E-Business at its Finest

Even today, some considerable time after the so-called dot com/Internet revolution�, electronic commerce (e-commerce) remains a relatively new, emerging and constantly changing area of business management and information technology. There has been and continues to be much publicity and discussion about e-commerce thus aims to consolidate the major themes that have arisen from the new area of electronic commerce and to provide an understanding of its application and importance to management.

Here comes Magento, which is the most powerful online eCommerce platform in the universe and is changing the face of eCommerce forever. It�s an open source application with a lot of sale system integration. Magento was originally designed to give businesses a platform on which they could provide an online solution for their commercial aspirations while also providing a highly extensive �Back Office� to administer the site from site design to product and order management. When we talk about WordPress, it�s only a blogging platform where you can build a relationship only to your audience compared to magento, it�s extremely a robust e-commerce platform and the most supported e-commerce out there. The main benefit of using Magento is its flexibility built into the main architecture of the program. The goal of this structure is to keep the base codes secure, yet scalable to meet different needs. In order to do this, Magento’s designers built the program’s code on the Zend Framework.

Magento focuses also on how to develop their website and these are some qualifications on how to become a seasoned Magento web developer, one must know Magento inside and out, from a development perspective passionate about creating elegant code to solve a specific problem, communicates openly and candidly and know how to ask questions that provides input supported by a logical, analytical thought process. Basically, one must interacts effectively in difficult conversations and has strong conflict management skills for handling Magneto scope and change management issues with customers. Technically, one should pass the two exams in the Magento Certified Portfolio which are the Magento Certified Developer and the Magento Certified Developer Plus Examinations with a two years of Magento development experience including knowledge of Magento development best practices plus existing functionality, creating custom modules, and object-oriented Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) experience.

�For many, the web is a companion, but others cash in on its e-trading opportunities,� says Rob Griffin. First off, almost everyone is online whether on Facebook, Ebay or Amazon today, where people can buy and sell their stuffs and purchase in just one click. But the question keeps on circling around the net on how much someone will earn when having an online shop. To give you some enlightenment about what�s the real deal into online shop and sell, here is some information how much one make money through the net. First you should flip domain names. One strategy is to use Google Adwords to find keywords that are trending and use that information to buy domain names that you think may soon be in demand. As with tangible Internet real estate, you can buy virtual plots (URL addresses), flip them and make a buck. To attract buyers, run tests to determine how often certain key words are searched so that you can demonstrate the likelihood that your URL will show up in Yahoo or Google. The best domain names are short, sweet, specific and easy to remember.

Here�s a story by an Army veteran Brandi Ramos of Springfield. As a single mom in need of extra income, she started her online retail career peddling �big and tall� men�s clothing on eBay. Three years later, Ramos, 32, makes a good living working online out of her 600-square-foot basement packed with hanging displays and baker�s racks piled with tupperware containing underwear and belts. Ramos aims to offer quick service, answering all e-mails within four to six hours. She claims to net $25,000 on $100,000 sales a year, and even earns a few bucks per order on shipping. Setting up a blog requires not much more than a basic publishing program, a server and software to track ad clicks. The hard part, though, is attracting enough eyeballs to make it worth someone�s while to pay to advertise on your site. To have any prayer of attracting large advertisers, sites need to attract at least 500,000 unique visitors per month, says David Hauslaib, publisher of Jossip.com, a media and gossip blog that counts big companies among its advertisers. Sadly, even if you do generate enough traffic, the �click-through� rates on ads tend to be quite low in the neighborhood of one half of 1%, according to Forbes. Subscription-based models are even harder to crack. Unless your site fulfills an urgent need (for tangible investment ideas, a potential mate, etc.), users aren�t likely to pay for the content. Sure, you can make money online. But no one said it was easy.

To start a new e-business, the World Wide Web made it easy and exciting especially in getting a new business website quickly but with some big bucks to spend for it. At first glance this looks great, $200 to start a business! And you don�t even need a designer. And for many businesses, this will be fine at first. But once you get past the initial stages of a business, you will notice that the theme you bought isn�t doing all that you want it to do. Many technical people will start looking at plugins to try and get it running the way they want, but ultimately, their site is going to look and act like every other commercially themed Magneto site out there. And to differentiate your site, you�re going to need more. Usually the cost of creating an e-commerce website ranges from $200 to $20,000 per month depending on the website maintenance, design and a lot of factors to consider. Maintenance is something that most businesses forget to budget. Or if they remember, they think that they�ll just do it themselves. But the first time you delete your entire home page by mistake and lose 8 hours of sales trying to get it back up and running, you�ll wish you�d spent the extra money on a maintenance contract.

The E-commerce consumers are also following the trends as well as the �what�s hot and what�s not� in the market. These are lists of consumer shopping trends to watch out for to help your e-business grow and saleable in the Internet industry:

Desire to shop online. Most people under the age of 40 prefer to shop online. Research increasingly bears this out. Some exceptions apply for things like clothes you need to try on and food. But watch for those lines to blur as well, as retailers develop new solutions.
More pre-purchase research online. People like the ability to research, compare, and create wish lists without being pressured to buy. This trend is accelerating. Even if they buy in-store, they are likely to research online first.

Mobile shoppers. People who shop both on mobile and in physical stores spend more. As more online stores are optimized or offer apps for online purchases, this trend will grow.

Lowest price. Consumers are using tools to monitor prices automatically. There are apps that recommend when to make a purchase based on daily pricing trends. Consumer�s showroom and shop online for better prices while in physical stores.

Shoppers want it now. They want it shipped the same day with two-day delivery, or they want to pick it up now. Amazon Prime created a monster for online retailers with its free two-day shipping. Global retailers are responding with in-store pickup. Watch for this to be next day and same day delivery expectations in the coming years.

Free returns and return shipping. Not only do customers want you to ship them the orders free, they also want you to pay for the return shipping if they don�t like an item. This trend will increase as well.

Payment flexibility. If you offer only credit card payments in your store, that�s not going to cut it in the future. Consumers love PayPal. New choices will be added from all sorts of places in the future. Think Square, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Shopping with friends. Shoppers want their friends� feedback and ideas. Facebook, Pinterest, Wanelo, Fab, Fancy and more are all tightly integrated with social shopping. Again, this trend is increasing online. It�s always existed for physical stores.

Consistency. Consumers want the shopping experience to be the same regardless of the channel. Omnichannel commerce is simply a response to consumers who want to be able to order the same product online that they saw in the store at the same or lower price.
Sourcing indifference. Consumers don�t care where it comes from. Just get it there in two days or they will simply order from Amazon.

Great online experience. Does your website load in, say, three seconds? That may not be fast enough for consumers today. Once they are in the store, they want good search and navigation. They want the store to be optimized for the device, but they also demand all the content including reviews, ratings, descriptions, images and so forth.

Seamless experience. If a consumer starts a cart on her smartphone, she wants to access that same cart on another device if she decides to buy at another time.

Online coupons. Coupons are back. Daily deals are dead. Coupon aggregators are hot with consumers. Searching online for coupons is popular as consumers seek the lowest price.

Showrooming. Consumers are using bar code apps to scan Universal Product Codes while in physical stores to shop for better deals, or research, and lastly,

Wish lists. Wish lists and gift lists are being used to save and share gift ideas. This extends beyond weddings to birthdays, holidays, and so forth. This allows for personal gifts that consumers want, instead of impersonal gift cards or unwanted gifts.

To make your online shop more sought-after , with the help of these custom attributes, it will really help generate more online sales to your online shop you get from your online buyers. Custom attributes are classes that are used to provide additional descriptive information about properties, methods, etc. used in your classes. It begins with the AttributeUsage attribute, which defines the way the your attribute class can be used. Since a custom attribute uses an attribute it provides one example of how attributes can be used just by creating a custom attribute. filterable properties that can be used in the Filter parameter with recipient cmdlets such as Get-Mailbox. They can also be used in the EAC and the Shell to create filters for e-mail address policies, address lists, and dynamic distribution groups. There are three parameters that can be applied to attributes. The AttributeTargets defines where the attribute can be used, for example, properties, methods, classes, etc. The Inherited parameter defines whether or not classes that are derived from classes that use your attribute inherit your attribute too. The AllowMultiple parameter defines whether or not multiple instances of your parameter can exist on an item. These are used for many reasons from defining which classes are serializable to choosing which methods are exposed in a Web service. Attributes allow you to add descriptions to classes, properties, and methods at design time that can then be examined at runtime via reflection.

Alinga have extensive experience working with the Magento ecommerce system, with an in-depth understanding in the development of both open source and commercially based web solutions. Whether it�s redesigning the front-end, or developing a robust tailored web solution, we can help.

Judge for yourself, check out our website portfolio or contact us directly for more information on how we can help you deliver successful results online.