Magento Hosting and the Magento eCommerce Platform

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Magento has been created for the ease of online dealers and other sellers so that they can manage their stores online. The very exciting and famous platform of e commerce brings several opportunities for the convenience of buyers and sellers over the internet. You can easily deal with the product and services online.

Magento also helps in creating search engine optimization friendly web stores. Magento hosting provides very convenient place for the online store user and it is also very useful for the ecommerce. Magento hosting has various tools offered for the convenience of the people. You can easily get all the marketing tools, SEO and catalog management services with the help of Magento. It is highly sophisticated administrative system provides good interface for the users. Magento can provide you 24 hours accessibility of your online stores.

Reliable Hosting

If you have to invest in co-location hosting, be sure your provider allows your potential customers to do online shopping 24/7. Your availability is an important determinant in the success of your venture. Customers can always rely on a functional store anytime. With the fast and reliable downloads, you have the assurance that your store will never be out of charge. When your site is working real time, it will mean more profit for you. The sophisticated software system, hardware and highly-qualified hosting experts are the key for the great service that you and your clients will enjoy.

User-Friendly Shopping Environment

One good feature of Magento hosting is the environment it creates for your site. Merchants and shoppers benefit from the improved cart experience. When customers enter your site and they see your open cart system, your products appear more appealing, and thus, the rate of conversion is higher. Because signing up can be a discouragement to some customers, Magento hosting allows the client to check out without the need to sign up. With multiple transactions in a single order, purchasing is a breeze. The unlimited webpage allows you to upload more information to help your clients make an informed decision. With a better shopping environment, you can boost your income in just few days after subscribing to Magento hosting.

The various features offered by magento are: –
order editing
multi currency support
comparison of products
guest checkout
free shipping option
order tracking and management
easy search options
manifold images per product

Benefits of e-Commerce Website Design

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In this era of technological advancement an increasing number of people prefer to do business transactions via internet. More and more businesses hire a company to design and develop e-commerce websites, considered a vital aspect in the process of using the internet to help increase sales of their respective products and services. As a result, e-commerce websites have become indispensable, as most commercial enterprises have their own e-commerce websites through which the organizations interact with their customers in addition to selling their products and services.

It is imperative to take into account certain factors that influence e-commerce website design. Appropriate images and pictures should be utilized in order to make the e-commerce website visually appealing. Making a good impression and grabbing the customers attention depends on the design and layout of the website. It is important to maintain a professional look which is also user friendly and not complex. Including a search engine and advanced filters would ensure that customers will have access to the product easily. Keeping your site uncluttered and navigable is essential in order to enable the visitors to obtain the necessary products and information.

Generally, a customer does not like to spend more than 30 seconds in the process of evaluating a website. Therefore, it is important that the customer gets the information he or she is searching for within that time. As a result it is possible that they would explore the website ultimately making a purchase. An effective e-commerce website therefore, must be able to give a business this advantage over others.

A merchant account that accepts all types of credit cards is essential for the success of an e-commerce website. Install a secure server and a reliable payment getaway to ensure that the customers information is safeguarded and verified at the same time. For this purpose, use companies that offer SSL certificates.

E-commerce websites help create new business opportunities with potential customers, potential business associates and new product manufacturers. Customers who initially did not know you existed will know about you, and other businesses will approach you about partnership opportunities.

Another benefit of an e-commerce site is that it gives you the ability to possess unlimited store hours, providing your customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week access to shop and buy products and services from you. In addition, brand or product awareness will increase as you will be able to reach out to millions of consumers all over the world.

Introduction to Leading Open Source eCommerce Web Application Magento

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Magento is an open-source ecommerce web application created by Varien which was later re-christened as Magento Inc. It was launched on March 31st 2008 and it is built on the components of Zend Framework. Magento is available under the Open Software License version 3.0. The Magento Enterprise Edition (paid edition) which is aimed at larger companies was launched on 15th April 2009; this version provides a service agreement with Varien.

Those involved in eCommerce need an affordable, flexible design option when putting up their online stores. Magento was designed to meet this need. This open-source eCommerce solution is offered for free download and allows users to design, set up, and run their own eCommerce stores with great flexibility. Magento supports installation of modules through a web-based interface accessible through the administration area of a Magento installation. Modules are hosted on the Magento eCommerce website as a PEAR server. Magento formerly worked with osCommerce. They originally planned to fork osCommerce but later decided to rewrite it as Magento. Magento officially started development in early 2007. Seven months later on August 31, 2007, the first public beta version was released. On May 30, 2010 Magento mobile was released, it allows store owners to create native mobile storefront apps.

Magento uses PHP as a web server scripting language and the MySQL Database. The data model is based on the Entity-attribute-value model that stores data objects in tree structures, thus allowing a change to a data structure without changing the definition of the database. Any community member can upload a module through the website and is made available once confirmed by a member of the Magento team. Modules are installed by entering a module key, available on the module page, into the web based interface.

There are three categories of modules hosted on Magento Connect:
1. Core Modules
2. Community Modules
3. Commercial Modules

Core and Community modules can be installed from the administration area. Commercial module pages provide price information and a link to an external website. There are no limits to creativity with Magento. Magento is easy to install and at the same time easy to use. Magento is used in many websites and online stores and has been a one of the most used ecommerce web application since its release.

The E-sign Act and UETA, Two Laws that Enabled E-Commerce

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Two laws were passed with the intention of making electronic signatures valid as a regular means of validation. These two laws are the ESIGN Act and the UETA, both of which made a lot of positive changes possible for e-commerce. Both laws have expanded the functions of electronic signatures, ushering in many new ways for companies to do business in the modern world. E-commerce is now alive and well, thanks to the passing of both laws which particularly support new business practices geared towards online business operations. Both the UETA and the E-sign Act are there to support and protect electronic signatures and the documents they are in, and have provided many benefits for e-businesses in the process.

The E-sign Act is officially known as the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, and is one of the United States laws that facilitate the use of electronic signatures and records for legal electronic contracts and documents both for interstate and international transactions. The E-sign Act makes sure that electronic documents are made legal and scrutinized under similar legal effects as regular paper documents. Nowadays, electronic records and signatures are considered just as valid and effective as regular paper contracts and documents thanks to the E-sign Act. Because of that, these e-documents are also under similar regulations as those imposed on paper documents.

The UETA (Uniform Electronic Transactions Act) is an act that was originally proposed by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. The NCCUSL has since then influenced the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and 47 local states into absorbing similar regulations within their own laws. The UETAs purpose works hand in hand with the E-sign Act as a means of having a governing law that concerns the retention of paper records and the use of electronic processes to validate e-documents as an alternative.

Prior to the UETA, physical copies and printouts of many documents were required by most states. This presented a problem with regards to storage and production of waste, especially in the case of banks, where every check had to be kept in storage for processing. The UETA made it possible for these companies to use paperless processes instead of handling physical paperwork all the time. Keeping everything in electronic data form not only makes storage a lot easier and less space consuming, but also supports the green movement by eliminating a lot of paper wastes and the need for carbon production via paper production.

The E-sign Act and the UETA have both contributed to the now widespread use of electronic signatures in many industries. Companies have seen the many benefits that these laws offer, and are looking at other ways to maximize the convenience present in using electronic signatures and records. The ease of use has helped many companies in wrapping up even the most complex transactions and business deals within a day. With the ongoing trend of businesses going towards web site-driven operations, these laws have definitely made the future of e-commerce a lot brighter.

SEO secrets for E-commerce Websites

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As the industry is changing as rapidly as Google tweaks their algorithm, it is hard to decide what the most important factors are. The On-site and off-site are the two major factors in SEO which is necessary for every type of website. Normally, most of the webmasters starts with the on-site SEO, because your aim is to get your website recognize by Google. If they dont, then how are you ever going to rank for a keyword?

The search engine spiders that crawl your E-commerce website will be looking at several different attributes on every page to determine where it needs to go and how relevant it is to specific searches done at Google search engine.

Another factor worth mentioning is a Keyword. What is a Keyword?

A keyword is basically an elaborate name for what people might search for when trying to find your E-commerce website. I am using a Bodhost.co.uk website as an example. People could search for “Web Hosting”, but they might also search for “Cheap Web Hosting”, “VPS Web Hosting” and “UK Web Hosting Service”. All of these would be keywords, or probably more properly could be said to be key phrases.

However, they are generally all referred to simply as keywords. Note that almost all On-site SEO has to do with is placing high-quality keywords throughout your E-commerce website content where search engine robots, spiders, or software might be able to decide what your website is about. 6 On-Site SEO Factors That Can Influence Your SERP Ranking:

* The Title of the Page * The keywords used in the text on your website * The keywords are used in H1 Tags * Keywords used in your domain name * Keywords used in the URL of a webpage * Meta Keywords

3 Major Off-Site SEO Factors That Can Improve Your Search Engine Ranking:

Backlinks to Your E-commerce Website

This is without a doubt one of the keys to having your website listed in the search engines results page for specific keywords. Google likes to look at what others are saying about your website to determine what it is about. For example, if someone is a huge fan of a UK Web Hosting, and you provide that service, they may link to your website with “UK Web Hosting” as the text that people would click on to get to your website. This text is called anchor text and Google will see that link as a simple “vote” for your website to appear higher than others for that keyword. In short, these are commonly referred to as backlinks.

Quality of the Websites linking to your Website

Those linking to your website should also have some form of importance. For example, there are many websites with loads of outgoing links to many websites. Google does not want to give these websites as much weight in their “vote” in comparison to a link from Bodhosts official website or something along those lines.

The Age of Your E-commerce Website

The reason I listed this as an off-site related issue, because it really doesnt fit in either category. This is a simple issue that the search engines will evaluate. This is not to say that it is the most important factor, but many older websites will naturally rank higher than new websites that have more backlinks.

I am not sure why this occurs, but many would say that it does. As compare to Google, Yahoo definitely puts more weight on this.