Davions Blog

Ecommerce hosting is filled with many choices. Unavoidable and undeniably important, the choice of shopping cart program is one that will effect every aspect of a store’s future on the web. The shopping cart is how your customers find your products and ultimate pay you for them. That last part is, perhaps, the most important of all. Choosing one that is right for an individual’s needs and can be comfortably administered is a step that can’t be understated. This article will briefly review 2 popular shopping cart programs, Miva Merchant and osCommerce.

osCommerce

osCommerce is an open source shopping cart solution offered by many hosts. To the frugal, its most endearing quality will be the price tag, which is non-existent. Being open source, osCommerce is available free of charge for anyone’s use. Simply jumping at the cheaper of the two solutions is not the ideal way to proceed. osCommerce provides all the basic functionality to run a store, add products, categories, and manage customer account information. The look and feel of the store can be modified somewhat through the use of templates, but the basic layout will remain fairly static. Visit one osCommerce store, and it will be fairly easy to identify the cart in the future. This is not necessarily a drawback, as some customers may appreciate using a familiar shopping cart if they have had good experience with another osCommerce store in the past.

As open source software, osCommerce’s primary method of support is via its user community. There is no “official” support support channel, simply forums and user groups that discuss the program and even develop add-ons for it. This means the primary method of support in an osCommerce environment will be via your host’s technical support department. This makes finding a host with reputable technical support very important. This is the primary trade off with most open-source software, economy versus supportability. Paying a large sum of money for any piece of commercial software not only pays for further development, but also for the software company to maintain support channels for that software. Open source programs don’t have that luxury, they rely on the user community to provide a means of support.

Miva Merchant

Miva Merchant is a large piece of commercial software, and as such will require a more significant capital investment than osCommerce. Fortunately many website hosting companies offer what is essentially a “rental” of a Miva Merchant licence for a much smaller fee compared to an outright purchase direct from Miva Small Business. Anyone considering this option should be aware that using a hosting company’s licence means that licence will remain with the hosting company even if they decided to leave. Miva Merchant does provide for import and export of customers and products, though, so a new cart can be setup at a new host with relatively little inconvenience.

Miva Merchant, in its basic form, provides a robust shopping cart environment able to handle a large number of products. Like osCommerce, it is software installed on the web server that is administered via a user’s web browser. The browser based interface includes many “wizard-driven” processes to accomplish basic tasks, such as product and category setup, that ease new users into the administrative system. Once comfortable with the basic functionality, an advanced version of the administration system is available for more detailed and efficient management of the store. Miva Merchant is highly customizable, affording the ability to style the store to mimic the appearance of the parent website. More advanced store styling features have been added with the recent version 5 release.

Like osCommerce, support for Miva Merchant will come primarily via the hosting company, though Miva Small Business offers direct support channels for a yearly fee. Purchasing support from Miva allows users to bypass their hosting company’s technical support and speak directly with a Miva Merchant representative. Also similar to osCommerce, Miva Merchant has a thriving “module” community. Modules are programs installed to Miva Merchant that offer increased functionality. If the core functionally of Miva Merchant “out of the box” lacks a required feature, it is likely that feature can be added by a module. Unlike osCommerce, these modules will come at a cost.

Conclusions

Miva Merchant and osCommerce are both powerful carts with strong, basic feature sets that will fit the needs of many online stores. The mostly non-existent cost of osCommerce provides a low barrier of entry for many smaller stores without a significant amount of capital. Though attractive for that reason, it is best to examine the feature sets of each cart and determine which one is most appropriate for the needs of the individual store. Making a wrong choice can have long lasting consequences. Switching between web hosts will seem easy after attempting to switch between shopping cart programs.
Oscommerce Programmers

Oscommerce

Codeigniter Mvc Framework

It’s fairly easy to set up shop and sell almost anything from bananas to banana boats on the Internet. Browse through the shopping section of Google (Froogle) or Yahoo and you can see the amazing variety of products that are available.

Click on a few of those links and take a look at the address bar on your browser. Many online stores use some kind of dynamic system for generating their pages. This means their product information is drawn from a database and dynamically displayed.

Dynamically displayed pages look something like this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=shopping+cart&btnG=Search

You will notice that there is no extension which would indicate a static page.

Is there a problem with dynamic pages? From SEO perspective there is a real problem. Search engines have trouble indexing dynamic pages, especially with multiple variables.

Here is what Google has to say about dynamic pages:

“If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few”.

Shopping carts that use a lot of parameters will have trouble getting indexed by search engines.

The Solution?

A client recently approached me to provide a shopping cart that would allow his products to be indexed properly. In addition, he had special requirements for the size and the cost of the shopping cart. The cart needed to be as inexpensive and as small as possible.

My client had previously been using PayPal “Buy it Now” buttons but disliked the way the customer was immediately taken to the PayPal site. He felt that would discourage people from making additional purchases before checking out.

I investigated the various free shopping carts like Zen Cart, osCommerce, and AgoraCart. They all offered some sort of SEO modifications, but they were too large to fit in my client’s limited hosting account.

Digging a little further, I came across Commerce.cgi [http://www.commerce-cgi.com] — a compact, fully customizable shopping cart. But free version did not offer the features that my client desired. The pages are dynamically generated, and there is no support for PayPal.

However, for a $50 lifetime membership, he had access to the member’s area which provided extra scripts for PayPal integration. There is also a very interesting script for making dynamic pages appear static.

This script, called Search Engine Advanced, uses the Apache mod_rewrite function to change requested URLs. I checked with my client to see if his Apache server supported mod_rewrite, and that was in luck. All systems go!

Installing the Commerce.cgi script was quite straightforward, and I could easily adapt the templates to match the style of my client’s existing web site. Once the cart was installed and running, I tried adding the Search Engine Advanced hack. There were a few complications, but the support staff at Commerce.cgi helped me sort it all out.

The results are very pleasing indeed. All the dynamic pages appear as static, and Google, Yahoo and MSN have started to index the site.

You can see the site up and running at Tea From Taiwan - specializing in hand processed oolong tea.

I would highly recommend Commerce.cgi for anyone looking for a highly configurable shopping cart. It is suitable for small to medium sites and offers great support through their BBS.
Cakephp Developers For Hire

Hire Codeigniter Developers

The Need

Any business that wants to attract attention through the Internet is going to need website development services. Corporations have no trouble with this and spend a significant budget to hire full time web developers. Unfortunately, that requires more money than many businesses have, especially since the cost for Western developers is so high. One of the most common solutions today is to choose web developers from India.

Why Outsourcing Works?

Today, web development India is some of the best you can find in the world. That’s because technology training and infrastructure have become a big focus in many of the larger cities. People are able to get into this business, provide their services all over the world, and earn a comfortable living for themselves. They provide great quality but because the cost of living is lower they can afford to charge less than their Western counterparts. Most companies are highly satisfied with the results of their outsourcing.

Services Available

When you hire developers India, you’ll have access to a wide range of web-related services. Everything from e-commerce development to oscommerce development is going to be available. This is a great way for you to get all of the services you need for the web presence you want without having to break your company’s budget in the process. The best part is that you can have these developers work for you full-time so when problems arise they will be there with the solutions.
Cake Php Dvelopment Process

Oscommerce-developing Ecommerce Store Exact Demands

However, as E-commerce has now allowed people to search for products on the Internet, the way by which people bought electronics also changed. Nowadays, buying the newest models of digital cameras, MP3 players, and DVD players is just a click away.

Virtual stores

As businesses see the benefits of putting up web sites that allow them to sell their products, putting up a web site became a necessity for businesses. A direct result of this is that almost all businesses advertise online, which means that you can expect that there will be thousands of -

Of course thats fine with a business that has more visitors than you need, but as your traffic will start small, you need to hang on to any/all of the visitors that come your way. One way to do this is to encourage as many of them as you can to subscribe to your mailing list or opt-in list. This is essentially a list where visitors are agreeing for you to be able to send them promotional materials isuch as newsletters, catalogs and such that could keep them updated about your site, products, news etc.

When using e-mail as the media of your marketing and advertisements, you eliminate the need for high cost marketing campaigns (such as PPC). Email is of course free and if you can use a low cost graphics package and web design software to make professional looking promotional advertisements you can keep the costs down. With an opt-in subscribers list, you are pretty sure that what you are sending out is received, viewed and read by the subscribers and not simply being deleted. They have signed up for service and have consented in receiving it. It is very important to have a double-opt in script, this means that when a user subscribes they confirm their subscription.

Some times however a subscriber may unsubscribe (opting out of your newsletter), they do this when they feel that they are not getting what they want or expected, or they feel there are too many advertisements, and not enough benefits. Make sure that you have some time each week/month to review your marketing strategy. This way you will keep your subscribers happy. Now lets look at some things you can do in order to build a list of eager subscribers.

Make it fun and Informative!

Its really important to make sure what you send out is of interest to your subscribers, and if possible fun. Try to use a little creativity but be careful not to lose track of the message. Build content around what your product or service is about. For example; if you are selling computer parts, put some pictures of what is new in the computer parts world, a new CPU Fan possibly that can fit any CPU.

Make it something they want to read about!

If you do your research well, you will be able to write about things that your subscribers are looking for, and this helps you to stay one step ahead of them all the time. Imagine that they are going to look to you as the one who tells them about what is new, and what is happening, you will be the expert they want to hear from.

Writing Style!

Remember when writing an article, someone will need to be motivated to read it, or the article is not worth the kb

The definition of woo-woo as found in the dictionary refers to “ideas considered irrational or based on extremely flimsy evidence or appeal to mysterious occult forces or powers.”

In a way I understand their perception that this approach to life and wellness is a bit woo-woo.

Think about it:

–We stick needles (acupuncture) in the body where there is already pain

–We take a sugar pellet that holds the energy of the poison that made us sick in the first place (homeopathic remedy)

–We take our clothes off and let someone we don’t know rub oil all over our body

–We eat the leaves, and the stems, and the roots of veggies and it’s okay if we eat the dirt too (homeostatic soil organisms)

–We cleanse our colon to clean our skin and get rid of our allergies

–We rub essential oils on our feet to balance our digestive system

–We question our doctors

These things don’t make any sense in the current model of health care. Does this mean they are wrong, or “woo-woo”?

No. They are not wrong. These things work. We are not “woo-woo”.

What this means is that a new model of health care is emerging. There is a paradigm shift taking place and much of what is required here is a new way of thinking in order to understand how these things work. Then we can embrace them, and build on them.

Here is how we can do this based on the above examples:

–”Sticking needles (acupuncture) in the body where there is already pain”

New understanding: These needles are placed in the energy (non-physical) body which has a direct influence on the physical body and which is known (research based) to reduce pain.

–”Taking a sugar pellet that holds the energy of the poison that made us sick in the first place (homeopathic remedy)”

New understanding: Homeopathy is based on the Law of Similars where the treatment cancels out the problem with the causative substance. Homeopathy was a primary approach to health care in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia was a homeopathic hospital.

–”We take our clothes off and let someone we don’t know rub oil all over our body”

New understanding: Massage, and other forms of bodywork and energy work, are the best therapies to balance the body so that self healing can take place. All healing takes place from within.

–”We eat the leaves, and the stems, and the roots of veggies and its okay if we eat the dirt too (homeostatic soil organisms)”

New understanding: Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine said “let food be thy medicine”. Of course he meant the food in its whole state - the way nature meant it to be -not loaded with artificial ingredients and preservatives. And with the over-usage of antibiotics that kill all of the good bacteria in the body - eating dirt that has wonderful soil organisms can help re-populate our systems with good bacteria.

–”We cleanse our colon to clean our skin and get rid of our allergies”

New understanding: Our colon is an important system in our body to eliminate toxins. When it is not doing its job,toxins can build in the body. A secondary eliminatory organ, the skin, then kicks in and takes over. It might break out in rashes and pimples to try to get rid of things the colon can’t. Also, the body might develop what may be incorrectly thought of as allergies (runny noses, rashes, coughing) whereas it is just trying to get rid of the toxins.

–”We rub essential oils on our feet to balance our digestive system”

New understanding: The plant kingdom has all of the cures for the body. We can use essential oils - the liquid vitality of the plant - to take care of many imbalances in the body. The feet have the largest pores in the body, reflex points related to other areas in the body, and are great places to rub therapeutic essential oils - to balance all body systems.

–”We question our doctors”

New understanding: We, as health care consumers, “hire” our physicians and other members of our health care team to use their expertise to help us help ourselves heal. Health care professionals are not our authority. When we hire someone for their expertise the process of questioning them is normal.

Making a paradigm shift is a slow process. And we who are considered “woo-woo” are blazing the trails for the much needed new paradigm to emerge.

Some of you have embraced this as your life’s purpose and are helping to fuel the shift - for that we thank you! You have had to put up with being considered “woo-woo” for a long time.

So wear your “woo-woo” label proudly - you are doing big work - you are a big part of ushering in a new era in health care!
Codeigniter- Rapid Application Development

Codeigniter And Its Varied Libraries

1. You have to set an E-commerce site Firstly, you must have your own webhosting account and domain before you start making a website. If you know basic HTML language, you can set up your own website within short period of time. In fact, there are some web hosting providers offer additional services like creating a site for their clients.

2. Choosing the line of shoe products and determining the type of footwear can make your own online retail store stand out from the others After your website has completed, you need to choose the right shoe products. Your online shoe store will become successful when your products are marketable and sellable. For example, some stores offer custom made shoe services; or sell baby and children shoes; these two approach specifically target on certain groups of consumers.

3. Consider other factors that can affect your productivity Good quality shoes and shoe-size availability, reliable delivery service can also be decisive factors to make customers return to your site and hence improve sales and your company reputation in the long term run of the business.
Oscommerce Suit

Cake Php Developers

There are many templates available today. When you have a good idea of your web site content ideas, and how many pages and menus you will require. You just need to find something suitable, with a style and color scheme that you like.

If you intend to build an ecommerce site, you need at the very least, to consider how many products you intend to sell, as this will determine the type of solution you choose. You can find ready made solutions to suit almost any taste, but you will have to investigate the pricing structures of the ecommerce payment system that is incorporated. You will also have to investigate the flexibility of the shipping solutions provided if you are selling hard goods. If you are selling digital goods, you will have to look for a solution that allows for secure download of your products after a sale is completed. Some packages also include a feature for periodical payments for those that may be selling an on going service like an e-course for example.

When looking for a style or design it is important you find something that displays your product well, maybe with a thumbnail image that links to a larger image, or at least has a way to show off your product in a positive and informative way. It is actually more important to supply good content. That is complete descriptions, maybe guidelines for use and general specifications where necessary. Especially if you are selling popular goods that are available widely. You will need to find a way to differentiate yourself. Good clear navigation and clean functional design will help your clients find the solutions they are searching for. On a larger site, you should incorporate a local site search function also.
You need to find a web page template that suits your purpose. The menu structure will have a bearing on your decision. Some simple templates only allow for 6 or 7 main topics, and no sub-topics. These often use a horizontal menu bar across the top of the page underneath the main image. This is great for a brochure site, but if you are building anything more sophisticated, you are going to require something with drop-down style menus, or at least a solution with more flexibility.

If you are going to build an ecommerce site, you will need to also consider building traffic. Some applications will suit a pre-designed system, but if you are planning something large, some more investigation may be required. If you are a little savvy, you are getting the picture that the traffic is the real solution. Good content is the basis of delivering that. There are so many options to choose from that supply a template and an ecommerce solution, but very few that go that one step further and provide a real traffic building system. If you have a look at this page, http://www.ecommerce-site-builder.com/web-page-template.html, in the “Or A Larger Ecommerce Site” section, you will find a link to a “comparison chart” of some popular ecommerce site builder systems, and see what I mean. When searching for an ecommerce web site template, you should also consider a good opt-in email processing solution for keeping in contact with your clients. A newsletter is a great way to do this, and provides a way for you to deliver promotional messages occasionally to your valued clients.

Cakephp Developers For Hire

There is nothing so disappointing as owning a valuable product that malfunctions and having to come to grips with the fact that your limited manufacturers warranty has just run out. It seems like it always happens that way. You buy it and it works great right up until the limited warranty expires. As a retailer it is a nightmare trying to explain to your customers that the warranty is up and there is nothing you can do. Well now there is. As an online retailer you have the opportunity to sell extended warranties for your customers that will not cost you a dime and may offer you a pretty penny.

There are some extended warranty programs online that will allow you as a retailer to sell extended warranties to your customers. They specialize in extended warranty programs and product replacement programs. The best part is it is as easy as pie. All you have to do is register and allow them to do the rest. They will give you the software needed to download the warranty program. These programs will automatically update your product pages to display the warranty seal. Once this is completed you will be able to offer your customers the peace of mind they deserve. They will be able to purchase the warranty and pay for it when they check out of your online store.

You as the retailer immediately receive a commission as soon as the point of sale is made. Actually you collect all the money right away and then every 2 weeks you send the warranty websites share back to them. When you sell extended warranties you get to help your customers right away and you get to help yourself in the process. In addition these warranties cover much more than just consumer electronics. They can cover automobiles, watches, riding lawnmowers, furniture and jewelry as well. As a retailer you owe it to yourself and your customers to sell extended warranties because when you do you really do offer peace of mind.
Codeigniter Mvc Framework

Php Developers

Oscommerce Developers For Hire

Ecommerce hosting, in simple words, relates to your web host’s ability to let you sell your products or services from your website. In its primitive, ecommerce hosting usually means your website has an interface between display of your items and a shopping cart system, proceeding thereon to accepting payment real-time in secured environment. An ideal ecommerce hosting ensures complete buying experience for those viewers of your website who wish to acquire your products or services.
While this is the end-solution for ecommerce hosting, the way the process is arranged differs in more ways than one. This means that while the site users’ experience may not vary much, for merchants it will be a trade-off among several possibilities. In the paragraphs below, we will explore various tenets of ecommerce hosting from a merchant’s point of view.
Ecommerce Hosting - Where to Start
As briefly touched upon above, ecommerce hosting stands on 3 main pillars, namely display of products, selection and adding them to your virtual cart which then automatically calculates total amount payable, and lastly paying for the items selected for buying.
Since your website resides on host server, you have to choose an ecommerce hosting that ensures your buyer does not suffer inconvenience while making a purchase. At the same time you may be averse to spending on high-end ecommerce hosting, preferring instead to focus on marketing your website.
It therefore boils down to either choosing an ecommerce hosting that only supplies necessary amenities so that you can do it on your own (let’s call them ’supplied ecommerce hosting’), or go for ‘hosted ecommerce’ that does it all for you. The principal difference between the two is how much you agree to pay and why.
Supplied Ecommerce Hosting
Necessary amenities being available, many budding web entrepreneurs short on cash prefer an ecommerce hosting like this. What do you get here? In most cases of supplied ecommerce hosting, among other things common, you will get a full-featured open-source shopping cart system (like oscommerce, zen-cart, agora cart, etc.) free of cost.
All you need to do is install the cart on your website and then dress it up as per your needs. Some programming knowledge may be necessary to make the cart work perfectly for you. If time is a constraint or you feel you are not up to it, you may outsource the small adjustments needed in the cart system. Many web hosts agree to help as a goodwill gesture to their ecommerce hosting customers. Do not forget to explore this.
Once your shopping cart is up and running, the next step will be to tie up with a payment system. If you are frugal, consider availing Paypal service. It is easy and fast to open an account and you can get going in no time. If you have chanced upon Paypal before having installed the shopping cart of your ecommerce hosting, do consider some of the excellent carts showcased there. You may get good value for your money.
Okay, you have tied up your cart with a payment acceptance system. Have you tested it? Do it before going live. It is important.
Hosted Ecommerce
If supplied ecommerce hosting is at one end, the other end belongs to hosted ecommerce. In fact, hosted ecommerce may be the perfect ecommerce hosting if you pay extra. Since the entire shopping cart system comes installed with all bells and whistles, all you need to do is upload your products and start selling. If this sounds good, it indeed is. Examples? Try Site Build It!, ekmpowershop, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, etc.
In final analysis, you will of course choose what best suits your need, but if you wish to start your e-business, look for a competent ecommerce hosting solution.

Cake Php Developers