot of links to other pages or to other websites. The same is with the other two pages mentioned. If you want to be successful in an affiliate program, we’re sure that you don’t want your landing page to cater to the needs of various people, most of which may not be really interested with your product.

When choosing a landing page, you must always have the customer directed into that page in mind. Therefore, your landing page must be relevant to the keywords and the contents you placed on your ad. It is also important that the landing page can induce your visitor to take action that is to purchase your product or at least provide leads for potential customers.

Final Word

You probably entered into an affiliate marketing program with these things in mind: to save on advertising expenses and to gain more profit. But if you get into an affiliate marketing program without actually having a landing page, you’ll end up paying too much without getting anything in return. So if you still don’t have a landing page for your ads, you better start creating one now. And don’t get us wrong; it isn’t enough for you to have just a landing page it should be a great landing page!

Categories
Featured

What is WordPress Child Theme & When to Use One

What is a WordPress Child Theme

A WordPress child theme is a WordPress theme that inherits its functionality from another WordPress theme, the parent theme. Child themes are often used when you want to customize or tweak an existing WordPress theme without losing the ability to upgrade that theme. In the past, there was no easy way of updating WordPress themes without losing all the custom styling and changes that you had made. This becomes chaos when all the sudden you find out a widely used script in popular themes has a major exploit, and you need to update your themes ASAP. It becomes a tough choice because on one hand, you would lose all the custom styles if you update. On the other hand, you risk your site getting hacked if you don’t update fast enough.

The core team and the community decided to solve this problem by introducing the concept of parent theme and child theme. A child theme in WordPress would inherit all the functionality, features, and the code of the parent theme without making any changes to the parent theme itself. This allowed users to change the styling of the parent theme and add/modify features without losing the ability to update the parent theme.

In theory, any WordPress theme can have child themes however not all WordPress themes are good parent themes. A parent theme with limited functionality and features is not exactly an ideal parent theme candidate in most cases. We will talk about the exceptions later on in the article.

A good parent theme also known as theme frameworks usually contains its own action hooks and filters. This allows designers and developers to create a robust custom WordPress site using child themes in a fraction of time.

Why do people use WordPress Child Themes?

Designers and developers use child themes to speed up their development. When using a good parent theme, you can drastically reduce the time it takes for you to create a WordPress site. All good parent themes aka theme frameworks offer tons of functionality and customization options, so you don’t have to code everything. DIY users often create child themes to tweak an existing theme without losing the ability to update the parent theme if needed.

Creating a WordPress child theme can be as simple as creating a new style.css file in a new folder. All you really need is one line in your new style.css header that defines the template (see the Codex for reference). A robust child theme can have just as many template files as the parent theme if not more. A child theme can have template files that are not even available in the parent theme.

When Should You Use a Child Theme?

Decisions

The decision to use a child theme often depends on your needs. Most sites that we build for ourselves and our clients are child themes of the Genesis theme framework. In rare cases when the project is too complex or too simple, then we build it as a standalone custom WordPress theme. As WordPress developers, we need to streamline our workflow while creating quality themes. Creating a child theme of Genesis framework helps us accomplish just that.

For users we recommend child themes only if you find yourself constantly adding new functions to your theme’s functions.php file and/or constantly adding/modifying the style.css file of your theme. In these cases, we highly recommend that you use a child theme. A short while ago during our WordPress meetup talk, one of the members asked us what if you are only adding custom styles? Is it better to use a child theme or a custom CSS plugin?

The answer to that depends on how savvy and comfortable you are with technology. If you are only modifying the styles of a few elements, then using a custom CSS plugin works just fine. However, if you find yourself changing the entire color scheme, moving things around in the CSS, etc, then you definitely should consider using a child theme.

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General

Improving Your Sites Look and Feel

Driving traffic to your website is important. But it is likewise important to ensure that your web design makes your visitors stay. After all, what is the use of spending thousands of dollars and wasting lots of effort and time in creating a unique product, securing top rankings on search engines and creating a hundred page site if your visitors don’t stay once they found your page?

There are a lot of factors to consider in creating a successful site. First of all, your site should be easy to navigate. Don’t make your visitors click on ten links and scroll down each page just to find what they are looking for. All pages on the site must not be five clicks away from the homepage. Visitors will enjoy surfing your site if it is easy for them to find the information that they want.

Second of all, your site must load fast. This is often one of the biggest problems on the Internet. Some sites take more than twenty minutes to load and some visitors don’t have the time and patience to wait for a long time. As a result they click away from your site. One of the best ways to make your site load fast is to use more text and fewer graphics. Keep in mind that not all visitors have fast connection so you have to design your site the way everyone can view it quickly.

Third of all, always remember your purpose in designing your website. Ask yourself, do visitors say wow when they see your site and then click away? Or do they stay and surf your site for a while? Does your site sell or just impress people?

It does not really matter is your visitors are impressed by your graphics and animations. What you have to keep in mind is your purpose. If you want your site to sell you have to design it in such a way that your visitors get interested in your offer and are encouraged to buy.

Fourth of all, use the right colors. Color is a very important to your website. When they are used correctly they can highlight important points and add clarity and impact to your message. But when they are used incorrectly, it can confuse your visitors and compromise your message.

Keep in mind that current trends play a big role in color schemes. A good strategy is to design your site in such a way that if a color change has to be made, it can be done so easily.

If you are able to follow this tips you will not only attract many visitors but you will also encourage them to stay for a while and maybe you can turn them into paying customers.

Categories
Featured

WordPress Theme Framework Explained

Recently, one of our users asked us the question what is a WordPress theme framework? Before answering her question we did a quick search, and the results were surprising. There was not a single comprehensive article that explained what is a WordPress theme framework. Majority of the articles were sites listing the top free WordPress theme frameworks or WordPress theme frameworks compared etc. Then there were some theme framework websites ranking among the top. In this article, we will do our best to answer questions like what is a WordPress theme framework, what type of theme frameworks exist, why do people use WordPress theme frameworks, advantages and disadvantages of using a theme framework, should you use a theme framework, and lastly what is our pick for the best WordPress theme framework.

What is a WordPress Theme Framework?

The term WordPress theme framework often refers to a code library that is used to facilitate development of a theme. In the old days of WordPress, there were some crucial problems with the way how themes were developed and maintained. There was no good way of upgrading WordPress themes without losing all the custom styling options. There was no way to prevent copying and pasting of the same functionality code in all themes. While these two issues might not seem like a problem to an average user, these can be disastrous for a few reasons. What if you realized that the same code that you had been using in all of your themes had a security exploit. Even more important, what if this theme was something that you publicly released for others to download and customize. Yes, that’s chaos waiting to happen. The core team and community decided to fix the issues mentioned above by introducing the concept of Parent Theme and Child Theme.

WordPress theme frameworks are intended to be used as a parent theme template where all the functionality resides. Developers can then create a child theme to add custom styling while leaving the functionality aspects of it to the framework. This allows for a centralized location where all the functions are hosted. If the core development team decide to deprecate a WordPress function, or there is a bug found in a specific theme framework, then it is extremely easy to push out an update without modifying anything the child theme has. This method allows you to keep the “framework” of your site strong without modifying how it looks.

What type of Theme Frameworks exist?

Well there are Free one and paid ones… Ok seriously, there are a few type of frameworks that exist. There are complete drag & drop frameworks like Headway Themes that empower users to create everything visually without any knowledge of code. Then there are pseduo-drag drop frameworks like Pagelines and Thesis. These frameworks allow users to drag and drop pre-define sections (similar to how WordPress widgets work). Obviously anyone can define custom sections using the available hooks and filters offered by the frameworks. Then there are theme frameworks that are full of options. Themify and most others fall in this category. Lastly, there are the theme frameworks that are built for developers to get a head start without the clutter and bloat like Genesis by StudioPress.

Categories
General

Linux vs. Windows Web Hosting, Does it Make a Difference?

One of the most confusing decisions someone new to web hosting will have to make is which platform their server should be on. There are a number of different choices out there but the main two are Linux and Windows web servers. There are also a lot of sources of information about hosting, but the majority of them are tainted by the author’s biased personal opinion unfortunately confusing the issue. Having just put in some solid hours researching the topic I have come to the conclusion that in general it quite probably does not matter which server you use. For the majority of people it will be far more important to choose a really good web host than to worry about the server-type that they implement.

Microsoft developed and owns the Windows operating system. Linux is open source and generally free. This means it can often be more expensive to set up and run a Windows server. However, this fact doesn’t really affect you unless you are actually setting up a server for yourself and if you’re reading this article then I’m guessing that it’s safe to assume you’re not. This article is going to offer information for those trying to decide which hosting company to go with. The cost involved in running a server does not affect the cost of a web-hosting package as much as you may think. Despite the general opinion that Windows servers are more expensive to run, buying a Windows hosting package can often turn out to be just as cheap or even cheaper than an equivalent Linux hosting package.

Some people naturally assume that because their PC runs Windows they need to buy a Windows hosting package. This isn’t true. Access to your web account will most likely be through FTP or a control panel and both servers support these methods. The main difference is that some of the FTP commands are slightly different between Linux and Windows and some FTP programs will be designed with one or the other in mind. This means you may occasionally find that when you try and get your FTP program to do something it returns an error message, but it won’t happen very often.

Your choice of server platforms should be dictated by the use to which you intend to put it. The majority of web features run fine on both platforms including PHP, mySQL, POP3 etc. If you intend to create your site using ASP, FrontPage, the .NET environment, Windows Streaming Media, Access, MSSQL, or any of the other Microsoft proprietary technologies then you probably need to use a Windows host. There is limited support for a number of these technologies in Linux, but they can be expensive and are usually lacking in features. It is probably worth considering the fact that if you use server specific technologies and then change hosts you’ll have a much harder time of it than if you use technologies that can be run on any system. Having it run generic technologies removes the need to focus on specifics and allows you to focus on the quality of service itself.

The reliability and stability of the different platforms have been the topic of many long arguments. The main reason that Windows is seen as being insecure is that it is the most widely used operating system for home PC’s. People spend more time looking for flaws in the most common system. With Linux being the most common server type, it has a surprising number of successful hack attempts made on it. In the end the security of both platforms comes down to the competency of the system administrators. If you are security minded then you’ll do better to make sure that the hosting company is reputable and highly skilled than to worry about the server they use.

In terms of performance there’s not a huge difference between the two servers. Linux reportedly performs faster because Windows (as usual) attempts to offer an ‘all in one’ package instead of the extendable Linux implementation. You’ll generally not notice a difference but if performance is of utmost importance to you then maybe this will influence your decision.

I’ve come to the conclusion that unless you are specifically using features that are unique to one platform or another your time will be much better spent looking for a really good quality host than a really good quality server. Developers are constantly improving both Linux and Windows so they should be fairly close in terms of features, security, and reliability for a long time. It’s the people implementing them that you should be basing your decision on.

Categories
General

The Importance Of Content – Adding A Weblog To Your Site

Continuing my theme of how as a small business you can improve your search engine results. In a previous article I extolled the virtues of article writing and in this one I shall consider the practicalities and usefulness of adding a weblog to your site in order to drive more traffic to your web pages.

I am presuming that you have optimised your site, added numerous pages of content and update or add to that content at least on a weekly basis. All of this I did with our own website but still the search engines only visited the site about every 4 – 6 weeks. So although our content was being added to sometimes on a daily basis I couldn’t induce the Google spider in particular to visit the site more often even though I was submitting sitemaps to Google.which informed it of these updates.

I then started reading about the benefits to businesses of having a weblog attached to the site. SEO’s were and still do wax lyrical about how search engines just love weblogs. On this basis I decided to give it a go and looked around at the various free blog sites and finally settled on http://www.blogger.com as this site allowed the blog to be integrated into the website and offered a multitude of templates to choose from. So I chose my template and went through the process of integration with the website which is a very simple and easy process to follow. The next step was to start writing the blog. Very quickly I discovered that it was the ideal vehicle for announcing new services, new products and new branch openings as well as informing the readers of our day to day activities and experiences. All of it is excellent content and the SEO’s were quite correct in that the search engine spiders do love it. So much so that the googlebot spider visits everyday to update the web pages and the weblog. This now means that when my content changes or new pages are added they are immediately indexed by Google. This has done wonders for the search engine placement of the site.

The second benefit that SEO’s talked about was the increased number of links that having a blog would bring in. This part I didn’t quite believe as I couldn’t see how it would do this. I am still not certain of how and why it does attract links but the truth of the matter is that it does. The articles and the weblog seem to inhabit a world of their own and they certainly take on a life which you have no control over. However the combined effect is to boost your own content, attract search engines to visit your site frequently, increase the number of backlinks to your site and increase the number of visitors. All of which are of tremendous benefit to you as a business.

The latest figures I saw published for the number of businesses with weblogs was only 2%. So all you small businesses out there with a website, get writing articles and add a weblog to your site. Keep that updated, preferably on a daily basis, and you will soon see dramatic effects both on your visitor numbers and your search engine placement.

Categories
General

Top Tips for Web Design

Content is King. The most important thing to remember about popular web sites is that they are always rich in content.

Stick to your subject. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Keep your goal in mind. Creating a web site is challenging and fun. The temptation to put as many bells and whistles as you can on a page is almost overwhelming. But unless your site is involved with bells and whistles, don’t do it! The purpose of designing a site carefully is not to make it look cool, or win awards. It’s to accomplish the intended goal of the site. It’s a good idea to write down the goal of your the site before starting any design work. It will help you make design designs for the site as a whole.

First impressions count! Think about the message you are sending to your customer. The first page of your web site should be a concise description of the website. Don’t make this page too busy – entice visitors to dig deeper into your site through the use of inviting text and interesting graphics. If you are serious about your business, buy your own domain name and don’t use a “free” hosting service.

Design sites, not pages. Your primary concern should be the site’s overall design. When starting to design a new site from scratch, you should try to create a design that will make sense to users, has a consistent look and feel, and is not to difficult to extend in the future. The consistency of design of a site is one of the factors that differentiates amateur sites from professional ones.

Make it easy to get around your site. Your customer should be able to easily navigate to any page in your web from any page in your page. It’s important to link in a consistent, well thought out manner that users can learn to navigate. Have clear links to your pages and, if are selling a product, make it easy for people to buy it! Show your business name, address, phone number and E-mail address on each an every page. Invite customers to contact you with their questions or comments. Add links to other sites only when necessary, or on a special links page at the end of your site. You want visitors to go through your site before surfing off to another!

View your site through the eyes of a stranger. Once you have completed you site outline, view it in other browsers. Does it look like you wanted it to look?

Don’t forget to tell the world about your new site. Make sure that your URL is on all your company business cards, letter heads, brochures, phone systems, etc. Swap links with other related web sites and consider banner advertising. List your site with the major search engines, but read their rules of submission first!

Keep your site current. Come up with a reason for people to visit and revisit your pages and recommend them to their friends. This could be a series of articles giving tips, a daily cartoon, or other attention catching event. The words most likely to attract visitors are: Free and Special. Be sure you offer something of value if you uses these words!

Survey says… Ask users about your site. Create a survey and give a reward for responding. Ask friends to check out the site, then grill them on what they thought about it. This can be valuable input on what improvements are needed. Often, users can be thrown by things a designer might never see as a problem. Don’t ever stop looking for ways to improve your website. Subscribe to professional E-zines, and keep surfing the web doing market research. What are your competitors doing better? Ask for feedback from your friends, relatives and customers. They will often see things with fresh eyes.