All You Need To Know About Progressive Web Applications

Progressive Web Applications are the perfect combination of web and mobile applications. These apps are specially developed by using the latest technologies to deliver to the users, a mobile app experience on the web screen. These progressive web apps are compatible with all the browsers for uninterrupted experience on all the platforms. The prime highlight about the progressive web apps is they have combined features of mobile applications like notifications, push messages, etc., with the combination on web features like search engine indexable URLs, deploying servers, etc. As mentioned, it has mobile app characteristics in it but progressive web apps need not be downloaded through any of the application stores like Google Play and Apple Store. It’s clear that they are web apps but they can also run on your mobile phone. Just launch them your mobile devices like any other apps.

Progressive web apps affect many other platforms, let discuss them

  1. Compatibility

    – Progressive web apps are considered as the most versatile app. They give the users the flawless experience on any of the devices they use. So now users can operate their favorite app on either on smartphones or any browser like Chrome, Mozilla, etc. Responsive design made the users choose progressive web apps over native apps.

 

  1. Speed

    – SEO is a marketing practice done by the majority of the business to rank higher in Google against its competitors. They are certain criteria’s which need to be fulfilled for ranking higher and maintain it. One of the major factors is the Speed in mobile search. Progressive web apps have the lowest time any app can have to load. Also, if the user is offline or has a slow internet connection, these app work. This is due to the cache which is left when the PWA is once run on that device. It reduces the site speed of that webpage as well as loads the page faster.

 

  1. Engagement

    – High loading speed eventually leads to a higher number of engagements on progressive web apps. Get notifications on multiple devices about the trends and news surely attracts the users to get involved in that topic. Due to the high rate of pros for progressive web apps like compatibility, easy navigation, faster loading time it becomes easy for the businesses to achieve their target audience, which is a high conversion rate. Engaging more people on your progressive web apps directly leads to higher ranking on search engines.

 

  1. Search Engine Friendly

    – Progressive web apps satisfy multiple criteria of a search engine, one of them is the URL factor. PWAs have the simplified pattern of the URL structures. Also, as they are compatible with mobile, a no different set of URLs are need to be created for the mobile version. The second important thing is security and secured progressive web apps. It’s the mandatory part to have the HTTPS enabled. This eventually gains the trust of the users for surfing in your web apps.

 

It certain that Progressive Web App is a better performer in terms of speed, compatibility, engagement as well as search engine friendly.

 

Cross Platform Apps Vs Native Mobile Apps

It’s been a long-term debate between the developers for Cross-Platform and Native Mobile App. As both of the technologies are been evolving with time. Each of them has its own pros and cons. Depending upon that factors the requirement changes for users, developers, platforms and even the mobile application owners. Sometimes the preference of the platform depends upon the developers. As they are aware of the users and app functions more than owners.

Let’s discuss each type separately

Cross-Platform Mobile Applications

Cross-Platform Mobile Apps are versatile apps which are compatible with multiple operating that means compatible on both Android and iOS platforms from a single app. Also, there can be used on any device like mobile and tablet. Cross-Platform Mobile Applications, in short, are nothing but the native applications developed and then wrapped with cross-platform, so they can match the growing and variety of devices.

Cross-Platform apps are mainly developed using HTML5, JavaScript and CSS. Some of the Cross-Platform Apps development tools are PhoneGap, Ionic, Xamarin, React Native, Flutter, and many others. All these tools have the same end product of developing the apps in the easiest form. A very well know phrase which is commonly used for Cross-Platform mobile apps is “build once, deploy everywhere”

 

There are certainly pros and cons for Cross-Platform Mobile Applications. Some of them are

  • Development time required for Cross-Platform mobile apps is less.
  • Lower time due to the reuse of the code or automated tools.
  • Cost Efficient, as one app, is built for multiple operating systems.
  • Compatible with both Operating Systems.
  • The number is users is high due to multiple operating systems.
  • Frequency of rollouts of the update is higher.

 

 

Native Mobile Applications

Native Mobile Apps can run only on a single operating system, either on iOS, Android or Windows. Mobile App developed for the Android platform do not run on iOS and vice versa. Compared to Cross-Platform Mobile Application, Native Apps are a bit tilted to the easy development side. As they only need to fit into the criteria of either Android or iOS checklist.

The main Integrated Development Environment i.e. IDEs used for Android developers use Android Studio and iOS developers use Apple’s XCode. They are developed with the purpose of functioning on a specific platform and to help programming languages for respective platforms. Native apps make the complete utilization of the hardware of the device being used for operating it.

Native Mobile application performs very well for the Games apps. As the usage of the device is completely done by this platform apps. As native apps are built for only one device and all the criteria are being filled up. This gives the user the best performance and experience.

 

Pros and Cons of Native Mobile Applications
  • The time required for the development of the native app is higher.
  • Coding of the app is always unique
  • The costing of the app goes a bit higher, as two different versions needs to be developed for different operating systems.
  • Consumes internal device lesser space.
  • Responsive time is less due to most criteria fulfilled.
  • Easily meet the standards of Operating Systems, due to one platform coding.

Choosing a platform totally depends upon the requirements of the app owner and the app user. Both of them have their own pros and cons which make them apart and unique.

5 Web Design Mistakes Your Business Needs To Avoid

As a web design and development company in Pune, we do a lot of work designing our client’s websites. Surprisingly though, we also spend a lot of time re-designing old websites and giving them a fresh look. Another reason we get so many website re-design requests is because of the relatively common web design mistakes that are previously committed. In today’s topic, we’re going to talk about the 5 most common web design mistakes most companies make that should be avoided at all costs.

Common Web Design Mistakes To Avoid

1. Not optimizing your website for mobile

One of the top cardinal sins of web design since 2016 is not having your website optimized for the smaller screens. Since 2016 Google has been focusing more and more on a better mobile-first experience and for good reason. People spend so much of their time on their phone that it only makes sense that your business should be represented well on the phone as well. People don’t take that into consideration while designing the website. They design the website to look unnecessarily flashy, too heavy with a lot of graphics and photos, but all that leads to is a heavy website that takes too long too long both on mobile and desktops and that the users don’t enjoy looking at.

2. Not optimizing your website for SEO

Now you may be wondering how Web Design affects your website SEO. Well if you read the previous point carefully you’ll notice how speed is a factor in both web design and SEO. Now a faster loading website won’t necessarily give you a higher ranking, but a slow website will definitely be penalized compared to its faster competitors. Web design plays a role in SEO also because if your site is designed well, your customers will love to visit it and spend more time on it. The more time they spend the better signals they send Google and the higher your rankings will progress.

3. Simplify the Layout

Another common error that most web design companies in Pune tend to make it that they make the layout of a website, web page too complicated and complex to show the effort they’ve put into the design. We at CodePlateau believe that the hardest design is a simple one where a lot of different elements work together seamlessly. Of course, clients tastes might differ from time to time but in most circumstances, we would definitely recommend something clean and simple.

4. Use Clear Communication

Within the first 10 seconds or less of having your customer visit your site, he should be able to tell what business you’re in. Even if he has never heard of your business ever before, the communication on your website should be crystal clear. While we’re on the subject of communication, we also need to talk about the typography you will be used as part of your web design aesthetics. Using clear easy to read fonts will go a long way in helping your content consumers enjoy their time on your site.

5. Not using Social Media Icons

People love sharing what they love and you as a business owner should provide your customers with every opportunity to share your website or your blogs with them. You can do this by adding your businesses social links in the footer on your website while also providing sharing options across the blogs and other content you may have. The more viral your content, the more exposure for your business.

Conclusion

It’s easy to summarize how to avoid making web design mistakes by always remembering one mantra for web design. When designing a website, always have the customer in your mind before anything else, design only for him and you’ll go a long way to make your business successfully online. If you need help with your company website, get in touch with the professionals.

What Is GIT?

What Is GitHub?
If you are a developer you’ve definitely heard of GitHub and if you’re friends with developers you’ve definitely wondered what Github is and why is it so popular among your developer friends. Today we’re going to detail out what is GitHub, what are the different parts of GitHub and how most developers use GitHub to build better projects for businesses.

But to understand GitHub you need to know what a GIT is. A Git is an open-sourced version control system that was invented by the same person who invented Linux – Linus Trovalds. As any developer will tell you there is no such thing as a perfectly coded app or website. Each requires several iterations that improve the app as you keep making updates. A version control system enables you to keep track of all the different changes and to know who has made the changes. It’s also an amazing platform to help people collaborate on different projects from around the world.

Now there are multiple version control systems available online such as SubVersion, CVS, Mercurial, etc, but since GitHub has the best features, it has become the most dominant version control system.

Now while GitHub is predominantly used by IT people that what most people assume it is for, but there are plenty of opportunities for non-IT personnel to use GitHub such as when editing a document and creating multiple version of the same before collating it into one major piece.

What Is GitLab?
Gitlab is an open-source tool to help companies manage their software development. What usually happens in most cases is that Apps are built-in parts, with people now able to move to step 2 without the completion of step 1. What GitLabs helps you accomplish is that developers from your organization can work on the project concurrently ensuring faster delivery and quicker optimization to the code since it is available for all to see. It allows for collaboration from multiple teams. It gives you a platform to manage, create, verify package, and deliver and secure your applications. The features in GitLab make it one of the best applications for your entire DevOps Lifecycle. The features in GitLab and GitHub are pretty similar with only a few minor differences with the nomenclature. The only major difference with GitHub and GitLab is that GitHub does not allow for free Private Code Repositories while you can store unlimited free Private repositories and work on them in GitLabs. There is also an enterprise version of GitLabs with provides your additional features.

Since GitLab is relatively newer it still has a long way to go to catch up to the popularity to the GitHub.

What Is BitBucket?
Like Github and GitLabs, BitBucket is another repository for code. It is a competitor to GitHub and GitLabs with comparative features. It allows developers in your organization to collaborate on projects, test out the code, and deploy the code right from the platform. It also has some new-age features like integration with Trello and Jira. In-built task creation and reminders on the spot. Unlike GitHub, you can also create several private code repositories for upto 5 team members and also buy the premium version for additional team members or pay per team member added to the BitBucket. BitBucket also allows you to secure your code by assigning various levels of permissions to the different members in your team.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to contribute to open source projects then an application like GitHub would make more sense. If you’re looking to build private tools and applications then you can choose either of GitLabs or BitBucket. Each come with its own pros and cons, and from an organizational point of view many would like to pick BitBucket, but as a web development company in Pune, we always go with what works best for our developers. If you have a web design and development project you need help with, be sure to get in touch with us today.

Updates of AMP in 2019

Since 2016 Google has been giving businesses an opportunity to focus on their websites mobile experience. The release of Accelerated Mobile Pages was a clear indicator of how Google was trying to prioritize the mobile-first approach. If you do have an online business are not optimizing your website for a faster, smoother, & richer mobile experience, then you’re definitely setting yourself up for failure. In this blog, we will be looking at the evolution of AMP & its current state of progress at the moment.

The Evolution Of AMP

As I’ve mentioned before AMP was launched during 2016. It was an open-source project by Google which combined the development efforts of millions of people to ensure faster delivery of data on mobile pages. What AMP does is, it removes all the “unnecessary” clutter that might be delaying the loading of the pages. From what you can see, you’ll notice AMP pages will be without too many images, they’ll have a simple font. Under the hood, the CSS will be optimized for faster delivery of data, HTML and JS code will be delivered as a first in first out basis.

History Of AMP

Since releasing in 2016 AMP have been the talk of the town among Digital Marketers all around the world. Digital Marketing professionals and tech enthusiasts are both looking at AMP pages from the perspective of gains. While marketing professionals see it as another method of lead gen through articles, the IT dept is looking for ways to go even faster. But lead forms were not always available and have only been recently introduced leading to a spike in the popularity of AMP pages, ensuring 900,000 businesses online are currently using AMP for some if not all their pages.

While AMP pages were initially built to deliver news faster, companies have adopted it to suit their requirements for a variety of different pages. Brands are focused on AMP developments for their product pages as they’ve seen a significant bump if buy-ins from the customer based on faster data delivery. Especially e-commerce players who say an increase of up to 20% in their sales figures as compared to companies that did not use AMP.

All AMP Updates of 2019

In the first quarter of 2019, some interesting updates were released by the AMP team. Let’s look at some of the most interesting one’s below:

1. Video Optimization on AMP

One of the most important updates to AMP in 2019 has been the video optimization efforts that have been taken. As a digital marketing company in Pune helping small business access the gains of AMP, we know the importance of video in a marketing strategy. Three new updates have been made,
i. Videos can now be docked so that the user can continue to scroll as they are reading their content
ii. You can now install a video player that has AMP video interface features you might need as a business
iii. You can use the AMP video optimization to run ads and keep a track of them on your website

These three features have really come as a blessing to video marketers, especially who were recently seeing a decline in watch times across the internet.

2. Input Masking

Lead gen on AMP pages is just in a nascent stage but it is still an extremely necessary step that needed to be taken. One large step forward for AMP lead gen pages is that you can now customize what you form should look like to a large degree.

3. Smoother List Scrolling

Since the internet is filled with the list, & one of the most common actions users take on their phone is to scroll, AMP has now enabled smoother scrolling options while the page is in development. You can set the grid and, resize the containers to provide the best experience to the users.

Conclusion

Very few businesses in India are taking advantage of AMP pages as there are not too many digital marketing companies in Pune that are technically capable of providing that solution. If you want to know what CodePlateau can do for your business, get in touch with us today!

Laravel: A New Era in PHP Framework 2019

If you are in the business of building web applications for your clients or businesses you might have flirted with the idea of using several different types of PHP frameworks. CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Yii, and Phalcon are some of the most popular PHP Frameworks but there is one that goes above and beyond these tools and one that is our favorite here at CodePlateau and that is the Laravel PHP Framework. But what makes the Laravel PHP framework better and different from all the others? Let’s take a closer look.

Why Laravel Is The Best PHP Framework For 2019

1) Object Oriented Libraries

One of the reasons Laravel is as popular as it is (more than 1 million sites use Laravel, and it currently has more than 51,192 stars on GitHub) that it has Object Oriented libraries and plenty of pre-installed ones. Surprisingly none of these libraries are part of any other major PHP frameworks. It’s easy implementation and advanced features has made it a success across the world and you have access to tools like password reset, CSRF protection, encryption as well as authentication.

2) Authentication Techniques

As discussed above Laravel provides several object-oriented libraries of which authentication is a major item. It provides a very simple and straightforward method of implementing authentication techniques across platforms. Even the control access to resources as well as the manner in which authorization logic is organized is very simply configured which makes Laravel one of the easiest frameworks to adopt.

3) Security

One of the biggest concerns businesses has, especially those that work directly with customers, is the threat of data security. Even companies like Facebook have come under the scanner for leaking their user’s data. Laravel takes a unique look at security and provides a really clever response. Security is covered within the framework itself. Instead of saving passwords in the plain text they use salted and hashed passwords. It avoids injection attacks by avoiding user injection of <script> tags. Overall it’s one of the safest PHP frameworks to work within 2019.

4) Artisan

Apart from the business reasons many companies choose to work with Laravel, there are plenty of development reasons that developers have chosen Laravel as the best PHP framework in 2019. Laravel provides an in-built command line tool called Artisan, which allows programmers to avoid tedious, repetitive tasks and rather focus on the tougher parts of the build.

5) Database Migrations

Change is the only constant, in life and in programming. Sometimes 1000’s of lines of code will need to be updated due to a feature change, or you’ll have found a better way to manage the database, the reasons could be anything. Database migrations with Laravel is extremely easy. As long as your changes are carefully managed in migrations and seeds you can migrate changes into any other development machine you might have. If you’re looking to make your developers life easier you should definitely consider Laravel as your PHP development framework in 2019.

6) Tutorials

Assuming you’re new to Laravel & haven’t had the chance to explore it as much as your peers, you don’t need to worry. There are plenty of tutorials available on YouTube, however, Laravel offers its own tutorial service (which no other platform does), Laracast, which provides excellent, high-quality, insightful, videos that give you everything you’d like to know in one place. While the tutorials are not entirely free you do have plenty of free videos available on Laracast which should help you more than cover the basics. It’s only the advanced tutorials that you need to pay for.

Conclusion
Your developers will surely thank you for picking the Laravel PHP framework and if the decision was left upto them, that’s what they would pick 9/10 times. At CodePlateau we have a team of highly skilled programmers who are experts in Laravel and Web Application development. If you ever have any requirements for web design and web development, do get in touch.

How To Rank Your Video Quickly On YouTube

Video are a great way to showcase your company’s products or services. A well-made video can even enhance a company brand reputation, but only if enough people see it. The problem with video marketing is that there is so much clutter out there that unless you rank well on popular platforms like YouTube chances are that very little people will see your content. In this blog, we’re going to look at how to rank your videos on YouTube.

How To Do Video SEO in 2019

1) YouTube Keyword Research

Obviously, the first step in any SEO process is to make a big long list of keywords you want to rank for. Now on YouTube just like on Google there are several ways to do this. The best way that I’ve found that works almost all the time is to use the keywords that appear in the suggested dropdown of YouTube search. Why re-invent the wheel when the source itself is telling you what keywords to use.

Another simple method to do keyword research base on the keywords you want to rank for is to choose what keywords the videos that are appearing at the top of the search are already using. You can look at the top 3 videos for a particular keyword and then use keywords based on those suggestions. Make sure that whatever keyword you use also is popular on Google search so that you can extract some users from that search as well.

2) Quality Content

Now getting your audience to find your video and making sure they watch it are two completely different sets of tasks. Using keywords, writing a proper description and having amazing video tags will be great to rank for a few weeks, however, if YouTube notices that even after ranking highly if your users are not clicking on your video you’ll soon start moving down the search chain. You need to ensure that your content, right from your thumbnail, to the title are of top quality, exciting and intriguing that will make the user want to click. Once they click to open the video you have to make sure that the actual video footage is exciting enough to keep the audience viewing it for its entirety.

3) Encourage Engagement

The flow of your content should be such that people want to engage with it. This could include liking the video, leaving a comment or even sharing it. All of these send a very important message to YouTube saying that you liked the video so much that you cared to engage with it. There are several ways to do this in your video, by adding an outro which encourages a user to comment on the video or asking thought-provoking questions during the video that will probably divide opinions and make users want to write something in the comments.

4) YouTube Optimization

Remember how we talked about keywords at the start of the blog, those aren’t simply to enter into your video description, title, tags etc. What you also need to keep in mind is that you need to say the keywords multiple times during the video. YouTube has an AI that automatically transcribes what you’re saying, and it’s pretty accurate so you have the opportunity for the AI to read the content of your video. If they read it, understand it and file it away for when it’s next required. Next time someone’s looking for a keyword you’ve mentioned they’ll remember your video and pop it up in search.

Conclusion
Different people use a combination of these videos to rank well on YouTube. Do you have a secret ingredient that you like to use as well? Please let us know in the comments below.

How To Reduce Website Bounce Rate And Improve Conversions?

If you’ve ever seen the statistics on your Google Analytics you might have noticed a small tab that mentions bounce rate. A bounce rate is very bad for business. But what is a bounce rate and why are so many businesses committed to reducing it? Simply a bounce rate is when a person comes to your landing page and jumps off even before they’ve had a chance to view it properly. Not viewing your landing page means not having an opportunity to convert. No conversion means less business. Below, we’re going to highlight the steps you need to follow in order to improve your website & reduce bounce rate & hopefully improve conversions.

How To Reduce Bounce Rate On Your Website?

1. Improve Website Speed

The first thing you’re going to need to do is to improve your website speed. The faster the content loads the faster the customer is able to view the content you have to display on your page. Statistics say that customers will not wait more than 2 seconds for their webpage to being loading. If your landing page takes more than 2 seconds to load you have to fix it immediately.

2. Improve Your Content Readability/Display

Once you’ve improved the page load speed of your landing page make sure you give your customers something exciting to look at. The content you have on display, whether they are images, words, or a video has to be neatly displayed on the website. The formatting of the content should be easy to read. If you’re writing a blog then make sure to include an appealing heading and image to draw the user to the content. Write shorter paragraphs and include images as a reference and as break points for your readers.

3. Avoid Using Pop-Ups

Content Consumers don’t like when there is a disruption on their content consumption journey. Whether it’s watching a video or reading a blog. Having unnecessary pop-ups that distract the consumer will only want them to push away from your website and webpage. But Pop-Ups do work, so you’ll need to place them strategically so that they become a part of the content journey of your consumers.

4. Keep Refreshing Your Content

Most websites offer static content to consumers. A blog is typically the only place that you are able to keep refreshing the content on a weekly basis, so make sure you do that. However, for your website, make sure to update the content every few months to make sure that the most relevant is reflecting on your website. Your customers will be thankful to you for that. Not only will it lead to a lower bounce rate, but you’ll also become their go-to source for all industry related information.

5. Attract The Correct Type Of Visits

The best way to ensure that you have a low bounce rate on your website is to ensure that the person visiting your webpage or website has a relevant reason for being there. Either you’re selling a product he’s looking for, or he’ looking to avail the services you’re offering or quite simply your blog or website has an answer to the question he has. Either case, using targeted relevant keywords will ensure that your website visitors will have come to complete a certain action and helping them to do that will reduce your bounce rate. Don’t add irrelevant keywords or content to your website, not only will this lead to a higher bounce rate, but also a search listing rank penalty from Google.

Conclusion
The logic to reduce bounce rate is pretty simple, give the customers what they want, as soon as possible and in as visually appealing a way as possible. Meeting these three targets should help you achieve your bounce rate standards. If you need help with getting more conversions on your website, please do let us know and we’ll be glad to help you with a free website consultation.

Checklist for a Mobile Friendly Website

Smartphones have been integrated into our world and how! You can’t turn a corner today and see someone’s head glued to their screen. While the question of where does this lead us as a society is for greater minds, we’re looking at the checklist you need to keep ready to be able to implement a mobile-friendly website. In today’s blog, we’re going to be covering just that topic. Hopefully the end of it, you’ll know exactly what you need in order to have a fully functional mobile-friendly website.

Mobile Friendly Website Checklist

1) Implement Mobile Friendly Design
There are at least 3 ways in which you can serve your customers with a responsive web template. However, out of these 1 is highly recommended by Google and is relatively easy to implement as well. This is by using a responsive design template. The HTML code, the URL shared to the customer is the same in the responsive design template. The other two options that are not ideal, but good to know are, by dynamic serving where you URL shared is the same across the different devices, but the HTML served on each device is slightly altered for the screen. The third option is to use a completely separate URL, one for mobile viewers and the other for web browsing.

2) Structured Data
Using structured data will definitely help Google understand the content on your website. The same applies to your mobile website as well. The pages on your mobile website should have the same structured data that is on your website. Google does mobile first indexing. Keep that in mind.

3) No Flash
Adobe Flash is quite an outdated tool. Some of your favorite games had been built using Flash but in more recent times flash has encumbered websites and makes them slow. More importantly, Chrome automatically disables flash on most sites due to security and speed issues. So it should be pretty obvious to anyone building your mobile website that they should not be using any Flash on your mobile-friendly website. Use JavaScript, CSS or similar other modern properties instead.

4) Font, Buttons, Design Is Important
Another important aspect of ensuring that your website is responsive and mobile friendly is the design architecture of the website itself. Being responsive enough is not enough it should have to be aesthetically pleasing as well. Pay special attention to the fonts. Mobile screens have been steadily growing bigger over the years, but they are still no comparison to screens of your websites and desktops. Fonts that are easily readable on larger screens are not so when using your website on mobile screens. It’s not the same with mobile phones. Buttons themselves can have an impact on your customer experience which can again have an impact on your website SEO.

5) Performance Matters
Apart from the fonts, buttons, design the performance of your mobile responsive website is also of the utmost importance. You have to focus on optimizing your mobile website to give your customers the kind of experience that they have come to expect from your website. There are several ways in which you can optimize your mobile website such as

– Improve your images
– Boost performance by improving the server response time
– Reduce the file size of your uploads by using tools like GZip
– Optimize your CSS

6) Focus On Your Customers
Maybe you won’t be able to display everything your website has to offer on your mobile website. That can be irrelevant. Your mobile website can be the platform that gives customers exactly what they need when they need it. Mobile users are normally looking for information on the go and they need accurate information quickly. If you are able to serve it to them through your mobile website then your customers will be dependent on you. Optimize the content for your users and you’ll almost have the battle won.

Conclusion
Having a mobile website can be easy but ensuring that you develop a mobile-friendly website that looks good, delivers on the design, content, and experiential aspects to the customers is not a piece of cake. You can do so by hiring the best web design and development company. If you’re looking to hire a professional web design company get in touch with us today.

Things To Consider When Building An E-Commerce Website

From relying on mega online e-commerce websites like Amazon and E-Bay many companies are now focusing on building their own e-commerce sites to directly try and tap their customers. In the last couple of years, we’ve seen a significant rise in the number of websites that are selling products online and with good reason. If you have some products you’d like to sell, it’s better to focus on developing an e-commerce website from scratch. You’ll have more control over the products you sell, the customers you are targeting and you have greater control over the pricing of the products. But if you’ve decided to build a website or are thinking about getting a professional e-commerce website development team, here is a checklist that you should be aware of.

Guidelines for E-Commerce Website Development

1. Understand the customer and product
Don’t build a website simply because you want to have an online presence without the customer base of the product that will sell online. There are plenty of products that have a higher propensity to sell offline than through online sales to ensure that you’ve made the right choice in going ahead for an e-commerce website development. If you need additional advice you can always get in touch with the best website development company in your area.

2. Choosing the right platform
Once you’ve decided to come online the next question becomes which platform to use and there is plenty of e-commerce website platform to choose from. You can either go with Hybris, Magento, WooCommerce, Shopify or even consider building your website from scratch using HTML, Java, and CSS. What you need to keep in mind, especially if you have a sizeable user base is to make sure you have
– A functioning customer relationship management tool to handle all their requirements
– A payment gateway integration to make paying for your products simpler
– Strong backend which can support your frontend activities
– Mobile responsiveness for all pages

3. Website Hosting Provider
Once you’ve decided which platform you want to choose the next choice to be made is the hosting provider you will go with. Now you may think that all host provide the same services, but in our multiple years of experience in website development and web design, we’ve seen that some services, although priced identically, have vastly different service levels. If you need more details on hosting providers for your website please feel free to get in touch with us.

Here are some things to keep in mind while selecting your hosting provider
– Speed is of the essence. Google rewards sites that provide data to the customers faster with a better ranking
– Choose a hosting provider that will make sure your site is available to the customer at all times. There should be zero or very marginal downtimes
– Since you will be dealing a lot with sensitive customer data, privacy and security or a concern. Make sure you choose a hosting provider that keeps your site protected at all times
– In case there is any issue you want to make sure that your hosting provider is there to support you at all times. Choose a host that has good service staff to support you.
– You might be starting off small but you should be able to build your website as you go so scalability in terms of server size, space, and reliability are always important

4. Choosing what you want your customer to see
Another important aspect of an e-commerce website development project is to make sure you know exactly what pages you’ll be showing to your customers. How easy the website is to navigate? Are the images too cluttered? These may not seem like important factors when building an e-commerce website but they are all very relevant not only to your customer but to Google as well.

Conclusion
If you use e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce and Shopify you might be able to develop an e-commerce website yourself, but without the help of professional reliable web development and design company, your website won’t have the much-needed fascination to the public. If you want someone to professionally build your e-commerce website, get in touch with us today.