Top 6 Designing Compliance for eCommerce Platform built on Magento Store

Sales figures are rising and so is the trend changing. But, is your business included in these statistics? If the answer is no, you have to seriously think about your e-commerce store's interface. Firstly, you must look if your site's interface is user-friendly, trustworthy and above all product rich. If it is, you already have toppled quite a lot of competition.

But to get to this position, quite a lot of planning is needed. It’s not just theme creation for an online store; it is structure making and web planning for it prior to the development phase. In the year 2013, the global online sales was around $200 billion which is expected to be touching $250 billion by the end of this year. Thus, to be in this tide, you must have a site which is loaded with all the features that impress users.

Mobile and Magento

This is the year 2014 and that means we are no more subjected to cubical or desktops for shopping. People are making maximum purchases through Smartphone, tablets, etc.  By 2017, it is expected that 5 billion people will be having mobile phones. Already the number of internet users through mobile has surpassed desktop. In such a time, Magento’s platform has all that a business owner needs to go with the mobile-friendly generation. On top of that, trying your hands on responsive design will add to the whole effort.

Magento Compliant Store Designing

Many companies globally have been associated with the e-commerce designing industry. As Magento is the leader of this niche, most of the projects are related to stores using it as a platform. Asking for theme is very common and in few cases PSD to Magento theme conversion too. But, while performing this task, there are several points which every designer or business owner keeps an eye over. Here are those:

1. Pixel Perfect Design: Every theme or design has to be pixel perfect. This makes the store more attractive for the viewers. One common request coming from the store owners end nowadays is to make the design retina ready. 
2. Cross-browser Compatibility: While making the design, the team must check whether it is running smoothly in all the browsers. This ensures maximum reach of the store and no jerk in user-friendliness.
3. W3C Validated: As online stores are dependent on search engines like Google, this has to be taken into account.
4. SEO Standards: The semantic aspect and SEO factors are taken into consideration while designing the whole thing. Even the parts like proper usage of H1, H2, H3 etc., in the right place of the web pages has their effect on the stores web presence.
5. Mobile Friendly: Every design has to be responsive as it has become the basic need of e-commerce industry. As most of the users are coming through Smartphone and tablets, this is mandatory.
6. Speedy Loading: The theme or design has to be less on JS or if used has to be optimized. As per Google’s policy of ranking factor, the site loading time is taken in account while allotting any website a rank. Make sure that every image in the store is optimized and not much heavy items are there in the home page.

Major Factors that can Reduce Maintenance Efforts on Your Magento E-commerce Site

Most e-commerce business owners have been seen opting for open source solution and enabled free extensions to offers additional support to the operation system. Magento is the first name that comes in the minds of millions as this is not only open source, but also has the biggest library of extensions. The infographics by best host news shows that Magento is much ahead of others in the interest meter with an authority position of 96% followed by Prestashop with 56% for the year 2014; the prime reasons being Magento's cost-effectiveness and low maintenance cost.

 Why Maintenance is called for?

 While discussing the need for maintenance, one must first realize the pattern of business. Online business is all about user-experience and to keep that steady, all the time your store needs to be perfectly maintained. A user on an average takes less than 3 seconds to decide whether to stay at a particular site or move ahead. If users find something which does not go with their expectation, you might not even see them return to your store. This also applies for loyal customers as their expectation will be more from you. With fierce competition, the store needs to be in its finest shape all the time, as a small slip in doing this might lead your customers to the competitor’s site.

Based on the changing trend and user behaviors, your site should be updated accordingly. Both B2B and B2C needs same amount of attention. Just take the example of responsive buzz. A few years back, people were quite contented with web 2.0 designs and social integration. Now, with the dominance of mobile users globally, this has become the first priority of every e-commerce business owner. Hiring a service provider offering professional Magento maintenance services in India is an ideal way to do get this done.

 Factors Hitting on Maintenance Cost

 Magento platform is self-sufficient in itself with tons of features to support any business stature’s operation. While running any business, the team behind the scene must make sure to take care of certain factors as these cuts down on maintenance cost hugely.

1. Sound Mobile Scripting: From the very beginning stage itself, the store owner must hire someone who is aware of mcommerce as 67% users are making use of mobile devices for shopping. Introducing it at a later stage of business is a heavy investment and will continuously call for costly maintenance.
2. Tested Coding: Agile development process needs to be followed. This ensures any bug removal stage by stage. The overall strength and security of online store decreases the need for maintenance to a large extent. 
3. Talk to Community: Never indulge yourself in a spree for hiring a developer all the time as a number of issues may be easy to fix. Shoot your question to the Magento community and get the best solution and keep your store maintained all the time.

These three prime factors ensure healthy web presence of your online store besides a low maintenance cost. Magento’s core power and smart usage of development practices makes any business stay relieved from a heavy maintenance budget.