The Top 5 Misconceptions of Banner Carousels

Why Banner Sliders are not Bad as people make them look?

Nowadays there is a ton of arguments surrounding the fact that Banner Sliders or Rotators are not as good for websites as they used to be. However, you still see a lot of big brands and company websites that make use of this feature for their websites and doing really great with it.

The fact is, sliding banners, if used correctly, are actually great tools for your website that can help you enhance your user experience and navigation. It has a lot of potential to show quick results and they do. However, a lot of people still don't feel convinced about this.

Given below are the top 5 misconceptions of Banner Sliders that people commonly have.

1. Banner Blindness

This is when your banners often look like advertisements and are hence ignored by users. This is true in cases where your banners use low quality graphics and an ad kind of design. In this case, not just sliders but even simple hero images are ignored. If you carefully curate your design and make it to the point, there is absolutely no chance that your banners will be ignored. Simple, elegant and to the point designs work the best.

2. Divide User Attention

User attention is divided when the designs of the banners include a lot of information and content that cannot be read and perceived in a matter of few seconds. Again, your banner design is at fault here. If your design is simple and to the point, users will easily understand the topic of prime focus of that banner and be ready to look at the next one.

This misconception also arises due to the fact that humans do not respond well to quick movements. This is where banner slider animations come in. If you choose a great banner slider add on, you can select a nice animation that seamlessly transitions one banner to another.

3. They Take Away User Control

When creating banners, experienced web developers make sure that this is not the case. Banner carousels usually have navigational arrows that allow users to manually switch back and forth different banners. Good Banner Carousel Extensions always have this option for users. This in fact gives them all the control over these banners.

4. They Reduce Visibility

There is absolutely no way sliders reduce visibility. In fact, they do the exact opposite. Rotating banners are such a great way to increase the visibility of important information on your website. You can also provide links to these banners that direct the users to exactly what is displayed on them. Since there will be quite a few of these, you can display multiple information in the different banners and include specific links for each. This also enhance user navigation.

5. They Take Up Space

Even though this is true, it is not a negative feature. Well designed rotating banners do take up space, but in fact they also give a quick view of the website's content to the users. Apart from helping you establish relevancy of your website among the users, it also helps you direct them where you want them to be. So all that space is probably a great part of your website.

Banner Carousels are absolutely not a problem. They are simply shown in the wrong light. World renowned brands like Puma, Coca Cola, Adidas etc. are regular users of banner sliders. Sure they wouldn't be doing so if it delivered such a bad user experience now, would they? So have no worries, and go and get a Banner Carousel Add On today for your website.

How a Product Configurator can help your eCommerce Store flourish?

The eCommerce industry is worth a trillion dollars and is growing exponentially. This figure gives you a brief idea of the number of eCommerce businesses that might be running and it definitely is a very big number. Due to the intense competition, eCommerce businesses are forced to offer something very unique if they want to get ahead of the others.

A product configurator is an eCommerce extension or module that allows online stores to provide customizable products to their customers. Customizable products are great way for your business to gain competitive leverage over others. Apart from this, given below are 5 ways how a ready-made product configurator module can help your online store flourish;

 1. Less Competitive Market

The demand of customizable products is extremely high. However, not a lot of people actually offer these. This is primarily because of the complexity of implementing such a functionality on their website. However, our Multi-Step Product configurator is actually incredibly easy to install and use. So this gives you a golden opportunity to reap the benefits of a very lucrative market with really little competition.

2. More Repeat Sales

Customizing a product is a very fun and engaging activity. If customers get to experience this in your store, they are bound to return to it repeatedly to get more of it. Being able to customize the products gives them a range of new possibilities. This also makes them eager to try these out and hence drive a lot of repeat sales.

3. Greater Customer Loyalty

Its not just the whole process but the fact that they are able to buy exactly what they want from your store rather than having to settle for something that's just remotely close is also what drives them to come back. Your products automatically become a lot more valuable to them. Your products start to reflect their personal requirements a lot better than other stores. All of this collectively drives them to become more loyal and frequent to your online store.

4. Direct Touch with Customers

Another advantage of having a custom product builder is that you are able to eliminate the middle men and directly connect with your customers. This helps you streamline the process of ordering in a much better way. Being in direct touch with them also gives you an insight of what your target customers are looking for in your products. This in turn is beneficial to help you improve your product specifications.

5. Better Online Presence

A Custom Product Builder Feature for eCommerce stores is a rather unique functionality. As mentioned earlier, not a lot of people provide this. This means that with this feature on your store, you are bound to drive a lot more traffic to your website as you engage with new customers. Creativity always draws a lot of attention online and a product builder is quite a creative functionality. Such a creative feature will engage users better compelling them to share about it in their social circles. This will in turn drive new customers to your store everyday.

Top 4 Custom Features of Learning Management Systems should Have

With growth of technology, organizations are being compelled to adopt latest techniques to keep pace with their industry. Organizations related to the education industry are also part of the same wave that are compelled to turn to Education and E-Learning software Development Solutions. Learning Management Systems were introduced to help them cope with  this rise in demand for technology.

Learning Management Systems or LMS are software applications that are used to deliver learning courses and training programs. These systems help the organizations elaborately plan and publish these programs either live or self-paced.

Although there are a lot of facilities a good Learning Management Solution must have, the following are four of the most important custom facilities for any LMS.

1. Custom Calendar System

A custom built calendar is of utmost importance whether the course is self paced or live. A custom calendar will allow users to set reminders for themselves. It will be used to track your academic progress, upcoming deadlines and events. It will also automatically set email notifications to the users about the same. Apart from the users, even the admin can automatically mark events in the user's personal calendar reminding them about upcoming courses or deadlines.

2. Intuitive Admin Interface

A good Learning Management System requires a user friendly admin interface to work perfectly. With the help of an expert education software development company, you can create a custom admin dashboard that has multilingual support, allows you to custom define user permissions allowing who can access what, provides detailed reporting and activity logs and also create course backups easily.

3. Course Development and Management

A custom built course management should equip the admin to easily create bulk courses and take bulk actions for these course that are set up. This is especially beneficial for self paced course providers. The course development system should also support embedding external resources and files for reference, group management for a course with huge participation and have comprehensive collaboration tools for all students.

4. Integrated Marketing System

Marketing is key to expanding the visibility of your courses and your platform if you're open to the public. Hence, you should have a custom built system that automatically schedules posts on all your social media accounts. Apart from this, it should also be able to automatically categorize and deliver emails received from different channels. These emails should be personalized according to the channel through which they were received. 

Business Benefits of Hiring Remote eCommerce Managers

eCommerce is the fastest grwoing industry that amounted to a total sale of $1.86 trillion in the year 2016. The trillion dollar industry is faciliatated by a plethora of small, medium and large businesses spread across the world.

However, managing an eCommerce business is not as easy as it may seem. A lot of effort and work has to be put in to make an eCommerce business successful. This is why the demand of demand of developers of various technologies like Magento developers, nopCommerce developers etc. is on the rise. Apart from these, the demand of eCommerce managers too is growing significantly and so is their compensation. But over the past few years, another great alternative for eCommerce managers has come up which is: Hire a Remote eCommerce Manager.

Although there are a lot of benefits  of this, given below are the top 4 benefits of hiring remote eCommerce managers.

1. Cost, Cost and Cost!

Any operation that is carried out remotely always has a major cost benefit. In these cases, the cost benefits are incredibly high as a remote eCommerce manager costs only about one third of an on-site eCommerce manager. This obviously saves up a significant investment allowing you to use your finances in expanding and growing your business.

2. High Experience

A good experience is always a preferred characteristic of any job. The same applies to eCommerce managers. Majority of the times if you go to hire a remote eCommerce maager, you will always get someone with a significant experience in the field. Another plus point in this is the fact that if you're just starting out, there is a lot the eCommerce manager will be able to teach you about the business.

3. High Range of Expertise

Most of the times, when you hire an eCommerce manager, there are only a specific set of skills that they bring along. However, remote eCommerce managers, are usually complemented by a team of expert eCommerce developers. This means that they will be able to help you out with a lot more thigns than you usually expect from an on-site manager.

4. No long term contracts

Another great advantage of remotely working eCommerce managers is that you aren't bound to them with a long term complex contract. You can hire them on a temporary basis and then remove them whenever required. You will have to pay them only when you have a lot of work and are not bound to the same commitment in the opposite situation. This again helps you significantly save up on costs, avoid having to go through complex procedures, provide employee benefits etc.

there are a lot more benefits to an eCommerce manager working remotely. However, these wer the ones that have the most impact on the growth of your eCommerce business.  

How Mobile App Development with Xamarin can be incredibly beneficial for User Acquisition?

Xamarin App Development to Study your Target Audience

Mobile App Development is a process that requires some serious research and investment. It is not a process that can be rushed into if you want your app to succeed. Apart from choosing the right Mobile App Development company, you will also need to decide your niche audience and how to reach them.

This is where Xamarin can come to your rescue. Xamarin is the best framework for cross platform apps. Since Xamarin has the capability of providing you with almost three apps at the cost of one, it can be used to study your niche market incredibly well.  

Given below are the steps you can follow to conduct a comprehensive research of your market with a Xamarin App.

1. Soft Launch a Xamarin App

The first thing to do in this is to launch a Xamarin App to the market trying to cover as many platforms as possible. Since most of the code of Xamarin apps is shared across all platforms, this process wouldn't be too hard on you in terms of investment. You just need to make sure you hire experienced Xamarin developers.

2. Study App Response

After launching your Xamarin app, market your app well in order to achieve the maximum number of downloads. This way you can study the ratings, suggestions and reviews given for your app on app stores and other channels. With the help of this, you will be able to get a rough idea of who your target audience is and what majority of them prefer.

3. Experiment with App Functionalities

Once people start reviewing and rating your app, a lot of them will also provide suggestions for your app. Even if they don't, you can contemplate a lot of functionalities that your audience might prefer. You can also ask for suggestions from experienced companies that provide business intelligence services. Once you add or remove functionalities with the help of your Xamarin Developers, continue analyzing the response of the audience to the changes.

4. Compare and Make a Decision

After spending some time accumulating responses and experimenting with your app, you can now compare various reports regarding your app audience, their responses, the changes they prefer and the ones they don't etc. You can now move on to finalizing the functionalities of your app, the best audience for your app etc. With this, you can also decide on various techniques and strategies to reach out to them before and after your final launch. 

You wouldn't even have to remove your previously launched Xamarin app from the stores. Experienced Android App Developers and iOS App Developers will be able to simply replace those apps in a version upgrade. If it seems well, you could even continue with the Xamarin apps itself without replacing them with native apps. In the end, your app will be able to generate far better returns in a lot less time than it would have if it had been launched without the research.

How is Web Scraping beneficial for Ecommerce Companies?

Web Scraping and its benefits for eCommerce Companies | Making the eCommerce Development the Best

Web scraping is the process of accumulating and organizing data from a variety of sources. Majority of the times, there is no facility to extract this data and you would have to consult a professional web scraping company in order to execute it. In the age of the internet today, data scraping can give you a competitive advantage over others. Business data is a gold mine and accumulating and organizing it can benefit your eCommerce store in a number of ways.

Some of the ways how web scraping and the data collected by it can benefit your eCommerce store are as follows:

1. Scraping Product Data from Merchants 

If an eCommerce store sells a variety of products from a number of different merchants, manually entering each product in your database is not a viable option. It requires a lot of manpower, time and hence a significantly large investment. Scraping all this data using a simple web scraping tool can help you save it all. The whole process becomes more seamless and even eliminates the possibility of human error. To implement this, you could either consult a web scraping company or better yet, an eCommerce development company as this would be more of their specialty.

2. Scraping Competitor Pricing 

As an eCommerce store, there are quite a few techniques that can help you show yourself better than the others to your prospects. The most effective way, however, is showing how you provide your customers with a better priced product. A web scraping tool will simply collect the pricing data  from various competitors and display them on your website. You can even choose from which sites you need the data to be collected.

3. Scraping Customer Review Data 

Customer feedback and review is crucial for any business. Its important for any business to know what their users are saying about them to others. Web scraping can help eCommerce store owners to collect this data from numerous sources to analyze their presence on these channels.You can then respond and bring about changes accordingly.

4. Scraping websites to generate new leads

Scraping is used to collect data and one of the types of data you can collect is customer information. You can target a website or channel where you could find your target audience. Then with the help of a professional web scraping company, you could extract customer information to further target them with promotional offers.

Apart from the ones given above, there are a lot more benefits of web scraping for not just eCommerce businesses but all the others too. The list would be long and even different for each industry. However, this gives a pretty clear picture of the benefits of web scraping.   

Top User Experience Enhancing Features of Android Oreo | Mobile App Development

Top 5 features of Android Oreo that will promote Mobile App Development with Better User Experience

When working on a mobile app, the first thing that professional Mobile App Development companies will suggest you is to map out everything you'll be offering in terms of user experience. This is because how your users feel about you is key to your success.

Similarly, in terms of experience, Android Oreo aims to remove the biscuit layer and go straight for the cream. So far, with the new features that have been announced, it seems like Google might just succeed in achieving it. Although it isn't available yet for all android phones, it will be by next year. However, there's no reason why we can't still be incredibly excited about it.

Here are 5 New features of Android Oreo to be excited about:

1. Notification Badges

Notifications badges are badges that appear over an app's icon indicating the number of unread notifications. In Android Oreo, users will be able to turn these notification badges on or off according to their convenience. Long pressing these app icons will display the notification as a small interactive push notification pop up. Users can take relevant action on this small pop up itself. 

2. Notification Priorities

Badges are not the only exciting functionalities in terms of app notifications. Android Oreo also lets users manage the notifications from different apps in a little more detail. Users can mark their preferences of how they want their notifications to be shown for a particular app. For instance, you can set to receive only silent alerts for certain group chats of a messaging app while the others notify you by a sound and lighting up your screen. However, this depends on whether your app supports this functionality or not. So make sure to include this option before you hire Android App Developers to execute your project. 

3. Picture in Picture Feature

In simple words, this feature will allow you to continue viewing a video while you access other apps. The video player will just be scaled down allowing you to have access to all the other things on your phone. For instance, you're in a video call with someone and wish to take down some notes of what they're saying. The video will simply scale down while you open up your notepad and type everything you need. Again this feature too will have to be enabled by your Android App Developers for your app.

4. Better Auto-fill Data Sync

Android Oreo can proudly boast its capability to save all your login, payment, app data etc. with your permission. This data will then be stored between devices and across apps for you to easily use. Plus, Google claims that the feature is much faster this time so the most relevant auto-fill data will be detected way earlier than it does now.

5. Exciting New Emojis

Taking things to a lighter side, Android Oreo will also introduce a whole list of new and exciting emojis. Some of these include a wizard, dinosaur, fairy and an exploding head you can use when you hear something mind-blowing. Google has made sure to add more face emojis to help users express themselves a lot better in chats.

Android Oreo seems like an incredibly promising upgrade, like always, and has definitely gotten users and android app developers excited. How do you feel?

5 Best Shopify Apps ecommerce Startups Must Have!

Part 2 - Apps for enhancing User Experience 

Previously it was briefly covered why Shopify is one of the best eCommerce platforms and how it has a plethora of apps to add more value to your store. The 5 apps we spoke about in the previous article were primarily beneficial for your stores sales and marketing strategies. Apart from innovative sales techniques, another aspect of your customer journey from first contact to conversion that is very crucial is User Experience.

The reason why User Experience is of utmost importance is because it is the first step of the customer's journey. The facts state it in a very simple way, if the prospect doesn't enjoy their experience in your store, it is highly unlikely they will buy from you.

Luckily, Shopify has a number of different apps to enhance your user experience. Here is a list of the top 5 Shopify apps that are recommended by professional eCommerce developers:

1. Persistent Cart:

The persistent cart is rather a crucial addition to your eCommerce store. The function of this is that it saves the shopping cart of a user in the same state that it was in when left earlier. Often users shop on multiple devices and also during different times which might empty their cart when they close their tabs. This puts the users in a difficult situation and hence ultimately abandoning the website.

With persistent cart, once added in the cart, the items stay there until they are removed by the user themselves. When the user logs out, the cart is emptied. However, this feature can be turned off if required allowing the cart to empty out only when the user wants so.

2. Tidio Live Chat:

When shopping in a physical store, there is always a salesperson along to clear any doubts you have about any product. This is equally important when shopping online and this is what Tidio Live Chat offers.

With a live chat option, your potential customers can get in touch with you at any point of time. When you're online, you will get an alert whenever a query is raised and you can immediately chat with the user. When offline, a contact form will still be available for them to send in their queries. It is also mobile friendly and provides multi language support.

3. SocialShopWave:

Social Media is an important tool for both the users and businesses. Social media not only makes it easier for them to access your site but also lets them become a part of your online community which imbibes a sense of trust in them about your brand.

SocialShopWave allows you to enhance your user experience through social media remarkably. It allows your users to sign up for your websites using any social media platform they are comfortable with, lets them easily share your products on their pages and even send automated emails personalized based on what they bought or added to their wish list.

4. Yotpo:

When shopping online, the whole process is based on trust and hence it’s important for users to be able to establish that over your store. Yotpo helps you establish that trust through user reviews.

Yotpo allows users to give and see authentic product reviews from other customers and easily distribute those reviews on different social media platforms. As per researches by top eCommerce Development Companies, these not only help in establishing trust but also aid a lot in SEO through user content.

5. McAfee Secure:

Another aspect of trust that users need before being completely confident of purchasing from your store is how secure your site is. Especially in recent times with growing malware attacks, users need to be sure that sharing data and transactions can be carried out safely.

McAfee Secure is a pretty huge name in the market that people and eCommerce developers are aware of and trust. With a McAfee Secure Trustmark, users are ensured that your site has taken necessary precautions for securing the website and that they can confidently shop on it.

Conclusion

So that was the list of our top 5 Shopify apps that can enhance your store's user experience quite significantly. As mentioned earlier, user experience is the first step of a user's journey towards becoming a customer and your prime aim should be to make a digital experience delightful. These apps can definitely aid you in that process.

5 Best Shopify Apps Ecommerce Startups Must Have!

 Apps for Sales and Marketing Strategies

Shopify is one of the best eCommerce platforms that many eCommerce development companies recommend. It’s affordable and easy to use and is much more than an average storefront. Shopify features fully-secure checkouts that allow retailers to start taking payments instantly, while Shopify Shipping takes away the excessive work required for order fulfillment by managing the whole process for you. Shopify can even handle your marketing by automating emails and creating targeted social campaigns.

Shopify primarily aims at making it as simple as possible to start and grow an e-commerce business. By far it has been doing a really good job. It’s great for those looking to create an online store or move an existing store to a more user-friendly and comprehensive platform.

While the basic version of Shopify includes everything you need to get a store up and running, you can equip your store with a number of its apps that are available to get even more out of it.

Given below are 5 Amazing Shopify apps to help you boost sales and increase customer satisfaction.

1. Custom Audience Sync with Facebook:

This Shopify app by Audience Push is an essential app for all Shopify store owners who utilize Facebook advertising. After connecting your store to your Facebook, this app will automatically update your Facebook Custom Audience list with details of each new customer to your store.

Every time there is a phone number or email entered into the checkout, a sale or a customer registration, the contact details are instantly pushed to a Custom Audience list created on Facebook. This helps you focus on a more targeted group of users to boost your sales. Given the fact that almost everyone in the world now uses Facebook, this is an app your eCommerce developers shouldn't skip.

2. Exit Offers

The Exit Offers app is highly recommended by eCommerce Development companies help boost sales by helping you save customers that are about to abandon a purchase. Visitors who add items to their cart but then try to leave without completing their purchase are shown an offer designed to entice them to buy the product. The offer can be defined by the admin.

Another great feature of this is that you can split test offers right from within the app to help you figure out which type of offer performs the best for you. This app can easily help you increase your sales by 20% by targeting price sensitive customers. It also significantly decreases your cart abandonment rates which are a serious concern.  

3. Product Upsell

The product upsell app is actually a pretty impressive one that can have a direct impact on increasing sales. What it does is that based on the products in a user's shopping cart, it automatically recommends them related products that best go with it or sometimes are even important for it at the point of checkout.

For example, if a user buys a Laptop, this app will give a suggestion of buying a laptop case along, in case of a camera, it would suggest a memory card and so on. Users often don’t realize their requirement of another product that is often used with the one they wish to purchase unless reminded or suggested about. Hence, it might be rather essential to have your store equipped with this feature.

4. Quantity Breaks:

The quantity breaks app will allow you to create different pricing tiers based on the quantity of a product a user buys. It also has the flexibility of creating these different pricing tiers on products that fall in a particular group.

For instance, if a customer plans to buy a product in bulk, then you can set it up in a way to offer the customer a 10% discount on the purchase of 10 of the same products, a 15% discount on the purchase of 15 and so on. Setting it up for products within a specific group works similarly. This app could be immensely beneficial especially for those stores who mostly have orders placed in bulk.

5. Points, VIP, Referral Programs

No shopper would ever deny extra points or would skip a reward. BigCommerce reports that discount offers influence the decision to purchase for nearly 71 percent of shoppers. Hence, you should definitely consider providing offers and deals to your customers and this Shopify App by Sweet tooth does exactly that.

Sweet Tooth Loyalty Points app lets you reward your customers in over ten different ways. You can create a reward program to give shoppers incentives for making a purchase, referring a friend, creating an account, following you on social media, and a lot more. This could help you give a really good leverage over your competitors.

Although there are plenty of apps available to integrate with the Shopify platform, these are a few of the major ones that eCommerce developers especially recommend to boost your sales. Especially if you are just starting out, these can help you achieve your eCommerce dream. These apps can take a tremendous load off of you by automating a majority of your sales and marketing strategies and aid you in growing your business.

Trends that will change the Landscape of Mobile Apps

The mobile app market is not the same as it was before. With the insatiable demand and rise in competition, mobile app development companies are constantly introducing new changes and strategies in order to help businesses keep up with the competition.

Given below are 5 Mobile App trends that will change the mobile app market in the near future.

1. Interactive Push notifications

Push notifications became a crucial feature in 2017 for browsers. Although introduced a little earlier, it was only in the late 2016 that they caught a lot of heat. With them came along Interactive push notifications for mobile. In simple words, these notifications allow you to take an action or respond to the notification to without exiting your current application.

Interactive push notifications got a lot of positive feedback as it took the customer first approach by not forcing a notification on them but rather giving them a better option while their busy. In coming years, you will definitely see a lot of these popping up on your screens.

2. Wearable Apps

Wearable Apps introduced a new app ecosystem. Although these too have been around for quite some time, it is only now that the industry is seeing an exponential boom. With the rise in the functionalities they can provide and their reduced costs, wearable devices have become widely popular all around the world. And along with them, the wearable apps that power these devices too.

The functionalities of wearable devices are increasing and with them the functionalities of their related apps. However, along with these, other apps too will be compelled to make wearable device versions of themselves as wearable devices increase their reach. Major apps like Uber or Google Search already do.

3. Augmented Reality Apps

With the introduction of Pokemon Go, augmented reality was brought into a new light. New possibilities of AR opened up and AR App Developers became high valued resources. And now, AR apps are being introduced in the mobile apps of almost every industry there is. Real estate, eCommerce, Gaming, Automobile, Furniture etc. 

It wouldn't be very long before almost every industry would have a mobile app that implements the Augmented Reality Technology in one way or the other. Audi has already built complete showrooms around this technology awing customers worldwide. Mobile apps won't be very far.

4. Enterprise Apps

With the growth in the trend of Bring Your Own Device to Work, enterprise apps are destined to have a very large growth rate ahead. Since majority of businesses today rely on some sort of collaboration and office management software, there seems to be no other cost effective solution other than enterprise apps.

Enterprise apps are an extremely safe bet for businesses. they save up on device costs, device maintenance costs and since most of them will be developed as hybrid apps to cover the varied range of devices, they would also save a lot on development costs.

5. No More Hamburger Menus

There was a time when hamburger menus were an easy way out for mobile apps from a relatively huge and complex menu. However, 2017 might just mark its end. with the ever increasing demand of having more option in visible sights, app owners have no other choice rather than to use other alternatives for their menu.

Hamburger menus sure made the job easy, but that is not something mobile apps should aim for. Mobile apps should aim to deliver a better user experience to their customers in every possible way. And that's not always easy. Popular trends that might take over the hamburgers include in-line scrolling navigation, side scrolling navigation (something which is very popular with apps), bottom navigation and tabs.