PrestaShop – The A2 Posting https://www.a2hosting.com/blog The Official Blog for A2 Hosting Wed, 15 Sep 2021 13:08:07 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.8.1 9 Important E-Commerce Trends to Watch in 2021 https://www.a2hosting.com/blog/e-commerce-trends-2021/ Mon, 29 Mar 2021 13:30:47 +0000 https://www.a2hosting.com/blog/?p=10491 With online shopping at an all-time high, the world of e-commerce has never been more exciting and fast-paced. If you don’t keep up with the latest e-commerce trends, you risk …

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With online shopping at an all-time high, the world of e-commerce has never been more exciting and fast-paced. If you don’t keep up with the latest e-commerce trends, you risk getting left behind.

By embracing industry trends, you can drive more traffic to your site and convert visitors into paying customers. What’s more, staying in the know can help you maximize your revenue today while future-proofing your business for tomorrow.

In this article, we’ll help you keep your store at the cutting-edge throughout 2021 and beyond. We’ll introduce you to the importance of e-commerce trends, explore nine of the biggest ones currently, and discuss how you can implement them. Let’s get started!

An Introduction to E-Commerce Trends (And Why They’re Important)

Market trends are patterns of consumer behavior that can be found across all industries. As an online store owner, you likely depend on website traffic.

More people visiting your store means more potential customers and sales. Staying at the cutting edge of the latest e-commerce trends can help you generate more buzz around your offerings.

Once people arrive at your store, your next task is to convert them into customers. If your site reflects the latest e-commerce trends and consumer preferences, it can help you boost their experience, and in turn you can maximize your conversion rates and revenue.

It’s always been important for businesses to keep up with consumer trends. However, since the ongoing pandemic is having a massive impact on the world of e-commerce, it’s perhaps more vital now than ever.

A recent survey revealed that, throughout 2020, COVID-19 drove online shopping to an all-time high. By embracing industry trends, you can increase your chances of connecting with this huge potential audience of people looking to shop in a safe online environment.

There’s also evidence to suggest that new customers you acquire now are likely to stick with your business for the long haul. The aforementioned survey showed that nearly 9 out of 10 people worldwide plan to continue spending money with an online store they discovered during the lockdown.

The world of e-commerce is always changing and evolving. Staying on top of the latest topics and trends can prevent you from falling behind and becoming irrelevant.

9 Important E-Commerce Trends to Watch in 2021

To help you identify exactly where your e-commerce store should go next, it’s critical to monitor industry trends. To set you on the path to success, let’s take a look at nine e-commerce trends expected to shape the industry throughout 2021 and beyond.

1. There’s an Increasing Demand for Personalized Shopping Experiences

Today, the vast majority of stores have an online presence. With plenty of e-commerce sites to choose from, customers are in a strong position to demand a five-star experience. There’s evidence to suggest that, for many customers, personalization massively improves the purchasing process.

According to marketing specialists Epsilon, 80 percent of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer a tailored experience. By customizing the experience for each shopper, you can help drive conversions.

Also, over 36 percent of consumers say retailers need to do more to offer personalized experiences. That means this strategy can help you get the edge over your competitors.

Every purchase has a positive impact on your revenue. However, repeat customers are particularly valuable, as they deliver a high Return On Investment (ROI) and Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV).

Personalization can help you build rewarding long-term relationships by improving the quality of the customer experience. You can even use it to present yourself as a helpful service, rather than just another online store. For example, you might recommend new products based on a customer’s previous purchase history, or remind them when it’s time to reorder their favorite items.

If you’re going to provide this kind of helpful service, you’ll need to record information about the customer’s habits and behavior. You can achieve this by adding membership functionality to your site using a plugin such as Members:

The WordPress Members plugin.

Members ensures that all the customer’s actions are added to their user profile, ready for you to use to craft tailored experiences. You could even use this plugin to sell members-only products or offer exclusive pricing to your best customers. Also, memberships can create a sense of exclusivity, which is another powerful way to encourage long-term loyalty.

2. Smartphone Shoppers Are Continuing to Increase

The number of global smartphone users has passed three billion. With so many mobile devices out there, it’s essential to optimize your online store for this demographic.

In 2019, mobile devices accounted for 65 percent of all e-commerce traffic, and 53 percent of sales. Depending on your industry, this number may be even higher. For example, fashion retailers receive 67 percent of their sales from mobile devices.

The number of smartphone users is projected to grow by several hundred million in the next few years. Therefore, we predict that mobile optimization will be a massive trend throughout 2021 and in the years to come.

To ensure that your store provides a favorable experience for smartphone and tablet users, we recommend using a mobile-responsive WordPress theme:

The WordPress Theme Directory.

It’s also a smart idea to remove popups, as these are particularly obtrusive on the smaller screen of your typical mobile device. Similarly, consider reviewing each web page to look for opportunities to trim unnecessary content.

Remember that your typical smartphone or tablet screen can display far less content than a desktop computer. By streamlining your site, you can minimize how much mobile users need to scroll to access the information or features they need.

Chances are your e-commerce store features a lot of product images. Beautiful, high-resolution images are essential for driving conversions. However, they also impact your page loading times.

If your site takes too long to load or provides a poor experience, you can assume that consumers will be less likely to make a purchase. To meet consumer expectations and drive sales, it’s important to optimize your product images for mobile.

3. Omnichannel Selling Is Becoming Essential

Today’s consumer expects to purchase content in multiple ways, such as browsing your product catalog on both their desktop and mobile browsers. Some online stores even have a dedicated mobile app:

The Amazon mobile app banner.

 

As an e-commerce site, it’s crucial that you meet your customers wherever they are, and provide a seamless experience across all channels. A headless e-commerce architecture can help you deliver this kind of omnichannel experience. By opting for a headless setup, you’ll be able to create your content once, and then publish it on multiple platforms.

If you’ve built your site using the popular WooCommerce e-commerce platform, you’ll have access to the WooCommerce REST API. This API gives you the flexibility to use your data in other contexts, including Single Page Applications (SPAs) and mobile apps:

The WooCommerce REST API can help you implement e-commerce trends.

As an online retailer, you’ll likely want to promote your content on every conceivable channel. However, it’s important to be selective about your omnichannel experience. Building and maintaining a presence across a long list of platforms requires a significant amount of time and effort. As a busy website owner, this may not be practical.

Different channels also have different target audiences, and there’s no guarantee that these people will be your ideal customers. Focusing on a platform that isn’t widely used by your target audience will likely deliver a low ROI.

Ideally, you’ll zero in on the channel(s) that your audience spends the majority of their time. Here, it may help to deep-dive into your visitors and their behaviors using a platform such as Google Analytics.

4. Environmentally-Conscious Consumers Are Encouraging Brands to Go Green

In 2021, environmental issues are no longer reserved for eco-friendly brands. Many major online retailers have taken the pledge toward sustainability, including e-commerce giant Amazon:

Amazon's sustainability website.

Sustainability is a great cause, and every business should strive to become more eco-friendly. However, there’s no denying that ‘sustainability’ is also a huge buzzword, particularly among millennials.

According to a recent study, 61 percent of consumers said that they would switch to a brand that’s more environmentally friendly than their current favorite. This means that taking steps towards sustainability isn’t just the right thing to do – it can also help you get an edge over the competition.

Your customers may even be willing to pay more for eco-friendly products, especially the younger generation. The same study showed that 61 percent of millennials and 58 percent of Gen-Z agree that they’d pay a higher price tag for a ‘green’ product.

This suggests that, even if you have to increase your prices, your customers may be happy to foot the bill. Sustainability could be one of the few ways for you to increase your prices, while also improving the customer experience.

To set your e-commerce store on the green road, we recommend reviewing your current offerings. Consider whether your products are made through sustainable processes or with eco-friendly materials. Wherever possible, it’s a smart idea to replace items that aren’t with more sustainable alternatives.

Additionally, if you ship to your customers, you might look into ways to reduce the amount of packaging used. You could also replace non-recyclable materials, such as plastic, with recyclable alternatives, such as cardboard. To boost your green credentials, you may want to provide instructions on how to recycle the packaging, or even the product itself.

5. Social Media Continues to Drive Purchasing Decisions

For years, social media has been an integral marketing tool for online stores. However, in 2020, we saw a few initiatives that strengthened this link between social media and e-commerce, such as the partnership between Shopify and TikTok and the launch of Instagram Shops:

The Instagram Shops dashboard.

These projects reflect the increasing number of customers who make purchasing decisions directly from their social media feeds. To capitalize on this trend, you can look for opportunities to create shareable content related to your e-commerce offerings. For example, you might create unboxing videos of your products.

You could also generate social media buzz by encouraging your customers to create their own content. Consumers generally perceive User-Generated Content (UGC) as more trustworthy than traditional promotional and marketing content.

Therefore, you may want to provide an incentive to shoppers for creating valuable UGC. For example, home-ware brand MADE has an ongoing Instagram campaign where customers share photos of their favorite MADE products:

The MADE Instagram competition example of an e-commerce trend.

How you promote your store on social media also makes a difference. Although it’s difficult to prove, there’s a common belief that social media algorithms reward the adoption of new features.

Every time new functionality is introduced, you may want to put it to the test by incorporating it into your social media activities. Then you can measure the impact it has on your engagement, conversions, and other key metrics. Armed with this information, you can adjust your social media efforts accordingly.

Experimenting with the latest social media features can also help boost your profile. You may even earn a reputation as a business at the cutting edge of social media trends. This can increase your appeal, particularly among the tech-savvy younger generations.

6. Online Influencers Are Assuming a Content Creator Role

An online influencer is someone who has a significant digital following. They can promote your business or products to their existing audience, similar to a traditional celebrity endorsement.

The influencer marketing industry is expected to reach $9.7 billion in 2020, making it clear why these partnerships deserve a spot on the list of important e-commerce trends to consider. The right person can send a fresh wave of traffic to your online store, and even increase your sales.

Influencers can promote your brand, but they also fulfill a content creation role. With more social media platforms than ever before, busy website owners may struggle to create enough content to feed the machine. Instead of partnering with an agency, you could consider teaming up with someone who will create content based on your brand.

The key to a successful partnership is to find a fitting match. Ideally, there should be some crossover between their fan base and your target audience, as this will typically result in more conversions.

It also helps if there’s some connection between the influencer and the product(s) they’re promoting, so the content seems more authentic. Even though the work is strictly business, fans like to believe that their favorite creators are discerning about brands they promote. If the audience thinks the promoter is genuinely passionate about your product(s), it’s more likely to result in sales.

While it’s tempting to go after the biggest social media stars, sometimes it makes more sense to partner with a micro-influencer within your niche. They may have a smaller audience, but if their fan base represents your ideal customer, the collaboration could yield a high ROI.

7. More Online Stores Are Becoming Multilingual

Thanks to the internet, your store has the opportunity to reach audiences worldwide. With online shopping more prevalent than ever, we predict that more businesses will try to capitalize on this global increase by producing multi-language content.

According to estimates, 60 percent of all online content is in English, but 74 percent of internet users speak a language other than English. If you restrict yourself to a single language, you’re missing out on a huge audience – and a lot of potential sales. Plus, this is one of the e-commerce trends you can take advantage of to make your site more accessible.

Even if your customers are multilingual, most people appreciate a business that attempts to communicate in their first language. Research shows that 65 percent of consumers prefer to access content in their native tongues.

When it comes to translating your content, we recommend working with a native speaker wherever possible. They typically offer the highest quality results, and will have an innate understanding of the cultural etiquette surrounding the language. Rather than providing a word-for-word translation, a professional can use this insight to help you create interpreted content that is more engaging and persuasive.

After translating your e-commerce site, you’ll need to give visitors a way to switch between the supported languages. You can add a language picker to your online store using the Polylang plugin:

The Polylang WordPress plugin.

You can also use this plugin to optimize your site’s categories, tags, and custom taxonomies for the different languages your store supports. The tool can help your translated content appear in relevant search engine results, and drive more international customers to your online store.

8. Customer Support Is Getting an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Boost

Customer service is essential for driving sales. Studies indicate that a consumer will spend  140 percent more after having a positive experience.

Many factors contribute to the quality of your customer experience. However, how quickly you respond to inquiries is a huge one. Ideally, you’ll answer immediately, and at any time of the day or night. Of course, for many online store owners, this simply isn’t feasible.

Chatbots can be a powerful way to provide customers with instant access to support, regardless of the date, time, or number of other people currently seeking help. There’s also evidence to suggest that these AI tools are becoming increasingly popular, with over 67 percent of consumers using them for customer support in 2019.

Even if you have a 24/7 customer services department, chatbots can streamline your support process. For example, you might use one to automatically gather important information, such as the customer’s account number and contact details. This information will then be shared with your support staff.

In this way, chatbots can reduce the amount of time required to resolve a customer’s query. When it comes to routine questions, research indicates that they can reduce response times by up to 80 percent.

There are various chat tools that integrate with WordPress. If you’re using WooCommerce, the WoowBot plugin is a popular standalone chatbot that has full support for the e-commerce platform:

The WooWBot WordPress plugin can help you implement e-commerce trends.

Another well-known option is Chatbot by Collect.chat. This plugin is free to use, and lets you add a chat widget to your site without any technical knowledge.

9. There’s a Growing Need for Online Businesses to Invest in Dedicated Hosting

Behind most successful websites are reliable, high-performance hosting providers. The type of hosting you use influences all aspects of your site, particularly its speed and performance.

Business-critical websites, especially online stores, come with a unique set of challenges and demands. Not only are fast page loading times and quick checkout processes necessary to ensure a seamless UX, but any amount of downtime can be disastrous.

As more companies move operations online, it ushers in an increasing need to invest in dedicated hosting:

A2 Hosting dedicated hosting plans.

In a nutshell, dedicated hosting means you aren’t sharing your server resources with other websites. In turn, you have the benefit of improved security and overall better performance. You can feel confident that your store will remain online, even during unexpected traffic spikes, and as your site continues to grow throughout 2021 and beyond.

Conclusion

Over the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many consumers to shop online and triggered an e-commerce revolution. Now it’s time to prepare your business for the next step.

To set your site up for success, it’s a good idea to provide a more personalized shopping experience. By offering membership features, you can encourage customer loyalty and increase your chances of securing repeat purchases. We also predict that consumers will continue to favor sustainable brands, and may even be willing to pay a premium for sustainable products in 2021.

Following the latest e-commerce trends is essential for driving traffic and conversions. This includes getting the foundations right, such as your web hosting. At A2 Hosting, we offer dedicated hosting plans that can help keep your e-commerce site up and running 24/7!

Image credit: Pexels.

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7 St. Patrick’s Day Marketing Strategies to Boost Your Ecommerce Sales https://www.a2hosting.com/blog/seven-st-patricks-day-marketing-strategies-to-boost-your-ecommerce-sales/ Wed, 10 Mar 2021 18:51:11 +0000 https://www.a2hosting.com/blog/?p=10580   Introduction We love the color green so St. Paddy’s Day is one of the best holidays in our book! This year we’re celebrating with  seven digital marketing tips and …

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Introduction

We love the color green so St. Paddy’s Day is one of the best holidays in our book! This year we’re celebrating with  seven digital marketing tips and tricks to help your business take advantage of this lucky time of year. 

 

    1. Be Authentic and Use the Right Tone and Voice
    2. Be Culturally Sensitive
    3. Add Festive Decorations and Go Green
    4. Help Your Customers Call On the Luck of the Irish
    5. Don’t Miss an Opportunity to Go Live!
    6. Send Out a Holiday Themed Email Campaign!
    7. Do Research on Other Successful Campaigns to Help Plan Your Own

 

1) Be Authentic and Use the Right Tone and Voice

 

As with any major holiday or promotion, it’s important to be authentic to your company’s brand when coming up with a digital marketing campaign. It’s all good fun to come up with holiday puns and green themed campaigns, but above all you must do your research and make sure your posts align with how you want to portray your company to the marketplace.

Know Your Brand’s Personality on Social and be Consistent

Do research on past posts and make sure your tone aligns with what you’ve published previously. It’s important to follow your brand guidelines and be consistent, even as you play with puns that fit the St. Patrick’s Day theme. Posting something that’s drastically different from previous content won’t help in building a strong brand

 

It’s also important to remember why people follow you. What are they looking for when they come to your site? For example, if you own a crafting store people are likely following you to see the latest trends in crafting materials or what cool things you’ve created with your craft supplies. Likewise if you own an outdoor clothing store, people may follow you to see your clothes in action or find awesome new hiking trails. It’s important you can deliver what your customer wants to see on your social platforms. This will make it easier to keep your followers engaged with your content and refer them back to your site. The perfect combination is:

2) Be Culturally Sensitive 

 

Be creative! Come up with new puns or ways to make old puns fit your brand. Remember to be historically and socially conscious before you post. Don’t be tone deaf and post offensive or charged content. Be relevant and timely while also socially conscious. A good publicity stunt can work wonders on brand identity and public image, but make sure to do it in the right way. Have your public relations team and any marketing members meet before posting and discuss implications of your campaign from all angles in order to uncover any miscommunication or issues that could arise later on. 

 

3) Add Festive Decorations and Go Green

 

It’s always important to follow online trends and be timely in your advertising, and one of the biggest trends during St. Patrick’s Day is the color green. Historically green was worn to represent the Emerald Isle and the people of Ireland, but today it has turned into a folkloric attempt to avoid the pinch of an errant leprechaun. St. Patrick’s Day marketing is a perfect time to use this color to entice your audience to purchase from your online store!

If you have merchandise that’s green or your brand uses this as one of their colors, this is a great time to highlight this. It’s also a great opportunity for online creativity. Add green banners to your website or pop in some green accent colors here and there.  Reap the rewards of your environmental efforts while joining in on the holiday spirit. Use this opportunity to advertise any “green initiatives” your company is participating in!

 

4) Help Your Customers Call On the Luck of the Irish

 

In addition to decorating your store, St. Patrick’s Day is a great time to run discounts and deals on your site! Use this opportunity to give a percentage off on all green items (color or environmentally sound) or create a custom sales item with your favorite St. Patrick’s day slogan or image. Create a sense of urgency and run your sale for a limited amount of time. Encourage User Generated Content (UGC) by creating drawings or picture-sharing promotions asking followers to participate if they’re “feeling lucky.” This is a great way to create talk about your brand and encourages followers to interact with your posts. 

 

5) Don’t Miss an Opportunity to Go Live!

 

You could use St. Patrick’s Day as an opportunity to do live video on your social accounts by sharing real time updates with your followers. Dress up and stream your live reactions as they send their selfies in or record as you contact the winners of your promotional contest. Create a funny behind the scenes video of your employees as they grant wishes or chase the rainbow. This is a great way to personalize your accounts and share the people behind your brand! 

 

6) Send Out a Holiday Themed Email Campaign

 

To increase touches, send out a holiday themed email campaign. You could stick a shamrock themed logo on your header and cross-promote any social media campaigns you have running. Increase your marketing reach by requiring email sign ups to enter social promotions you have planned. Then attach a secret promo code that can be used by people who subscribe! The possibilities are endless and it works well to coordinate your overall marketing strategies across all marketing channels and promotional materials.

 

7) Do Research on Other Successful Campaigns to Help Plan Your Own

 

We know all of this might sound like a lot, but sometimes it helps to look at successful campaigns when trying to come up with some ideas of your own. We’ve got three examples below that may help spark some ideas for your own festive campaigns. 

 

Guinness: Make St. Patrick’s Day the Friendliest Day of the Year

 

Their Friendliest Day of the year campaign was a huge success. By emphasizing coming together with friends and family, they were able to tie the theme of community to their product, eliciting warm feelings when followers thought of their brand. They included infographics with St. Patrick’s Day facts that could be shared worldwide, helping spread their brand awareness through increased follower interaction. They were timely, relevant, and socially aware as they ran their St. Patrick’s Day campaign. 

 

 

M&M’s: Ms. Green Campaign

 

M&M used their iconic candy personas to bring their brand to life. Ms. Green embarked on a spokes candy campaign around Ireland, stopping off in famous cities to meet the locals and see the sights. Her tour was documented and shared as she educated her followers on Irish history and phenomena. Not only was the campaign relevant and shared accurate cultural details, but it encouraged fans to interact with their brand by posting selfies in order to win a trip to New York. They used ‘here for the craic, not as a snack’ as their tagline, an Irish pun that had the right comedic tone to spark laughs rather than controversy. 

 

 

McDonald’s: Shamrock Shake

 

Finally, shamrock shake season. Every year McDonald’s releases their limited edition shamrock shake, a mixture of chocolate and minty goodness. Their timely release, limited timeline, and extensive media coverage creates a sense of urgency as people line up every year to get a green milkshake while it’s available. Rather than just releasing a mint chocolate chip shake they were able to turn their St. Patrick’s Day campaign into a hot commodity. 

Conclusion

 

Most importantly, make sure you use this holiday as a point of connection with all of your customers. You want your brand to be engaging and personal, so celebrating this holiday together is a great way to achieve this! Personalize your campaign and share any employees with Irish descent. Use real time trends  as a way to connect with your socially savvy customers. Run video marketing campaigns and highlight topics relating to St. Patrick’s Day. Holidays are a great time to gain new customers and connect with loyal followers. Personalize your marketing content this year and make this the best celebration yet!

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How to Start an Online Store (in 9 Easy Steps) https://www.a2hosting.com/blog/woocommerce-create-online-store/ Wed, 10 Feb 2021 17:14:47 +0000 https://www.a2hosting.com/blog/?p=10097 Online shopping has changed consumer behavior forever. If you sell any products or services, you can generally benefit from selling them online. However, breaking into the world of e-commerce and …

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Online shopping has changed consumer behavior forever. If you sell any products or services, you can generally benefit from selling them online. However, breaking into the world of e-commerce and launching your own online store can be daunting.

Thankfully, with the right tools you can build a fast, reliable online store without having to write a single line of code. Using these tools, you can launch your e-commerce business and start collecting payments, with minimal effort and very few upfront costs.

In this article, we’ll show you how to launch an e-commerce store using WordPress and the popular WooCommerce platform. Along the way, we’ll share advice on how to maximize your sales, by prioritizing your store’s performance and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Let’s get started!

Why You’d Want to Start an Online Store

Over the last few years, e-commerce has completely changed consumer habits. Today, online shopping is an indispensable part of the global economy, and online-only stores such as Amazon and eBay are some of the biggest names in retail. It’s difficult to even imagine a modern company that doesn’t offer customers the option to purchase products and services online.

In 2019, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to $3.53 trillion, and 2020 seems set to be a record-breaking year for online retail. Throughout 2020, physical stores around the globe were forced to close in an attempt to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic. This caused online shopping to skyrocket, as consumers embraced e-commerce as a way to access goods and services in a safe environment. In June 2020, global retail e-commerce traffic stood at a record 22 billion monthly visits.

With more people shopping online than ever before, you could find a large audience for your e-commerce business. By launching your online store now, you can maximize sales while helping your customers access the goods and services they need, without the risks currently associated with in-person shopping.

Introducing the WooCommerce Platform

There are a number of e-commerce plugins available for WordPress. However, with over five million active installs, WooCommerce is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms.

Out-of-the-box, WooCommerce provides everything you need to build an engaging online store, sell products, and accept payments. This has made WooCommerce a popular choice among online stores of all shapes and sizes.

Today, WooCommerce is used by many big-name brands. Aeropress, Weber, and the All Blacks all rely on WooCommerce to power their online stores.

There’s also evidence to suggest that WooCommerce can help you build a successful e-commerce store. According to research, 28 percent of the top one million e-commerce stores use WooCommerce as their e-commerce technology of choice.

WooCommerce was originally developed by WordPress theme developer WooThemes. However, in 2015, WooCommerce was acquired by Automattic – the company behind WordPress – who run and operate WooCommerce today.

As an Automattic product, WooCommerce is a stable, reliable e-commerce solution that’s regularly updated. If you want to create an online store, it’s always worth considering WooCommerce.

Why Build Your e-Commerce Store With WooCommerce

As a free WordPress plugin, WooCommerce is accessible to organizations of all shapes and sizes. This includes startups and smaller businesses, who typically have tighter budgets than established enterprises. Using WooCommerce, you can launch an e-commerce store with minimal upfront costs.

WooCommerce has a range of features built-in, but it’s also extensible. If vanilla WooCommerce doesn’t meet all your needs, you can choose from a wide range of WooCommerce extensions.

If you can’t find the perfect extension ready-made, WooCommerce is open-source software. This means you can always modify or extend the WooCommerce code to suit your exact needs – or hire a coder to make these changes for you.

WooCommerce is also designed to be user friendly. Using WooCommerce, you can potentially build a professional e-commerce store without having to write a single line of code. If you have previous experience with WordPress, building a store using WooCommerce will likely feel intuitive and easy.

Collecting payments is one of the most important parts of running a successful e-commerce business. WooCommerce can securely accept cards, mobile wallets, and bank transfers. It also integrates with over 100 payment gateways including PayPal, Stripe, and Square.

Today, many customers shop on their smartphones and tablets. In 2017, $1.4 trillion of total retail e-commerce sales were made using a mobile device. In 2021, it’s estimated that mobile e-commerce could account for $3.5 trillion of total e-commerce sales.

If you’re going to maximize your revenue, it’s essential your e-commerce store is mobile-friendly. WooCommerce works across all devices, including smartphones and tablets. The WooCommerce team is also continuously improving the plugin’s performance for mobile. For example, WooCommerce 3.0 optimized the product gallery for mobile users, and added support for touch gestures.

How to Start an Online Store (In 9 Easy Steps)

In this section, we’ll show you how to build a complete e-commerce store, using WooCommerce and WordPress. As promised, you won’t have to write a single line of code. Let’s dive in, and start your e-commerce business!

  1. Choose the Right Web Hosting Provider

Your choice of hosting provider has the potential to make or break your e-commerce business. Downtime is always bad news, but for e-commerce stores downtime can mean an immediate drop in sales. To avoid downtime, we recommend opting for a provider that offers an uptime guarantee.

Performance is another crucial factor, as today’s consumer isn’t willing to wait around. Amazon calculated that a page load slowdown of just one second would cost them $1.6 billion in lost sales each year.

Performance can also impact your e-commerce store’s SEO. In particular, it can affect how quickly crawlers can index your content and serve it to customers. If your hosting provider doesn’t prioritize speed, your latest products and special offers may not even appear in Google’s search results for a significant period of time.

Google also uses page speed as a ranking factor in both its desktop and mobile search results. Research indicates that 39 percent of online purchases are influenced by a relevant search. Where your store appears in Google’s search results can have a huge impact on your sales and revenue.

There are many factors that can impact your site’s performance. However, your choice of hosting provider is one of the most important decisions you can make, particularly at this early stage.

At A2 Hosting, we take performance seriously. That’s why we’ve created a series of e-commerce hosting plans that are optimized for WooCommerce. These plans can deliver 20X faster page loads than competing WooCommerce hosting providers.

2. Set up WooCommerce

After activating the WooCommerce plugin, you’ll encounter a Welcome to WooCommerce screen. This is the WooCommerce configuration wizard, which is the quickest and easiest way to create a basic e-commerce store. By completing the wizard’s various screens, you can fast-track through much of the initial configuration, and get your e-commerce business off to a strong start.

If you accidentally dismiss the Welcome message, don’t panic! You can simply select WooCommerce from WordPress’ left-hand menu. WordPress will now display a list of all the steps required, in order to successfully complete the initial WooCommerce configuration.

WooCommerce's store setup menu.

You can now work your way through this list, by clicking each item in turn and following the onscreen instructions. Once you’ve successfully completed each task, it’s time to progress to the next step.

3. Add Extra Payment Gateways

As part of the setup process, WooCommerce will prompt you to add a payment gateway. A payment gateway enables customers to pay for goods and services using a payment system such as PayPal. By default, WooCommerce supports a number of core payment gateways. However, you can also add payment gateway extensions.

As part of the initial setup process, WooCommerce should prompt you to add at least one payment gateway. However, to maximize revenue we recommend offering at least two payment gateways.

There’s no guarantee all your customers will have access to the same payment gateway. Some gateways may also experience downtime. If you only support a single gateway, you’ll be unable to process payments until that gateway is back online. This could result is missed sales, and a significant amount of frustration on behalf of your customers.

Payment gateways may also have varying rules, regulations, and associated charges. Depending on factors such as geographical location, some payment gateways may represent better value for you and your customers.

You can enable additional payment gateways, by navigating to WooCommerce > Settings and then selecting the Payments tab. This screen displays all the payment gateways WooCommerce supports.

WooCommerce supports multiple payment gateways, including PayPal.

To add a payment gateway, click its accompanying Set Up button. This will open a menu where you can configure your chosen gateway. For example, if you’re configuring PayPal you’ll need to enter your PayPal email address and PayPal API credentials.

Once you’ve configured your payment gateway, select Save Changes. You can then enable the payment gateway by pushing its accompanying slider into the on position.

You can repeat these steps to enable multiple payment gateways. Just be wary of offering too much choice, as a list of unfamiliar payment options could potentially confuse your customers.

4. Create Your Product Categories

Product categories are an important way to organize your products, and help visitors find the items that matter to them. To ensure your e-commerce site is easy to navigate, it’s worth taking the time to define your product categories in advance.

You can always create more product categories as your store grows. However, by defining some product categories now, you can lay the foundations for an organized, logical e-commerce store.

To create a product category, navigate to WooCommerce > Categories. In Add New Category, enter the name of the parent category that you want to create.

Creating product categories in WordPress.

In Description, provide a description for this particular category. By adding a description to each product category, you can help search engines such as Google understand your site’s content, and rank it appropriately. Relevant, keyword-rich product descriptions can also help boost your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Once you’re happy with the information you’ve entered, select Add New Category. Rinse and repeat to create multiple categories.

You may also want to create product subcategories. For example, you might create a Clothing category consisting of Sweatshirt, T-shirt, and Jeans subcategories. To create a subcategory, open the Parent Category drop-down. You can then select the parent category that you want to assign to this subcategory.

5. Create Shipping Zones and Shipping Methods

If you’re going to physically ship products to your customers, it’s important to create at least one Shipping Zone. A Shipping Zone might be a country, region, or even a specific zip code where you ship your items. Your customers will see only the shipping methods that are available for their zone.

To create a shipping zone, navigate to WooCommerce > Settings > Shipping. You can then select Add shipping zone.

WooCommerce shipping zone settings.

Give your zone a name, choose a region, and select Add shipping method. WooCommerce supports several shipping methods by default, including free shipping.

According to a recent survey, almost half of consumers prefer stores that offer free shipping. What’s more, 77 percent identify free shipping as the most important factor when making purchasing decisions. To drive conversions, you may want to offer free shipping when certain conditions are met.

WooCommerce also provides a local pickup option. This is great if you’re selling bulky items that are expensive to ship, or you anticipate lots of local trade. Note that if you offer local pickup then store base taxes will apply regardless of the customer’s address.

Make your selection, then click Add shipping method. You can repeat these steps, to create multiple shipping zones.

WooCommerce's shipping zones.

By default, WooCommerce generates the following option: Locations not covered by your other zones. If no appropriate zone is found, WooCommerce will default to this shipping zone. You can edit or delete this zone, as required.

You can also add more shipping options, using a WooCommerce shipping plugin. These plugins give your customers more options, and some even integrate with well-known shipping services such as DHL. Some popular choices include WooCommerce ShipStation Integration, and Advanced Shipping.

6. Create Your First WooCommerce Product

It’s time to stock those shelves! To create a product, select Products > Add New from WordPress’s left-hand menu. You can then give this product a name, enter a description, and upload some images that represent the item or service you’re selling.

Next, open the Product data drop-down menu and specify the type of product you want to create. Here, you have a few choices. WooCommerce supports simple products, which are defined as products that are shipped and have no options. The opposite of a simple product is a variable product. A variable product has multiple options, for example a coat that’s available in different sizes and colors.

A grouped product is a collection of related items. Finally, an external/affiliate product is sold on a third-party website, but featured on your e-commerce store.

The next steps will vary, depending on the type of product you’re creating. For example, if you select Grouped product, you’ll be prompted to enter the product’s Stock-Keeping Unit (SKU). This is a unique string that represents this product in your e-commerce store. Alternatively, if you select Simple Product, you’ll be prompted to specify whether this product is downloadable.

The e-commerce product settings menu.

After creating your product, it’s time to set your price. You can specify the everyday, non-sale price in the Regular price field.

You can now assign this product to at least one category, and add product tags. Both of these elements are essential for helping visitors navigate your store, and find the exact items they want to buy.

7. Create an Inventory and Stock Notifications

At this point, we’ve entered some basic information about our product. However, before we go ahead and publish the product, it’s a good idea to perform some stock management. This involves entering the total number of units currently in stock, and configuring some optional low stock warnings.

Stock management ensures you know when to order more stock. It also helps you avoid unpleasant situations, where you have to explain to customers that the product they’ve just paid for isn’t actually in stock.

To start, select the Inventory tab and create an SKU for this product. You can then enter the number of units you currently have in stock.

WooCommerce's inventory menu.

WooCommerce can email you when you’re running low on stock. If you want to receive these notifications, select the following checkbox: Enable stock management at product level. In Low stock threshold, specify the point where you’d consider this product to be approaching low stock.

Creating low stock notifications with WooCommerce

By default, WooCommerce doesn’t allow for back orders. However, back orders can help you secure sales, even when an item isn’t currently available. This can be particularly useful during peak retail seasons, where it’s generally accepted that some items may be temporarily out of stock.

If you want to permit back orders, open the Allow back orders drop-down. You can then select either Allow or Allow, but notify customer. If you choose the latter, the product page will display an Available on back order notice. The customer can then decide whether to purchase this product, fully aware that it’s not currently in stock.

8. Build an eBay-Style Product Menu

To drive conversions, your customers should be able to find their perfect product, in just a few clicks. WordPress supports a range of navigational menus. However, drop-downs are particularly popular, as selecting a parent category displays all the associated product subcategories. This is exactly what we see with many popular e-commerce sites, including eBay.

The eBay e-commerce website.

By default, you can’t add product categories to a WordPress menu. To enable product categories, select Appearance > Menus > Screen Options. You can then select Product Categories.

WordPress screen option settings,

Next, scroll to the Add menu items section. You can now add product categories to your WordPress menus.

A WordPress product category menu.

Since we’re creating a drop-down menu, position each subcategory beneath its parent. You can then grab each child category and drag it slightly to the right, so it appears indented beneath its parent.

Creating a e-commerce product menu, in WordPress.

You can now create your menu, as normal. To ensure this menu appears across your entire e-commerce store, we recommend setting it as your top menu.

9. Boost Your Revenue With Related Products

As an e-commerce store, you’ll naturally want to push customers towards purchasing additional products, or more expensive alternatives. One method is to display related products.

Related products, in a WordPress e-commerce store.

WooCommerce tries to generate related products automatically. However, you can often get better results by linking products manually. To start, navigate to Products > All Products. You can then open any product for editing, and select its Linked Products tab.

WooCommerce's linked products menu.

You can define two types of linked products: ‘upsells’ and ‘cross-sells’. Upsells are typically more expensive alternatives, whereas cross-sells are complimentary items. For example, potential cross-sells for a laptop might include a Bluetooth mouse, or a laptop bag.

Conclusion

If you sell products or services, chances are your customers are already online and looking to make a purchase. If you aren’t offering your goods via an e-commerce platform such as WooCommerce, you could be missing out on sales.

When building your online store, we’d recommend paying particular attention to your product tags and categories. These elements are often overlooked, but are vital for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

To climb Google’s search engine rankings, it’s also important to choose the right hosting provider. By opting for a hosting package that delivers high performance and an uptime guarantee, you can give your store the best possible chance of attracting a large volume of traffic, and securing lots of conversions.

Image credit: freestocks.

The post How to Start an Online Store (in 9 Easy Steps) appeared first on The A2 Posting.

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Magento, OpenCart or PrestaShop: Which One Is Best? https://www.a2hosting.com/blog/magento-opencart-prestashop-one-best/ Fri, 25 Nov 2016 22:01:55 +0000 http://www.a2hosting.com/blog/?p=1730 Choosing the right e-commerce platform is a complicated matter. You need to be certain that you end up with a platform that can handle your inventory, process transactions, and provide …

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Choosing the right e-commerce platform is a complicated matter. You need to be certain that you end up with a platform that can handle your inventory, process transactions, and provide you with any advanced features that you need. If you make the wrong choice, you may find yourself facing unnecessary technical headaches and costly downtime.

Thankfully, there are plenty of top-notch e-commerce platforms available these days. That means you have the luxury of picking and choosing your favorite before jumping into anything.

To make your life easier, we’ve taken a look at three top e-commerce platforms: Magento, OpenCart, and PrestaShop. In this article, we’ll look at their features and ease-of-use, then tell you which one we think will fit your needs the best. Time is money, so let’s get started!

Magento

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When people think Magento, their minds often jump to the word “enterprise”. However, while the platform is a professional e-commerce solution, it can also power stores of any size. Magento is feature-packed and includes a simple admin interface, built-in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) functions, and integrated inventory management.

Magento powers over 200,000 online stores, and comes in three editions: Enterprise, Cloud Enterprise, and Community. This final option is free and is the one you’ll want to opt for if you’re new to e-commerce.

Magento’s Key Features

  • Open-source, with a healthy development community contributing to its ongoing development.
  • Offers a library with hundreds of extensions and can also interface with third-party applications.
  • Provides built-in SEO functions.
  • Includes order management tools such as wish lists, rewards systems, and gift registries.
  • Enables you to customize the checkout process.
  • Offers excellent scalability.

Ease of Use

To be honest, Magento isn’t the simplest e-commerce platform out there. You don’t need to be a developer to use it, but you’ll need to spend some time sorting through its documentation if you want to take advantage of its advanced features.

That may sound like a hassle, but the rewards are well worth the effort. Furthermore, Magento offers extensive documentation and a Resources Library, with dozens of talks and video tutorials on hand.

Who Would Benefit From Using Magento?

We would recommend Magento to e-commerce users that are fully committed to seeing their stores grow. The platform scales very well, and with its advanced set of features, your site will be able to handle just about anything.
However, learning to use Magento and growing a store could take some time. You should anticipate spending quite a bit of time learning, or even plan to hire a Magento developer to take care of the advanced stuff for you.

OpenCart

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OpenCart is an open-source e-commerce platform designed with ease-of-use in mind. Users can launch new stores quickly and customize its look thanks to a wide variety of free and premium themes. As is the case with most similar platforms, OpenCart also includes an extension system, which enables users to add advanced functions to their stores as needed.

The OpenCart admin dashboard is one of our favorites. It provides users with a comprehensive overview of their store’s sales and analytics at a glance, and it looks reasonably stylish.

OpenCart’s Key Features

  • It’s an open-source platform under regular ongoing development – in other words, it isn’t going away anytime soon.
  • Offers a comprehensive catalog of themes and extensions, with free and premium options.
  • Automatically tracks your store’s most important metrics and displays them prominently in the admin interface.
  • Accepts over 20 payment methods right out of the box.
  • Provides management of multiple stores from a single dashboard.
  • Enables you to differentiate your products according to their attributes (such as colors and sizes).
  • Built-in affiliate and discount systems.
  • Helps you manage backups right from your interface.

Ease of Use

It doesn’t get much simpler than OpenCart. Their official documentation can guide you through the entire process of setting up a store, and there are also plenty of advanced resources available.

Who Would Benefit From Using OpenCart?

OpenCart is an excellent choice for e-commerce users looking for a simple solution. It’s also ideal for those who need to manage multiple stores at once, since you can do so from a single dashboard.

We’re big fans of the way backups are built into the platform. If you struggle when it comes to performing regular backups, you might want to give this platform a shot.

PrestaShop

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PrestaShop shares rather a lot of similarities with the two other entries in this article. It’s an open-source e-commerce platform with an extensive collection of themes and modules, and it’s also backed by a vibrant community.

PrestaShop’s Key Features

  • Open-source e-commerce platform.
  • Hundreds of free and premium themes and modules available.
  • The default theme is fully responsive.
  • Offers a live editor, which enables you to customize the look of your store from the front end.
  • Provides a network of certified partners that can provide help with any aspect of the platform.

Ease of Use

If you’ve ever used WordPress or any other similar Content Management System (CMS), PrestaShop’s interface should be easy to grasp. As is the case with OpenCart, the PrestaShop back end displays your analytics prominently, but in this case, the information is much more detailed.

The platform offers excellent documentation to help you learn the ropes. And if you choose to skip the documentation and dive right in, you should have no trouble learning the platform on your own if you have a bit of prior experience working with websites and CMSs.

Who Would Benefit From Using PrestaShop?

If you like OpenCart, PrestaShop should be right up your alley. The platform feels a bit more polished, and you get access to a lot more modules and themes than the former.

However, the real decision comes down to expense. A lot of PrestaShop’s modules and themes have a price tag, and they tend to be quite high. If you don’t mind spending some money to get your shop looking and behaving the way you want, consider this platform.

Conclusion

If ease of use and low cost are your primary considerations, OpenCart is a natural choice. It doesn’t offer the advanced features or scalability that Magento does, but it’s a lot easier to get up and running. PrestaShop, on the other hand feels more polished, but costs can ramp up quickly even for small stores.

Overall, each of these e-commerce platforms offers a unique set of features, and each one is perfect for certain users. Let’s take one final look at each:

  1. Magento: Provides the best scalability and many advanced features.
  2. OpenCart: Is the simplest platform to use, and it’s costs are relatively low.
  3. PrestaShop: A very polished platform, with a broad range of premium modules and themes available.

Image credit: StockSnap.io.

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Self-Hosted vs Hosted E-Commerce Platforms: Which Is Right for You? https://www.a2hosting.com/blog/self-hosted-vs-hosted-e-commerce-platforms-right/ Tue, 25 Oct 2016 15:39:42 +0000 http://www.a2hosting.com/blog/?p=1643 Nowadays, anyone can get an online store up and running in a matter of hours. That’s all well and good, unless, in your hurry, you pick the wrong type of …

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Nowadays, anyone can get an online store up and running in a matter of hours. That’s all well and good, unless, in your hurry, you pick the wrong type of platform and are forced to either start from scratch or live with a store that is less than perfect.

There is a multitude of e-commerce platforms available nowadays, each with its own unique features. The first step you need to take is to choose one to serve as the backbone of your e-commerce empire. And it all begins with a simple decision: hosted or self-hosted?

Hosted and self-hosted platforms each come with their own set of pros and cons, let’s find out what they are and why you should care.

Self-Hosted E-Commerce Platforms

When we say self-hosted e-commerce platforms, we’re referring to a variety of open source applications that require web hosting to function. Think of purchasing a hosting package and installing WordPress. Self-hosted e-commerce is pretty much the same thing. Only, rather than setting up a blog, you’ll be installing a platform for an e-commerce website.

Pick an open source e-commerce platform and you’ll know exactly what you’re getting. The most popular platforms are well-documented and you (or your developer) can make any changes you require. This gives you a degree of control over your online store that hosted platforms simply cannot match. If you need additional features, you can either find plugins and extensions to enable them, create them yourself, or hire someone to build them for you.

Since self-hosted platforms can be set up anywhere, you’re free to choose your preferred hosting service. Not being tied to a centralized service means you can move your store if you outgrow your provider or find a better deal elsewhere. It may sound complicated, but these days most hosts, including us, will help you set things up.

Self-hosted platforms sound pretty great, right? However, you shouldn’t make up your mind just yet. Let’s move on to discussing their shortcomings before jumping to any conclusions.

The Cons of Self-Hosted E-Commerce Platforms

  • They are usually harder to set up than their hosted counterparts. At the very least, you will need to find a hosting provider, choose your e-commerce platform, and go through an installation and setup process.
  • In most cases, there is no centralized support system you can contact if you need help or run into an error. So you will need to become adept at looking through the documentation and searching community resources to troubleshoot problems for yourself, or hire a qualified developer to help you.
  • Depending on your hosting provider, costs can pile up once your store begins to grow.

Now that we’ve detailed both sides of the coin let’s take a look at two examples of self-hosted e-commerce platforms.

WooCommerce

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Technically, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, but that doesn’t make it any less potent. This platform powers 30% of all online stores and is part of the Automattic family of WordPress products.

What’s more, the WooCommerce team will happily answer support questions through their help desk. This platform is a great fit for users that are comfortable using WordPress and can be used to power stores of all sizes. Click here to get started hosting WooCommerce.

Magento

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Magento
is a leading e-commerce platform which powers over $50 billion in transactions per year. It’s not as easy to pick up as WooCommerce, but most people would agree that it’s a more robust platform.

That being said, we would recommend Magento only to users with at least some basic level of web development experience. Despite its thorough documentation, the platform can be a bit much for first-time e-commerce users. It’s overkill for small operations, but a perfect solution for professional businesses.

PrestaShop

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PrestaShop
may not be as popular as the previous two entries on this list, but this scrappy open source e-commerce solution shouldn’t be discounted. The platform has grown tremendously over the past few years and is now used to power over 250,000 storefronts.

PrestaShop is remarkably simple to use. It’s a perfect fit for users looking for a free and open-source platform with a friendly interface and powerful shop-building capabilities. In addition, PrestaShop maintains a roster of partner agencies that will happily set up shop for new users who don’t want to do it themselves.

OpenCart

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Despite its somewhat-outdated website, OpenCart remains a strong contender among self-hosted e-commerce platforms. Its setup process is as simple as any of the other three we’ve mentioned so far – anyone who knows their way around a web host should be just fine.

As far as features go, OpenCart integrates 20 payment gateways right out of the box, supports multiple currencies, and enables you to sell digital products. These features make it a solid pick for users that wish to support sales across the globe instead of focusing exclusively on local markets.

Hosted E-Commerce Platforms

Hosted e-commerce platforms are another option worth considering. These platforms provide an all-in-one e-commerce solution that includes hosting, a shopping cart function, and technical support. In most cases, you pay a monthly fee that varies depending on the size of your store, and most hosted e-commerce platforms offer reasonable prices and discounts if you pay for several months in advance.

Moreover, hosted services have a clear advantage over their self-hosted counterparts: they are far simpler to manage. In exchange for a fixed rate, you get hosting and access to a support team that takes care of any issues for you. You will, of course, still have to add items and customize your store yourself, but everything else is taken care of.

To put it simply, hosted platforms lower the technical barriers to entry, and offer premium support and customization capabilities (usually in the form of themes and plugins). That’s a pretty sweet deal. So you must be asking yourself, what’s the downside?

The Cons of Hosted E-Commerce Platforms

  • Hosted e-commerce platforms generally cost more than their self-hosted counterparts.
  • Your monthly or annual fees will grow as your store attracts more traffic and requires more powerful features.
  • Customization possibilities, while available, will be limited. You will only be able to use pre-approved themes and plugins. This protects you from a security standpoint but can be stifling in terms of creativity and limit the store features you can implement.
  • Switching platforms is costly and time-consuming, if not impossible, depending on the scope of your store.

With those caveats in mind, lets check out two popular hosted e-commerce platforms.

Shopify

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Shopify
is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms around these days. It powers more than 300,000 stores which, together, have made approximately $20 billion in sales. On top of powering complete online stores, Shopify also provides basic shopping cart functionality for websites built using other platforms such as WordPress.

BigCommerce

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BigCommerce
is an ambitious platform that markets itself to both small businesses and enterprises. Some well-known brands, such as Toyota and Martha Stewart, have built their online businesses on the BigCommerce platform. Despite being a hosted solution, it offers in-depth customization and a robust set of features.

Conclusion

Both self-hosted and hosted e-commerce platforms are powerful and flexible enough to fulfill even the most demanding set of requirements. So, the choice boils down to how you prefer to run your business:

  1. Self-hosted e-commerce platforms: They provide you with absolute control and can be set up and run on a shoestring budget, but they require more time to set up and maintain.
  2. Hosted e-commerce platforms: They enable you to get things up and running quickly, and take care of the technical details for you. Yet, they cost more than self-hosted platforms and are less customizable.

Image credit: Negative Space.

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Top 10 themes in Prestashop that will make your online store POP! https://www.a2hosting.com/blog/top-10-themes-prestashop-will-make-online-store-pop/ Fri, 12 Aug 2016 18:29:27 +0000 http://www.a2hosting.com/blog/?p=1190 Top 10 themes in Prestashop that will make your online store POP! A Theme Dreamland PrestaShop is one of the leading platforms for integrating e-commerce into your website. It provides …

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Top 10 themes in Prestashop that will make your online store POP!

A Theme Dreamland

PrestaShop is one of the leading platforms for integrating e-commerce into your website. It provides its users with a range of unique features including open-source software, a passionate community and tons of customization options.

The customization is what sets PrestaShop apart from similar programs. Not only are there templates to choose from but there are hundreds of themes available. This grants you with plenty of choices to pick what will make your website stand out among others in the market.

Below you can read about the top 10 themes that are guaranteed to make your online store POP!

1. Antique

Number one on the list is Antique. Antique is a beautiful responsive template that brings you an elegant design, smooth user interactivity and quick loading times.

Despite its name this theme is not limited to antique shops. The layout is intended for any website that wants a high quality and professional layout. Everything about it can be customized. It runs well on desktop browsers and is equally quick on mobile devices.

The Font Awesome icons set this one ahead of the rest because of their functionality. You can rely on the icons to load without hiccups. They can be scaled to fit a wide range of sizes. Other features include:

  • Drop Down Cart
  • Drop Down Menu
  • Accordion Categories
  • Product Quick View

Antique can be part of your website for $144.99.

2. Wholesale Warehouse

The Wholesale Warehouse theme is another all around theme that gives you plenty of options to customize the layout and look. This theme is a solid choice if you have a wide variety of goods products for sale.

The large category integration puts Wholesale at the forefront of responsive themes built for companies with many items to offer. If you have an electronics, fashion or equipment website then you would enjoy what this theme offers.

It costs $144.99 and will save you money while being loaded with features.

3. QX

QX is a modern looking theme that takes a minimal approach to its design. It is effect without being overbearing or flashy. It has a simple vertical menu that emphasizes style. This theme is perfect for the business that wants to have a sleek look while giving shoppers a pleasant experience.

You can expect 100% customization with QX. It was conceived for high fashion sales but that does not close it off from being adapted to fit just about any market.

QX is available for $144.99.

4. Zro03 Supermarket Store

One of the most beautiful, stylish and minimal themes that will really make your shop pop is Zro03. The layout uses a bootstrap grid system, sidebar menus, a sticky menu and social media sharing buttons. This makes Zro03 perfect for the modern business that wants to mesh their shop with their social media accounts.

The look is by default minimal as the developers wanted to avoid clutter in the design. This theme is also quite affordable at the price of $109.99 making it excellent to keep your budget alive.

5. Leo Alaska Responsive Template

For $99.99 you can grab the Leo Alaska template, a stunning theme that can be used for almost any website.

Featuring slides that are the full width of your site as well as product banners Leo Alaska sets your site apart by keeping the viewer interested without straining their eyes. Slideshows of your products are available with ease. You can also integrate a blog into the site to guarantee more interest.

6. JMS Hermes

Not only does JMS Hermes have a cool name but the layout is awesome. It is fully responsive and will look perfect on any device. It is aimed for clothing and shoe shops but can be adapted into any business with a little editing.

It is also builds testimonial snippets into the page making it great for sharing what your previous customers had to say. You can blog as well as show off the Top Sellers on your site. Social media is one click away with the built-in networking options.

JMS Hermes is $79.99 making it one of the more affordable Premium themes on the PrestaShop market.

7. Simple and Colorfull

The title says it all in Simple and Colorfull. This responsive theme has two columns and 8 colors built in. This keeps it simple but effective as an attractive theme.

Simple and Colorfull works on multiple devices and has multiple language support. The cost of this theme is only $34.99 and is worth checking out.

8. Jewelry New 1.3.1

In the case that your shop sells watches, rings, necklaces and other bits of fine goods Jewelry New 1.3.1 is a safe bet. The theme has a consistent black design that places the focus on the items being sold. The dark colors make the diamonds pop off the rings and watches in the most tasteful fashion.

This is a professional looking theme that redefines elegant web design. It can be edited to fit other business themes but looks best when presenting jewelry. The price for Jewelry New 1.3.1 is $89.99.

9. Top Fashion Store

The Top Fashion Store theme is perfect for clothing brands and accessories that want a minimal design. There are enough customization options to keep this one interesting without slowing down the shopping experience.

It is compatible with most modern browsers and looks great on mobile devices as well. You will enjoy what Top Fashion Store has to offer. With the right tweaking it can become an important part of your brand’s image. Top Fashion is available for $69.99 making it a solid theme at a moderate price.

10. OMG Store

A theme with exciting options is OMG Store. It is fully responsive and features:

  • Facebook Login
  • Discount Labels
  • Catalogue Mode

There is an unlimited amount of color options as well as dozens of font choices. Backgrounds and textures can also be adjusted to your liking. OMG Store is suited for any online business.

Running at $64.99 OMG Store would make your store pop without busting your bank.

Conclusion

For more themes check out the PrestaShop Market! And if you’re looking to really make your PrestaShop store POP, visit A2 Hosting now! You’ll be hosted on our blazing fast SwiftServer platform.

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Warning: Top 5 things you need to know before downloading Prestashop https://www.a2hosting.com/blog/warning-top-5-things-need-know-downloading-prestashop/ Wed, 13 Jul 2016 19:11:53 +0000 http://www.a2hosting.com/blog/?p=1186 There are thousands of e-commerce platforms on the open source market that are vying for your attention. If you want to integrate an e-commerce platform into your online business you …

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There are thousands of e-commerce platforms on the open source market that are vying for your attention. If you want to integrate an e-commerce platform into your online business you know that it can be an overwhelming search for the right one.

Features that are important include:

  • community support
  • mobile support
  • search engine optimization
  • great design
  • secure payments

PrestaShop offers you as a business owner all of these necessary features and more. PrestaShop is an e-commerce shopping cart platform that places emphasis on customer satisfaction. With this shopping cart added to your business website you can expect one of the best plugins of this kind.

PrestaShop boasts over 250,000 unique clients that use their software. That alone speaks volumes to the success of this platform for businesses. There are businesses ranging in size from tiny single-owner boutiques to large brands.

What sets PrestaShop apart from others is that it is open-source. This means that you will not have to pay for the software since they give you the rights to use it. This type of business model also opens PrestaShop open to user additions, code tweaking and bug fixes all done by an active community of passionate users.

There are 5 things that you need to know before downloading PrestaShop. Below you can discover what those things are while learning if PrestaShop is the right platform to use with your online shop.

1. Open-Source Means Open Community

Open-source software means that the owner of the software can distribute the software to anyone that he or she chooses while providing access to the source code to promote public collaboration in development.

PrestaShop is open-source, and the community around it is a large one. Those who wish to edit every single file included in the source code can do so as they see fit. This makes PrestaShop a great platform to use if you want something that allows maximum freedom inside the software.

You can customize any file as you see fit and edit the files to your needs in a specific way. The developers of PrestaShop also encourage their users who make changes to the code to share it on the community so that all users may benefit. They even link to their page on GitHub so that you can see all the changes as they take place.

2. Responsive Design

Responsive design is something that is seeing more and more use as mobile devices are taking over the way that people surf the web. In fact more people are using their mobile devices to Google search than desktop users.

PrestaShop takes the importance of mobile responsiveness into consideration. This is a massive feature because it means that your customers can shop on your site no matter where they are. Your business can be explored on any platform which is great for you because your market will be that much bigger.

Visitors on your site can checkout in a quick and easy way. This will ensure returning customers because your site will be seen as one that cares about the user experience.

You can also manage your website’s shopping platform from your own mobile device, a feature that pushes PrestaShop into the forefront of modern e-commerce platforms.

3. Marketing Matters

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is vital to growing an online business. With strong SEO you can make sure that your web shop will show up in search results across the web. The right SEO content can take your business to the next level and increase the number of unique visitors per month.

SEO is made easy with PrestaShop. It offers built-in SEO support that helps you make creative decisions to bring in more Internet traffic. You can edit the Meta title, Meta description and provide a unique product URL. All of this is done inside of your platform management.

Not only that but PrestaShop makes information such as price, reviews and availability seen in search results because of its integration of schema.org data. Search results for your site will be smart and efficient. This sets your business apart from the competitors and gives your potential customers what they need to know without wasting their time.

4. Custom Themes

Making your e-commerce plugin blend into your site is of high priority as a responsible Internet business owner. You will find over 2,000 unique themes to choose from in order to customize your shopping platform to fit into your website.

This is an excellent feature because it shows that the developers care about keeping your product consistent in its presentation to your clients. Your site will look more professional with the use of an interesting theme.

The option to purchase custom templates is also available. Prices range from low to high but each template that is offered is beautiful, functional and ready to go. You will spend less time tinkering and more time drawing in customers with the use of a professional template.

5. The Right Payment

With PrestaShop you will find integrating the payment platform of your choice is simple and secure. You have a large selection of available payment methods to choose from so that you can find the one that suits your business the best.

Options include:

  • PayPal
  • Amazon Payments
  • Sky Bank

No matter which platform you need you will find it with this software. Pick the one that is right for your region and audience.

If you have any questions you can contact PrestaShop’s reliable customer service. They are known for their quick support, friendly demeanor and genuine care for their customers.

Choose a platform for your business that will not only bring in more sales but also make you a leading face in your market. If you go with PrestaShop you can expect to see positive growth in your e-commerce activity while becoming a part of a great community that respects the importance of strong and reliable software.

What you don’t have to be worried about is where you host PrestaShop when you choose A2 Hosting! Your store will be hosted on our high performance SwiftServer platform that will give you a step up on your competition.

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Prestashop vs. Opencart https://www.a2hosting.com/blog/prestashop-vs-opencart/ Wed, 29 Jun 2016 21:32:48 +0000 http://www.a2hosting.com/blog/?p=1209 The Right Platform Taking your business to the next level can include a variety of steps. The most important of these steps is moving your business online. This is especially …

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The Right Platform

Taking your business to the next level can include a variety of steps. The most important of these steps is moving your business online. This is especially true if you want to remain competitive in the modern market. If you want to take that step and boost your place in the market you will need an e-commerce platform that is best suited for your business needs.

There are many options available when it comes down to choosing an online shopping platform for your website. Two of the best ones available are PrestaShop and OpenCart. Each has their own set of unique advantages and disadvantages. That is why it is vital that you research what each offers and make a decision that will amplify your business potential.

When you are searching for an open source e-commerce tool for your website you should consider:

  • features
  • ease of use
  • community development

Both PrestaShop and OpenCart will grant your online business more freedoms. Read on to discover what exactly they can (and cannot) do for you!

PrestaShop

Add-on Paradise

The first thing that is attractive about PrestaShop is the amount of extra templates that it offers. PrestaShop is full of amazing templates that range from rustic and classic to minimal and modern. You will find every style that you can imagine inside of the template marketplace.

The one negative about the template market is that the best templates are not free. There are some nice options inside of the basic free package, but if you want more you will have to spend some money. Prices range from about $45 to over $150.

There are also additional add-on modules that includes Search Engine Optimization tools to the Amazon Market function and everything in between. You can really take your site to the next level with all of the available features, but they are not necessary to get going.

You can still design a beautiful and functional site without buying a template or module, however.

Designing Made Simple

The store builder is easy to use. PrestaShop boasts that there are “hundreds of rich features” all for free right out of the box that help get your site up and running in no time.

Everything about making a shop is simple. You can customize everything from the banner to the way  that your customers search through your products. From the developer side you will get plenty of analytical information and management tools to keep you on top of your site at all times.

Mobile support is included making PrestaShop an attractive tool for the modern business. Your template will be responsive and guaranteed to look great no matter the device. This is key to ensuring a maximized amount of new customers exploring your site.

A Community Feel

The community is very active inside of the PrestaShop world. They have a major hand in the ongoing development of the software.

Users share code, translate for each other and discuss all topics that relate to running an online shop. The community is a huge perk to joining PrestaShop. The users are active, passionate and helpful. No matter your question you will find an answer.

OpenCart

Feature Friendly

OpenCart is packed with great features by default. You are given an unlimited amount of categories, products and different manufacturers right from the start. Your site will also be able to host reviews and ratings from customers as well as a range of language support and currency options.

Templates are not available on any market. You can import your old website into OpenCart if you wish to keep the theme consistent. This is the one major drawback that makes PrestaShop more suited to those who wish for above and beyond customization. There are modules available for extra features, however.

An Open Forum

The forum on OpenCart is a useful spot to pick up information about the platform. You can expect to find answers to most user questions as well as bug reports, template support and more. The community does not seem as powerful as PrestaShop but is a good place to pick up the information that you need to get moving with your new e-commerce platform.

The customer support is open 24/7 and has multiple country support. This is great if you are based outside of the United States or are keen to travelling. No matter your location you can expect quick responses and plenty of help.

Conclusion

Both PrestaShop and OpenCart offer plenty of features and upgrade options to make them powerful e-commerce tools.

Keep in mind what is important for you. You will not be disappointed in either platforms, and both are great places to start your journey into the world of online business.

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