How to Improve the Security of Your WordPress Blog

30 March,2015 Wordpress No Comment Author: Marie

WordPress is one of the famous blogging platforms. It is used by approximately 61% of the CMS systems worldwide. Securing it is a big challenge. There are hundreds of hackers every day trying to break into popular sites such as WordPress. Here in this article you will see a few tips to protect your WordPress blog.

Secure your login

First and foremost, keep your credentials secure. Your login details should be complex to guess. They have to be protected. Do not use common words based on your usual routines or personal details. Choose complex passwords with combinations of special characters and numbers. Weak passwords are an easy entry.

Host using secure protocols

Choose to host your site on a secure platform. This will need security protocols like HTTPS to be used to access your site. But this is more secure than normal hosting. A lot of hosting service providers offer this for an extra premium. But the cost is worth the damage. Secure hosting prevents malicious entries. It secures your site by allowing only credential users.

Kick out viruses and malware

Get your systems free from malware. Malware or Spyware are malicious programs that peep into your system directories. They cause damage and are prone to viruses. Install your systems with proper anti-virus or malware programs to secure them. Eliminate the systems if they are virus prone. This avoids viruses being transmitted across your site.

Use your user name

The simplest way to secure your site is to have your user name to access. WordPress provides admin access. Admin access provides complete rights to the users. Have an email or a username to gain entry. This will prevent brute-force attacks. Have a quick check on the install scripts that use admin as username. Rewrite them to have your user name as an access name. And also remember to secure the access with a strong password.

Authenticate it 2 ways

Another way that web sites use is to provide a 2 way authentication mechanism. This means the access to the site is in two levels. First level involves an entry and the second level provides the access. Both the levels need to be authenticated. Even if one fails, the access will be denied. Adopt your WordPress site to have a 2 way security mechanism. This is very important if you access the site from multiple devices such as phones, tablets and computers. This may take a while to gain entry. But adding one more level to the security is safer.

Add a firewall

Make infra changes. This will include the addition of firewall or hosting your site on a secure VLAN, etc. These are specialized security mechanisms available to protect your WordPress site. A firewall will deny access when originated from unknown or untrusted IP addresses. The firewall also prevents certain malware programs to gain access.

Limit login attempts

Many users limit their login attempts to prevent denial of service attacks. Hackers generally try and login multiple times to bring down the system. When continuous login attempts are made, the system is busy entertaining the authentication and stops from responding to other requests. Thus, an easy way to secure is to limit the login attempts to your site. This will ensure that access is allowed with a certain number of retries. Also, it is good to limit the simultaneous logins for your site. This would mean limiting the number of devices you can login from at the same instant. These limits ensure that your WordPress site is accessed from a trusted device and by your trusted user.

Always update to latest version

WordPress updates multiple versions for their sites. Always ensure you are running your site on the latest version. This will secure the system with the latest security updates. The plugins that have been an integral part of the ecosystems also need updates. By updating to the latest versions, you will ensure your site is free from outdated plugins. This will make your site not vulnerable.

Plan backup for contents

Always plan a backup for your contents. With the latest trends in internet blogging, you may not predict the hacking patterns. It is a good practice to back up the contents. This will take care of any accidental damages to your site. Accidental damages would also include physical damages. Plan a periodic backup. So any loss due to damages will be a small delta. And that may not cause a big loss of your site. It also helps to get your site back up quickly after an attack.

Hide your user directory

Limit the users from browsing your user directories. This is one of the most powerful features of WordPress. So limit these features to show the users the directories they need. Do not provide universal access to the directories. Hide your name as part of the URL from the users. This puts your site to a major risk as the attackers can gain access to your user directory.

Keep it simple

Keep it simple. The simpler your site is, the easier it is to manage. Tracking and monitoring any accesses and attacks become easier. Also, it is easy to have a periodic snapshot of activities on your site. This dashboard will help you analyze the patterns of access and take actions accordingly.

Best Practices in E-mail Marketing

24 March,2015 Business Advice No Comment Author: Marie

E-mail marketing is an art. It has to be practiced with nuance. It helps build relationships. It helps develop business and increase sales. It sets a non-transactional tone to the business. Emails are essentials of communication. Marketing using emails makes a direct impact on customers. Email marketing helps bond with them. It helps you to express your perceptions. It delivers your thought process and business strategies. It binds customers to your business. It buys in the mind sets of business growth. Practicing marketing using emails has its own flair. It has to be dealt with passion. This article provides few key strategies and best practices for email marketing.

Engage them with special offers

Email marketing is all about engaging customers. A powerful email entertains your customers. It makes your customer look forward to your business. Make your customers feel special by your emails. Generate excitement to drive sales. Involve them with pre-orders and offers.

Be a part of your customer’s life

Write emails with expressions. Show your care for customers. Your customers in turn will start caring for your business. Build an involvement through a trust. There are hundreds of emails in your customer’s inbox. Make your email special by deals for their occasions. Mark their birthdays, anniversaries with free trials, discount coupons and special offers. Your emails help you reach out to them. Express them you are part of their life.

Earn customer from customers

Use social media to reach out to them. Mark your mails with social network logos. Hashtag your timelines to show others trust in you. Earn a customer through a customer. Social media and reviews help your brand earn trust. Be transparent and involve them in the social reach. Ask for referrals from your customers. Use testimonials to reach out. Show them the value you create.

Have a dialogue with customers

Value your customers. Ask feedback about your products. Ensure them with actions. Use voting buttons to receive responses. More you seek improvement, more the trust you build with your customers. Make them feel valued in your emails. Enable them to see your improvements. Listen to their suggestions. Have forms in your emails. Construct emails with conversations. Initiate two way email conversations. Keep your customers in habit of dialogue. This helps you to push your brand into their minds.

Partner to potential

Business is not about individuality. It is about peer handling and partnership. Use your partner’s brand to create value. Tie ups and joint ventures are powerful. Reap the benefit of brand from the tie ups. Expand your customer base using your partner’s brand value. Include your partner’s brand in your emails. Be proud in using your partnership to enable business. Accelerate your business by potential partnerships. Have your customers’ say in deciding partnerships.

Create the visual experience

All text is boring. Use HTML styles to provide experience. Have downloads of important announcements. Create a way for your customers to have you in their memory. Provide your emails with style. Include images and emoticons to capture the moments. A picture speaks a thousand words. Use pictures of promotions and events to your customers. Let your email speak for you with links to images. Providing links to corporate events keep your customers engaged. Emails are meant to create memories. Leave the memory behind with the visual experience. Excite them with downloadable images. Engage them with links to create brand curiosity.

Guide you customers with constant reminders

Memory is short. Let your customers know about the expiry of product warranty, service etc. Remind them the next step. Provide them a way to reach you. Let them know that a trial license is expired. Use emails to mark their calendars. Use emails to define their to-do lists. Do not overwhelm your customers. Make them believe they are the king. Use emails to serve them at their command. Make them stay tuned with your next moves. Create interest in their minds about your brand. Guide them with the action plan.

Enable customers to reach you

Use emails to provide them a way to reach you. Include signatures, contact numbers in your email. Don’t shy away from including URLs, social logos in emails. Use as much effort to enable your customer to connect with you. Let them know your community drive if they are close to you. Invite them to participate. Have the signs to directions and maps. Show them you are real and dependable.

Keep the context during communication

Keep the context in your email communications. Written communication can be misinterpreted. Set a context in your email. Let your subject line communicate. Use similar subject lines while discussing similar topics. Do not let your customer wonder for the meaning. Use periodic communication methods. Do not change the frequency in your emails for newsletters. Make your customers expect you. If you miss out, ensure apologies are made. Ensure constant communication and clear contexts are always maintained.

Appreciate and be thankful

Above all, be thankful to your customers. Let them know you succeed because of them. Be simple in expressing thanks. Appreciate them for being with you. Laud them for your journey. Be generous in your email. Create happiness in their life. Use your emails to communicate happiness. Send them e-cards as part of emails to express your content.

Follow all these easy to follow tips and rest assured, you will have customers flowing!

80% Of HTTPS URLs Not Displaying In Google’s Search Results

15 March,2015 What's New No Comment Author: Marie

Credits: blog.combell.com

Lately, there was a new small-scale analysis done and it showed that over 80 percent of the HTTPS URLs do not show up in search results in Google. This statement was revealed by Gary Illyes, who is a Google webmaster trends analyst. Many of these HTTPS URLS are actually eligible for indexing and yet they are displayed as HTTP URLS due webmaster configuration.

Illyes added that it is not possible for the URL to become canonical simply because the site owners do not give information about them. Additionally, it was reported that site users use HTTP versions in the sitemap files, in the rel-alternate-hreflang and rel-canonical elements, even if HTTPs variant works really fine. He also recommended using HTTPS if the site supports them since Google has given ranking to HTTPs since August.
Illyes also shared a simple analysis that Google used on HTTPS URLs. The analysis proved that 80 percent of these HTTPS URLs were indeed eligible for Google search result listings. He explained further though, that these were not included because of the canonicalization of the HTTP version by the webmaster. It was not reported though if that was accidental or done on purpose.

It is Google’s intention to show the HTTPS variant, although if one want the Http version to be communicated Google instead, it is also possible. The configuration is the main reason why 80 percent of the eligible HTTPS URLs are not shown in Google search result listings. Again it was emphasized that it was not Google’s fault that HTTP version still shows.

To further explain this issue it is best to understand that the recent analysis performed showing that over 80 percent of HTTPS URLs being eligible for indexing (meaning these have no noindex and no crawl issues, thus all is good) cannot be canonicalized because the site owners do not tell Google about them. Again site owners are just using the HTTP version even if the HTTPS URLs version is working just fine.

This could only mean that the choice is actually on the website owners. All they need to do is to let Google know more about their HTTPS URLs and then everything will be alright. When this happens, the 80 percent of HTTPS URLs not showing on Google search result listings before are going to be canonicalized so that they will show on the search engine’s result.

Source: Search Engine Land

How to Choose the Right Webhosting Company

8 March,2015 Wordpress No Comment Author: Marie

Hosting your business or personal website has become easier nowadays. Many companies provide lucrative offers and discounts to host your web site. The web hosting companies play a pivotal role for your website to get highlighted. This helps your website to have more traffic. It increases your revenue as the numbers of visitors grow. But the challenge lies in choosing the right hosting company. There are many factors you will have to consider before signing up your domain with the provider. This article will provide you with the factors that will help you in choosing the right webhosting company.

Image/dreamweavertutorial.co.uk

Find your hosting purpose

Firstly, you need to know the purpose of hosting your website. Is it for business? Is it for your personal presence on the internet? How much traffic you expect towards the site? Is there any special software required? Is there any storage space required? You need to know the needs before you host the website. This will help you in choosing the right hosting provider as per your needs.

Ask for availability & hosting options

Once you know your needs, you will need to see how much of an uptime is required for your site. Business sites require a 100% uptime. Personal sites need not require the same availability. The availability of your site helps in determining of the infrastructure. It could be a server grade high end platform. Or a simple desktop based hosting as per the availability required. The pricing also varies according to the infrastructure.

The infrastructure plays a great part. It helps to minimize cost, maximize traffic as per the needs. You also need to know if your site can be shared, dedicated or be based on the cloud. Blogging sites and personal sites are usually shared. Sites for business are usually hosted using dedicated servers or VPS hosting. You will have to determine if the provider has options to upgrade your hosting services.

Go for multiple domains

When you choose to host your site, look for multiple hosting domains from the hosting service provider. Multiple domains help you leverage the internet. It helps you in a better way by rolling out location based services, localized reach. Having multiple domains for a single host account is cost effective than having multiple accounts for multiple domains. This also reduces the confusion and complexity. It helps maintaining various host accounts at a later stage.

Combo with advanced features

Do not just finalize your hosting provider for basic features offered. Check for advanced features such as automation of your websites, auto installers, FTP access, http security, SSL certificates and SEO friendly hosting. Hosting is not all about space and domain. It should help you in reaching your business out to a wider audience with added comforts.

Read renewal, refund & suspension policy

Look out for renewal and refund on the pricing policies from the service provider. Usually renewals should be cheaper. There should be a provision to change your hosting type with the addition or removing of features as per your needs. Needs change with the type and so is your website. Choose your hosting provider who allows this. Go for easy renewal or refunds without hassles in case your hosting needs are not met.

One most important thing to check along with renewals is the terms and conditions towards account suspension. Some hosting services suspend your hosting accounts. Reasons include use of more CPU power, hosting space, etc. If your need is to have your web site up and running smoothly, you need to ensure the suspension of accounts is not enforced so strongly and for silly reasons. Read the terms and conditions carefully before signing up for services.

Integrate site with Emails

Email is an important thing. Check for offers on integrated email services along with the web hosting services. In usual cases, web hosting account should have email accounts. Clients can reach out to you using the email account using the hosted domain name. Ask your hosting company about the additional charges for the emails if any. Most of the service providers provide atleast one email account along with hosting accounts.

Look for backup, support and customer care

It is important to ensure that your site contents are backed up and statistics are available for your website. Choose your provider who has a periodic backup of the site contents. Look for redundancy policies and infrastructure for your critical business needs. The provider should also have an incident reporting and management system to raise concerns regarding maintenance of your web site. Check for the maintenance intervals and the down time offered by your hosting provider. Choose the provider offering shorter downtimes. The provider should have a scheduled maintenance periods and notifications sent to you. This will help you keep your clients informed about the maintenance periods.

Check for the support provided and availability of 24/7 customer care from the provider. This is vital to get your website running anytime.

Check for the subscription period

Check for the subscription period. Some of the companies charge per month and some by yearly subscriptions. It is easy to start with a small time frame to host your site. Move towards a larger timeframe slowly as you get comfortable with the hosting service provider. Also check for the option of changing your subscription periods after you have signed off with the hosting company.

Consider all these factors before choosing a right web hosting company.

Effective Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

7 March,2015 Business Advice No Comment Author: Marie

If you are managing a blog it is only natural that your main objective is to drive traffic into it. When there is high traffic into a blog, there is surely going to be high possibility of increase conversion. So, what should you do in order to ensure that there is sufficient traffic into your blog? Here are some effective ways to do it.

Post High Quality Content

Blogging is basically all about posting contents that are relevant to you, your business or your website. If you articles are not informative and pertinent to your goals, you cannot expect people to get really interested in reading your blog. This means less traffic, which equates to few or no conversion at all.

High quality and readable articles are very important because they can also be very instrumental in generating incoming links into your site, which should result in strengthening your brand and in increasing loyalty from your readers, existing buyers, and potential customers.

High quality contents are ones that provide readers with the right information that they seek. The intention of the content should be to educate the readers, rather than just to entertain them.

Be Passionate about Blogging

When you blog, you are representing a part of yourself to the world. If you do not enjoy blogging, there is a big chance that you will neglect posting on a regular basis. This is the kind of practice that usually causes blogging failures.

Know the Importance of Professional Blog Design

If your blog points back to your business website, it is very important that it is incorporated with a highly professional design. Your blog is the representation of your professional image that you want your readers to see and identify with. With a professional looking blog, you can be assured of reinforced brand, increased credibility, and increased leads and conversions.

One common mistake that many bloggers commit is placing too many ads and unnecessary images on the blog design. These are the most common reasons why some visitor the disinterest in some blogs. The ads and the images can be found intrusive, which usually prompt the viewers in clicking the back button and ignoring the articles. Your blog is existing for the purpose of increasing traffic and conversions, thus it is essential that you can ensure that your blog design is enticing and practical at the same time.

Another important thing to keep in mind about blog design is that it needs to be responsive so it would look good on laptop, desktop and mobile devices. Using easy to read fonts is also highly recommended.

Ensure a SEO Friendly Site

One important reminder is that you must also make sure that your site is acceptable not just for the human eyes, but also for search engines. A well-structured blog site is instrumental in ensuring that your contents get good search engine rankings. Make sure that the site theme uses correct header tags in templates, validates without CSS or HTML errors, and can fully take advantage of extra navigational features like breadcrumbs navigation links. It is also essential to use reliable SEO plugins to make sure that your pages are highly optimized.

Be Wise in Choosing your Topics

Being wise is always a part of being in business, and blogging is a kind of business. Thus, you need to select your topics wisely. You must understand that the topics covering your blog influence the kind of readers you are going to get. Publishing tutorials are going to get you beginners, and posting advanced tutorials will entice more experienced leaders.

Thorough research is the answer to having the ability to choose the right topic to write and publish. It is also significant to devise a more permanent content strategy, so that you wouldn’t have to keep on coming up with a technique every time you need to post on your blog. Covering popular topics is one good way to attract more audience.

Share Important Current Events

Some bloggers publish links to news stories; you should not make the same mistake. Instead of just redirecting your readers to the more interesting story, you should be the first to inform them of what’s happening out there. Your opinion matters and you should let your readers know about them.

Interact with the Audience

You want to have high traffic into your blog, and traffic is brought by your audience. This means that you should make an effort in making sure that your readers have a better understanding of who you are, what you have to say and what you are selling. This can be accomplished by allowing your readers to post questions and hen responding to each question as honestly and precisely as you can. Your answer will inform you readers of how well-acquainted you are with your blog and your product or services.

When you blog, you give a part of yourself to the world. This means you want everyone else to know what you have to say and what you want them to understand. Blogging should help you gain more revenues and the best way to accomplish that is to have increased traffic into your blog.

7 of the Best WordPress Plugins for 2015

1 March,2015 Wordpress No Comment Author: Marie

If you are looking for the best WordPress plugins for your website this 2015, you may want to check out this list. These WordPress plugins were proficiently handpicked by the experts.

WordPress SEO by Yoast

WordPress SEO by Yoast is not your ordinary SEO plugin. According to the experts, it is your complete website optimization tool package. It lets you do a lot of thing like adding up appropriate titles and effective descriptions to the articles.

At the same time, this plugin also allows users to do page analysis,insert open graph Meta data, publish xml sitemap, and more. It is also easy to install and to setup.

Out of the box, this plugin is already a reliable platform. Do some tweaks and improvements, and it will definitely give you more that you can ask for. The good thing about this plugin is that it requires you to select a focus keyword for your articles, and it then makes sure that the focus keyword is used everywhere.

Backup Buddy

According to SEO experts, one of the easiest to use, user-friendly WordPress backup plugin is the Backup Buddy. Its features include a quick setup for automatic backup scheduling for yoursite. This means that it gives you the option to use the cloud to store backups so that you can sleep worry-free with the knowledge that every single content you have is effectively backed up.

W3 Total Cache

If you are very much concerned about your website’s speed in search engine rankings, then you need a very reliable WordPress plugin like W3 Total Cache. This plugin is guaranteed to help in optimizing your WordPress website for speed and for performance. It also give you the ability to effortlessly setup browser and page caching, compress the pages so that downloading is easier, and also to setup content delivery system for static files. This plugin is also the only WPO (WordPress performance Optimization) framework that was designed specifically to boost page speed and user experience

W3 Total Cache plugin improves your site’s user experience by boosting server performance, decreasing download times and by providing transparent CDN or content delivery network integration.

Gravity Forms

If you are just starting on managing your WordPress website and you want a plugin that you can easily use, then Gravity Forms is what you need. This plugin is said to be the most beginner- friendly and developer-friendly WordPress plugin. It is very useful in adding virtually any type of online form intoyour WordPresssite. This plugin also comes with add-ons that are powerful enough to let you make online survey, web directory, user-submitted posts, orroughlyanything that requires user input.

With Gravity Forms, you can create and publish your WordPress forms almost instantly. No hard work, just fast and simple form-building. You can easily choose your fields, effortlessly organize your options and smoothly embed the forms on your site with the use of built-in tools.

OptinMonster

One of the best lead generation WordPress plugins in the market today is the OptinMonster. This plugin allows users to build stunning optin forms and beautiful pop-ups for their WordPress websites. Additionally, it converts users into regular subscribers. It also comes fully-packed with great features like analytics, split testing, page-level targeting, and exit intent technology.

Edit Flow

Another great WordPress plugin is the Edit Flow. This WordPress plugin provides an effective editorial workflow organizational structure for WordPress sites. It also allows users to do extra tasks like, see their editorial calendar, organize authors, leave editorial remarks, allocate posts and many more. It has special features like; Calendar, Custom Status, Editorial Comment, Editorial Metadata, Notifications, Story Budget and User Groups.

Soliloquy

Wordpress Plug-in Soliloquy

When it comes to responsiveness, one of the most recommended WordPress plugins is the Soliloquy.Some slider plugins usually slows downthe websites and that can really hurt SEO ranking. On the other hand, this particular plugin is considered as one of the fastest slider plugins as it loads sliders at roaring fast speeds. This plugin also comes fully packed with special features and it even has afree version that can be instantly utilized for trial use. When you use this plugin, you have the ability to enjoy a hassle-free WordPress website management as it is especially designed in such a way that it is highly focused on usability, reliability and efficiency. It is created in a way that it fuses functionality and simplicity into one powerful and useful slider engine.

There are, of course several other WordPress plugins that are available today. If you really want to have an easy to set up website that is also easy to manage, you can truly rely on one of the WordPress plugins that are mentioned here. After all, these plugins are chosen by the experts. This means that there is no doubt that they are all efficient, powerful, easy to use, and can guarantee high search engine rankings and increase of potential subscribers.

Why Should You Use CDN for your WordPress Blog

22 February,2015 Wordpress No Comment Author: Marie

We have discussed in our previous post that one of the important factors that make a good website, is the website speed. We have pointed out the fact that website visitors like websites with good loading speed and only feel frustration over the slow-loading ones. A slow loading website is likely to lose visitors over a fast-loading one. Do you now see how important a website loading speed is?

There are many ways to do that can help you make your site load faster, and in this post we will talk about CDN, something that will help you a lot in speeding up your website loading speed.

What is CDN?

CDN or Content Delivery Networks is a network of servers (usually located in various parts of the world) that cache the static content from websites such as images, videos, audio clips, css, and javascript files.

How it works?

When a user requests your site, the server closest in proximity to that user will deliver the static content. This ensures the shortest distance for the data to travel, therefore providing the fastest site experience for the user.

Source: technatter.com

Why Should You Use CDN?

The number one reason for using a CDN is to improve your user’s experience in terms of speed, and as we have discussed in one of our posts, speed matters a lot. This can lead your visitors and prospect customers not to come back to your website anymore because it loads very slowly.

A CDN is best used for those websites that get visitors from different parts of the world. Just for example, if Simpliolabs.com is hosted in North America, GTmetrix (free tool that analyzes your page’s speed performance) test might report fast based on the default test location. However, if a good number of users are coming from Asia, their speed will not be as fast.

CDN would allow users from Asia to download the static content from a closer source or server. CDN not only ensures faster experience to your users but it as well, prevents site crasher when the traffic on your site surges.

Another positive outcome of using CDN is the lessening of bounce rate. This simply means that when readers all over the world try to access you blog, there is a very high chance that they will be able to see your blog. If there is a higher chance for viewers to see your blogs, that is tantamount to more page views. Finally, if there are more page views, then your blog will be more popular due to the added hits.

Every blogger’s goal is to achieve popularity status. With the help of CDN, it can be achieved. Since it lessens the chances of viewers of not reaching the site and it also increases the viewing speed, then the result is increase in page views. The increase in page views will amount to higher ranking with search engines. When this happens, the blog will experience a very positive cycle – more page views means higher search engine ranking and higher search engine ranking means more page views.

When higher search engine ranking is achieved by a website or a blogger, then the blog will become global. This means that anyone from any part of the world with internet access can and may view your site. What’s exciting about this is since your scope is broad; you have higher chances of not only earning more, but also inspiring more people. If you want to achieve such status, it is better to avail of a CDN that has wider coverage. For you to know which CDN to get, you must check the countries where you get the most hits.

Not only does the use of CDN potentially increase your chances of earning more and inspiring more, it also decreases your expenses. When you use CDN, it makes loading faster and running the server faster too. Due to this, you do not need to continuously upgrade your computer’s hardware for example RAM or hard drive or improving your CPU in general. If you were to weigh spending for CDN or spending for computer parts, it is cheaper to go for the former than the latter.

In Summary

There is no negative effect in availing a CDN for your WordPress blog. Using a CDN increases your chances of getting more views, which then increases your chances of getting higher search engine rankings, which ultimately increases your chances of owning a global WordPress account. Again, it is important to know where your hits are coming from so you can use the best CDN option for your website. Also, know the all the potentials that a CDN may bring to your website so that you can optimize its services. Do not only use a CDN to speed up your page. Use it to optimize your viewer’s experience so that you may leave a mark to every viewer in the world.

10 Web Productivity Tools That’ll Maximize Your Efficiency

20 February,2015 What's New No Comment Author: Marie

We live in a fast-paced world. There are just so much things to do with such so little time! We all need the extra help we can get in order to accomplish what needs to be done. The good news is there are loads of software tools that can aid us with our everyday tasks. Now, efficiency is within reach!

If you are the type of person who tends to lounge doing unnecessary things or obsess too much doing one task, then you need a tool that will remind you of your daily efficiency. Yast can be the answer to your problem. It is a tool that helps you track the time you spend on various activities may it be connected with your work or plain leisure. All you need to do is sign up for free and you can enjoy its wonderful features like plotting a chart on how fruitful your day is.

Another important tool that busy professionals need is one that keeps track of daily schedules. Doodle.com is a virtual assistant that does not only keep track of your daily schedule but also automatically tells you when you are free to schedule your next meeting. What’s also cool about this tool is you can connect your schedule with other business partners to easily coordinate when your meetings can be set. All these features can be used for free. Who said having an assistant is expensive?

Now that your daily schedule is set, it is time to promote your business. An easy yet cheap way to do this is to use Getresponse. This tool helps create colourful newsletters that may contain new products or new promotions that your business offers. With Getresponse, you can automatically send out newsletters to your target clients via email and track their responses easily. Your newsletter can also be linked to your Facebook and Twitter accounts for more views.

Another popular favourite when it comes to productivity tools is Evernote. It is an application that syncs with computers and phones to save all files to a cloud. Evernote makes jotting down ideas easier before they are forgotten. Evernote has a lot of features like being able to jot down notes, take photos of whiteboards, record voice memos and organize everything right on the comfort of your phone.

If you have clients across the state or abroad that you need to meet with, then you can use Uberconference. This tool allows you to make a conference call with up to ten people for free. The calls can be recorded and can be played back for documentation purposes.

What-Is-HelloFax

When you need to constantly exchange written documents with clients across the state or abroad, then you can access Hellofax. This tool allows you to transmit and accept fax messages online. This can save you from using thermal paper because you do not need to print out written documents. All these documents can be seen online. Hellofax can also save a lot of time because you can send to multiple recipients at one click. Finally, all documents you receive are automatically saved to your cloud device so you do not need to worry about your hard drive capacity.

Another way to share documents and files without loading your hard drive is by using Dropbox. This tool securely stores and safely shares your important files with your clients or colleagues. Files saved in Dropbox can easily be accessed from any computer or mobile devices which mean you do not need to bring your external drive wherever you go.

If you need to create a document and save it online, it is best to use Googledocs. This tool lets you create and manage a document file that can also be accessed by multiple users in their remote locations. It is best to use this tool when you manage a team from different locations.

Social media has played a big role in brand marketing, and it’ll be quite tasking to do live posting on these accounts if you have not only 1 or 2 but many accounts to post into. This is where scheduling the updates for your social media channels becomes important, and here is where Buffer comes into the picture. Buffer is perfect for those with busy schedules as it lets you integrate multiple social media profiles into one Buffer account. It also schedule posts from several different accounts at once.

Lastly and most importantly, since you are too busy meeting your deadlines you might forget to take note of your budget. So that you will not go bankrupt while you take care of your business, you can use Nerdwallet. This tool helps you make important decisions regarding your spending powers. It advises you when a purchase or investment is good or not. Since Nerdwallet relies on real-time data, you can be assured that its suggestions and recommendations come from valid sources.

There are many more tools available online that you can download and use for your convenience. All these tools are just aids; it will not do everything for you. Remember, you are the driving force of your career. These tools are just available to give you better focus and direction so that you can achieve your goals sooner.

A Comparison Review of Prestashop to Magento and Woocommerce

7 February,2015 E-Commerce No Comment Author: Marie

Prestashop, Magento and Woocommerce are three most popular ecommerce platforms to build powerful online store. But the question is which one is more powerful and better for starting or promoting your business online? Certainly, all three have their own pros and cons yet their objective is same, that is to design a fully functional ecommerce site.

After a careful research and also basing on experts suggestion, we are able to do a comparison review of Prestashop, Magento and Woocommerce. We hope this comparison review will be of help to those who are planning to start an online store and in the process of looking for an ecommerce platform most suitable to your business needs and market demands.

Prestashop

Prestashop is an open-source eCommerce solution with plenty of features. It is easy to setup. It allows you to use a quick configuration process. Prestashop is available for download in two options: fully-hosted Prestashop cloud where you can start selling online in minutes or self-hosted Prestashop where you can get full technical control of your online store. Both are entirely free and ready to support your ecommerce activities.

Online stores designed using Prestashop are absolutely gorgeous and can be managed easily even of you don’t have much technical knowledge.

Pros and Cons of Prestashop

Pros

Prestashop is easy to install and customize.
Dashboard is also very intuitive and very user friendly. All needed information is quickly available on Dashboard.
Easier to configure than Magento and Woocommerce.
It is available in 40 languages. Fully supports English and French.
Prestashop has a Live Configurator to easily customize the PrestaShop theme by changing fonts and colors.

Cons

It has only few customization options especially when it comes to graphics so you cannot play with the graphic element much.
You’ll need to purchase templates, themes and modules if you want the most out of Prestashop.
Prestashop has compatibility issues.
They don’t have an official support team, but you can find plenty of developers and users in the PrestaShop forum.

Magento

Magento is also an open source eCommerce platform like Prestashop. It is an intelligent and smart platform for designing online store with powerful functionality. It is available in two editions – Community edition and Enterprise edition. The best idea is to test free version to get familiar with basics. Magento gives its users all kinds of modules, features and extensions. Their technical support has also gained many praises.

Magento is best for big businesses or those looking to grow their business quickly.

Pros and Cons of Magento

Pros

Magento has more out-of-the box features than Prestashop and Woocommerce
Magento is perfect choice for bulk products editing and capable of handling large databases smartly.
You can smartly play with multiple categories and products. If you are running a small business, it’s better to opt for Prestashop or WooCommerce instead of choosing Magento in the beginning.
Magento has wonderful power of handling massive amount of data and traffic.
Magento has SEO features not found in Prestashop, WooCommerce or any other eCommerce solution.
Provides more themes for the user.
Great technical support.

Cons

It is expensive for small business owners.
Setting it up requires quite some time due to its complexity.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a wonderful content management system that comes with plenty of functionalities. It is not a standalone CMS but is a solution that works within WordPress. It can be taken as best choice for serious content management and highly suitable for those companies who cannot afford Prestashop and Magento.

Founded in 2011, WooCommerce is relatively young compared to Prestashop and Magento. It is the best choice for those looking to add eCommerce functionality to their websites or blogs without having to leave the comfort of their CMS.

It has endless choices for plug-ins to make your store even more powerful and stronger. The best part is that it is easy to work with WooCommerce even if you are technologically challenged.

Pros and Cons of WooCommerce

Pros

As a website owner, Woocommerce can be taken as best compromise between usability, cost and security.
It is FREE and easy to use.
It has less administration costs when compared to Prestashop and Magento. Images can be uploaded quickly and it has the capability to manage massive amount of data.
Woocommerce is single stable platform for all of your website development needs that includes products management, blogs or content management, advertising, search engine optimization, user friendly & attractive interface, newsletter etc ….

Cons

By default, it is not ecommerce ready instead you need a Woocommerce expert to build ecommerce store. Once you are done with initial setup, take help from an expert and ask him to build an online store using Woocommerce platform. Undoubtedly, blogging can be managed yourself but programming always needs help of an expert.
Base plugin might not suffice, so premium extensions are needed.
WooCommerce is useless if you are not a WordPress user.

At the end, it is clear Magento, PrestaShop and WooCommerce have their own advantages and disadvantages. Although it is clear that Magento is best for small to medium business and Magento and WooCommerce for any business size.

Certainly selecting best web development platform out of three Prestashop, Woocommerce and Magentodepends on your project requirements and budget too. The final decision is up to you surely, but this comparison review will help you in making wise decision according your business project hopefully.

Sources: ITX, Prestashop, Torque Mag

What Makes a Good Website

31 January,2015 Business Advice No Comment Author: Marie

Throughout the years, as technology advances and online marketing has become a sure-fire way to get customers and leads, websites have become a great asset for businesses. Almost all successful businesses have websites but having a credible online presence requires a good amount of work and a lot of patience.

There are a lot of factors that can either make or break the effectiveness of your website. In this post we round up the things that makes a good website.

Appearance or Design

The number 1 on our list is the “website design.” The appearance of your website says a lot about your business and of course yourself as the owner. A website should always be visually appealing and professional. It may be the first and last impression to a potential customer.

Always remember that a website reflects you and your company. A poorly designed website doesn’t attract and impress potential customers as much as those who are beautifully and carefully designed.

Under this factor are the navigation, texts, graphics and colors used for your website.

Navigation of websites should always be simple, user-friendly, and easily-found. Visitors of your website must be able find any information they need quick and easy. Visitors tend to leave a website if they find the navigation too complex for them.

Texts should always be easily read. Do not use many different fonts on your website. Always use professional, simple fonts that can be easily-read by anyone and are supported by any type of computer systems. Font sizes matter too!

Graphics also play a big role in a design. Good, high-quality graphics make a great impression. They make a website come alive! Imagine a website with no graphics and just pure text – Boring isn’t it? However, you should remember that using too much graphics is not good too.

Colors are important as well. You should choose those which create a proper mood or tone for your business. Using too much color can distract your visitors from your website’s written content.

Unique Content

Aside from the appearance of your website, it must have substance. This substance we are referring to is good, credible and unique content. Your visitors or audience will be looking for information which will help them make a decision, so any content you add to your website must be informative, relevant and credible. If your website has a blog, it is very important to update your content regularly; this will keep your visitors interested to what new content you share.

The content on your website, aside from informative, must also be unique. Content plays a great role in SEO (Sear Engine Optimization). A unique content will help you rank highly in SERPs or Search engine results pages.

Functionality

Functionality is the third factor on our list. Your website must be fully functional, meaning every page, navigation and link should be working properly. Broken components such as broken links and poorly constructed navigation will only leave your visitors frustrated.

Speed

Fourth on our list is the speed of your website. Everybody deserves a fast web experience. A fast-loading website provides your visitors a great user experience while a slow-loading one can only frustrate them. This can also lead them not to come back to your website anymore.

There are many factors that affect the loading speed of a website. Some of the factors include server or hosting of your website, the codes and the graphics.

Quoting from MOZ Blog, “A fast site improves overall site quality and increases user satisfaction.”

Responsive Web Design

Fifth on our list is to give your website a responsive design. We could have included this to our #1 list but we decided to make it separate factor because nowadays, this helps to improve user experience.

Did you ever wonder what your visitors use to read your website? A laptop? A smartphone? or a tablet perhaps? This is why responsive web design is very important.

What is a responsive web design?

Quoting from Smashing Magazine, “Responsive Web design is the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation.”

Optimized for SEO

Last but not the list on our “What Makes a Good Website” list is that a website must be SEO optimized or in other words SEO-friendly. All the other 5 factors are meaningless without this.

What is the use of a pretty, fully-functional website, with fast-loading pages and good content if it cannot be found on search engines?

SEO helps your site get visibility in search engines. Visibility in search engines means more traffic to your website and the most important thing is that you can be found by potential customers. SEO has proved itself to be one of the most important components of any organization’s branding efforts and online presence.

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