Posts Tagged ‘Ecommerce Development’

Why it’s Good to Use a Minimalist Web Design for Your Website

May 3rd, 2021

Minimalism consists of reducing a website design to its crucial components. Minimalism is ruling the internet these days. Most of the websites, even the small ones, now use a minimalist web design. You may have seen countless popular websites with minimalist esthetics, even if you have never designed a site in such away. Such websites with a minimalist design feature fewer colors, textures, links, font style, clickable buttons, images, menus, and other useful elements than their equivalents.

Perks of Minimalist Web Design

If you’re thinking about adopting a minimalist web design, then you might be pondering what perks it offers. Switching to a new web design needs smart work, and choosing a minimalist web design is a smart move. However, incorporating minimalism can improvise your website’s ranking and its success level in countless meaningful ways.

Fewer Errors

A minimalist web design will guard your site against errors. Errors are usually ascribed to bad source code. So, If a visual component isn’t coded properly, it may provoke an error message alert when requested by users. For instance, bad links can result in a 404 error if they point to a null URL. Whereas images may fail to load if they have an invalid address.

By using a minimalist web design, your website will have only necessary visual elements. Thus, there’re fewer chances for errors to occur. Site visitors will be able to navigate across your website without facing any error. So in turn, you’ll foster a more faithful as well as satisfied audience.

Quick Loading Time

A website may load in the blink of an eye if it uses a minimalist web design. Loading time is directly proportional to the number of visual elements. The more visual items a page has, the more time it will take for loading. When a user loads a page, the entire page’s visual elements take time to download. Thus, minimalism ensures that your web pages are free of unnecessary visual aspects that would otherwise surge their loading time.

Lower Bounce Rate

A minimalist web design can retain your website’s bounce rate under control as it offers a quick loading time. Bounce rate is a metric for the percentage of users who leave after visiting a single page. Some users may visit half-dozen pages before leaving. However, others may visit only a single page and then leave. Users who fall under the latter category will add to a higher bounce rate.

You can optimize your website for a minimum bounce rate by using a minimalist web design. As per econsultancy.com, two in five users will quit a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Thus, with fewer visual items, users won’t have to wait for your site to load. They’ll also be able to navigate easily across web pages, thereby lowering the bounce rate.

Easy Maintenance

Compared to complex types of web design, a simple and minimalist web design is much easier to maintain. It usually needs less or no upkeep, in fact. Even if you update your website’s CMS as well as its server, your site should proceed to work flawlessly. All credit goes to its minimalist web design.

However, a complex web design with more visual items will make it hectic to maintain your site. You may perform a regular CMS or server update, only for it to break some visual elements. You’ll then have to detect and fix the broken elements. Thus, if you’re tired of such issues after periodic updates, you should opt for a minimalist web design.

Better Multi-Device Compatibility

A minimalist web device can optimize your website for multi-device compatibility. Users today are no longer confined to use a typical desktop PC or laptop. Other portable mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, smart wearables, and other infotainment systems can connect to the web. Different devices use diverse technologies to load as well as to display website content. Your website might be compatible with PCs as well as laptops. But, when a user attempts to access it on a mobile device, they may face compatibility issues. Some of your site’s elements may load outside of the viewport, whereas others may load in a minute size that makes them impossible to view on a mobile screen.

Minimalist web design is a prerequisite for better multi-device compatibility. It will widen the range of devices with which your website is compatible. With a minimalist web design, your website will only have basic as well as necessary elements. Thus, your website will be compatible with a variety of devices.

Higher Search Engine Rankings

Another potential asset of using minimalist web design is higher rankings in search engines. Google and other search engines use a site’s loading time as a ranking signal. As a website with minimalist web design loads faster, so it will align better with search engine ranking algorithms.

A minimalist web design can also allow your website to engage more backlinks. While visiting your site, other webmasters won’t be fascinated by its visual elements. Instead, they will focus solely on your site’s content, which may force them to link to your website after leaving it. More backlinks help to improve your website’s rankings. It’s a fact that users will stay longer if your website uses minimalist principles. They’ll surely navigate across pages, and they’ll spend more time viewing your content. As your website’s usual session time increases, so will the ranking authority.

Whether you’re going to launch a new website, or you’re just looking to give your existing site an overdue makeover, you should always consider a minimalist web design. Besides being easy to create as well as implement, it offers a diversity of benefits such as fast loading time, fewer bugs, a lower bounce rate, less care, better multi-device compatibility, and SEO friendliness. At Clap Creative a Magento development company, we can help you with the minimalist web design in Los Angeles for your website.

What is the Role of E-A-T scores in E-Commerce Sites?

May 23rd, 2019

Online businesses are today dominating the whole world. But to stay in the rank of this tough competition possible with your available content and evaluator scores. Content matters where the whole game of ranking has evolved to a new level. For e-commerce sites, content equally matters to any other website. When Google uses factors to measure to website’s brand worthiness – three important factors are Expertise, Authority, and Trust or commonly known as E-A-T.

What E-A-T Means?

As above indicate E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trust. This concept is a huge ranking factor in many sites. Let’s discussed what these three terms actually mean:

Expertise:

The term stands for expert knowledge and skills. Here you need to show up your skills in the main content. Like, if you offer a service of that you have deep knowledge about, you are recommended as an expert of that field. Your website also needs your expertise to stay ahead of the other market competitors.

Authority:

Here you have to clear up the guidelines of Google to show that you have the authority to create main content. Likewise, expertise is a measurement of knowledge or skill level, authority is the measurement of how well you are doing. Small and new businesses really find it harder as authority comes over the time.

Trust:

Making your potential customers feel like they can trust you is such a vital part of an e-commerce business. If your brand is not trustworthy among your customers than your sales will be pretty much non-existent. Make sure that you stand on the points of trustworthiness box in E-A-T score.

Why E-A-T Scores are Important in E-Commerce:

Soon after updating the search quality rater’s guidelines in July, last year, the main focus shifted to the E-A-T (Expertise, Authority, and Trust) scores. If you want your shopping pages to show up high in the search, you will need to identify how to maximize your E-A-T score.

E-A-T is important in the e-commerce industry because the site pages or shopping pages are considered as YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) pages. And these pages are held to be the highest quality standards so for this reason expected E-A-T is also demanded highest.

Now, what content Google consider?…

The foremost important thing to recognize is that content is not limited to the text and raters are not just being asked to evaluate the text. They have to evaluate your site’s functionality. It includes your e-commerce website’s design, interface, usability, interactivity, and other important functions.

These quality raters are also reminded that high-quality shopping content allows users to find the products and purchase them easily. To determine E-A-T of shopping pages, there few things need to be able to find that give you positive scores. High E-A-T isn’t going to get you far enough if the amount of content is not sufficient or satisfactory for the purpose of the site page, so from here, you can start.

When search raters are evaluating site pages, the guidelines ask them to do something special checks for information like – contact form, payment policies, exchange & return policies, etc. keeping in mind that all this information likely be found under customer service.

Google’s rating experts are charged with thoroughly investigating each site’s E-A-T. So, in an e-commerce website, provided information and content of the highest quality across every page of the site is needed as well as checked carefully by the owner.

Conclusion:

Having good E-A-T scores benefit your e-store or online business immensely. The better you scored, the more successful your brand or e-commerce site becomes. Just consider the individual section of E-A-T score carefully to impress search engines and be ranked higher by Google. The search quality evaluators indicate that expertise, authority, and trust are central considerations for Google’s engineers.

E-Commerce Marketing Tactics for Driving Traffic to your Webstore

March 9th, 2018

So, finally, you have created your e-commerce webstore and set-up your social media profile. Now what? No audience seems to be flocking to your site with cash in hand as you might have expected. In fact, creating your website and social media presence is only the first and most probably the easiest step towards driving traffic to your store.

The rest is a long and tiring journey that can take ages to complete, extracting a large chunk out of your investments along the way.

Just kidding…

But it isn’t piece of cake either, simply knowing where to start while creating a winning digital marketing strategy for ecommerce can get pretty tricky in itself and the only thing harder than marketing your e-commerce store effectively is trying to do it with outdated ineffective techniques.

One thing to understand here is, when it comes to ecommerce marketing tactics, there are good ways and there are better ways. There are also bad ways that should be avoided at all costs. Don’t worry, here we will try to cover every possible tactic to help you along your journey to success. Let’s get started.

Craft your Content as Best as You can

As high-quality content entices users to continue clicking, reading and exploring, therefore creating and distributing content that is entertaining, informative and helpful to potential customers help build positive associations with your brand. Its various benefits include-

  • Content adds value to your brand
  • Helps you know your customers through feedback
  • Establishes your brand as an authority
  • Helps build a loyal customer base

Always remember, a well written, appealing content that is error-free, structured and reader-friendly demonstrates your business’s competence.

Never Underestimate the Power of Influencers

I assume you are familiar with the saying, ‘it’s not what you know but who you know that counts’. That maxim is the age-old secret for marketers trying to build awareness and loyalty for their products and services. It also safeguards your website from cynicism associated with traditional marketing and advertising methods.

Since you can back your product or services with glowing reviews from influential bloggers or with stellar celebrity endorsement, the chances of people making a purchase increase tenfold as they are often seen as genuine and authentic. Targeting influencers also let you reach out to their loyal followers or audiences.

Use KPIs to your Advantage

Establishing KPI or Key Performance Indicators should perhaps be the most important stage for your digital marketing strategy as it helps in setting strategic goals and ensures those goals remain aligned with the company’s interests. Some of the most important KPIs for digital marketing include-

  • Number of unique site visitors
  • CTR or Click Through Rate
  • Return visits to websites
  • CLV or Customer Lifetime Value
  • Total Revenue
  • ROI or Return On Investment
  • Total conversions
  • CPA or Cost Per Acquisition

Ditch the dot-com Domain Name

As the dot-com domain is getting more and more crowded these days due to the influx of online businesses with their long and confusing URLs, it only seems viable to carve out your own digital nook by ditching the dot-com domain and going for something that’s more in compliance with what you do such as dot-me (.me), dot-lifestyle (.lifestyle), dot-boutique (.boutique) etc. It’s also a great way of telling the world who you are and what you do.

Abstain from Two/Three-word Key Phrases

The problem with going for two or three-word key ranking phrases is that they are highly competitive since they tend to have high search volumes and because everybody wants a piece of the action. Unless and until, you have months to spare on it, going after key phrases that you may not stand a chance of ranking is a futile effort.

For e.g. it’s useless to rank for the term  ‘web development’ because you are a web development company as you will never be able to crack the competition among giants fighting for it. Instead, narrow it down using ‘ecommerce web development’ or even better, providing a location such as ‘ecommerce web development Los Angeles’. it will ultimately bring more targeted and organic traffic to your site compared to ‘web development’.

Unleash the Power of SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the visibility of your website through search engines. SEO is single-handedly one of the biggest factor responsible for the success of your e-commerce store, apart from generating traffic, it also enables you to turn this driving traffic into potential customers or subscribers.

Below are mentioned some such tips to improve your SEO rankings (apart from the ones mentioned above)

  1. Avoid duplicity while publishing content as you can get penalized by search engines.
  2. Do not forget to add product reviews.
  3. Instead of copy-pasting manufacturer’s product descriptions, create a unique and search engine friendly description for each product.
  4. Optimizing product images by adding related keywords into the ALT tags of every image.
  5. Keep product content only a link away from your homepage in order to make it easy for users to find products.
  6. Create unique meta-descriptions for every webpage

Getting Started

If earlier you were clueless about where to begin, now you have learned some creative and uniquely practical tactics to drive traffic to your webstore. Always remember, you should never take ecommerce marketing lightly as your sales and the overall success of your company depends on it.

Magento vs. Shopify vs. PrestaShop Twitter Audiences Survey

June 4th, 2016

The importance of social media is high for each brand, as most of us contact followers with promotions, important notifications, feedback requests, and some brands even provide customer service via social media.So, we asked ourselves a question: “What are the differences of social audiences of main e-commerce platforms? Do they have something similar? Perhaps, they have some overlaps or similar locations, or anything else?” The presented below survey is designed to address these questions.

The survey covers the Magento Twitter audience, which is one of the most important social media for the platform, compared to the PrestaShop and Shopify Twitter accounts.

Key findings of the survey are given at the end of this post.

General Information

Magento vs. Shopify vs. PrestaShop Twitter Audiences Survey - ClapCreative

Magento is the oldest Twitter inhabitant, but much less active than Shopify, for example. Shopify also has the best followers/tweets ratio. Each tweet brings Shopify 9.2 followers per tweet, while Magento gets 8.4 followers, and PrestaShop -2.3.

Magento vs. Shopify vs. PrestaShop Twitter Audiences Survey - ClapCreative
So, total quantities of followers of the mentioned above platforms differ greatly, as it clearly demonstrated on the diagram above.

Audiences Overlaps: – 

But to be absolutely realistic this diagram should look like the following:
Magento vs. Shopify vs. PrestaShop Twitter Audiences Survey - ClapCreative

We analyzed 10 thousand followers from each account and determined that the audience of these three platforms has considerable overlaps:

  • PrestaShop & Shopify – 3.2%;
  • Magento & Shopify – 8.3%;
  • Magento & PrestaShop – 14.2%;
  • All platforms – 2.2%.

The overlap of the Magento and PrestaShop audiences is the biggest and mostly presented by digital companies and developers, according to the randomly chosen sample from the mutual 14.2% scope.

  • Marketers – 10%;
  • Developers – 20%;
  • Digital companies – 25%;
  • Non topical – 15%;
  • Abandoned – 15%;
  • Other – 15%.

All three platforms have 2.2% of followers, who follow all the platforms at the same time. We analyzed a 10% sample of randomly chosen following accounts from that array, and got the next results:

  • Abandoned accounts – 40%;
  • Digital companies – 15%;
  • Independent developers or consultants – 25%;
  • E-commerce news – 5%;
  • Other – 15%.

The quantity of abandoned accounts is significant in this sample and makes up to 40%, but we can disregard them. The companies and independent developers working at the junction of platforms or with all three platforms simultaneously constitute 40% of the total quantity, and this is the main relevant group.

Main Interests of the Audiences: –

The study of top keywords from the audiences profiles determines them as the following:
Magento vs. Shopify vs. PrestaShop Twitter Audiences Survey - ClapCreative
The main finding from the table above is that PrestaShop and Magento followers are much similar to each other. The structures of their main interests match each other greatly. More clearly we can demonstrate in on the diagram below.
Magento vs. Shopify vs. PrestaShop Twitter Audiences Survey - ClapCreative

As you see, Magento and PrestaShop Twitter followers are interested in almost the same topics and to the same extent. Their followers like “web” and “marketing” topics, while the Shopify audience subjects of interest are more diversified and directed towards “design” issues.How can we explain those similarities of Magento and PrestaShop Twitter followers? Clearly, the platforms themselves and their peculiarities can explain this phenomenon.

Magento and PrestaShop are both open-source e-commerce solutions written in PHP, what allows PHP developers work with them both extending their functionality. While Shopify is a SaaS e-commerce platform designed for SEM businesses and mostly attracts theme designers.

So, now we know that Magento and PrestaShop twitter followers have much similar and the Shopify Twitter audience differs from them in many aspects. But we can find out even more insights about those audiences, which greatly present the entire platform business communities.

Audiences Activity: –

Analyzing the frequency of posting on Twitter by those audiences we discovered that the Shopify Twitter audience is the most active. Almost 60% of its followers had tweets last week, while only 51% of Magento followers and 49% of PrestaShop Twitter fans tweeted within the same period.
Magento vs. Shopify vs. PrestaShop Twitter Audiences Survey - ClapCreative
And again, the distribution of tweets by days and weeks is greatly similar for the Magento and PrestaShop audiences (see the diagram below).
Magento vs. Shopify vs. PrestaShop Twitter Audiences Survey - ClapCreative

Audiences Distribution by Time Zones: –

45% of the PrestaShop Twitter audience is located near Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome, Madrid, Stockholm, and some other nearest European cities, while other locations are minimal for this platform.

The Magento audience is primarily described by three main geographical areas: Western Europe, the U.S., and northern India, near New Delhi. The European area of Magento is more widely distributed to the west and east, compared to PrestaShop, and the Eastern Time zone is the most popular in the U.S. for Magento.

The same as Magento, Shopify is interesting for New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, New Jersey, etc. residents, however, the Indian share it has is three times larger than Magento has in that region. Perhaps, it is explained by the policy of the platform striving to get leadership in India and South Asia.

Magento vs. Shopify vs. PrestaShop Twitter Audiences Survey - ClapCreative

Conclusion: –

So, the analysis of Twitter audiences gave us much information about the followers of the platforms and can be interpreted, to some extent, as a description of the platforms communities.

Key Findings: –

  • Shopify is the most active on Twitter;
  • Each tweet brings Shopify 9.2 followers per tweet, while Magento gets 8.4 followers, and PrestaShop -2.3;
  • Magento and PrestaShop Twitter audiences overlap by 14.2%;
  • All three platforms have the 2.2% Twitter audiences overlap;
  • Magento and PrestaShop have almost the same structure of their Twitter audiences interests primarily addicted to “web” topics;
  • The Shopify Twitter audience is the most active on Twitter;
  • Magento and PrestaShop followers post in the same manner by the frequency of posting;
  • PrestaShop is popular among users from Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome, Madrid, Stockholm, and some other nearest European cities;
  • The Magento audience is primarily located in Western Europe, the U.S., and northern India, near New Delhi;
  • Except the U.S. and Western Europe, the Shopify Twitter account is very popular in India, much more than Magento and PrestaShop accounts.

Note: The data is obtained using Simplymeasured.com