Magento’s eCommerce Edge Over Opencart

Picking the right eCommerce platform for your business’s online existence is not so easy given that there are quite a variety of options available in the market with varying degree of features. Picking the best platform is important to ensure that both the business and its customers have the basic ease of use. Two eCommerce platforms that serve as open source PHP based content management systems (CMS) are Magento and Opencart. Since both these systems have no user fee for basic platform building, the difference markers between these sources are the customization and additional features. To narrow things and help your business make the right decision, here are five basic factors that reveal the pros and cons of both Magento and Opencart.

• Access: The major line of difference between Magento and Opencart is its user interface, wherein the former eCommerce platform needs professionals to develop and customize features for businesses. On the contrary, Opencart allows businesses to equip the platform and get it running easily with its simple UI and inbuilt interface. Despite Magento’s complicated PHP interface, it offers the best options for building on a platform at any given point in time for the business.

• Customization: Every business needs its unique signature to be imprinted on the eCommerce platform to build the brand. Magento stands miles apart from Opencart due to its extensive customization features that can help the business to experiment as well as build a user-catchy platform according to themes, seasons, special events, etc.

• Content marketing: Magento’s other great advantage over Opencart lies in its smoothly integrated SEO tools. While the basic SEO tools are well structured in both Magento and Opencart, the major edge is that Magento’s tools are well-rooted and easier to master due to the incorporation of schema markup and canonical tags.

• Market presence: Opencart is fairly new to the arena and has fewer adopters as compared to Magento that has more than 20% market share with more than 14,000 stores in Alexa’s top 1 million platforms. This existent presence of Magento gives its users the ability to connect and be backed easily on the web than any other eCommerce platform source on the market.

• Costs: At the end of the day, the primary criteria for choosing between Magento and Opencart lies in its cost incurrences over time. While Opencart is fairly cheaper due to its simpler structure hosting, Magento needs businesses to spend based on the services being sought. However, the pricing of the features after hosting are heavy, Magento’s services match up to the costs.

One last criterion that could possibly help in making the final decision between Magento and Opencart lies in the scalability of the platforms over time. For a smaller company that just needs a website entry, Opencart can serve the easy route. For a business that is focused on growing over time and having the best user-interface would benefit from Magento as these eCommerce platforms are built for customization perfection with the best capabilities to monitor user behavior, etc. Magento offers the most up-to-date features for those businesses that are driven solely based on the internet presence. For a business that has specific needs that vary periodically, Magento would be a best-suited eCommerce platform, provided it is ready to invest in dedicated resources to get the platform up and functional from day one. 

Ecommerce Strategy: 5 Reasons to Start Selling Online

The growth of e-commerce has spiked up in the recent years as compared to the traditional brick and mortar businesses because of the consumer reach through technological advancement and the availability of improved and flexible logistics. According to reports from the National Retail Federation, the growth of online retail has been expected to rise from 8% to a minimum of 12% in 2017 which would mean that the total revenue form e-commerce sales would fall somewhere between $427-$443 billion. Every sector of business, be it a startup or an established one, the advantages of expanding into the e-commerce domain are plenty. Below is a list of the top 5 reasons why starting the e-commerce venture is worthwhile:

1. Couch start: The business arena today, whether it is the sale of a product or service, is driven by the advancement in technology. While expanding or starting a brick or mortar business will take a considerable amount of time to be fully functional, getting to the e-commerce platform is simple and just a few clicks away. There are various pre-existing websites that allow sales through their channels, as well as established vendors who can create the required web portal within a few hours. Without an actual retail outlet or a business center, an individual can easily sell from the confines of their lodging space with just a computer and internet access.

2. Cost efficient: Most businesses require a significant amount of money to invest in marketing a product for sale. The e-commerce platform can enable a seller to start growing their business with a small investment and with the profitable returns the organization of an established business is easier. Some of the leading e-commerce websites are not easy and free to sign up but there is also the flexibility of using the certified logistics for a reasonable price, and a seller can essentially avoid the large upfront investment needed to grow a business. The use of resources like social media, Google AdWords, and organic search can help greatly with the marketing aspect, and also save on payroll costs.

3. Online brand awareness: According to statistics and market trend reports, it is a recognized fact that customers first check out the products online regardless of whether they buy it online or through a retail store. Reports have shown that in 2014, close to 81% of shoppers followed this trend, and this number has only been growing ever since. Having an e-commerce platform for your product launches you in front of the customer and with the appropriate online marketing-strategy tools, these products can also be accelerated to be among the top searches or sales lists. This would also pave the way for potential customers to relate and order your product easily.

4. Internet boundary: The sale via a typical brick and mortar shop may limit its sale to the geographical location, but the launch of an e-commerce platform enables the seller to reach customers in the global market. This not only ensures the widespread of sales but also aids with the gathering of new customers in varied markets around the globe.

5. Growth in online sales: According to comScore reports, while the level of online purchasers was 47% and 48% in 2014 and 2015 respectively, the rate of online purchasers has grown to more than 51% currently. Taking to the e-commerce platform ensures that your sales are projected towards where the purchaser crowd in high than confining your product to a 4 walled-store.

In the words of Hil Davis, Co-Founder of the Online Men’s Retailer J. Hilburn, “e-commerce and mobile commerce have dramatically changed the way brands reach customers, making it faster and easier for consumers to make purchases on the fly while avoiding the hassles of going to the store.”

A Broad Stroke Overview of Grails Web App Development Framework

Grails is an advanced web development framework which is based on Groovy. As there are miscellanea of web app development frameworks available now, a developer who is familiar with Java framework may doubt the need for just another application development platform or framework. Grails web app development, for a thing, is not just another framework. It is indeed a significant enhancement to the traditional Java, J2EE based platforms. This article aims to explore the core capacities of the framework and to establish how this is highly advantageous for the developers who are into offshore web application development right now. 

Simple and streamlined process

Grails follows the ‘Coding by Convention’ archetype and combines the same with a full range of Java technologies. Grails offers the basic framework along with a variety of tools and plug-ins that simplify the job of building web applications using Grails. Spring, Sitemesh, Hibernate, Quarts and various other tools integrate within the framework to help the developers in agile web app development. The dynamic and flexible Groovy platform combines and exploits all of these tools in a manner that the entire process becomes quite simple and streamlined for the developers.

What is Coding by Convention?

The said phrase refers to one of the advanced techniques that Grails offshore web application development framework uses. It helps the application developers in building and maintaining the web-based applications sans the complexity that that they experience while working on similar platforms. The coding paradigm requires less configuration and the developers can put their effort in application coding only. Framework configuration is not required in most cases. For instance, in a standard Grails based application, some controller will handle an HTTP request and it will also render the view to the client. No configuration of framework is needed here. 

Installation basics

Starting web application development using Grails should be easy as the development framework combines every tool and technology that a developer might need in a neat package. Developers are not required to download code libraries like Hibernate as the full-stack web application development framework is preloaded with all the features that developers generally look for. What is more, the framework is compatible with all the Java IDEs including IntelliJ, NetBeans and Eclipse. Many light web development tools are required to maintain Grails based applications. 

Offshore web development using Grails

If your business represents an industry other than IT and you are interested in using the services, offshore app development companies that exploit the power of Grails, you should just look up the web to find completely serviceable ISV (Independent Software Vendors). There are companies based out of India and other Asian countries that offer Grails offshore web development solutions at competitive prices. Just check to make sure that the company has extensive expertise in Grails based web application development. You must also check whether the company is accredited by all the major industrial confederations. Check how many applications the company has developed so far and whether their clientele includes some of the big names from across industries.

Resource Box: Sigma InfoSolutions is one of the early adopters of Grails/Groovy. The Grails web services provider is now offering bespoke application development solutions to offshore and inshore clients. 

For additional information, please visit Sigma Infosolutions or write at grails@sigmainfo.net or call the Helpline at 1-888-861-7360 (US) /+91-80-40865100 (India).

Finding Where Grails Is Different from Conventional Java Platforms

Grails is one of the most advanced web application frameworks that use the Groovy language (which is a Java platform based programming language). The Grails web app development framework follows the ‘coding by convention’ concept, thus offering a complete development environment that hides less important configuration details from the developers for facilitating them to write programs in an agile manner. Grails web application development framework was earlier known as Groovy on Rails and is different from similar Java based platforms in at least three different aspects. What are these advantageous features that similar Java platforms lack in them? This article explores. 

No XML configuration needed

Programmers who have extensive familiarity with Java frameworks know well that this type of framework requires configuration of environments at the beginning and during development as well. This configuration has to be objectified in XML in traditional Java platforms. On the other hand, it is done to avoid the incorporation of the configuration code in the main application code. Grails based mobile app development, however, have lessened the importance of XML configuration prior to application coding. Developers around the world have realized that XML configuration is an extremely tedious process and it significantly reduces their productivity. Grails completely nullify the necessity of separate configuration of XML files. Instead, the Grails developers access and exploit a set of conventions integrated within the framework. 

Ready to Use Environment

While using traditional Java based framework toolkits, the developers need to assemble and integrate different development units, which is marked as a tedious as well as time-consuming process altogether. Offshore development using Grails is a streamlined process in which the developers can access a web server that facilitates them to start coding like a shot. All inbuilt libraries are part of the distribution process of the Java based framework. The Java environment helps in preparing deployment automatically. 

Better functionality

One of the most advantageous features of Grails web application development framework is that different dynamic methods are available in several classes. The method that is added to a class dynamically is known as mixin. This, along with many other dynamic features, enables the developers to perform actions without implementing extended classes or interfaces. Automation of the development process is arguably the greatest feature of Grails web app development framework.

However, not many companies in India and abroad have understood the fullest potential of Grails/Groovy as an offshore web application and mobile application framework. There are only a handful of companies in India as of now that are offering agile web development and web based application development solution using Grails. On the other hand, some of the leading companies have pioneered the concept of using offshore Grails development services. Companies across the world have started using the services of the offshore Grails and Java based IT solutions providers that are predominantly nestled in the Indian subcontinent only. It does not matter whether your business falls in the category of heavy industry or any other industry, you can always reap Grails web application development benefits by using the services of these companies. 

Resource Box: Sigma InfoSolutions is one of the early adopters of Grails/Groovy. The Grails web service provider is now offering bespoke application development solutions to offshore and inshore clients.

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