Website Archives - BOLLYWOOD SURKHIYAN

Why You Need a Website

24 hours per day

Your website runs 24/7 and 365 days a year without any supervision. If you have the website, you can always be there for your customers. You can provide both prospective and regular customers the convenience of reviewing your products and services when your store or office is closed.

Online brochure

Companies spend millions creating brochures and distributing them. By having a website you can totally skip that. Your potential customers can find out about you and any of your products or services online. If you get most of your business through networking or your personal connections, then they will want to check out your website. So here the website plays an important role to know your customers about your business.

Business will gain credibility

More and more people are searching online for things they want, for solutions to their problems, to compare prices, or just to get some information about a store, restaurant, hotel or business before they purchase from them. If you don’t have a website, potential customers will go to your competitors who do or who has the website, especially if you are a home-based or small-scale business without a bricks-and-mortar address

Long term promotion of your business

Compared with the cost of traditional means of advertising, such as newspaper advertisements, radio commercials, promotional materials and networking events that often include the cost of a meal or trade tables, when you consider the probable market you can reach with a website, it is a very cost-effective way to promote your business long-term.

You can be kept your customers informed

A website is an effective way of introducing your customers to new services, letting them know about new products, announcing upcoming events and special promotions. You can also provide added value by posting tips, resources, and other information through a blog on your website. Unlike print ads, newspaper flyers and articles, which quickly become outdated, your website can provide current information and news.

You will get More Customers and wider audience

Websites are accessible from anywhere, anytime in the world provided there is an internet connection. More than 3 billion people use the internet every day, and some 80% of those have purchased something or contacted a company, online in the last 1 year. You can target a much wider audience if your business has a website and by not having a website, you will be missing out on a big piece of the pie.

Importance Of Having A Website Banner

Needless to say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression on anyone’s mind. And when a visitor comes to your website so the first thing that makes your company’s impression on their mind is the banner of your website. Therefore, having an eye-catching banner is as important for your website as salt in a dish to add taste. After all, you also want to make a first impression on your visitor’s mind. Don’t you?

On the off-chance, your website doesn’t have any such banner so the chances you are losing more customers than you are gaining right now. A banner is a sort of advertising over the World Wide Web that showcases your offers to your customers and holds their attention. Here are some points that make you understand the importance of having a website banner.

Encourage Visitors: One of the common reasons to have a website banner is that it helps to encourage your customer to stay on your website for further browsing to understand your offered products and services. All in all, it increases the visibility of your website on different search engines and easily captures their attention.

Cheapest Way Of Advertising: Advertising can do wonders for your business growth and if you are not investing in it to save your money so you probably losing the countless business opportunities. Yes, advertising is expensive, but not all the time because website banner is the cheapest way to do it in an effective and creative manner.

Promote Company News: If your business holds any event and want people to know about it, so, website banner is the easiest way to do so. It allowed you to promote your company news and important information in a manner that captures the attention of its visitors, so, more and more people get involved in it.

Highlight Hot Products And Services: Another reason to have a website banner is that it helps to highlight your star products and services in front of your customer. It increases your conversion rate and gives new wings to your business promotion.

What do you think now? All above points clear your doubts regarding its importance for your business. The banner can be challenging to design but can do a miracle for your business growth and therefore you should hire a Website Designing Company to do this task. The banner is the gateway of your website makes sure it should be attractive and informative as well that increases your presence over the World Wide Web.

Which Is More Important For Website Promotion – SEO Or SMO?

SEO and SMO are faces of same coin i.e. website promotion. Both are equally important to rank your website in well-known search engines because now the trends are changing.

What Is SEO And How It Works?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It has many aspects of creating meta tags, backlinks, page speed, site structure, error pages, domain name, structured data, image optimization and URL structure. One of the most important parts of the SEO is creating unique content with proper keywords. Content is the blood of SEO. So, nowadays persons are focussing more on quality contents to promote their business. Google changes its content quality parameters very fast. So, you need to be updated with latest changes. Also, the content of your website should be updated regularly.

How SEO Helps In Making Your Page Land On The First Page Of The Search Engines?

Content of any website have keywords that are related to search by the user. So, when people search for anything, the particular page that contained the keywords searched by the user comes on the front page of the search engine.

What Is SMO And How It Works?

SMO stands for social media optimization. Since most of the people are nowadays using social media platforms for their daily interactions. So, promoting your website through the platforms can help you get more searches. SMO is a speedy way to become popular to the masses.

Which Are Most Popular Social Media Platforms?

Top 5 most popular Social Media Platforms are as following:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Twitter
Instagram
Pinterest

Which Is Best To Choose -SEO Or SMO?

SEO has more aspects related to your problem and it also helps you know drawbacks of your website, so, promoting through SEO will not only help you land on first pages of Search Engines like Google, but it also lets you the find the defects on your website that further helps in removing them.

While promoting page through social media is good to come in searches by the people-that improve the search outcomes, but overall it doesn’t let you eliminate the defects of your website.

Nowadays, due to increasing awareness and technological advancements, the parameters of SEO and SMO are continuously changing. So, to improve your site ranking and gain visibility over search engines you need to be updated to the trend. If you still have any question or not sure about your decision, do take professional consultation.

How to Start a Blog or Niche Website And Make Money

In 2021, due to lockdowns and mandates, more people than ever before began to look for ways to earn money working from home. In particular, many looked at blogging as an online business. The problem though, was that many of them didn’t really know how to make money from a blog. So just how can it be done?

Keep reading and I’ll go through 3 steps that you need to take to become an online blogger.

First, you need to find the right niche to work in. You need to find a “hungry market,” people who are looking for information to read and looking for products to buy.

It also needs to be a niche that you’re interested in because you’ll be writing a lot of blog posts about it.

Once you know what you’ll be blogging about, you then need to create a blog. This is simple to do using all the blogging software available. You can even set up a blog for free through platforms such as Google’s own Blogger service. Blogger has been around for years and is used by many successful bloggers, including me.

Once you’ve set up your blog, fill it with useful content, products to sell, and onsite advertising for extra income. Some bloggers earn thousands this way, selling products online as affiliates, and earning money through PPC advertising.

Once you get enough pages set up, it’s time to market your blog to get as many visitors as possible. And if you have an email subscription box on your blog, you can stay in touch with all those who sign up.

Marketing can be paid for, or can be done for free through social media and article directories. When you’re first starting out, it’s better to use free marketing, although you can go ahead and pay for it if you want to and if you already have the funds. Personally, I’ve never paid for online advertising for any of my website and blogs. Perhaps I’m leaving money on the proverbial table by marketing this way, but my online success over the years has been good without it.

And that’s the 3 steps you need to take. Choose your niche, set up a blog, join an affiliate network to find products to promote, and market your blog in as many places as you can to get thousands visitors. Just make sure you’re marketing in the right places to get the right kind of visitors.

So what are you waiting for?

Get your own money-making blog set up and running today.

Build Your Own Website Easily With WordPress

If you work from home or are trying to get that elusive first project, creating a professional website is an important step. As a home for your business, your website can showcase your skills, provide details of your experience, and give potential clients and customers a convenient way to get in touch.

What’s more, being able to create or work with a website is a useful skill in itself. For many people that work at home, the ability to get a website up and running is an additional service that can be sold to your existing clients.

You don’t need to spend a fortune getting a website developed for you. You can do it yourself, even if you have never had any experience. Thankfully, there is a secret – WordPress. WordPress is a free system that streamlines and simplifies the process of web development and, as you will find out, can still be flexible enough for just about any website imaginable.

What Does WordPress Do Besides Blogging?

Many people have heard of WordPress, but do not understand the full capabilities of the system. Most people think that WordPress is a platform for blogging when, in fact, it is far more than that.

Today, WordPress has grown into what would be called a content management system, or CMS. A CMS is a tool to store all of the information required for your website and present it to your visitors in a professional, organized way. Other content management systems include Joomla and Drupal, but the reality is that WordPress is the easiest to understand, the easiest to work with, and the most easily adaptable.

Let’s look at – in simple terms – how exactly WordPress works once it is installed:

You access a convenient WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface to securely work with all of the content on your website
You can create new web pages in a variety of formats
The content that you create is stored in a database
You can use the same interface to edit your content in the database
When visitors access your website, the information in the database is presented to them in a website layout. You can change this layout at any time and your content will automatically adopt the right look

In technical terms, WordPress is fairly advanced. In the nine years since the platform first launched, this advanced functionality has been used in all kinds of exciting ways.

Why Should You Use WordPress?

You may be wondering why people choose WordPress as their CMS. The answer is because WordPress can make just about anything that you want to do easier, quicker and more convenient!

Press agency Reuters uses WordPress to keep journalists up to date with the latest news as it happens. Music streaming service Spotify powers its entire website with WordPress.

WordPress makes creating, editing and organising your content simple and, as a result, less time-consuming. That gives you more time to focus on other areas of your business. WordPress also gives you the chance to get a professional design to make your website look great – often free of charge.

The best way to see how WordPress streamlines setting up your website is to try it for yourself. WordPress is easy to install on your web hosting or, if you sign up on the WordPress website, you can explore its features with no set-up required.

Installing WordPress Made Easy

There are a few different ways to get started with WordPress, depending on your budget, your expertise and whether you use a web hosting service.

If you are just trying out WordPress and do not have your own web hosting, visit signup.wordpress.com and sign up for a free account. You will be guided through the entire process of creating your WordPress site, which will be stored on the WordPress servers for you. It is also possible to pay for a custom domain name (the address of your website) during the sign-up process.

Alternatively, if you already have a web hosting plan that supports PHP and MySQL, you can install your own WordPress on your server. This can be done by visiting WordPress.org and downloading the necessary files. The website also offers a convenient guide to installing WordPress in 5 minutes.

Finally, see if your web hosting provider offers an automatic script installer such as Softaculous. If so, you will be able to log in from your web hosting control panel and install WordPress in just a few clicks.

Finding A Great Theme

Once WordPress is up and running, you will need to log in with the details that you chose during set-up – usually at yourdomain.com/wp-admin. You will see the WordPress dashboard, a control panel that lets you work with your website, and a range of different menu items on the left-hand side. A good place to start is by selecting a theme, under the Appearance menu.

Using the ‘Install Themes’ tab at the top of your screen, you can explore an extensive database of layouts and designs for your website. From conventional business layouts to distinctive and unusual looks, there are currently 1,607 themes available. After finding one that you like, installing is as easy as clicking the ‘Install Now’ button.

As well as these free WordPress themes that are available from within your control panel, many websites offer a great selection of themes – some of which are free, and some of which are ‘premium’ themes that incur a charge. If you are just getting started with WordPress, a free theme is a good choice. Of course, paying for a premium theme guarantees high quality, good performance, and continued support from the theme developers.

For professional WordPress themes, check out these websites:

ThemeForest
WooThemes
GetYourThemes

Once you have installed your theme, you will be able to conveniently customize it to suit your specific requirements. You can do this using Widgets.

Using Widgets

Many people choose WordPress because there are so many professional-looking themes available for it. However, it can be useful to tweak your chosen theme to make it more individual.

When a developer creates a theme, he will name specific areas of the layout that you can customize. For example, you may be able to change the menu at the top of your layout, a sidebar that runs down the side of every page, or the footer.

Under the Appearance menu on your WordPress control panel, select the Widgets option. On the right, you will see a list of the different areas of your theme that you can customize. On the left, there is a range of included widgets that you can simply drag and drop into the relevant section.

Standard WordPress widgets include Links to other websites, an automatic list of your Pages, and a calendar of when Posts have been published. You can also install other Widgets free of charge, in the form of Plugins.

Use Widgets to personalize your theme. Once you are happy, it is time to start thinking about the most important thing of all – your content.

Pages And Posts

A common obstacle for people that are new to WordPress is the distinction between two similar types of content – Pages and Posts. Whenever you want to publish something on your website, you will need to decide whether it is a Page or a Post and select the appropriate option.

Originally, WordPress only offered the ability to create Posts – a term that is short for Blog Posts. Posts are content items that are time-specific and, when they are created, they have the current time and date attached to them. Creating a new Post causes two things to happen:

An individual web page is created with the content of your post
Your post is added to a single page that collects together each individual post

This is perhaps clearer as an example – let’s imagine you have a blog section on your website, at yourdomain.com/blog. When you publish a new blog post, a single page will be created – for example, this could be yourdomain.com/blog/my-post-name. But, at the same time, your blog post will be added to the central page at yourdomain.com/blog, giving your visitors the chance to see all of your most recent posts in one convenient place.

Posts are also added to your website’s RSS feed – more on that in our next article on advanced WordPress tips. Pages, on the other hand, are static items that do not have a date attached to them. They are the pages of your website that stand alone, offering general information about your business.

If you’re still unsure, ask yourself this question before you create your content – is this something that will stand alone (a Page), or something that is part of a section of the website that I will update regularly (a Post)?

Explore And Learn On The Fly

You now understand the concepts of WordPress, including what it can do, common terminology, and why you should be using WordPress to build your site. So start exploring!

The great thing about WordPress is that it is intuitive and easy to use. Anything that you create can be deleted or edited with ease, so the best advice is to check the menu options included in your control panel and start working on your content right now.

Once you’ve made a start, be sure to read our next article on making the most of your WordPress installation to create a website that really stands out from the crowd.

Monica Patni,Freelance Website Designer, Freelance Website Developer, Internet Marketing

I INTRODUCE THE MOST CREATIVE AND ORIGINAL IDEAS

Hello, I’m a freelance Web & UI designer in Jaipur, India. I have 6+ Years of experience as a Web Designer, Web Developer and graphics designer. Good design is obvious, Great design is transparent. I passionately move pixels and lines of code to craft clean, responsive, and user-friendly websites.

I have built all kinds e.g. Static, Responsive, Web apps, Custom made WordPress design from the scratch including logo, graphics, banners, social media banners etc.

I can help convert your Adobe Photoshop design (PSD) into well-written SEO friendly XHTML/HTML5 and CSS3 code that’s clean, pixel perfect and meets current designstandards.

As a user interface designers, I need a little inspiration from time to time. This is what I have been doing since 2010. Started as a UI Designer, I quickly grew into a professional with many of respectful clients. What separates design from art is that design is meant to be functional.

The Good thing about websites is websites promote you 24/7: No employee will do that. While designing I highly focus on layout, color, graphics, fonts, and SEO friendly Content so that website can rank easily in search engines. Please connect with me I am here to help you to grow your Business.

Who Should You Hire a Freelance Web Designer or Web Design/Development Company in India?

You Might ask this question to yourself, should I hire a freelance web designer or a web development and design company in India. This could be because of various reasons like lack of knowledge, budget constraints, and previous bad design hiring experience.

I will make easy for you, Hire a freelance web designer or ui designers if you want hassle free, No delay, Not getting fooled and wants to start your website design and development quickly. In most cases, companies struggle to get the right talent for stunning Web design. All web development companies hire mediocre designers and developers to work on more than 5 projects simultaneously to cut the cost and increase their profits.

Most of the web design companies work on the same methodology they claim to complete your project in a single day at the cheap rate. They treat every web design or development project as same and just use different templates and bad coding method.

With bad user friendliness and cheap design clients only not struggle to get business but also run behind these companies to fix problems.

You have to understand one thing that no businesses will pay from their pockets if they are giving same services at lower cost despite standard rates than you must be compromising with quality or running behind them to get your project completed ontime.

With Freelance web designer you can interact them individually you will get to know the person who works on your design personally.

How Much Do I Charge?

Frankly speaking, I am expensive than most of the freelance web designers and Design agencies in Surat. I am an expensive designer because I give personal attention to my client’s websites, 2x times more time than any other Freelance Web Designer agency and give 100% to deliver results in minimum time.

I work on a single project at a time so that I have full attention for each and every project.

There is no point hiring a cheap web designer if he fails to deliver a user-friendly website that will give you business in a long run and your all the money is wasted for nothing.

Why Should I Hire Freelance Web Designer in Surat, NCR Only?

It will be easy to communicate and meet if you hire a freelance web designer in Surat, noida, gurugram or faridabad if you are based in Surat/NCR (India). You can easily show your requirements and can get to know each other face 2 face rather than skype or phone.

Also being a freelance web designer I love to meet my clients to create business relationships.

Can We Meet and Discuss or Call You for Website Design Requirements

Yes, sure I am always open for Cofee…

If you nearby in Surat, Noida, Gurugram or anywhere in NCR. We can fix place over call a place which is Central to our location and discuss the project. If you are not near Surat/NCR then no problem we can do Face-to-Face meeting over Skype and discuss the project in details.

hello@monicapattni.com

7 SEO Tips for eCommerce Website

Whether we speak of old school shopping or the new in town eCommerce wave, the only way customers can reach the place of business is if they can locate the store easily.

Internet thrives on search. Millions of search strings make their way into the internet ecosystem each day. There’s no point in spending money on a fancy website and stocking up on best products at awesome prices if your site isn’t featuring on the first page in Google.

That is where SEO efforts come into the picture. People are more likely to find you, if you have a higher search rank. And the more traffic, higher the probability of making sale.

When it comes to SEO for an online shop, “one size fits all” strategy does not work. Online shopping websites need to carefully assess the needs of their business and plan accordingly. Here are a few tips to help towards making that all-important decision.

The effective keywords

Invest some time and money to identify the most appropriate keywords for your online store. Users tend to be very specific while doing a keyword search. Ensure that the keywords used in your online shopping website’s SEO aren’t too generic. Or else, visitors simply won’t be able to find you.

No duplicate content

Be as original as possible in your product descriptions tags. That’s probably the most important step in eCommerce SEO. Since content duplication in eCommerce stores is inevitable with product descriptions and lists, it is advisable to look for ways to reduce redundancy.

Don’t copy-paste the manufacturer’s product description, take some time to build your own. It may give you a mild headache, but it will save you a migraine later. Ensure that each product description is unique and search engine friendly.

Pay Per Click

Pay per click is the necessary tool in the SEO of online shops. However, it is advisable to not rely on it entirely to create visibility. PPC costs continue to rise with each search and as soon as you stop paying for placement, your online presence disappears. Some customers do not trust sponsored links, banners, and other ads. Therefore, organic SEO is essential along with PPC for online shopping website to improve visibility.

Strengthen your content strategy

Keep adding unique and high quality content regularly to your eCommerce Portal. It will help with your search engine ranking, and an added value for users. Consider having a blog and add relevant content that’s related to products and services on your website.

Optimize images

Use ALT tags liberally on your website. Image search function has gained a lot of popularity and people are using it to find products. Your eCommerce SEO strategy needs to incorporate related keywords for ALT tags of every image on the website. Don’t stuff keywords; ensure that every keyword used is directly relevant.

Meta descriptions for webpages

For onsite eCommerce SEO, use a different meta descriptions for each page. Meta descriptions are written for humans with the purpose of helping to get visitors to your online store once it shows up in search engines.

Remember to optimize anchor text

Use keywords for internal links on your website. This will help enhance your visibility in search engines. Consider doing the same for product descriptions by linking them to other similar products on your website.

99 Ways to Flood Your Website With Traffic by Mick Macro

This is one of the books I have found useful in my search for further traffic sources. There are several methods you won’t even have thought of and many are free traffic sources. Organic traffic once set up continues to grow over time by word of mouth and people passing on your link. It is therefore very important that your website and all your articles are well written, informative, appealing and relevant to the searches in your chosen niche.

It is a good idea to use both organic traffic and paid advertising to encourage searches. Paid traffic can be ppc, Facebook ads, solo ads or banner ads, as they bring quick returns especially useful when making tests.

I have pulled out a few items from the book as illustrations; method 21 is talking about free blog sites. There are many providers to choose from, weebly.com is an easy to use free website provider. Especially useful as you can upgrade your website to a paid version in the future to com, org, info, etc. Weebly.com is easy to use, there are great tutorials, plus a helpful chat line. It is also a highly ranked site so relatively easy to get onto page one of Google.

Method 25 explains the correct way to use Twitter to gain traffic (not the way most people use it)!

Method 22 Ask and answer sites like Yahoo Answers” and Ask.com where you can ask questions and leave answers to other peoples’ questions. They work a little like forum marketing.

Method 51 Stumbleupon, get your articles voted for and passed around. Don’t forget a good resource comment and link to your website.

There are ways to improve your website No 70, 56, 53, 43, 36, 35 to gain more traffic.

The above are just a few entries to show the versatility, some will appeal to you more than others but so many ideas to implement you will never wonder what to do, just when will you have the time!

So if you are an online marketer I hope you will find this little inexpensive book as helpful and full of ideas as I have. Or are you looking for the easiest route into the online world? If this is the case affiliate marketing is the simplest way to start online, if you work with the guidance of a coach. You can start earning commissions in a short time even if you are still learning the techniques.

You will have a great range of best-selling products provided for you and professionally written order pulling sales pages, plus up-to-date training. It is in your coaches interest to help you as they will be earning when you earn too. Affiliate marketing is a fun way to begin online with the security of knowing you are working to a tried and tested plan.

So whatever your online business we all need traffic. Without a ready supply of customers there is no business. Wishing you great success enjoy your time and location freedom with your laptop

Shopify Review: Is This One of the Best E-Commerce Website Templates?

Deciding to build an online store is a great decision and a solid business model. Once you’ve decided on a product to sell, your next big decision is choosing a great e-commerce website template. I’ve tried many e-commerce templates – and I can say hands down that Shopify offers one of the best e-commerce website templates and platforms when you take pricing, template options, style, and ease-of-use into consideration.

In fact, many e-commerce store owners have extremely successful online stores using Shopify.

Let me jump right into the features and benefits in this Shopify review. I’ll also tell you about some of the drawbacks to this e-commerce platform – but in the end it is one of the best e-commerce website options available (please note that these are the features and benefits at the time this article was published).

Features and Benefits of Using Shopify for your E-Commerce Store

Free Trial:

You can try it free for 30 days. Take advantage of this offer by exploring the many e-commerce website templates they have to choose from. Look under the hood and discover how easy it is to get your online store up and running fast.

50 E-Commerce Templates / Store Fronts to Choose From:

Shopify has 50 fantastic themes / template styles to choose from. You can also easily customize any theme or template you get to ensure you get the precise look and feel you want for your business.

No Contract Required:

When you use Shopify you don’t need to commit to any duration. You pay month-to-month. I don’t need to tell you how advantageous this is. After all, when you’re starting up – the last thing you want to do is get committed to long-term expenses.

No Computer Coding knowledge Needed:

You don’t need to know how to build websites to set up a Shopify e-commerce store. Shopify makes it super easy to choose and set up any of its 50 templates simply by clicking buttons.

Payment Processing:

Shopify makes it super easy to integrate with a credit card gateway and/or Paypal. If you sell digital products – no problem – you can deliver them through an integrated app included with your Shopify subscription.

Use Your Own Domain:

I can’t stress the importance of building your store on your own domain. Yes, you can use a Shopify domain – but for the long-term it is much, much better to start building your store on your own domain. Shopify makes it easy to build an e-commerce store on your own domain.

Why use your own domain? Because if you start getting links to your store (great for search engine rankings and highly recommended), then if you switch domains – those links you get to a Shopify domain are wasted. Start your business on the right foot by investing the $10 it costs to get your own domain.

Low Monthly Cost:

Once you decide to use Shopify, it only costs $24 per month for a basic plan. You can sell up to 100 SKUs with this plan, which in my view is a tremendous offering. There is no setup fee either. If you ever need to upgrade your plan, that’s very easy to do. Shopify = flexibility.

In addition, however, you also pay a 2.0 percent transaction fee as part of your cost (when you upgrade plans, the transaction percentage lowers). This allows Shopify to charge low monthly fixed cost rates. Being able to limit fixed costs and have a variable cost option (i.e. costs directly linked to your sales) is a tremendous feature and advantage as you get your online business off the ground.

SSL Checkout:

You definitely want to offer your customers secure shopping. With all of Shopify’s e-commerce website templates and plans you automatically get to offer secure shopping for your customers with the industry standard 128 bit SSL encryption.

Bandwidth: Unlimited.

This means if you get a flood of visitors your site won’t shut down. Obviously this is critical to running a successful online e-commerce store.

Discount Codes for Your Customers:

You have to upgrade to a $59 / monthly plan in order to offer coupon codes. If you’re just starting, this isn’t necessary. Once you start generating sales – then you’re in a position to monitor your sales and then decide if coupon codes can help build your business.

Automatic Back Ups:

Shopify backs up your store so you don’t have to be concerned about losing any data.

Add a Shopify E-Commerce Template to Your Existing Website:

If you already have a blog or website and wish to add a store – it is no problem with Shopify. You simply establish your Shopify store on a subdomain (subdomains cost nothing to setup).

Customer and Technical Support:

You can contact Shopify for help, use their Shopify forums, and check out detailed tutorials in the Shopify Help Wiki. You won’t be stranded to struggle.

Drop shipping Integration and Partners:

If you don’t want to pack and ship your orders you can use a partner drop shipper such as Fulfillment by Amazon, Shipwire, and Webgistix.

Drawbacks to Shopify for Your E-Commerce Template Solution

I don’t like that you have to upgrade to a $59/month plan in order to offer coupon codes. It seems to me coupon codes are a powerful way for a starting business to build revenues. It should be offered in every plan.
Too few drop shipping partnerships. Now I’m not sure if you can set up drop shipping with a company other than Amazon, Shipwire, and Webgistix. Likely one of these 3 will suit your needs, but if not, it may be more complicated than necessary than setting up an automated order-processing system. Again, this is something you would need to discuss with prospective drop shippers and Shopify.

Despite my 2 dislikes mentioned above, I still believe Shopify offers by one of the best e-commerce templates available anywhere.

Website Redesign: The 5 Biggest Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

My hairdresser told me that a customer earlier in the day had had such a bad experience at another salon that she had worn a wig to her appointment. Underneath, her hair colour was patchy and the hair itself was coming out in clumps. The client was terrified and distrustful of having her hair styled again and it took all the longer to calm her down and try to repair some of the damage.

As a freelance web developer, I often feel that I am looking at the web design equivalent of this experience. So many companies, especially SMEs, are duped into buying web design or CMS (Content Management System) packages which are costly and do not fit their business. Others pay top dollar for design and then find out it isn’t workable on the web.

You may think that sounds like a gift to a trusted web developer like me who then gets the business, but I don’t like it. It makes people distrustful of the whole industry and makes SMEs despair that they don’t understand their website or how to make it work for their business. That’s not good for my business. So, here are my top tips: five pitfalls to avoid when considering a website design or web redesign.

1) Budget, budget, budget

During the process of designing and developing your website, there will inevitably be some to-ing and fro-ing between you and your web developer to get things the way you want them. When you ask the developer to quote for the project, make sure you get the quote broken down into specifics. Find out exactly what is included in the quote and whether this is a flat fee or an hourly rate. What happens if the web project overruns? Is web hosting included? What about Search Engine Optimisation? Ongoing maintenance?

Every web developer or web design company is different, but once you have your quote, get a second and third one from other sources, just to check that it’s about right for the web development work you want done. There’s no harm in letting the web developer know that you are getting other quotes: this will mean you get their most competitive rates or package.

2) Specify that your end product needs to be in valid HTML

The web developer or web development company you choose should be able to produce code, run it through HTML and CSS validators and show you the results. Many graphic designers who also claim to produce websites work in Photoshop, so they produce images not code. Other developers use Flash which will look very pretty but will be completely unreadable to Google and won’t work at all on some browsers and the iPhone. It’s a bad idea to overuse images or Flash on your website, because they damage your Google ranking.

If you have a graphic designer who is going to produce images which then need to be translated into HTML, that’s fine, but be aware that the cost will increase as a second professional will be required.

3) Ask for in-built Content Management System (CMS)

So many web designers and developers offer CMS as standard that it shouldn’t be adding to your bill to make this request. Content Management means that you will be able to update your site to meet your requirements in future. This is especially important for blogs and news pages which will need to be kept up-to-date.

4) Ask what measures the company is using to secure you a good place on Google and Bing

In other words, investigate Search Engine Optimisation. By far one of the best ways to do this without even needing to contact the web developer is to Google likely keywords for their site and see if you can find them. If they can’t optimize their own website, are you going to trust them to optimize yours?

Bear in mind that SEO is a game of two halves. The first is on-page: your website needs to be designed so that the content is working for you, not against you. The biggest considerations here are the use of images and Flash (see above), but valid CSS and HTML and a clean site structure are also important. Your website designer needs to ensure that your text content is relevant for your keywords, that headers are the right size to give prominence to the right keywords and that images are correctly labelled for text readers, to name but a few SEO design considerations.

The second stage of SEO happens once the site is up and running and primarily involves promoting your site via other web sites, social media etc. This part of SEO may be more within your control and remit as the business owner, but if you are asking the web development company to do this for you as well, ask for evidence of previous success and get a bulleted list of actions the web developer is going to take on behalf of your web site.

5) Take ownership

When you agree on a price for the web site redesign, establish whether or not you are purchasing the copyright to the design as well. Will the web developer want a backlink to their site and is that OK with you? If bespoke features (e.g. custom web hosting, CMS, SEO tools) are being used, do these tie you in to buying certain products or services from the web design company in future?

Bear in mind that you might want to change things around in the future so keep things as flexible as possible. There are plenty of open source programs out there which will help you keep your independence so that you can keep your costs low.

There is, of course, a thread which runs through all of this advice. Employ a web developer you can trust and establish a good working relationship where both parties expectations can be met.