Responsive Website Development Archives

How to choose the best e-commerce WordPress theme for your website

How to choose the best e-commerce WordPress theme for your website

Theme has a significant impact on various factors of your website, which is why it is vital to choose the right one for your e-commerce website.

WooCommerce is by far the best eCommerce WordPress plugin around. It is an easy-to-use plugin that will instantly transform your WordPress website into an online store. But WooCommerce plugin would not serve any purpose if your website has an old and outdated WordPress theme. Your website’s theme will be entirely responsible for the design and layout of your online store.

And with so many emerging e-commerce stores, you will do whatever it takes to stand apart from your competitors. Today there are thousands of e-commerce WordPress themes available that vary in quality and effectiveness. So then, how do you choose the right kind of theme for your e-commerce store?

In this blog post, you will learn why it is crucial to find the perfect theme and how you can choose one for your e-commerce WordPress website.

Why is choosing the right kind of e-commerce WordPress theme so important?

It takes just a few milliseconds for users to form an impression about your site, be it good or bad.

Since a theme is responsible for the design, it also has a powerful impact on the impression of your e-commerce site.

Not just the design but a good theme also plays a pivotal role in encouraging users to buy, which helps in increasing the conversion rate.

A slow, complex, and unresponsive website results in poor performance on the search engine results page. Thus, a theme has a significant impact on various factors of your website, which is why it is vital to choose the right one for your e-commerce website.

How to Choose a Great e-commerce WP Theme

Choosing an ideal e-commerce WordPress theme can be intimidating. With thousands of theme options available online, it can get tough to decide the one that will meet all your needs.

Consider the following features and options while you look for a perfect e-commerce WordPress theme for your website.

1. Easy to use and flexible: A good e-commerce WordPress theme is not only packed with useful features but is also easy to use and flexible. Look for a theme that is easy to install and configure for your e-commerce business.

2. Supports all extensions: There are so many free as well as premium WooCommerce extensions available. A perfect eCommerce theme should support all kinds of extensions seamlessly.

3. SEO-friendly: An e-commerce WordPress theme with built-in SEO will help in driving more traffic to your online store. Thus more the traffic better the sales.

4. WooCommerce Integration: Search the list of features an e-commerce theme offers and check if it supports WooCommerce integration. However, all WordPress themes that support WooCommerce goes for a theme that is designed especially for e-commerce businesses.

5. Mobile Responsive Design: Almost all users today use their smartphones to browse any website. Thus choose a theme that is mobile responsive and looks appealing on all kinds of devices.

6. Speed optimization: Online shopping websites that take a long time to load are more prone to abandonment. You should choose an e-commerce WordPress theme that has fast performance and loads quickly.

7. Updates regularly: Choose a theme that comes with new updates regularly. These updates make your e-commerce site compatible with the latest versions of WordPress, WooCommerce, and any extension you have installed on your site.

8. Detailed documentation: What if you face any issue while installing and configuring the theme.? Make sure your e-commerce WordPress theme comes with detailed documentation that you can refer to at any point.

9. Check reviews: Reviews are the most convenient way to check if you are picking the perfect e-commerce theme. Check all reviews and read them carefully to understand what other users have experienced and help you decide on a quality theme for your e-commerce website.

CiyaShop: The Best WooCommerce Theme

CiyaShop is one of the best e-commerce WordPress themes that contains all the above features packed in one place. Not only this, it has unlimited theme options, stunning hover styles, and countless page layout designs for your e-commerce store. So what are you waiting for, go and get this theme now!

A Developer or a Designer-Who reigns the supremacy of User Experience

By Potenza Responsive Website Development January 25, 2018

A Developer or a Designer-Who reigns the supremacy of User Experience

It is a misplaced notion, common among many that UI and UX are the same. Now, even though they do rely on each other to a certain extent, they are not the same. The user experience (UX) is affected by many more factors than just user interface (UI). Designers do impact the user experience, but is that impact as significant as that of a developer?

They hold the power to damage the Experience

One of the most annoying factors that affect a website visitor is the slow website. Imagine waiting for minutes that may seem like an hour that time with the entire fast-paced tech around us. Website performance is one of the key ingredients that improve the user experience. This responsibility of working on website performance lies primarily with website developers.
The responsibility for the sites that are inaccessible or don’t work on a particular platform and a browser falls to the front-end developers.
Ever been irritated by the specific way few websites ask for your contact number or credit card number? And that specific way is the only way the website will accept your submitted data. This is part of form validation and depends entirely on the choices made by the website developer.
Use of capital letters, small letters, numbers, symbols, and special characters is a must while creating a new password. Moreover, it must be 8 characters long. We understand the security safeguards required but the enforced strict password requirements can ruin the user experience. Offering something like Slack Magic link instead of adding compulsive complex passwords could do the trick as well. Again, you can blame the developer for not taking safeguarding steps himself and shoving it all on us.
Multiple techniques can be implemented that deal with spam and may take longer to code. However, few developers prefer to take shortcuts by simply adding CAPTCHA and make spam the user’s problem. This can significantly compromise user experience.

We can go on and on, but it then would take all day to reach the conclusion here!

It is important to note that though the responsibility of the above issues lies in the hands of the developer, it may not always be their fault. While some decisions may be enforced on them by the management, some may have stemmed from lack of knowledge transfer or platform limitations. Lack of time is another factor that makes them take decisions taking user experience into consideration.

So with the right resources and opportunity provided, can they improve the user experience?

They hold the power to improve the Experience

Again, listing down all the potential ways will take all day so we will take top four points into account and how it improves the user experience.

Create User Centric Form

While the visualization of the form lies in the hands of the designer, there are varying factors and details that need to be taken care of by the web developer to make it a reality. These details are as follows:

Avoid splitting information across multiple fields.
Utilize smart validation.
Only show fields that are necessary.
Reduce the unnecessary options provided.
Remember data.
Avoid forcing users to enter same data again and again.

Developers are heavily involved in form creation and have the potential to seriously hamper user experience if not done right.

Provide Better Error Handling

Designers don’t usually focus on details. We don’t mean to undermine them but there are many occasions where even though the finished interface design is good, they fail to address few glitches or errors in the interface. Error handling in such cases isn’t easy and it becomes developer’s responsibility to find ways to remedy it.

Improve the Handling of Edge Cases

Attention to detail often leads developers to get hung up on edge cases. They unnecessarily focus on secondary priorities or needs of audiences and end up ruining the experience for everyone else. Consider the form below.

Note the third line of the address field that allows users to add an extra field to fill in their complete address. Even though a small percentage of users uses it, is it really necessary to display it by default? It will take up unnecessary space and only distract users who have no need for it. A developer can easily hide that section by default and allow to add an extra field when the user clicks on it or fills in maximum characters in the provided address field.

Maximise Performance (or at least the feel of it)

You don’t need to tell your developers that they need to focus on performance. A good developer will always be aware of it. They are already inclined to make a website as fast as possible. But sometimes, developers tend to focus more on data rather than the experience. There can be a thin line between how fast a website is loading and how fast it feels like it is loading. Web developers can take following smart steps to ensure that visitors feel that the website is loading quickly when the reality might be a bit different.

Load content prior to web fonts, JavaScript, etc.
Provide instantaneous feedback when the visitor clicks on any link or a button rather than make him wait.
Load an image of the video first. Load the video only if the image is clicked.
Pre-load a lower resolution version of the image, then replace it with the higher resolution image once the load is complete.

The above points highlight how designers are not the sole guardians of the user-experience and much of the hard work done by the developers goes unnoticed and under the radar. They play a crucial role in influencing the user experience, as much as designers do, if not more.

Need to improve the user experience of your web or mobile app? Contact us at Potenza Global Solutions today! We are a reputed website development company brimming with a team of web developers and designers, offering website development and website design services across the globe.

10 Top Tried-And-Proven Tips To Run A Woo-Commerce Site Successfully

By Potenza Responsive, Responsive Website Development, Web Development, WooCommerce, WordPress Development July 5, 2017

10 Top Tried-and-Proven Tips to run a Woo-Commerce site successfully

WooCommerce, a free plugin that lets you sell products and services from your WordPress site. It was acquired by Automattic Inc., WordPress’s principal company recently. It is one of the best-designed e-commerce plugins for WordPress and is considered as a most popular eCommerce solution across all websites.

So now that you’ve implemented Woo-Commerce to your responsive eCommerce website, what are the steps you can take to turn your online storefront into a successful business?

Here are the 10 Tried-and-Tested Tips that will help your Woo-Commerce site run successfully:

10 Tips To help your Woo-Commerce site run successfully

Appeal with Photos

Entice and appeal to your customers with high-quality photographs of your products and take an important step to guide your customers towards making a purchase from your store. When potential customers visit your product page, it’s because they want to have a look at your product; show it to them with large images from multiple angles with a consistent style and settings. Give them complete control by letting them zoom in on your individual images and cycle through multiple images; A Lightbox plugin can make this happen.

Set the Tone of your Brand

Don’t be a plain online store that just sells products or services! Stand out from the crowd and connect with your customers. Show off your brand’s story and personality by setting a tone of voice that is throughout your web pages, product descriptions, and blogs. Show them why your brand is unique!

Always remember that great brands aim for customer’s hearts and not their wallets!

Create Great Content for your Customers

The design of a website is essential in building a good first impression on your visitors, but it’s the high-quality content that helps retain them and gain high ranking on SERPs. Focus on content that talks about your customers’ needs and how they can get the best out of your products and services. Share the story of your brand and elements of your business through your blogs. It is recommended while preparing product description that you focus on content that helps your customer understand you and your products/services better and why you are a good choice for them. Make use of good cases and address questions that your customers may have.

Connect with Newsletter

Believe it or not, Email marketing is still relevant and is still one of the favorite modes of communication for marketers. Marketers still prefer to reach their current and potential customers through Newsletters detailing their products, services, events or offers. Target and customize your emails based on users’ habits and purchase history to get the best returns. Track the behavior of your audience – links they have clicked on, why they choose to unsubscribe and how often they forward your emails.

Grow with SEO

For an online business, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is essential to increase brand visibility and credibility. When people search online for your products or services, having your website at the top of the SERP builds trust. Optimize your website by adding the right keywords in the content to generate more traffic from diverse sources and affect the revenue of your ecommerce store.

Use the basic WordPress SEO by Yoast, a complete SEO solution provided by WordPress that adds Meta descriptions, keywords, and optimized permalinks to make sure search engines know where your content is.

Support your Customers

Customer support is crucial to running an online store. It isn’t just about helping them solve problems related to shipping or refunds, but it’s more about making them feel comfortable on your website.

Answer their most common questions related to pricing, guarantees, offers and policies that they might have, preferably in FAQ format and encourage them to contact you whenever they feel stuck through a contact form or live chat.

Give Olark a try; it is easy to install on any Woo-Commerce site and you can even try it out for free.

Special Treatment for Special Buyers

So your business is running like a well-oiled engine and you’ve started developing a strong customer base. Why not offer your customers something special and give them a reason to visit and shop through you again?

Wishlists

Offer your customers a chance to prepare their wishlist so they can choose the keep the product aside and make the purchase later when it’s convenient for them. WooCommerce site Wishlist allows you to create and add products to an unlimited number of Wishlists and so much more.

Vouchers, Coupons and Store Credit

Give your visitors complete freedom on they choose to spend their money whether it’s through vouchers or free credits. Let your customers purchase a product as a gift voucher for them to gift their loved ones. Provide special offers to your current customers and let them know through emails or any social media channels. You can also set up a store credit system to make the purchase process easier for them.

Use Smart Coupons extension for WooCommerce to get an all-in-one coupon solution for your eCommerce site. Whether you want to offer store credits, generate coupons for promotions or allow gifting, this extension will make your life so much easier.

Secure yourself with a Backup

Always remember to backup all your files and content. You never know when your system might need to be updated or when you might fall victim to a hacker attack. It is highly recommended to keep your data updated to keep the downtime to a minimum.

Get your eCommerce site protected and prepared with real-time automated backups through VaultPress specially optimized for WooCommerce websites.

Allow Speedy access with CDN

Fast-loading websites have reduced bounce rates, improved user experience and higher ranking in SERPs. CDN (Content Delivery Networks) services can take care of delivering heavy files like images and CSS sheets from a server geographically close to the user and optimized for speed, thereby substantially reducing page-load times and giving your website a huge boost.

Use MaxCDN which is reliable and offers competitive rates.

Get Users to participate

Today’s buyers love to share their views and reviews, especially on social media platforms. Let your customers share their reviews and ratings on your products and services on your websites and let everyone know what they liked and (what they didn’t). These reviews can give you good insight on what is working for you and where you can improve to increase customer satisfaction. A report shows that 85% of online shoppers will make a purchase only after reading online reviews.

Use Review for Discount and Testimonials by WooThemes that allows your customers to give you reviews and testimonials respectively for your WooCommerce-powered website.

Conclusion:

With Woo-Commerce integration and these 10 Tips shared above, we hope you get your eCommerce website up and running successfully.

Potenza Global Solutions is a WordPress Development Company that offers responsive website development and custom eCommerce development among other IT solutions.