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What is ReactJS and Why to Use It

Introduction to React JS:

React is a front-end JavaScript library developed by Facebook. It is an open-source JavaScript framework. It is used to build web and mobile applications. It powers the most popular social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram. Currently, it is the most popular developer’s choice for creating JavaScript libraries.

React encourages on creating reusable components. It offers a simple model and provides better performance. It has a strong client base and a large community. It has very proper documentation. It can also render the server side code using Node. It implements the one-way reactive data flow. Hence, it is way beyond the traditional way of data binding. Read More

Top 10 Marketing Tips to Use PPC & SEO Together to Boost Search Marketing Efforts

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are effective marketing strategies to attract visitors to your site. PPC is known to deliver instantaneous results. SEO is not expected to land immediate results, but the results, in the long run, can be fantastic. The costs are huge but search engines need you to rise into the traffic of the organic rankings.

Many people approach SEO and PPC differently touting them as two different marketing strategies when they are not. They are basically two sides of the same coin related to online search. The efforts complement each other for search strategy. Read More

How to Boost E-Commerce Sales Through Social Media

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When many businesses think of online marketing, they first consider social media. It’s the best way to reach customers, since it has a measurable impact on customer purchases, especially for millennial.

However, the platform seems to be most effective in building brand awareness and driving local sales. E-commerce businesses have an ongoing challenge to drive traffic to their websites, where they turn visitors into paying customers. Read More

Magento 2 Features and its Relevance in M-Commerce

Magento 2 Features and its Relevance in M-Commerce

The mobile era has ushered in a slew of mobile-based transactions that have entailed a large number of commercial activities including payments, web browsing, apps usage and several other aspects of M-commerce.

Mobile is now being leveraged for almost all day-to-day activities including shopping, surfing, and entertainment with billions of devices accessing these services on a daily basis. Even payment gateway companies like PayPal, have witnessed a huge surge in payments, with more than 1.5 billion dollars coming through mobile alone.  Read More

The Best Three Techniques to Uplift Your SEO in 2018

Best 3 SEO Techniqes

An SEO strategy is touted to be effective when all tasks are geared to drastically improve website quality or a company’s web presence. With SEO evolving over time, expect 2018 to bask on new results.

Every business’ website needs a strategy of a UX overhaul or proper content to rank high on SERPs. The website’s SEO is highly important for the said company’s success. Hence it is essential to set goals for SEO and try to reach the top of the SERPs by implementing methods that work well in today’s business context.

It is also evident that one has to conduct SEO experiments to find the right approach for your website and business. Because every industry is different, SEO advice should be personalized to the domain and not as cookie cutter options. Experimenting is the way to go.

The Evolved SEO techniques for 2018:

With search engine algorithms changing on a periodic basis, SEO companies and experts have the hassle to keep updated on the relevant techniques and help businesses to land the front page results. By adhering to old techniques, sites might lose on website rankings. That’s why one should research on SEO tactics that work currently. Here are some techniques to uplift your SEO in 2018:

(A) Skyscraper Approach:

Most marketers think that “great content” is enough. But if you’re serious about high-quality links and their generation, you need to be systematic and need to promote your content consistently. Otherwise, just throwing a bunch of stuff does not work all the time.

“The Skyscraper Technique” for deriving Quality Links and Targeted Traffic relies on finding link-worthy content, make the site content better and reach out to intended prospects. A linkable asset is a major foundation of any content marketing campaign, implying the necessity of high-value pages that can be leveraged for links again and again. It is not link-bait content but the genuineness of content that is useful and relevant for any scenario. The next step is to elevate the content to the next level – by making it longer in terms of word count, spruce up the content and add social signals with cutting-edge content. Also, design the content piece with several links and social shares along with a minimalist design to make an impression. Add some depth to the listicle content and get the word out! Finally, one should reach out to the right people through email outreach, especially site owners who share similar content.

To attract the relevant people, use ahrefs.com to export links pointing to the competitor’s content right into the spreadsheet. Weed out referring pages that do not make sense and then email them for a response and review.

With the Skyscraper technique, marketers already understand that their hard work is going to pay off.

(C) Keyword Matrix:

A keyword matrix helps in boosting rankings and the overall keyword spread. It matches user intent in all search queries against web site content, sending in positive feedback to Google about the page being relevant.

Keyword matrices are usually used for paid search, and also to create an influence that would help quantify opportunities. Keywords shape your content, and the structure of the content needs to support user’s intent, in attracting searchers to visit and navigate your site pages.

Building a keyword matrix involves thorough keyword research through a keyword mining tool and then export the same to CSV format, within 10,000 keywords.

The Google Keyword Planner can help in exporting the keywords to CSV. The keyword combiner can connect individual research files here. Tagging for search intent is useful as well as critical, based on their informational relevance, navigational identity, a commercial investigation with specific parameters, and transactional behavior.

Once all keywords are tagged for best and intent, add the content type and then choose keyword opportunities in terms of average bid price versus AdWords and PPC, and search volume versus real organic results.

Using a keyword matrix gives the ability to refer a set of data to drive the editorial calendar, the relevance of videos, along with other keyword optimization opportunities. You need to consider how keywords can shape your content, and how the content can support your user’s intent efficiently and seamlessly.

This year, try the Best SEO Techniques in a thoughtful way to get results you need for the benefit of your business. It is evident that most SEO tactics have evolved in the past year or so, and link building has become more complex than ever. Leveraging broken links and forming a keyword matrix are smart ways for marketers to leverage existing data to the optimum. Additionally, asking for referrals from influencers, webmasters and others could help a lot. Find out about the best tools in the business and the evolving ones that are under the radar but can do the trick for your business in more ways than one.

Chatbots

Chatbots – Delivering the Boost to Their Social Media Marketing Strategy

Best Ways to Utilize Bots

1Sell Your Products

ecommerceThe best thing about bots is that they can sell products independently without any human intervention. They can help the customers to find the right product and For instance, Google Now helps the customers to buy products from various websites. It even allows the customers to check out from the bot interface. The clothing brand H&M uses a chatbot to sell their items on Kik, a messaging service. 

 

2Personalize the User Experience

icon102 71% of customers prefer personalized ads. Bots can bring a personalized user experience. They bring the results based on what the customers choose to see on their feed. For instance, Google Now provides the customers with a customized feed as per their preferences. Chatbots provides a great user experience. They can select to choose from news, sports, entertainment, etc. Once done, the bot will provide the feed and alerts based on your choices. Bots help you to get what you want and prioritize your feed as per your wish. Thus, they promise to give you a rich user experience at all stages. 

Example: CNN’s bot sends customized news feeds to users. That is one of the reasons it is a newsbot that’s gotten a great deal of attention. It goes to prove that personalization can go a long way. This concept applies to all kinds of bots.

3Communicate With Website Visitors

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This is the most popular and useful bot actions. Businesses and websites can enjoy many of the benefits these bots offer. When visitors come to your website, they will always want to know about your offerings and services. If your customer support or sales team are unavailable to serve the customers, they might never wish to visit again. Bots can set up live chats and interact with your customers. They can resolve the customer’s queries and provide prompt responses. These all-time available bots can save a lot of time and serve all your customers. This helps in keeping the customers as a priority.

Example: Bots from My.LiveChatInc.com, are set up to do precisely that. It may come as a surprise that clients really appreciate messaging. Econsultancy discovered that 57 percent of customers prefer to live chat

4Bots Integrated With Messaging Platform

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Chatbots have been the most popular with messaging platforms. This is where the bots work like magic. The Messenger bot from Facebook is indeed a very popular one. It does all the work for the users just at one click. The users can interact with the bot and get information about the upcoming movies, movie reviews, watch your favorite sports, shop online and a lot more. Messengers bots are a smart platform for eCommerce stores. The businesses can sell their products with the help of these smart bots. Customers can select their products at a single touch and check out from the bot interface.

Example: Slack provides pages of bots that will assist you to make surveys, examine statistics, send emails, and a great deal more.

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Top Chatbots Development Platforms for Best Chatbots for Your Business

The customer experience (CX) is one of the major small business distinction, and also chatbot integration is among the several methods that pave the way to accomplish and keep it with perfection. Consequently, if you would like to keep up with the times, then you have to put money into chatbot development. Wondering how to start with that? Here’s a listing of the top seven chatbot platforms which are equipped with basic and innovative resources to construct a chatbot.

  1. Chatfuel Chatfuel is an easy tool to create your own AI bot on Facebook and Telegram. No coding knowledge is required to use chatfuel. You can easily add and edit the content. The best part is it is easy to create, install and use. You can create an event assistant, sports team, personal avatar, news and a lot more with this easy-to-use and easy-to-integrate chatbot tool. It works with all leading platforms and services such as Google, Bing, YouTube, Instagram, etc. You can create, integrate and test the bots to serve all the industry verticals.
  2. Facebook Messenger Platform With Facebook Messenger bot, users can initiate and build customer relations with conversations. You can enable secured transactions, get game info and live scores, book salon appointment or even a test drive for your dream car. Today, almost 90% of the youth uses facebook and messenger. As per reports, Businesses can scale their sales and reach their customers with these smart bots. They can find their customers, provide customer value and satisfaction. Moreover, bots can help businesses with constant support. Developers can read the documentation, forums and case studies to develop smarter messenger bots.
  3. Meokay Meokay is one of the top tools that build the chatbots to upgrade the email marketing platform. Both skilled technicians and non-developers can create chatbots with this smart tool. Within no time, you can create the conversational scenarios that can be further customized for the user experience. Once done, you can link this tool with your services and launch it.
  4. Botsify Botsify is yet another Facebook chatbot platform to integrate chatbots in the system. It offers a paid subscription in four easy steps.
    • 1Login to the  botsify.com site.
    • 2Connect to your Facebook account.
    • 3Set up a webhook.
    • 4Write commands for the chatbots.

    Rest will be taken care of by the Botsify. It will handle the customer services and requests for you. There is also a free service available that lets you create bots as per your imagination.

  5. SmoochSmooch is a great tool for building omnichannel messaging in your software. It acts as a chatbot connector that bridges all the business apps with the daily used messenger apps. It links the two apps together for smoother and automated conversations across teams. It sends the notifications from your messenger to your business apps. In the end, this provides seamless conversations and responses. These connectors allow you to create chatbots to respond to the customer queries.
  6. ChattyPeopleChattypeople is also the popular chatbot platform that creates an AI chatbot on Facebook. It is completely free to use. No coding skill is required to create facebook message bots. It is an integration of e-commerce and ai-commerce, giving a rich customer experience. Its simplicity makes it an ideal platform for marketers and entrepreneurs to use. You can develop a simple chatbot that responds to the customer queries and integrate with the e-Commerce platforms such as Shopify or WooCommerce to monetize the Facebook pages.
  7. BotKitBotkit provides building blocks for creating smarter and innovative chatbots. It is more like a helping hand to the developers that develop bots for the platforms such as Slack, Facebook Messenger, and more. This complete toolkit for bot development helps you create smarter, conversational applications that imitate human conversations.
    Thus, developing chatbots has become quite easy with such resources and tools available in the tech world. But, developing is never enough. Businesses and enterprises can get a lot many benefits with the implementation of chatbots. In order to get the most out of these chatbots, here are the most innovative ways.

Top Brands Using Bots:

  1. LyftIt’s possible to ask for a ride in Lyft via conversation (Facebook Messenger and Slack) or voice (Amazon Echo). The Messenger bot will inform you of the present area of your driver and also reveal a photo of the license plate and car version. In Slack, it is possible to just use slash commands (e.g., /lyft house ).
  2. Pizza HutPizza Hut has always pushed the envelope when it comes to tapping into new technologies. In this example, the cheesy-dough pusher offers a chatbot on two different platforms:
    Facebook Messenger (because everybody is doing it) and… Twitter! Yes, Twitter can be used to socialize with Pizza Hut’s chatbot, too. What can you do while conversing with Pizza Hut’s AI sales rep? For starters, you can ask about things on the restaurant’s menu, along with any other questions that you may have concerning the ordering procedure. And the chatbot can helpfully inform you about any accessible bargains you have access to in your region. Of course, this chatbot just wouldn’t be doing its job if you could not order from it, and fortunately, Pizza Hut’s bot makes it easy.
  3. Master CardWith credit cards, you do not really get the person-to-person encounter you might get with a bank teller. You’re spending money the majority of the time, maybe not depositing money, which means you don’t find many chances to ask about your balance or anything else you might want to know as you perform a good deal of activities on a website. Mastercard is introducing a more personal touch to client financial interactions using a chatbot which uses, you guessed it, Facebook Messenger. Hop into a conversation with the Mastercard chatbot and you are able to ask for a listing of your most recent trades. But you are not confined to account-related inquiries. Using the chatbot, you are able to make purchases from a number of Mastercard-partnered retailers, which offers a bit more variety than a few of these single-store implementations we have mentioned from other companies.
  4. Starbucks When you start the Starbucks mobile program, you are able to interact with the organization’s chatbot in one of 2 ways — through text, as you want in a text-based chat program, or through voice. From that point, you have numerous jobs you can achieve. You may place your order in the event that you already know exactly what you would like. You are able to be given a message in the bot as soon as your order is prepared. And since the chatbot wishes to be super useful, it will give you your purchase complete so that you understand how much to pay when you walk up to snag your beverage. You will probably find more ability added into the Starbucks chatbot since the provider dreams up new ways it could function you (and since the company introduces new products and solutions ).
  5. The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal chatbot which makes it effortless to remain with Facebook Messenger on top of information and stock quotes. Alarms can be even customized by you. Just type in a few commands and you’re able to get business data and key financial metrics, compare companies and get live stock quotes.

5 Ways To get the most out of Your Chat Bots

  1. 1Implement Your Chatbot Across All Leading Platforms Everything started with the Facebook Messenger chatbots. But the tech world is so amused with the progress of chatbots that they have started integrating it on all the possible platforms. Now, the chatbot development platforms have started allowing the companies to develop chatbots that can be implemented on various platforms. Twitter, Slack, Instagram, Google Reply have already been flooded with chatbots. Various chatbot development platforms provide customer support bot that can help boost your business by:
    • Taking orders from facebook
    • Offering push notifications and promotions to the customers
    • Working seamlessly with the social messaging apps
  2. 2Go Beyond FacebookUndoubtedly, Facebook is the most popular social media platform. In 2016, it announced the messenger app for third-party chatbots. Later, businesses, enterprises, and brands have leveraged chatbots to build strong marketing strategies and boost customer outreach post-sales. Today, almost 80% of the enterprises on Facebook utilize chatbot services to serve their customers. So chances are that you are interacting with bots rather than the sale executives. But it’s not only Facebook, nowadays, Google, Twitter, Skype, Telegram also allow seamless integration of bots. The famous pizza brand- Domino’s also uses a chatbot for improving its customer support and marketing strategies on various platforms. It offers services through its website and help-lines.
  3. 3Use Chatbots as an Analytical Tool Like most of the digital marketing platforms, chatbots work with surplus data. Marketers and analysts keep a close eye on the metrics provided by chatbots. The reason is they give insightful information about the customer’s behavior and responses. Chatbot analytics is still a newbie to the market in terms of metrics and analysis. But it is more beyond that. By analyzing and testing the variations from different messages, you will be able to select the most effective conversations. This can help you create the bots and optimize your client-oriented bots.
  4. 4Publish Your Content Directly to Your Audience Chatbots is an effective way of marketing your brand and businesses. They deliver the content and personalized messages to the audience. They work as per the preferences and interests of the customers and their needs. Chatbots are a smarter way of organizing and distributing your content across the multiple channels. This helps to drive more traffic and boost sales on your websites. Thus, if chatbots are implemented properly, they can prove beneficial in increasing the conversion rates and boost the business trade.
  5. 5Intelligent Social Media Assistance The buzz that social media has created is undeniably more powerful than old marketing strategies. Social media is one of the easiest communication channels that are accessible everywhere. The integration of AI, social media and chatbots has created a hype in the tech world. It is essential to initiate and provide smarter and intelligent conversations with your customers. This encourages customer engagement and rise in chatbot development. Customers demand smarter and quicker responses, and thus it is important to develop AI-powered bots. These help you with better communication and increase customer engagement in this social media obsessed world.

Chatbots As a Part of Marketing Strategy

Chatbots allow seamless integration of the bots operating on various platforms and different messaging apps. Thus, they can respond to every user query without human intervention. They are based on the next-gen technology i.e. Artificial Intelligence. They are built with language assistance to imitate human conversations.

The technology has an intelligent interface that allows the chatbots to interpret and understand what the user asks and responds accordingly. And the best part is these chatbots respond not only through text-based chats but also through audio, video and GIFs.Chatbots have been ruling the social media platform. They save time and give a friendly touch to the conversation. They have the potential to respond to most of the user queries, thus helping in strong customer engagement and relations. Due to this more customers can leverage the prompt replies. Moreover, businesses can serve their customers more efficiently and also save on the high overheads on staffs. This has improved the real-time user engagement over the past years.
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There have been so many popular chatbots integrated with social media. For instance, the Facebook Messenger bot is a popular chatbot that engages users giving an ultimate experience with all these responses. Users can get reminders for events, webinars, play games, etc. They can also Even the popular brand Tommy Hilfiger has its chatbot named TMY.GRL, a fashionista that will take you on a fashion tour and guide you with your queries. The popular messaging app Skype also uses chatbots to respond to movies, music, news, etc. Thus, to complement the social media marketing mix the use of chatbots has become essential in the tech world.

Chatbots, when integrated with social media marketing strategies can help your business soar heights. They have multiple benefits that give customers the best experience. They provide the flexibility to automate the tasks and also assist in providing the data. They are becoming a vital way to enhance the user experience for the purpose of better customer service and growing engagement. They help businesses to deliver the services within the app.

Chatbots and E-commerce Platforms

Chatbots have been a great assistance in the e-Commerce world. They provide management, security, monitoring and most importantly, customer engagement. Thus, they are a complete package required to the e-Commerce businesses.
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Let us see how chatbots are the perfect choice for e-Commerce platforms.

  1. Highly Automated Chatbots use AI assistance tools that are interactive and automated. They offer automated updates about weather, traffic and much more.
  2. Cost and Time-Saving Bots help you save both time and cost and reduce the cost of hiring staff.
  3. Easy Integration: Bots are easy to install, integrate and easier to use.
  4. Convenient and Contextual Bots are both engaging and contextual.
  5. Customer ReachThe chatbots are continuously upgrading and day-by-day they are helping businesses to engage more customers around the world.

Thus, chatbots are becoming an integral part of eCommerce businesses.

How has Messenger Chatbot Revolutionized Marketing?

Facebook rules the world of social media. In this era, it has created a revolution with the successful launch of Facebook messenger chatbots. These bots allow all kinds of businesses to provide deliverable content, interactive user experience and automate the customer service. Like Facebook, Messenger has reached a billion users and it also promotes the enterprise ideas through the integration of interactive chatbots. Thus, businesses and marketers consider it an integral part to benefit their strategies.

Facebook allows customers to get in touch with the brands in the easiest way. The advent of messenger bots has led to a new era in the world of brand marketing. This helps the people to connect directly with the businesses and get automated responses. Today, there are more than thousands of chatbots that promote the businesses on messenger. This promotes the businesses and aids in the marketing strategies by the marketers.

In recent years, the rise in the popularity of chatbots has resulted in the extensive development of chatbots in the tech world. This has also increased the demand for development tools for AI and chatbots. With such exponential growth, there is no denying that chatbots will extensively rule every marketing platform in the near future.

If you need more assistant about chatbots, feel free to write to us at info@zestard.com. We would be more happy to assist you.

Shopify-vs-woocommerce

Shopify vs Woocommerce – The battle of eCommerce platforms

Starting and choosing a platform for an online store has always been a difficult task. There are plenty of eCommerce platforms available for setting up all kinds of online stores. Some provide high-end solutions while some provide limited services. Some platforms cater to small businesses while some are the best choices for large-scale businesses. However, it all depends on overall business demands and the need to deliver value to end customers.

When you think of setting up an online store, Shopify and Woocommerce emerge as two of the top choices. These are the most Popular eCommerce platforms, which are suitable for all kinds of online businesses.

Shopify

Shopify is a self-hosted eCommerce solution. It provides an end-to-end solution with features includes site hosting, installing content management system (CMS), payment gateways and setting up online stores.

Minimal technical knowledge is required for using this service. It is the best solution for building your online store from scratch. It also includes an inbuilt blogging facility and boasts of several pricing plans, varied features, add-ons, and apps. Shopify also offers a portable credit card reader for taking customer payments offline.

Whether you are just starting out or have a full-blown online business – you will find a suitable Shopify plan that will take care of your online store.

Shopify

WooCommerce:

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin. All you need for creating an online store using WooCommerce is a WordPress website.

You need a WordPress website for which you have to pay a hosting fee, install the WooCommerce plugin and then set up the store. If you already have an existing WordPress website, it is easier to set up WooCommerce.

Woocommerce dashboard

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Comparison: Shopify vs Woocommerce:

Let us compare these two leading platforms on the basis of their features, pricing, customers, and services in depth.

Shopify vs Woocommerce

Which One is Easier to Use?

Shopify is easy to install and use. It quickly enables merchants to add products and manage data efficiently. With a single sign up, the store is all set up in minutes.

On the other hand, WooCommerce requires a longer process of installation. It requires integration with WordPress themes and plugins.

However, once the process is over, both platforms offer a similar level of ease of use.

Why Choose Shopify?

  1. If you want a quick setup and installation.
  2. If you do not want to do much hard work and do not mind investing more for hassle-free setup as well as features.
  3. If you want a highly optimized solution.
  4. If you want your store to be accessible to all devices and customers.
  5. If you are not interested in the technical setup and details.
  6. If you want a reliable and 24/7 online support at your service.

Why Choose WooCommerce?

  1. If you have a minimal budget to start with
  2. If you are willing to do everything on your own
  3. If you have much time to invest in setting things up and handle tasks
  4. If you want to be in full control of your online store.
  5. If you want to access a variety of site designs and themes.
  6. If you are ready to use and search thousands of plugins to extend the functionality of your store.

What Do These Platforms Offer on a Unique Basis?

Shopify offers amazing options and benefits. This helps the merchants to make more profits. It also gives a great shopping experience to the customers. Also, Shopify does provide many free options along with unlimited benefits.

Some are:

  1. Automatic fraud analysis
  2. Unlimited products
  3. Unlimited file storage
  4. Manual order creation
  5. Social media integration
  6. Blog module
  7. Free SSL certificate

WooCommerce adds a lot of interesting and exciting features to the WordPress plugins. Here is a list of features that helps you sell your products and make maximum sales. Some of them are:

  1. Adjustable shipping rates and taxes
  2. A plethora of products and product categories
  3. Stock levels control
  4. Mobile-friendly structure
  5. Payments via PayPal
  6. Works with WordPress themes

Design Themes:

Shopify

Shopify offers both free and paid themes. While Shopify offers a variety of themes, some are not as feature rich as those of the third-party themes.

The paid themes range from $100 to $180.

However, if you need more customizations and features, choose Envato Market for an impressive selection of popular Shopify themes at affordable prices.

Envato Market includes features such as complete customization control, social sharing, newsletter integration, zoom-in capabilities and quick-view options for products, and much more. Also, you can opt for multi-purpose themes.

[Example of 20+ Great Shopify Templates]

WooCommerce

WooThemes offers customized and free WooCommerce themes. The paid themes range from $60 to $300. You can also integrate it with any WordPress theme. This is a benefit of WooCommerce. Thus, theme selection is certainly rich.

[Example of 20+ Great WooCommerce Templates]

SEO

Shopify

Shopify includes a packaged system for e-commerce sites and hence does include basic SEO-friendly features. But for getting the sites to rank up high on Google, it does not allow enough flexibility to push for effective content marketing strategy or advanced SERPs.

  • Shopify automatically generates XML sitemaps for stores
  • It provides Meta Tags to avoid any sort of duplicity, important for SEO-friendly portals
  • One is not free to change the structure or apply on-page SEO to Shopify stores easily
  • Limited options for building readership and content marketing

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an e-commerce extension for WordPress, which is the number one blogging platform in the world. Its inherent advanced SEO-friendly features and highly customizable feature set allows users to boost SEO success more than ever!

  • WooCommerce is more customizable for sites that require changes
  • Since it is developed like a blogging platform, it is extremely SEO-friendly.
  • One can edit the base URL structures, permalinks, etc. that aid in the SEO of the site
  • It includes a quick and easy application of SEO-related elements including slugs, titles, meta descriptions, headings, image tags etc.
  • One can leverage free and premium plugins to boost SEO results for the site too
  • Since it is self-hosted, the technical skills required for installation and configuration could be a bit of a hassle but it does help in improving page load speed and thus lead to better SEO rankings

Customer Support

Shopify

Shopify is renowned for its high-quality customer care.

It offers a 24/7 access to every customer. They address every query via email, calls and open chat. Also, you can get an access to an extensive knowledge base. This covers all the FAQs.

WooCommerce

On the other hand, WooCommerce lacks a good customer support. Customers can get support from the WordPress forum. Also, you can create a free user account at WooCommerce.com. They provide the best solution to all your queries and problems.

Performance

Shopify

  • Shopify is a highly flexible platform but is restrictive when it comes to complete overhaul of the website structure
  • The site page loads could be affected due to different factors, which are not in the hands of administrators
  • Small e-commerce vendors can get up and running with the options provided to them and even manage their catalog faster than other e-commerce platforms.

WooCommerce

  • If one is technically sharp, one can retain full control of the store and even boost performance considerably.
  • With complete access to website files, source code, and data, store-owners can get their sites to perform better than ever.
  • One can even build WooCommerce-based stores on the computer with offline mode and then get it live, when satisfied with its robustness and security.
  • The platform’s flexibility can enable better performing e-commerce websites than Shopify.

Pricing

How Much Does Shopify Cost?

Shopify has various plans – Basic, Shopify, Shopify advanced, Shopify Plus. The pricings are clear and vary as per the plans.

  1. Basic – This plan is applicable to the stores with an annual turnover under $10k. Price: $29
  2. Shopify – This plan is applicable to the stores with small sales. Mostly the stores with an annual turnover between $10k and $50k. Price: $79
  3. Advanced Shopify – This plan is applicable to the stores with growing sales. Mostly those stores with an annual turnover between $50k and $250k. Price: $299

Shopify Plus & Gold – This plan is applicable to the stores doing large scale businesses. Mostly those stores with an annual turnover above $250k. Starts at $2000 per month. [Read more about Shopify Gold]

Click Here to View Detail Pricing Plan with Features

How Much Does WooCommerce Cost?

WooCommerce on the other side offers the platform for FREE.

But as shared earlier, you need to buy a Hosting Service, where you can install WooCommerce. The hosting service can cost you around $5 – $100 per month.

Apart from hosting services, you will pay additional for the domain ($8 – $15 Annually) and SSL Certificate ($50 – $200 Annually)

The Pricing Perspective:

At first glance, WooCommerce appears to be a cheaper alternative and it’s surely better-priced option compared to Shopify if one is ready to maintain and set up the complete website by yourself.

BUT if you are NOT technically savvy, and have no idea about hosting plans, SSL, etc., you will end up outsourcing WooCommerce development to experienced eCommerce Development Agency who might charge hourly rates for the installation, setup, and management of the store. In this scenario, WooCommerce may end up costing you more than Shopify!

Limitations:

Limitations in Shopify

  • Some themes and plugins are costly
  • Restrictive in implementing wide-scale changes
  • Lack of flexibility in appearance and content management
  • Limitations in WooCommerce
  • Tougher and more time-consuming to install and set up stores
  • Needs good technical skills to solve problems
  • Lack of high-class customer support compared to Shopify

Limitations in WooCommerce

Tougher and more time-consuming to install and set up stores
Needs good technical skills to solve problems
Lack of high-class customer support compared to Shopify

Existing Customers

Shopify powers the most popular brands that are making millions. Here is a list of some of the biggest brands using Shopify.

  1. Red bull
  2. The New York Stock Exchange
  3. Budweiser
  4. Tesla Motors
  5. Penguin Books
  6. The Economists

 Here is a list of some of the most notable big brands using WooCommerce on their sites.

  1. All Blacks
  2. Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
  3. Orange Amplification
  4. Weber
  5. Singer
  6. Ghostbed
  7. CitySightSeeing Dubai
  8. Airstream

This is surely a never-ending debate. It strictly depends on your demands and the investments. Both these platforms offer everything you need to set up an online store and in return provide good turnovers.

However, I believe that if you invest a little in one of the Shopify plans, Shopify will take care of the rest. Also, within no time you can experience good returns.

React or Angular 2: The Best Choice for 2018

Currently, web designing is taking a splash with the new JavaScript technologies. Every year, new technologies come in and old ones fade out. Programmers have to be adaptable to pick and choose relevant new technologies. Also, businesses have to be quick to try the new technologies in the town. Choosing the right framework is important for both. Angular 2 and React are the two torchbearers for front-end development in 2018.

react vs angular 2

Angular is a platform for building web applications by Google. While React is a JavaScript library for building creating UI by Facebook. Let us now quickly jump to the battle of React vs Angular 2.

Technology React JS Angular JS
Language JavaScript JavaScript
Complexity High Low
Architecture Component Based Flux
DOM Virtual DOM Real DOM
Type Open Source JS library Fully-featured MVC framework
Development Time High Low
Learning Curve Low Medium
Rendering Fast Slow
Community Bigger Smaller
Popularity High Medium

1. Templates

Both React and Angular 2 are based on JavaScript.

Angular 2 is in TypeScript. The templating is done with the HTML files. It follows the object-based programming patterns. Due to this, Angular 2 has high-performance typing features. Angular 2 put JavaScript into HTML. It is HTML-centric.

Everything in React is in JavaScript XML(JSX). It has a JS syntax that enables HTML quotes. It promotes the building of machine-readable code. The templates and logic of React are written in JSX. The syntax of React is simple and clean. React puts HTML into JavaScript. Thus, it is JavaScript-centric.

2. Framework

Angular 2 is a full-fledged framework. This framework can run on any platform or browser. It has other advantages such as it is consistent, offers a lot of ready-made tools. Moreover, the ng components are quite mature and robust.

ReactJS is not a full-scale framework. Due to which the integration of the UI library into the common MVC framework becomes tricky. This requires a deeper programming knowledge. ReactJS is still fresh and not mature. Taking consideration of the limited ecosystem, it is still young.

3. Architecture

Angular 2 and React follow different architectures. Angular 2 follows a component-based architecture. The components have a strong and deep binding. As Angular 2 is an object-oriented programming, the elements are properly encapsulated. Every element in the component has its unique functionality. This makes the components reusable and properly testable.

While React does not follow any such architecture, it uses Flux which provides a structure and architecture. It gives a unidirectional data flow to the components. Flux is more of a pattern than a framework. Thus, using flux with React makes the coding easier and flexible.

4. DOM

DOM(Document Object Model) is one of the major difference to point out when using React or Angular 2.

Angular 2 manipulates the real DOM by extending HTML with its directives. This enhances the two-way-data binding. Thus, any changes to the view will reflect in the data and vice versa. This turns out to be an advantage for the developers, increasing the development time. And it enables the auto-sync between the model data and the view.

React on the other side uses the virtual DOM. The Virtual DOM is of great use while handling large databases. It comprises of the smart methods. With React, the view changes are applied to virtual DOM. This optimizes and accelerates the update process.

5. MVC

Angular 2 follows the MVC pattern. Thus it has a proper component-based architecture. It has a clean separation of the presentation, business and data entity model. This allows a proper testing of written code. This makes Angular 2 out-of-the-box programming language.

React does not follow the MVC pattern. It does not have patterns, templates or any MVC architecture. Instead, it has view layer only. Developers need to solve the Model and Controller on their own to design the app. They have to be familiar with the component’s life cycles and states.

6. Development Time

Developers are always fascinated with how the language works, how short is the learning curve and the overall development time.

Angular 2 is a complex component-based language. It has a quick installation and setup. But it has unnecessary syntax to do simple things. Thus, there is a drastic increase in development time. This puts Angular in a tougher position.

React takes comparatively longer to set up. And once done, you are ready to work on the app development. It should be relatively easy to add new features.

7. Learning Curve

Angular 2 has a steep learning curve. Though the Angular 2 community provides a complete documentation. But sometimes it becomes difficult to read the documentation. Angular 2 focuses more on the components. But it is comparatively difficult than React.

React has a short learning curve. It uses the least abstractions. However, it takes more time to learn the best practices. It has too many things to learn in depth.

8. Native Rendering

This is always the talk around the tables. All libraries are capable of native rendering. But there is always a performance competition among all the libraries.

Angular 2 is the stable version with the new addition of components. It comes with a native script. However, it still fails to beat the performance of react native.

React native comes with the native rendering. It does it better than the Angular 2.

9. Community

The community support plays a huge role in the success of these languages. Both have powerful communities.

The global community support of Angular 2 makes it one of the best Javascript frameworks. The developer team, designers, support team – actively work behind its success. They work with collaboration, contributing to the community. Angular 2 has hence boasted of huge reliability and credibility.

Facebook and Instagram both support react. The experts and developers work constantly to make this technology worth. Users can find active participation in online forums such as Stack Overflow, GitHub, Reactiflux Chart and many others.

10. Global Usage and Popularity

Thousands of companies worldwide have chosen the rich JavaScript frameworks. They use it for their sites, apps and internal projects. Angular 2 is popular among many leading sites. Google, the main force behind it also encourages its use. It powers The Guardian, PayPal, Lego, Netflix and other leading sites.

Many Fortune companies and startups have chosen React native for their app development. Instagram, Facebook, Dropbox, Tesla, Khan Academy and more such leading brands use this. React is very popular among many startups as well.

There is no doubt that both are advanced and high demand technologies in 2018. However, the developer’s choice depends on the requirements and the system constraints.

In 2018, there will be a rise in the creation of native apps. With Angular 4, there are possibilities in this area of huge improvement. 2018 will reveal whether Angular 4 will break through the domination of React or not.

Contact us to know more about our comprehensive Angular and React development services today!

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11 Reasons to Choose Shopify for your E-commerce Store

With multiple platforms available for e-commerce site development, it becomes tricky to choose the ideal one for your needs. If one needs to initiate an online store and choose the best platform, it is essential that it ticks the right boxes. In that case, we feel that Shopify fits the bill of being one of the best effective e-commerce platforms today.

reason to choose shopify

Top 11 Reasons to Choose Shopify as your Ecommerce Platform:

1. Easy to Setup

Shopify is focused on keeping tools simple and effective while offering wide functionality for merchants required for eCommerce store management. Its ease of use is what convinces merchants who are not tech geeks to opt for the platform since it includes necessary tools and documentation for easy store setup by anyone.

2. Reasonable Price

Shopify is priced for the long term which is useful for every growing storefront. All Shopify costs are spread out for every month and priced nearly $29. A transaction fee is levied for small stores but it is waived off as it becomes bigger. The pricing is systematic in its structure such that there is never a huge one-time investment and no contracts, and one can invest in inventory instead.

3. Simple Backend System

Shopify also has a simple backend system, which is incredibly easy, for a store owner since one can put in the time to sort backend in locating things, with diverse product additions, and customer service.The entire settings, analytics fields and setup checklists are synchronized to the tee.

4. Good Professional Support

Shopify supports techies, designers and developers with incentives. The platform encourages specialists to work with Shopify platform and makes it accessible to the public at large with the custom design. Unlike other open-source shopping carts that often rely on community, Shopify now has a dedicated team for support.

5. Loads of built-in Apps

Whether you need a blog, some coupon codes, upsells, analytics, inventory setup – Shopify has a full array of apps in one place. Additionally, the developers build applications that can customize your Shopify store. One can get the desired functionality with all types of inbuilt and custom applications.

6. Reliable Hosted Solution

Shopify hosting is part of the monthly subscription and includes automated backups and updates. Also, the stores cope well even when there are huge web traffic spikes and deliver minimal downtime too.

7. Friendly Cash flow Structure

As mentioned above, Shopify charges a transaction fee on smallest stores which are waived off when the store becomes big. The cash flow structure goes from month to month with no upfront investment too.

8. Point of Sale Integration

For online retailers, who also have a physical shop location, Shopify provides an efficient point-of-sale system that syncs with the online store. The small online retailer that might not be able to afford a full-service solution can take benefit from this feature. The inventory can be handled seamlessly on both mediums, which relieves one of the biggest hassles.

9. Complete Design Control

Most hosted eCommerce platforms offer the ability for store owners to edit their template designs but also set constraints of a template. Shopify, on the other hand, has a theme templating engine that gives enough flexibility for all sorts of interface improvements. Shopify’s templating engine offers designers and developers a plethora of options over hosted eCommerce platforms.

10. Free Security Option

Shopify provides secure hosting features including an SSL certificate and a secured shopping cart for online transactions. Merchants can use any payment gateway, although it offers Stripe as the preferred payment gateway. Stripe provides flexible tools for e-commerce and Shopify makes it easy for all merchants with stringent security options.

11. Easy SEO

An SEO Shopify expert can help manage transitions between e-commerce sites to keep the existing robust rankings. Shopify has an SEO-friendly setup that leverages each of the product categories and helps in its promotions.

Shopify has all the ideal e-commerce features that you would need. It is a nearly perfect e-commerce platform that aids all small business stores along with the large marketplaces.

Shopify Gold vs Magento Enterprise: The Ultimate Comparison

First and foremost, every eCommerce platform allows for a strong shopping experience with virtual storefronts that attract, entice and enable consumers to buy products or services as they desire.

Online merchants host their websites and even manage their offerings, prices, promotions etc. But when higher volumes are considered, the e-commerce strategy does depend on the solidity of the platform.

shopify gold vs magento 2

Every eCommerce platform aspires to deliver a strong shopping experience with the help of virtual stores that enable consumers to buy products as they desire.

Online merchants host their websites and even manage their offerings, prices, promotions etc. But when higher volumes are considered, the e-commerce strategy does depend on the solidity of the platform.

Shopify Gold and Magento Enterprise are two of the best eCommerce platforms in the present scenario. And to help to choose the best, a representative from a veteran e-commerce solutions provider can help you out!

With 8+ years of eCommerce business, Zestard Technologies Pvt. Ltd includes a team of certified Shopify Specialists and Magento Developers, who have also garnered repute in the field.  The company has deployed 200+ successful online stores that boast of an impressive ROI. Although we are platform agnostic, we partner with clients to choose an ideal one based on their requirements.

Shopify Gold

Shopify recently released Shopify Gold for Indian merchants in July 2017 and has a simple navigation. It provides fully supported service, although it holds a bit less market share than Magento the growth has been stupendous and faster compared to any e-commerce platform.

Magento Enterprise

Magento Enterprise offers integrated cloud hosting and impeccable infrastructure, featuring pre-integrated tools, good management to handle traffic spikes and boost operational efficiency.

Shopify Gold vs Magento Enterprise

There are some differences and similarities with specific advantages and disadvantages to both platforms. Our research and comparison criteria are done objectively to choose the ideal one for your business.

1. Scalability & Reliability

Shopify Gold features 200 TB Storage, along with Unlimited Bandwidth, 8000+ Orders/ Min. processing time, and 99.99% Server Uptime.

shopify features

Shopify Gold offers a fully hosted SaaS solution perfect to handle high-volume merchants for business. The infrastructure rests on 500,000 Shopify merchants, ensuring all sorts of flash sales, Black Friday audience etc. is handled efficiently.

Magento on the hand relies on Content Delivery Network (CDN) and DDoS protection. It also offers generous bandwidth allowances and even offers New Relic APM Pro for thorough Performance Monitoring and Blackfire.io Enterprise for the purpose of Performance Testing without any restrictions.

Magento 2.0 is scalable but priced accordingly for on-premise deployments that require solution architects to accommodate highest peaks in traffic, even though for a single day every year. But every change to the system impacts the scalability of the architecture.

2. 24*7 Support

Shopify Gold gives access to launch manager along with a dedicated account manager who can guide you with immediate assistance.

Magento also provides 24×7 monitoring of your system and renders email support for application and cloud infrastructure. The support is inclusive in the USD $3399/ month plan only.

3. Cost Effective

Shopify Gold has priced at 0.4% of monthly sales or a fixed price amount of Rs. 65000/ month, whichever is the higher amount, to a maximum levied a charge of Rs.130,000/ month covering all licensing & support costs involved.

Magento Commerce Starter licenses start from $1999/ month or about Rs. 130000 while Magento Commerce Pro is priced at nearly Rs. 2,20,935 per month. Shopify hence is priced at nearly half the price of Magento making it a very cost-effective platform.

4. Easy to Start Platform

Shopify Gold allows users to deploy their store within weeks and without much technical knowledge. Shopify’s templating language is quite intuitive and hence does not require development experience. It also allows for private app development and even quick and easy cart scripting for complex customizations.

Magento, on the other hand, is accessible and can be deployed by technical users only since the system can be deployed by someone who knows programming. Implementation times for Magento 2 usually takes up 4 to 8 months and also require technical resources including, developers, deployment specialists, QA and testing professionals, etc.

5. Better Reporting

Shopify Gold has a strong reporting dashboard for adding different elements including revenue, orders etc.

Magento uses third-party tools for reporting purposes.  Shopify Gold is the stronger option of the two as they have dedicated app for merchants for the purpose of reporting and order processing along with a robust SDK for mobile applications. But in terms of reporting, both platforms have third-party apps that attend to the need of custom reports. As mentioned earlier, Magento 2 needs comprehensive technical knowledge too.

6. Marketing Friendliness

Most marketers do not have a technical background so if the platform needs to be leveraged for creating product descriptions, and even to edit website copy, one needs a platform that is easy to use for the average marketer.

Shopify Gold definitely offers a marketer-friendly option, better than Magento EE, giving access to key functions from the admin panel, and create conversion pixels for tracking of relevant social media campaigns, discount code generator, and other extensions.

Magento EE has no default functionalities and features need to be created, causing the marketer to rely on developers to get their work sorted. Shopify Gold though as per research is still the easiest platform for the marketing team.

7. Performance

Shopify-hosted websites have faster loading speed than Magento. According to selfstartr.com, Shopify boasts a 1.98 seconds loading time while Magento sites take an average of 5.05 secs to load.

In terms of Google page loading times, Shopify achieves a rating of 63 while Magento achieves 51. In terms of mobile friendliness, Shopify scores again with 94 points to Magento’s score of 81. Needless to say, Shopify outscores Magento on performance.

8. POS Integration

Shopify Gold has powerful POS integration capabilities and is seamless enough to sell on multiple platforms including social channels and sites, mobile avenues, and other marketplaces. Magento, on the other hand, has decent capabilities for POS integration but Shopify outscores the platform by a large margin.

Additionally, Shopify boasts of PCI Level 1 Compliance security along with better SEO capabilities than Magento making it one of the most useful e-commerce platforms. One can preferably opt for Shopify because it is one ideal e-commerce platform that is cost-effective, has scores of apps that can be deployed by non-techies and even features easy customizations that can be used for specific businesses.

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