Buried Treasure Fossil achieves 2X revenues by focusing on Magento store Maintenance

“Having the site page and product opening performance restored is great news. Thanks to Sigma and the team. I received 4 orders in the past 4 hours.”

– Gary Greaser
Owner, BTF

Buried Treasure Fossil is the place for new and seasoned fossil collectors, providing a wide range of incredible fossils to choose from. As a purely online business, BTF strategy is to offer great fossils at great prices, and super service for customers across the USA. The relatively young company is owned by Gary Greaser, an avid enthusiast, and collector of the fossils. Having realized that migrating to Magento Opensource from Magento 1.7 could enable him to boost his sales while delivering an excellent customer experience, Gary chose Sigma to migrate their site to Magento Opensource which was completed and went live in 4 months.

The team worked hard to ensure that all features and functionally made it easier for customers to navigate through the site. Some of the enhancements like Featured Category on the homepage and filtration of the fossils by species enabled customers to find what they need in half the time that was required earlier. By using landing pages for product categories, customers could see all relevant information about a specific fossil on the product page, and add it directly to their cart.

Present Business Need

Launching an e-commerce site takes a lot of work, and so does effectively supporting, maintaining, and evolving it. Proactive maintenance, site updates and applying security patches are a critical part of managing an e-commerce site.

As with many companies, Buried Treasure Fossil does not have the in-house tech team to keep a modern e-commerce site running effectively and securely while the business is growing. To bridge this gap, Sigma is responsible for keeping their site running optimally – both from a technology and a marketing perspective.

Support and Maintenance

The team defines and prioritizes the site updates, functional improvements, patches and site issues when they arise. For every task, we have a turn around time of 4 to 8 hrs. We track these changes and issues within our issue tracking tool – JIRA, assign a unique tracking number to each task and get them done. We have regular status calls and generate weekly reports in order to track the progress of all support issues and to ensure the process is being followed and most importantly, expectations are being met.

Sigma’s client support activities include a combination of the following activities:

• Ongoing website maintenance
• Troubleshooting for technical issues
• Magento training to clients hold of their Magento store
• Performance improvement
• Website speed optimization
• Feature up gradation and installations
• Security patch updates
• Suggestions and solutions for improved search engine ranking
• Solution to the server or hosting related problems
• Daily status reports and weekly progress reports

Sigma Magento Experts are always ready for any kind of Magento support and maintenance. We work as the client’s go-to experts and help them with up-gradation of software and improved functionality with new and updated features in the E-commerce website.

Based on customer requirements and hourly support they need, we offer customized Magento maintenance and support monthly packages. We discuss clients’ requirements and agree with them for a particular number of hours per month and make a schedule as per their suitability to catch up during business hours through telephonic, email, chat, video chat and face to face support.

Ecommerce Web Design Trends for 2018

An e-commerce business is not successful for just the products or services it sells or how well it markets them, but by the way, it designs its websites for user’s ease of access, functionality, and features. When you are starting out as an e-commerce business or one that is already set up shop in the World Wide Web, then you need to remember that you are right away competing with the well-established businesses that preceded you. You cannot just be famous by being the new kid on the block, the first things that users of your website will look for are how you have aesthetically designed it, how you connect with them, and ultimately how your e-commerce website appeals to them. To drive that appeal to the user, you need to ensure that your website is not simply a page with tools, but has the required administrative features that are embedded naturally into your business process. Customers enjoy innovation and creativity, and these are driving factors that can increase their affluence towards your business. Some of the top trends that are key to driving customer satisfaction and influencing sales are:

Guided selling

There is the no bigger joy for a customer than a website that has an interactive website that perks up the interest and picks out the right list of items they are looking for based on their selected preference. Guided selling makes it all the more interesting as it is more than a filter option and a shorter more attractive form of a form where a customer is asked to choose and navigate through the website with ease. A good example of guided selling is found on Victoria’s secret page for selecting a sports bra.

Micro-interactions

The best examples of micro-interactions are the like button that pops up when clicked on in Facebook, and the payment success symbol that opens up when your payment has fallen through on the modern day payment portals. Having plenty of apt micro interaction features in an e-commerce website definitely encourages the user to be more interactive and actively participate in adding items to a shopping cart, subscribe to a service, or provide feedback. According to the author Dan Saffer, Microinteractions, there are four main parts to a micro interaction:

• A trigger that initiates or begins the micro-interaction.
• Rules that define or determine what happens in the interaction.
• Feedback communicates what is happening or what just happened.
• Loops and modes which govern, if you will, the content.

Using product pages as landing pages

The reason Apple Store’s landing page designs are mystically beautiful is that its web pages are designed with simple yet catchy descriptions to products, enhanced levels of photography, and the compelling placement of the call to action. Websites today are more focused on linking the landing pages to the product sale page as they have become an essential element of CRO. The best way to capture a customer’s attention is to set up cluster free landing pages that have relevant and concise content on a clean landing page design with an inviting and intriguing call to action feature. There is no better tool to drive sales when you can give the customer a mystical experience of shopping online.

Full-screen Search, Forms

Modals that are controlled typically with a script and overlaid as a cover over the page’s elements has been an effective user interface medium for quite some time. The only change that has modified the trend is that these models are now full-screen so that both the mobile and computer web design are similar for the search and forms features, and this seemingly captures the full attention of the user.

Material design and Card UI layouts

These two features are forming the face of most e-commerce web design and development is due to the seamless and engaging user experience that this layout provides. One of the best ways to improve brand recall and awareness is by adapting material designs that have a smooth and easy to access grid layout with customized transitions, shadow effects, and animations. More importantly, the material design is integral to increasing store level activity and engaging customers efficiently. Card UI layout is a sub-feature of material design and is the success factor of Pinterest’s appeal to visitors. The three key factors that drive the success of Card UI layouts are readability, responsive web design, and development to create the perfect fit for social media dominant store layouts.

When you build your web design to improve user experience, the end result is better site visits and a drive in overall sales. The change of a user to an active buyer depends on how far you can engage them onto your site and improve brand recall.

Magento Enterprise delivers enhanced experience and powerful marketing to drive higher conversions

Every great online shopping experience in the minds of innovative marketers and merchandisers. From optimizing the website content, merchandising the products, to creating awesome marketing campaigns and promotions.

With Magento Enterprise Edition 2.1 you could empower your online store to deliver more engaging shopping experience faster and easier than ever before.

The top six ways in which Magento Enterprise magnifies your business into a brand are:

1. Ease of content staging and preview:

Most times, businesses battle with the hassle of customizing seasonal campaigns and running them at the scheduled time periods. With Magento’s user-friendly tools, a business can effectively

• Pre-schedule the required updates
• Preview them on the timeline dashboard
• Run a test-run up to the point of checkout to ensure the programmed promotions work on dot,
• Ability to easily share across the team in order to make real-time changes.

This way, the scheduled promotion runs on the appointed date and time without the need for human interference which might otherwise cause time delays, etc.

2. Enable ease-of-payment:

Magneto Enterprise Edition features PayPal enhancements that streamline the checkout experience and boost sales. The increase in conversion rates is almost 69% as the shoppers can pay with PayPal without ever leaving the site. The ability to securely store the credit card information through PayPal Saved Credit Cards means fewer security headaches, and more frequent purchases, as the Customers can check out quickly without entering their credit card information.

3. Scope for growth:

Magneto Enterprise Edition’s “Elasticsearch”, which uses the latest technological algorithms for search assistance, allows businesses to easily handle their catalogs in tandem with customer preferences. This allows for a higher conversion rate as shoppers can easily find what they are looking for. This feature is compatible with 33 languages, has “stop words” selection, synonymous search result optimization, and is also designed to handle large catalogs as a business grows.

4. Tuned for PCI Compliance:

The most common problems with businesses are the struggle to comply with PCI due to the payment portal restrictions from third parties. With the use of Magento’s new hosted fields that is integrated with Braintree, you can keep the checkout experience and the conversion rate within the control of your business. This integration of Braintree only replaces individual fields.

5. Margin-less deployment:

Magento has adapted its deployment through cloud strategy to allow businesses to focus on their customers without having to worry about the website infrastructure. In order to suit the retailer needs and environment (cloud, on-site, or hosted premises), a business can effectually build its storefront and optimize without any security restrictions via AWS.

6. Customer Segmentation and Personalization:

With Magneto Enterprise Edition 2.1 business can study its own input on the customer’s trends. This will help in building an effective marketing campaign that would suit its. This standout feature also ensures that a business can set up functional cross-sell and upsell features, and gift bundles that offer the best in-house prices for new customers. In addition, their VIP customers, which can be easily located based on buying and spending pattern, would receive personalized offers and irresistible deals that enable a definite conversion.

Magento Enterprise Edition empowers both online and multichannel merchants. Match that with a great site design that is simple and easy for the customers and you’ll be on the path to continued and greater success.

Why you need to consider building on React.js

So what is React?

React is a JavaScript library for building User Interfaces. It is often misinterpreted as language, tool, or a framework. To put it simply, React ensures the developers can create large web applications which use data that can change over time, without the need to reload the page. The main goal is to be fast, simple and scalable. React processes only user interface in applications.

It is simply a JavaScript runtime. Lightweight, modern and fast way to execute code

Let’s see why some of the biggest names use react

Facebook

Interestingly, Facebook created ReactJS library, which is why it is obvious they would use it for the Facebook app. Facebook has recently opened a beta of its completely rewritten ReactJS, called React Fiber.

Instagram

Instagram is completely based on the ReactJS library with its users completely adapting to its amazing features.The use of ReactJS within Instagram is huge with various features including the Google Maps APIs, geo locations, search engine accuracy as well as tags that pop out without hashtags.

Netflix

The React version works with Netflix too – specifically on their platform called Gibbon which is used for low-performance TV devices instead of the DOM used in web browsers. There is also an official blog post by Netflix explaining how the ReactJS library helps their runtime performance, startup speed, modularity and various other advantages.

New York Times

A couple of months ago, New York Times has designed a great new project that simulates different looks of stars on Oscar red carpet. This project’s interface was built in React and allows the users to filter the gallery of different photos from 19 years in a fast and nice way. The re-rendering on this project is one of the impressive features of React

WhatsApp

WhatsApp too uses ReactJS for building user interfaces, like the way it uses Underscore.js and Velocity.js as some of its most efficient engines. The newly launched WhatsApp Web app has also been using React.

Let’s look at what makes React this amazing

1. The Virtual DOM

Imagine a page has a button that changes the color of some text when clicked. It doesn’t make much sense to re-render the entire page for that. React plays smartly here and re-render only the text that changed color and leaves the rest of the page untouched. React keeps a virtual representation of an application’s page structure in memory while comparing it to any incoming changes. Anytime a render is required, React compares the incoming changes to the previous page and only updates the parts that were actually manipulated. This allows React to perform very efficiently and is its most impressive feature.

2. Reusable Components

React strongly encourages the use of components, a huge time-saver when it comes to development. A component could be anything a button, a navigation bar, a registration form, whatever an application needs. Once a component is built, it can be used over and over again throughout an app. Smaller components can be used together to create more complex components and different data can be passed into components to create unique instances. Not only does this save you time but it makes it easy to keep a consistent look and feel across your application.

3. JSX

JSX allows developers to write HTML-like code right into their JavaScript. React takes care of the heavy lifting by transforming the JSX into React compatible code. Most developers are familiar with HTML syntax and it allows them to picture the structure of the component or page they are building more easily.

4. Community Support

React is maintained by Facebook and Instagram but also has a great open-source community. There are a ton of React-specific solutions for any problem you may face. There are numerous component libraries that offer different buttons, modals, progress bars and more.

5. Learning Curve

Frameworks like Angular are much more complex and come pre-loaded with many other features. React is flexible in this regard and many times you’ll want to pair React with routing, state management, and other libraries to create a robust application. Even after adding additional packages to a project, React is still extremely intuitive to use.

React has its pitfalls as well, but the pros far outweigh the cons. The virtual DOM makes it extremely fast, component use cuts development time, JSX helps make coding with React feel more familiar, and it’s easy to pick up and get started with quickly.

How inevitable is SEO for your business?

Research has shown that about 68% of the world’s population relies on internet searches for almost everything. The use of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a tested strategy for helping business to be front-runners in search engine results through the use of a good architecture website that contains the right content. Investing in this SEO strategy ensures that a customer reaches out to your business over your competitors due to the traffic generated strategically on your website.  Google receives over 57,000 searches per second on any given day, and almost 93% of Google users do not step beyond the first page of search as they deem all other content immaterial. The use of SEO strategies ensures visibility, branding, credibility, traffic generation, exposure, cost-effective mode of marketing, demographics based targeting, ROI, customer trend analysis, and the edge over competitors.

According to Sam McRoberts, CEO of VUDU Marketing and a widely published expert in the SEO field, “SEO is far from dead. It’s changed so drastically that people really need to learn to think of it as less of a marketing tactic, and more of a branding play.” An SEO optimized web infrastructure that is mapped as search-engine friendly, ensures the existence of any business which might otherwise become obsolete in the technologically fast-paced world.

Two main reasons why SEO is crucial to businesses are:

1. SEO is evolving: Although there have been changes regarding organic traffic in the recent years, SEO strategies are progressing towards focus exclusively on optimal user experience by generating higher positioning on search engines. Even video and audio files relevance on the search engine results are based on keyword searches. Having SEO strategies in place ensures that a business’s website is built soundly on rich content with tactical keyword placements without which the business could end up on an irrelevant page. Moreover, mobile optimization is on the rise as customers have started relying on smartphone searches for their immediate needs. This has paved the way for local search optimization techniques via SEO to ensure that the business’s relevance in its own locality is secure. This technique also helps with specific placement and positioning of the business’s brand on social media platforms, which in turn increases organic traffic on the main website. All these advantages need the proper installation, use, and regular updating of SEO stratagems to ensure maximum ROI.
2. SEO in the long term: Most common reason for the failure of businesses that employed SEO strategy is the expectation of results overnight. The employment of SEO tools helps to prepare for the adaptation and placement of the changing algorithms of search engines. Having a dedicated module towards SEO along with regular updating of website content and maintenance of website infrastructure generates the results eventually. To quicken the process, the website should be focused better in terms of content, and also be regularly cross-checked with market trends since online algorithms are constantly evolving. It is also important to have an update of competitor strategies for better placement. Proper maintenance ensures that the current customer base expands and also passively accrue traffic by being listed in the business’s top 5 search words online.

All these strategies will only pan out if the right SEO tools are employed for prime results. The tools employed should include analytics review, keyword research, competitive analysis, on-page analysis, content and link audit, and technical site analysis. Some of the top rated SEO tools available in the market are: Reload SEO, Magento SEO Suite Pro extension v4.4.0, Advanced SEO Suite by Mirasvit, Free Magento SEO Extension by Creare, Ultimate SEO Suite by AheadWorks v1.3.8, SEO Suite, SEOSpace Ultimate Magento Extension, etc. The use of these tools helps to analyze the on-page factors, generate content words, identify structural mistakes on the webpage, study traffic trends on the website, among other functions. Using professional help may go a long way towards successful use of SEO.

Why Kentico is a Preferred CMS Platform

Kentico is an all-in-one CMS, E-commerce, and Online Marketing platform developed with ASP.NET and MS SQL. From developers to content editors, it’s easy to use and allows users to make edits and update the system quickly, enabling companies to operate both more efficiently and effectively. The beauty of Kentico is that it’s loaded with features such as WYSIWYG editor, workflow, permissions, multilingual support, full-text search, online forms, newsletters, e-commerce, blogs, polls, web analytics and other modules.

There are three basic development models provided by Kentico.

1. Portal Engine: Provides you with a browser-based interface using web parts components to create websites. Coding with the Visual studio is only required while creating custom components.
2. ASPX templates: The developers can find varied templates to suit the website needs and this can be further customized using standard ASP.NET architecture and standard development tools, such as Visual Studio. This model requires you to be familiar with ASP.NET web form development and have at least basic programming knowledge of C# or VB.NET.
3. MVC: Kentico allows you to create websites using the Model-View-Controller architectural pattern (based on the ASP.NET MVC framework). Note that, not all features are supported for MVC development; see Supported and unsupported Kentico features on MVC sites for more details.

Why Kentico?

1. Ease of Use

Kentico CMS is out of the box one of the easiest CMS systems to use. Anyone who has ever used the Internet has all the skills required to add and update pages, add dynamic content, and create stunning, feature-rich websites. Kentico administration system comes with plenty of tips and descriptions to guide users through nearly every process. Additionally, Kentico provides step-by-step guides and tutorials directly on their site along with videos, blogs, and forums.

2. UI Personalization

The Kentico Administration site provides the feature of UI personalization. The UI personalization application enables you to provide certain users of the website with a simplified user interface. This is useful for business users who don’t need to see all the applications, tabs, menu items, or parts of UI pages which they do not use. Setting up a personalized UI can significantly decrease the learning time for users, new to the system and makes the system generally easier to use and understand.

Note:

1. UI personalization does not apply to users who have the Administrator Global administrator privilege level. Administrators always have access to all UI elements, regardless of the system’s UI personalization settings.
2. Do not confuse UI personalization with the permission system in Kentico. Permissions control what users can do, such as create or modify objects, while UI personalization controls what users can see. A user may be able to see a part of the UI but still not have permissions to perform any actions.

3. Content Staging / Continuous Integration

One of the challenges of updating content on a site is the repeated effort to migrate changes from one platform to the next. Often companies will have different environments for their staging (QA) content and their production (live) content. With Kentico, publishing data from one environment to the next is accomplished easily through the use of “content staging”. With a few clicks, a user can migrate content between the systems and quickly synchronize all environments. With the use of the “Scheduled Tasks” feature, this process can even be accomplished on a daily or hourly basis to increase productivity even further. This minimizes administrative time and easily allows a company to define a concise process for updates and deployments.

4. Workflows

Workflows in Kentico allow content to be moved through a set of predefined steps. These steps are easily created and configured in the Kentico system and can be quickly applied to any or all content. An editor can make changes to a page, and then submit it for approval. The approving manager gets notified automatically by the Kentico system of the change. The managers can then view the edits, submit them back to the editor for correction, publish the changes, or even edit the edited content. Workflows can also be configured to have several steps that must be completed before content is published to the site.

5. Smart Search

Smart Search in Kentico is a Lucene-based search functionality that quickly analyzes and locates content. Through the use of this module, defined content is indexed and stored in the system to allow searches to be completed much quicker than traditional database-based methods. Search results can be customized to only return relevant content and images. The Kentico system constantly updates the search results as new website content changes to keep the results accurate.

6. Feature-rich CMS

Off the shelf, the Kentico CMS system allows for eCommerce, blogging, forums, messaging, and a number of other critical functions. With the Ultimate license, companies have full access to every feature and can quickly add new functionality to their sites. Many other CMS systems require a series of add-ons to obtain the functionality readily available in Kentico. Even if a company decides to add modules, later on, all that is required is a simple update of the license and the features for the module are unlocked. Having such a wide range of features allows a company to focus on their business, not piecing together functionality.

7. Smooth Updates

Kentico provides step-by-step guides for every product update. Their installation packages are professionally written and provide a solid, concise process for applying the updated content. Any special requirements are clearly defined and easy to follow. Updates come complete with documentation and files targeted at a number of environments (.NET 2.0,3.5,etc.) so that all clients can benefit from their improvements.

8. Customer Recognition

Kentico is constantly gaining market share and quickly becoming a premier CMS software company. Kentico constantly communicates upcoming changes with their clients and values their input. Kentico listens to its partners and strives to deliver a product that meets their needs. For the training program, Kentico reached out to several of their “Gold” level partners to create the training material and guidelines. This type of customer involvement demonstrates Kentico’s commitment to their clients and their success.

9. Constantly Evolving

As each day passes, new technologies and functionality are being created. The folks at Kentico embrace these changes and are constantly incorporating them into their product. They test their code using the latest development environments and servers (Visual Studio 2010/Windows Server 2008) to ensure compliance. Kentico integrates a number of third-party components (CKEditor, Lucene, AJAX, etc.) and utilizes the latest source code that is available. All of these efforts allow Kentico to deliver the latest technologies and functionality that drive dynamic, interactive websites.

10. New Documentation

With the release of each new version of Kentico, it keeps on adding a lot of developer-centric functionality. With this, there comes a lot of questions from the community on how to utilize them and best practices. With the release of each new version of Kentico, they also keep updating their documentation to provide the information to get developers heading in the right direction. It really helps the developers to understand the new features and help them implement within the applications.

References

1. https://docs.kentico.com/k9tutorial/site-development-overview
2. https://docs.kentico.com/k9/managing-users/ui-personalization
3. https://devnet.kentico.com/articles/five-things-developers-should-be-excited-about-in-kentico-9
4. https://bitwizards.com/Thought-Leadership/Blog/2010/May-2010/Top-10-reasons-to-use-Kentico-CMS