Author: brian

Ecommerce Platform Customization in Magento

Posted on

Magento continues to be one of the most popular and richest E-commerce platforms for businesses. It helps E-commerce owners to manage their products and address customer requirements effectively. However, a business cannot fully unlock its maximum potential through a routine Magento installation.

As a result, there is a need for extensions that can equip E-commerce solutions with more advanced and useful features. There is a reason that these extensions are not installed directly into Magento and are instead available online. Each business comes with its own requirements and goals where certain extensions can capture the vision of a business. A Magento’s extension can be seen as a mini solution that entails different features and functionalities for solving individual business concerns.

Language Translator

How global is your E-commerce business? Does your target audience speak language other than English like Spanish, French, German, etc? How do you plan to reach out to these valuable customers?

For communication, the language translator extension can prove useful in the translation of your web store’s text according to a customer’s preferred language. Translation includes website content like product descriptions, customer feedback and landing pages.

SEO HUB

Do you monitor your website from the SEO perspective?

Search Engine Optimization helps a business to gain better standing on search engine result pages (SERPs) as compared to its competition. For this purpose, the SEO Hub extension can be used. It can help to:

  • Update meta descriptions with optimization.
  • Configuring headings with the right tags.
  • Manage inbound and outbound links.
  • Place the best keywords in your blogs and website content.

Ketty

Is your store focused on fashion products and accessories? Are you looking for a theme that can bring a chic and elegant design?

The Ketty theme was designed for fashion businesses. The theme comes with a background video that can present all your business’ major products. Similarly, for the business’ growth on SERPs, the theme comes with a blogging option. For sleek menus, the theme’s megamenu assists to divide all the services and products with clear categorization.

Single Page Checkout

How are your orders processed? In order to utilize the right extension, it is important to view your website from the customer point of view. In some E-commerce stores, a customer has to go through several web pages for a single purchase. As a result, the customer’s enthusiasm is waned due to added complexity as they lose valuable time.

In such situations, an extension like One Page Checkout can prove to be a game changer. The extension can assist in combining processes of several web pages to a single page, thereby saving customer time and reducing complexity. Additionally, the extension comes in with support of payment methods like PayPal, Braintree, etc.

Bronto

Email marketing is one of the most important components in the toolbox of an E-commerce owner. With Bronto, E-commerce owners can increase their sales through targeted campaigns for marketing. Through Bronto’s email campaigns, potential customers as well as one-time customers can be made permanent with tailored emails. Bronto imports all the E-commerce data like the history of a customer’s interaction and their preferred products so that customers can be divided into clusters. Bronto can also be used for transactional emails, recommendations, promotions, etc.

Sweet Tooth

Loyalty programs are a must-have ingredient in the E-commerce solutions. A loyalty program is created to reward permanent and loyal customers so that they can be encouraged to keep purchasing from the business. This includes discounts and offers for the permanent customers. By using the Sweet Tooth extension, you can develop your own loyalty program.

SLI Learning Search

It is a widely known fact in the E-commerce space that a customer that types information in a search bar is more serious than a customer that is just clicking on the buttons. Therefore, it is necessary that the search functionality on your website is powerful and flexible enough to produce effective results.

Through SLI Learning Search, an E-commerce store’s search bar evolves to use AI. AI ensures the generation of the right results in order to satisfy a customer’s query. Likewise, it also places relatable recommendations for a product. The auto-complete feature can further aid in providing helpful suggestions when customers are unsure about a product’s full name.

Daily Deals

In order to create urgency for a customer, the Daily Deals extension can be quite helpful. The extension lists different types of deals on a daily-basis where a countdown timer presents the customers with a specific time limit under which the product can be purchased at a cheaper price. The extension helps to:

  • Share the most popular deals.
  • Provide a centralized view for all the deals.
  • Adjust the discount price of a deal through percent or fixed discount.
  • Share the details of a deal including the savings.

Live Chat

Often, a customer lands on an E-commerce website but cannot order a product due to lack of information and details. Because of time constraints, the idea to call or email the E-commerce is not desirable. In such cases, a means of communication is required where real time customer support can be guaranteed. For such dilemmas, businesses use an extension of Live Chat. A Live Chat extension helps in real-time interaction with customers so their confusions and queries can be quickly addressed.

Embedded ERP

Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP refers to a group of tools that can facilitate different business processes and operations through a unified platform. E-commerce owners can improve their business productivity through the extension of Embedded ERP. The extension helps to:

  • Manage all the stocks and go through the quantity and other product details.
  • Track purchases of all the clients with details including pricing, time, etc.
  • Processing an order including how it can be packaged and delivered to the customer.
  • Track the order lifecycle. Tracking begins from the moment a customer orders a product to its delivery to their homes.
  • To view dashboards where analytics and reporting features can help in businesses analysis.

Top 6 Machine Learning Algorithms That Are Disrupting Major Industries

Posted on

One of the leading trends in technology industry is Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is the technology of the future, and many companies have shifted their focus towards it in order to keep up with the rapid moving technology. From far away, the world of artificial intelligence might seem like rocket science, but there is an easier way to access and work on it, and that is through machine learning.

Machine learning has been around for quite a while now, but it recently became popular among the big tech companies due to the high potential of artificial intelligence. The interest in the development of machine learning from big corporations has started disruptions in the many industries of the world. Industries like finance, retail, transportation, education, and many others industries are feeling the direct impact of machine learning.

Machine learning basically works through an algorithm. An algorithm is a set of instructions created to solve a particular problem. It is created for the computers to understand the particular problem and solve it in the best possible way. Algorithms are the backbone of artificial intelligence, which is why it is really important to understand them.

Here are the top 6 algorithms that are disrupting major industries around the world:

1.   Decision Tree

Sometimes we are faced with situations that often confuse us due to mixed up data. To sort this problem we divide the data into certain groups to understand it better. Now, as we are intelligent beings who can easily understand the situations through visual and audio input, we don’t face much problem in solving problems. Computers on the other hand are not so intelligent. They might be faster at solving complex equations, but they still require a human’s help to do that.

Decision Tree is an algorithm designed for computers to understand and categorize the data into separate groups. What this algorithm does is that it defines certain attributes to filter through in each set of data. The computer then goes through each set and filters out the data and puts them in different groups. The process is repeated until all the attributes are followed.

Decision Tree is one of the most common algorithms, and it is being used in almost every technology around us. In mobile apps, social media sites, e-commerce sites, and many other places.

2.   Naïve Bayes

Probability is really important to predict and understand many real life situations. There are laws of nature that can only be predicted through a proper probability of the past and current events. So, when it comes to computers, things don’t change that much as well. Computers face many difficult situations that require an algorithm, which can provide probability powers to it. The best algorithm to use for probability problem solving has to be the Naïve Bayes.

The Naïve Bayes algorithm is used to calculate the probability of an event that is about to occur, given that the other event related to it has already occurred. The variables used in this algorithm are hypothesis (h) and knowledge (d). Hence, creating the equation of algorithm as:

P(h|d) = (P(d|h) * P(h)/P(d)

3.   CART

CART stands for Classification And Regression Trees. This algorithm is actually an advanced and much more equipped version of the Decision Trees algorithm that we discussed earlier. The main purpose of CART is to also classify the data into different groups but in more complex way.

To understand how this algorithm works, we need to look deep into its principles. CART algorithm consists of multiple nodes, root nodes, leaf nodes, terminal and non-terminal nodes. The non-terminal nodes represent the input variable, while the leaf nodes are output variables. The root node is the initial node that filters out large chunks of data and the internal node is another where the data is split.

All of these nodes are used to classify the data and we get several groups of it perfectly sorted out. CART is quite commonly used in social media platforms.

4.   Adaboost

Classification of data is really important when it comes to machine learning or AI. If the computer is unable to classify the input data, then it cannot go ahead with the processing. We have already discussed a couple of classification algorithms above. What if the data is just too complicated to be filtered out by those classification data? Well, this is what you need boosting algorithm for.

Boosting algorithms assesses the results from different classifications by different algorithms and then combine them to extract out the best result. The best algorithm available for boosting process is Adaboost.

One of the best applications of Adaboost algorithm is the handwriting recognition.

5.   Neural Network

Neural Network is one of the most complex algorithms, but it is quite easy to understand. Basically this algorithm consists of the two main layers, which are input layer and output layer. Between these two major layers there is a network of hidden layers that consist of different weights and biases. These weights and biases process the input data in different ways and then send it to the output layer.

6.   Markov Chain

Markov Chain is one of the most intelligent algorithms out there in the machine learning world. However, it can be a bit tricky to understand if you are a beginner in this field. Therefore to understand it you need to look at this example below.

Let’s focus on the famous sentence of the English language, i.e., “quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now if we put this sentence through the Markov Chain, then it will get broken down for analysis. The Markov Chain algorithm will suggest that the word ‘the’, which is placed in the sentence after the word ‘over’, has a 50% probability that it will be used in the beginning of the sentence. Similarly, this algorithm analyzes each and every word of the sentence to determine the corresponding probabilities of how the sentence might be restructured to create a new meaning.

Should You Use BigCommerce?

Posted on

What is BigCommerce? Should You Use its Software for Your E-Commerce Site?

E-commerce has taken over the world by storm. Anything you need can now be purchased through an app or a website through online payment. This immense popularity of e-commerce has triggered many opportunists to enter this industry and present their services to the potential customers online. This opened up a gate for software developers to provide the perfect platforms for people or companies looking to develop their own e-commerce site or app. Hence, we saw the birth of software manufacturers such as Shopify and BigCommerce.

BigCommerce is a software development company dedicated to produce e-commerce softwares for businesses out there. It is the only company that is competing toe-to-toe with Shopify, and it is slowly becoming the most successful as well. With over 9, 500 e-commerce sites running BigCommerce software around the world, things are looking pretty good for it.

Features

One of the biggest features of BigCommerce is that it provides perfect website building tools for its users. It wouldn’t be wrong to call it the WordPress for e-commerce websites. This is because you won’t be required to have any coding knowledge to build the e-commerce website by using BigCommerce.

BigCommerce provides a wide variety of options to setup your website. You can easily pick a method to receive payments out of the many options available. Managing products has never been easier as BigCommerce has a wonderful interface to categorize all the products according to their types.

BigCommerce also boasts customizable shipping options and a flexible tax system. It also allows the users drop-shipping options so that they can move around their businesses independently.

BigCommerce might seem like the perfect software for e-commerce builders in the U.S., but turns out that it is not so good for people outside the land of the free. Many businesses have complained regarding the lack of features because the software is primarily designed for the customers in the United States. Whether BigCommerce is going to respond to these complaints by fixing them or not, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Ease of Use

One of the most important things about any software after pricing is its ease of use. If it takes you an eternity to learn the software before you can start working with it, then it gets really frustrating and simply not worth it in today’s fast paced world. Luckily, BigCommerce excels in this area as it is much easier to use than all the available competition. This is the main reason why it is increasing in popularity rapidly.

However, after being reviewed extensively by experts, it has been concluded that BigCommerce is definitely easier to use when it comes to basic tasks. If you are looking to dive in deeper, then you would require some technical knowledge to do that. Therefore, if you are a business owner who wants to focus on each and every attention, then you can hire a good software developer to help you with that.

Pricing

When it was launched, BigCommerce had pretty competitive pricing as it was a direct competitor of Shopify. However, after getting a bit successful, it has drastically raised its pricing. This sudden surge in the pricing has definitely benefitted the company a lot as they are reporting revenue earning of about $125,000 per year.

This raise in the pricing might be looking good for the company at the moment, but it might haunt them in the near future. This is because Shopify is still offering its services on fixed pricing, and it can easily lure new potential customers.

Templates and Design

One of the coolest things about using BigCommerce is the design templates that you can find on its store. Gone are the days when you would have to design the themes from scratch. You can simply pick an already designed theme and customize it according to your needs.

The BigCommerce store is loaded with a wonderful collection of themes. These themes are divided in paid and free categories. The good thing is that the free themes aren’t so bad and some of them look premium due to their high quality. However, the paid themes are more responsive and functional, and they cost between $150 -$200.

SEO and Marketing

If you are building an e-commerce platform, then you need to draw the attention of all the potential customers. One way to do it is by a proper SEO and marketing strategy. If you are using BigCommerce as the backbone of your e-commerce site, then you have a big advantage already. This is because the fast responsive system of BigCommerce loads the content pages at ultra fast pace. This rapid functionality grabs the attention of search engines and your website quickly gains ranking.

Payments

When it comes to payments, BigCommerce is one of the best e-commerce building softwares out there. The reason for that is that BigCommerce does not deduct any transaction fees or imply any type of additional fees on third party payment options such as Amazon Pay, PayPal, and Stripe. In fact, it offers special credit rates for customers who are paying with PayPal.

This is a huge advertisement opportunity for the users of BigCommerce. It also supports over 60 different payment gateways, which allow the users to send payments directly from their stores instead of sending it to a different place such as PayPal.

Security

When it comes to security, BigCommerce might just be the best at it among its competitors. It offers a dedicated SSL certification for its users to let their customers feel safe. The SSL certification means that the checkout is actually hosted away from the site for safety measures. However, you do get a choice of enabling SSL certificate or you can simply buy your own from elsewhere.

Conclusion

BigCommerce might just be the best software that you can buy to build your e-commerce platform. It is secure, easy to use, and has tons of customization options to choose from. However, the pricing is quite steep, which makes it a difficult choice. So, if money is no object for you, then you should definitely go for it.