Themes and Mods

Magento vs WooCommerce: What to choose for your online store?

The field of eCommerce is increasing rapidly. A large number of business owners are moving online to reach out a wider audience and increase their ROI. For this, they need to choose the right eCommerce platform, tools to set up and run an online store. But, most of the store owners often find it difficult to choose the most appropriate eCommerce platform to commence their E-business.

WooCommerce and Magento are two most popular eCommerce platforms preferred by E-merchants all over the world and both have their individual strengths and weaknesses. Then, how an online merchant can choose the best one amongst the two? Well, this comprehensive guide will help you to evaluate these two E-commerce platforms on different parameters and make a wise decision easily:-

Before choosing an eCommerce platform, you need to analyze a few things:

• Your targeted audience
• The number of products and services you are going to offer (to your potential customers)
• Type of store
• Are you capable of supporting your E-store with additional infrastructure like an ERP system
• Do you have sufficient budget to get a totally customized online store both in terms of design and functionality

You need to answer several other such questions before choosing your preferred platform. Using any of these two systems will consume your valuable time and money. Switching from one platform to another is not an ideal option when you have already invested a large sum to develop your E-store.

Let’s evaluate these two platforms from different angles:

1. Cost

Magento
The Community version of Magento is free in the beginning. But when your business grows and, you feel it necessary to expand your business, you need to add some extensions to customize and run your store successfully. At this junction, your costs start to mount up as some essential Magento extensions are quite expensive. Additionally, you may also need a specialist Magento developer to take care of your E-store and keep it in running mode. You will need to spend a considerable amount of money for enhanced content management, a higher level of support and on other things.

WooCommerce
The basic version of this plugin has the ability to accept payments from your customers via PayPal and a few other payment options. Nevertheless, you need to have diversity when it comes to sending or accepting payments online. You need to buy premium extensions to add a full range of payment options to your store, which enables you to take payments from your customers easily.

2. Hosting

Magento
Magento is a complicated platform, which means even a small or medium sized store can consume several GBs of disc space and complex operations put additional pressure on your servers. That is why; you need to have dedicated hosting or a cloud plan to run your site smoothly. If you host your site on shared servers, it will run slowly. You may lose your customers due to slow website and suffer a great loss in business as well. Hence you need to do thorough research and read genuine web hosting reviews before finalizing your web host.

WooCommerce
If you talk in terms of hosting requirement for WooCommerce, this small and efficient plugin eats up a little disk space and is light on your server space. It can run smoothly on any server. But, when you increase the functionality of your site (following a sharp boom in your E-business), it will start to feel sluggish and clunky.

3. Design & Features

Magento
Magento is a complete online shopping solution and is preferred by larger E-retailers who need plenty of customization and functionality. This platform has the power to handle numerous products and it supports multiple languages, payment options, and different currencies. Apart from this, you can easily run multiple storefronts via one dashboard, which is a fantastic facility if you have the local versions of your website or you manage numerous sites.

The initial installation process is simple with the availability of numerous videos and tutorials. Adding extensions to Magento and customizing the store is much more difficult for you if you don’t have coding experience. Herein, you need to seek the help of Magento developers, which come at a considerable price on account of the complexities of the platform.

WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a popular plugin for WordPress and is ideal for small and medium-sized eCommerce companies. You can easily set it up and use it even if you don’t have deep coding knowledge. If you have been using WordPress already, you can easily add eCommerce functionality to your site.

Its default design is clean and numerous customization options are available, with a number of free and premium themes. Even if you don’t have in-depth knowledge of coding, you can still run your E-store easily.

4. Search Engine Friendly

Magento
Due to the availability of too many features, the Magento-based websites often face problems while loading in browsers. If customers are accessing your site with slow speed Internet connections, it takes more time to display the pages fully. Such a condition make customers unhappy and they abandon visiting your site sooner or later. Even search engines give them less importance, which might affect your ranking on SERPs.

WooCommerce
WooCommerce is comparatively lightweight and it loads faster on all browsers. Due to quick loading, the WooCommerce-powered websites are likely to secure higher ranking on different search engines, which means you get more visitors and more income too.

Final analysis

WooCommerce stores are ideal for small to medium sized stores. You can start and handle a WooCommerce store easily if you are familiar with WordPress.

Magento is a right solution for large scale business entities, who have lots of products and service to offer to their prospective customers and buyers. Magento is ideal for you if you have long term plans for the expansion of your business. For this, you will require a team of Magento developers to assist you while dealing with the technical aspects and customization of your E-store.

So, the choice depends upon your budget, business scale and goals. Analyze all these with a cool mind and take decision accordingly.

Author Bio
Emily Benson is an creative writer and an experienced CMS developer. She currently, employed at HireMagentoGeeks and managing Magento web development projects. You can follow her on Twitter.

Six must-have traits of the WordPress Publishers

Every human being is born with a special set of traits and those who are able to recognize these, stands apart from the crowd. Well, if you are planning to publish content on WordPress, then this post is just for you. In this post, you will read about some must have traits that would assist you in reaching out to a wide range of audience.

Here’s the list of traits that will make you a better WordPress publisher:

1. Be Proactive

WordPress is completely based on the HTML codes but still, users are able to comfortably manage and customize it as per their needs. The themes and plugins available in the WordPress directory make everything easy for the users. Moreover, there are plenty of online tutorials, which address almost all the matters related to WordPress modification, installation and troubleshooting. All you need is a proactive mindset and you can tweak anything in WordPress.

2. Keep the end in mind

WordPress is an online web development tool, so it will be good if you use it to meet your objectives. Always keep in mind, what you want to accomplish with your WordPress-powered website. The possibilities are endless but all you have to do is target the specific possibilities. Launching a WP-based site can be daunting for some, but beginning with the end in mind would help you in making right decisions.

3. Always put the first things first

Before you initiate the process of WordPress developers, you need to first prioritize, plan and evaluate your strategy, so that you don’t have to face any issues during the development phase. By plotting the course of action, it will become easier for you to track your progress and you would be able to keep the whole development environment under control. Make sure you spend enough time to chalk-out the best plan for your project.

4. Think about Contribution

As you all know, that WordPress is powered by an open community. So, it will be good if you contribute something to this community. Doesn’t matter what you know about WordPress, just share it with the people who are part of the WordPress. Moreover, you can also post any queries in the WP Community page and people will definitely reply to it. So, it is a Win-Win situation for you as well as the community.

5. First, understand and then take action

To boost your online visibility, you should have a customer-centric mentality. It’s the audience who will decide in which direction your business venture will go. So, build an audience before creating a business setup. If you are not selling any tangible product to users, then your website’s content becomes the product. By understanding the needs of your readers, you can create content which would offer you a real value.

6. Keep pace with changing trends

WordPress is growing at a very rapid pace and so does the technologies which are powering this content management system. To stay ahead in this market, you need to constantly upgrade your knowledge base and keep pace with the latest & upcoming trends. Each WordPress update comes with a new set of features that you should know how to use.

Summing Up
There are always new lessons to be learned, all you have to be proactive, focused and prioritize the essentials.

Author Bio:
Anna Jhonson is a web developer by profession, a writer by hobby and works for Markupcloud, a WordPress theme development Service company deals with PSD to WordPress conversion. She loves sharing information regarding WordPress customization tips & tricks.

Ultra

Ultra is a responsive, flexible and powerful WordPress theme that can be used to create any site quickly and beautifully. Everything on your website from header to footer can be easily customized with just some clicks. You can easily create unlimited layouts using drag & drop Builder, responsive layouts, slider backgrounds, video backgrounds, parallax scrolling, custom styling, animations, and more. This theme comes integrated with 60+ Pre-designed Layouts, 9 Bonus Builder Addons, 14 header/page design styles, 5 single post layouts, 15 pre-set colors, full section scrolling feature, Mega menu, 6 Archive Layouts, Animating Colors, Image Filters and more.

Features:

• 100% Responsive and Flexible
• 9 Bonus Builder Addons
• 60+ Pre-designed Layouts
• Select a header/page design from 14 styles
• Single post layout – default layout plus four unique layouts
• Header background allows you to: upload a background image, pick a solid color, insert a slider, upload a video, set animating colors, or have it transparent
• 15 pre-set colors or you can pick the color of your choice.
• Show/hide any element in the header and footer
• full section scrolling feature allows viewers to scroll through your page design one row at a time like a presentation slideshow
• Mega menu allows you to display recent posts, multi-column dropdown menus, and even the ability to add widgets into the menu.
• 6 different styles for archive post layouts that you can choose from: slider, fullwidth, masonry, grids, polaroid, and overlay.
• Animating Colors
• Image Filters – Auto-apply Grayscale, Blur, and Sepia filters to your images
• Ultra includes an optional portfolio that works seamlessly with all of the post layouts available for the blog posts.
• Support for WooCommerce
• Comes with design skins and pre-made demo sites

Price: $49.00

View Demo      Download Now

6 Best WordPress eCommerce Themes of 2016

WordPress is one of the most powerful CMS which powers a large number of newly built websites. It has a lot of features to offer which make it so popular among the business owners and developers around the world. A number of Ecommerce websites are being developed using this platform these days. The best thing about WordPress online stores is that you can extend its functionality using a powerful theme and some plugins.

Here is a list of some useful eCommerce WordPress themes:

1. Hugo:

Hugo is a trendy eCommerce WordPress theme. It helps you to create a professionally designed WordPress site in no time. It features a truly unique design and is ideal for any kind of online fashion store. Hugo is a highly flexible theme and comes with a fully responsive design.

Key Features:

• It comes with a drag-drop homepage builder.
• It comes with Custom widgets which helps to provide more functionality.
• It enables you to choose from multiple color schemes.
• It is SEO optimized which will help your site to rank higher in the search engine rankings.

2. Polaris

Polaris is a versatile WordPress theme for eCommerce sites. It is highly customizable and easy to modify. It enables you to create amazing animated multilayered sliders. You can choose a fullscreen header to display your popular products. Polaris theme has a Live Search option which makes it really easy to find the desired products.

Key Features:

• It is built with HTML5, CSS3 and Less.
• It comes with a drag drop option to edit the layouts easily.
• It is powered by quickshop for an enhanced online shopping experience.
• It has a fully responsive design which makes your site compatible with any device.
• It comes with an interactive contact map powered by Google maps.

3. ShopMe:

Shopme is a perfect WordPress theme for your online store. It is extremely easy to install with its one click installation and comes with a powerfull “Theme Options” panel. It offers different pre designed home page layouts to choose from. It is a complete package for your eCommerce site which includes some really useful plugins like WPML, Ultimate WooCommerce brands plugin etc.

Key Features:

• This theme is cross browser compatible and has a SEO friendly code.
• It includes Chat X plugin which enables you to chat with your users.
• It is powered with a drag and drop page builder.
• It comes with a number of header styles and layouts.
• It allows you to choose from 4 product box layouts.

4. Barberry:

Barberry is a Retina Ready WooCommerce WordPress theme. It is based on Bootstrap. It comes with a retina ready design. It comes with a catalog mode option. This theme is loaded with a Toggle sidebar feature. It is Cloud Zoom ready and come with a Custom Login or register page.

Key Features:

• It has a Fully Responsive design.
• It comes with 4 header variations.
• It comes with Unlimited background colors.
• It enables you to customize Layout using shortcodes.
• It comes with 3 product thumbnail animations.

5. Shopkeeper:

Shopkeeper is considered one of the best WordPress ecommerce themes. It is a powerful theme which enables you to create sites for a wide range of businesses and styles like online stores, product catalogs, blogs, portfolios, or corporate sites.

Key Features:

• It comes with a number of prebuilt page layouts.
• You can choose from unlimited header styles.
• It comes with a fully responsive design with Sharp Retina Graphics.
• It is highly customizable.
• It comes with a powerful Theme Options panel.

6. eStore:

eStore is another popular eCommerce WordPress theme. It is a clean and beautiful theme which is highly customizable. It is compatible with WooCommerce and YITH WooCommerce Wishlist plugins. It helps to create a fully functional and attractive online store which helps to drive more visitors to your eCommerce site.

Key Features:

• It comes with more than 10 custom widgets.
• It has a responsive design which makes your site adaptable to a mobile, PC or tab screen.
• It comes with Layout Options for individual Posts.
• It comes with Multi Color Categories
• It comes with Left and Right Sidebar.

These WordPress themes can really help you in creating a feature-full online store. You can leave a comment below stating your perfect choice among these.

Author Bio:
Terra Davis is a professional WordPress Developer and currently working with Stellen Infotech, a renowned WordPress CMS Development Company. She is a passionate writer and has actively writing useful blogs and articles about technical stuffs.

5 Best WordPress Plugins to Boost up your Website speed

The speed of your website matters whether regardless to how it is scripted. A slow-loading website will cease visitors and also the potential earnings. So without taking any wariness, you will terminate with a sluggish internet site.

There are some ways that a user can speed up their WordPress website and increase the page views. You can do it by buying traffic (not recommended) to updating your websites for maximum speed (recommended). Since you have selected rich platform WordPress over other web development tool, the increase in speed of the website and decrease in the average page load time can be done easily through available plugins.

Here comes the list of 5 best WordPress plugins to speed up your website:

WP Optimize

It is a type of plugin that can help your pack with speed increasing issues over your website. Activate it and then select the required features to be enabled. It is used for improving database development, trash data, limit post revisions, etc. You can even fix other plugin related problems that cause the website to load slowly. Thus, it is a complete package that can help you to take care of many issues and doesn’t charge anything for using any of its features.

Click here to Download WP Optimize plugin.

EWWW Image Optimizer

If you load enough pictures, you’ll notice the increase in load times and a decrease in bandwidth utilization. The EWWW Image Optimizer automatically lessen the file size for images by converting to the file format which generates images of small size and uses a collection of tools to enhance images.

One drawback with this Image Optimizer is to GIF animation files. It will not allow you to do edit animation after performing an optimization unless you perform a un-optimization operation with gifsicle(Command-Line Animated GIFs).

Download EWWW Image Optimizer here.

Digg Digg

In everyday life, all of us use social media and the buttons in the social media on your website increases the chances of getting your blog posts shared by 50%.

However, most social media plugins load some scripts that are slowest to load. Digg Digg plugin arrives with lazy loading option, which means your site visitors are provided with a fake button until a visitor brood over buttons for sharing. The buttons can be added either at the top or bottom of your webpage.

Download Digg Digg here for free.

W3 Total Cache

The W3 Total Cache is one of the most common caching plugins for WordPress. Your website performance can be elevated by 10 times, as asserted by its plugin developers.

A caching plugin stockpiles the images, CSS, and your website Javascript files are placed on the server, so it does not have to load the website scrape and every time you receive a website visitor, the static version of your website is displayed. So many resources can be preserved and made compatible with any type of website. The configuration of this plugin is not easy unless you have a basic knowledge of WordPress. Also, you can integrate this plugin with a content delivery network (CDN) service like MaxCDN.

Download W3 Total Cache here.

WordPress Inspector

WordPress Inspector tests your WordPress for speed, performance, SEO, and security. It allows you to see hidden debugging information and includes information like option value, current admin screen information, user information, a list of items available on the menu, registered scripts, and styles. It is essential to check your WordPress regularly, and its theme and plugins to make your website performs better and is secure.

Click here to download WordPress Inspector.

It best to Judge which plugin suits your requirements and start using that. The WordPress plugins described above will significantly improve not only the speed but also the security of your website.

Author Bio:
Akil Malek is a digital marketer with one of the top mobile app development companies, Peerbits. He has an excellent knowledge of mobile technology and mobile app development with an experience of over four years in digital marketing.