Why Ecommerce Websites Prefer Using Magento To Sell Products and Services

The list of features that Magento has should alone clue you in as to why Magento is such a trusted and popular ecommerce software. Online stores allow those with Internet access, around the world to conveniently shop from the comfort of their home.

When building an ecommerce site, it is essential to offer your customers a site that is reliable, fast, secure, and easy to use. Magento offers all of that, plus some; from offering customers up-sells and coupons to being able to create a wish list and email it to yourself and others.

Customization is key; with the amount of websites around and the number of online stores, it’s important that your store stand out. Magento features allow users to customize nearly every portion of their store, from placement of widgets to colors. Second to appearance in the world of web sites is ranking and SEO content. Search engine optimization comes built-in with SEO features making it increasingly easier for site administrators to keep their web site high in search rankings.

Brands from Zumiez and North Face to Bonobos and I Love Jeans, have found great success with the easy integration, the feature-rich platform, and the regular updates of Magento and make it easy to see why so many others utilize it also.

6 Magento Benefits Over Other Ecommerce Platforms

Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Choose Magento as Your Ecommerce Platform

10 SMS Mobile Marketing Facts

SMS marketing seems to have taken the world by storm recently. And for good reason too. Here are some SMS Mobile Marketing Facts that might have you changing your mind about text messaging

– 91% of US residents have their cellular device within reach 24-hours each day, 7 days per week.

– You will find more cell phones to the earth than TVs.

– Worldwide, more individuals own mobile phones than toothbrushes

– 85% of all mobile searches lead to actions within one hour.

– 10x the redemption rate is achieved by mobile coupons as compared to conventional printed coupons.

– In 2013 $4.2 million was spent on Mobile Applications

– An estimated $29.5 million will be used on Mobile Apps in 2013

So what can we understand from this?

Over the previous ten years, cellular phone use has developed at a relatively constant speed. From the marketing view, consider this: it’s estimated that over 70% of individuals worldwide have a mobile phone of some sort by 2011. This implies that 70% of all clients may currently be attained at any period of-the day, in any nation on earth, in any language. With these kind of SMS Mobile Marketing Facts, it’s easy to see why SMS marketing has become so popular. What is really astonishing is that because we’ve entered into the age of smartphone technology that increase has improved tremendously. Just imagine what SMS Marketing in 2013 will look like.

So how does a marketer make the most of these text messaging facts?

This is a brand new method to reach your market: Marketers who establish advertising campaigns targeted for mobile phones will raise the chance of catching your crowd’s focus. Time spent watching TELEVISION takes up about 16% of our everyday lives as Americans, normally. Why devote an enormous amount of cash on TV ads, once the number of time your clients are spending watching TELEVISION is decreasing? Especially if they’re texting and searching the internet while watching reruns of their favorite shows.

The key is to get your customers to take action: It is approximated that it requires a cellular phone person, on average, about 90 seconds to react to your text message. Compare that to the estimated 24 hours it will take for anyone to respond to an e-mail! As a marketer, should you send an SMS text message, your clients will get it almost immediately and read it nearly instantly as well. If your text messages are persuasive enough, you can see tremendous returns. It’s easy to see why these SMS Mobile Marketing Facts have been making big splashes in the marketing community.

7 SMS Mobile Marketing Facts and How SMS Marketing will Grow Your Business

Until recently, mobile advertising was comparatively a brand new area. But with mobile products now outnumbering PCs it is the right time for experienced entrepreneurs to take eager interest. And several of my own training clients frequently ask me, what really the advantages of mobile advertising?

Here are seven mobile marketing tips that will help you understand the SMS Marketing Business.

1. The cellphone is fairly individual.

You likely do not understand this. Computers aren’t as private as cellular phones. Actually 90% of Japanese surveyed stated they wouldn’t reveal their mobile-phone devices, in other countries the amount stands at about 63%.

2. Mobile phones are consistently kept close at hand.

Here’s something intriguing, according to 2007 study by Morgan Stanley, 91% of mobile-phone owners maintain their cellphone products within one metre, 24 hrs per day. Evidently, even in-the toilet. That means that advertising communications may be read and applied immediately. Your SMS Marketing Business strategy can begin to bear fruits within a few minutes.

3. The telephone is always on.

Consider it. Do you ever leave your phone behind intentionally? In reality a lot of folks find it hard to leave behind cellphones even if they’re on vacation. For business owners, that indicates that you could reach anyone anytime 24 hours a day. Warning: Do not send advertising communications at three in the morning. I doubt if many folks will value this.

4. The transaction method is simple.

Most phones tend to have some sort of integrated payment system. This makes it pretty easy to buy things straight from your phone.

5. The handset is a fantastic device for impulse purchase.

Their phones are always carried by most people and any advertising communications done correctly can generate impulse buying. This is part of the reason why the SMS Marketing Business has been booming recently.

6. Accurate measuring and audience tracking.

The truth that cell phones are seldom shared means that any words call, Text message can immediately be monitored to special amount.

7. Effortlessly blends with social-media platforms.

Several mobile devices may also be utilized to browse the internet and Social networking websites like Facebook and twitter considerably depend on mobile devices.

As a business owner, finding companies that do Mass Text Messaging for Businesses is one of the best ways you can grow your business. The only thing you need to make sure of is that your message doesn’t turn your intended audience away. When done properly, Small Business Marketing using SMS messaging is one of the most cost effective ways of doing business.

Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Choose Magento as Your Ecommerce Platform

The introduction of e-commerce in the world has changed the mode of the businesses in this world. While doing business directly with customers or with other business firms, the use of e-commerce platforms has gained a wider importance. There are many e-commerce platforms available today in the market, but the Magento platform provides the best of the e-commerce solutions due to various advanced features. Various reasons for choosing the Magento platform are as discussed below.

1. Open Source Platform: The e-commerce platform Magento is an open source platform. This means that the users like programmers and developers of this platform can view the code and can easily modify the code of the platform to give custom looks and functioning features to their websites according to what they want their website to be like.
2. Rich in features: The Magento platform has an upper hand over other platforms of e-commerce with a plus point that this platform comes with a variety of inbuilt features allowing users to get the most out of this platform. Various features are like SO friendly environment, comparison and management of products and much more.
3. Growing community of developers and users: The community of the Magento users and developers is very wide and is growing at a fast pace also. This growing community is helpful in observing various negative points of the platform highlighting the errors of the platform causing problem to the users and developers present there are ready all the time to help users with the best possible solutions for the errors.
4. Extensions: Since the platform comes with an open source feature, there is an advantage of creating custom extensions by the developers. This flexibility of the Magento platform to be used by the developers and users according to their requirements makes the platform worthy enough to be termed as the best e-commerce platform available till date.
5. Integration Flexibility: Magento has a flexibility in terms of integration with applications to be interfaced with it. The Magento platform has an extensive Application Programming Interface that allows users to integrate it to various standalone applications along with the various web applications present on the web. This allows the users to gain a flexible control over their website according to changing needs. Also, the platform comes with a flexibility feature of upgrading from other e-commerce platforms as well. After change of the platform, the details of the information like products’ details, information of customers and orders and other valuable information stored with previous platforms can be easily fetched and stored in this platform.

6 Magento Benefits Over Other Ecommerce Platforms

In this world of high competition, the competition level in the segment of online business has also grown to a high level. At this level of competition, a well developing business run by you needs to have the best e-commerce platform. The industrial segment working on the design and development of websites is now having a huge range of e-commerce applications. All these applications need a single solution that proves to be the best among all. Magento is a robust, featured with various user friendly features and provides the best solution to numerous e-commerce web issues raised among the online business. Some of the benefits of this platform over other platforms present in e-commerce are as given below.

• Open Source: The Magento platform is an open source platform. This gives the permission to its users and various developers around the world to open up the code written for the Magento platform and modify it to customize the looks and the functioning of the website according to their needs and requirements.
• Community: This platform of e-commerce has a large number of developers in its community. This large umber of members, developers and programmers proves to be very helpful to the normal users of this platform in e-commerce service. The community members continually work on various features of Magento and discuss the issues with each other to get out the best of the solutions.
• Freedom to choose Hosting Service: Unlike other e-commerce platforms available in the world, Magento offers a unique benefit of the freedom to choose your own hosting service. Since, most of the e-commerce platforms are bound to the hosts and thus, compel the retailers to use their hosting service only, which is not the case when using Magento platform.
• Features: Magento has another plus point of various number of features available in it that make it a clear winner in the competition of the e-commerce platform fight.
• Integration: The extensible Application Programming Interface adds more to the popularity of the Magento platform. This API of the Magento allows connecting with all types of web and standalone applications available worldwide. This also helps the business utilizing it to be flexible with the internet services according to the change of requirements with time.
• SEO Friendly: Another main feature of the Magento is that it provides the designs of the websites that prove to be friendly as far as the Search Engine Optimization functioning of the site is concerned, thus, it helps websites using it get a better rank on search pages.

SMS Marketing Has Increased 34% in the Hospitality Industry

Some of the great scholars and marketing experts say that marketing fuels the business process. But, observing the recent scenario and the changes in it, it can be noticed that the components of the fuel are changing rapidly. Now marketing also is a technology driven process. It helps the firms to connect with their customers in every level of interaction and buying process. The evolution process of marketing is just great to observe. First there were play cards, then came radio, then came television, then came internet and now SMS marketing. In a way, it seems that the tools are getting smaller and smaller.

The marketing process in the hotel industry is the most exciting to watch as the industry is showing an intensive growth in spite of the competitive market and the firms have to continuously innovate new marketing strategies. Until recently, internet or digital marketing was the key trend setter for the business organizations and their customers. However, with the advent of mobile or text marketing, marketing seems to have picked by a rapid space. As the business executives and customers were thinking of giving internet the award for best marketer, SMS marketing came into the picture and somewhat made major changes in the picture.

The use of mobile marketing has increased by 6.9% in the world business sector and in the hospitality sector SMS marketing went up a stunning 34.6%. One of the renowned leaders of the hospitality sector, Marriott International developed specialized mobile services for their customers that allow them to get the latest deals and packages on their cell phone. There is more, the customers can avail to these services and deals with the minimum expenditure of time and money directly and instantly from their cell phone (Available from: http://www.marriottvanderbilt.com/stayconnected). The rising involvement of mobile marketing also signifies the customers’ acceptance of it.

The need for accessing internet has also decreased with direct SMSs from the services providers. No need to search though a long list of websites, instead the companies come to them directly. The SMS marketing technique was initially used by the telecom service providers for understanding the needs of the customers. This concept was picked up by other industries as they observed that mobile usage was growing. Specifying the hotel industry it can be stated that SMS marketing has taken it by storm, from booking to cancellation everything little business aspects can be done through this amazing new marketing concept.

What is SMS Mobile Marketing and How Can I Use SMS Campaign to Drive Awareness to my Business

When it comes to marketing and promotion, you may consider SMS Mobile Marketing among the effective and best routes to be had. It’s also calculated as the most effective mode of marketing both in Asia and Europe. In addition, this SMS Campaign has the ability to achieve lots of market penetration and has taken over a few cities due to that ability. With a Mass SMS Mobile Marketing campaign, it will be easier to get your message across to the widest possible audience. Keeping this in mind, here are several hints to make your Text effort worthwhile:

Little to no elaborate language

Customers are attained with a more individual approach much easier than with your advertising lingo. However, this doesn’t mean that you won’t suffer a disadvantage if you include it. The small space for the text is your restriction. This is not as much of a disadvantage as it seems. You can use your restriction to develop SMS Campaigns that get straight to the point. You do not need to drive your prospective clients away by prattling on with no intention.

Short sentences are Better

Optimize your campaigns by breaking up the primary information in brief phrases, since there is a very small room for the text messages. In this manner, you can clearly state your purpose while inserting more related sentences in the whole message. It’s a bad idea to type in all caps, unless you need to emphasize a point. Your customers will often become irritated if you use them too often during your Mass SMS Mobile Marketing campaigns.

Only include the most important information in your messages

Recall that you just have 160 characters to easily fit into a little display in undertaking your SMS marketing message to your market. Do not cram your message with a lot of attributes that’ll just cause your readers confusion. Emphasis and display only the greatest features you can provide them, and then perhaps you can present your additional offers on your own website, social media marketing websites, or shop.

Actionable Information

SMS Mobile Marketing works because your information becomes actionable. This obliges users to consider taking action once they’re confronted with a message they comprehend to require an action that must be made immediately. Attempt to using words including “Purchase”, “Buy”, “Subscribe”, or “Avail”. Companies that have made this a rule of thumb in their company have tremendously increased the amount of customers they have.

10 Reasons Why SMS Mobile Marketing Is Effective for Night Clubs

Technology has advanced far beyond what anybody could have perceived a decade ago. Almost 80% of the working population today uses smartphone. Of that population almost 90% use the internet from their smartphones to find gas stations, ATMs, nightclubs and restaurants. Mobile phones offer an amazing opportunity to attract new clientele and maintain a healthy relationship with them. The potential to attract customers, create a brand and maintain a healthy relationship.

Using the service of SMS marketing always keeps you in touch with your customer base. At the same time, it is a cost-effective and time-effective measure of promotions and marketing. Where everybody has a mobile phone today, it is only right that companies use this potential to maximize their opportunity. Nightclubs can reap the most benefit of these services since they can always connect to their customers and potential customers with the help of a simple SMS.

An SMS marketing campaign can:

  • Help you create a simple worded message for your intended audience.
  • Help you send discount offers or coupons to your customers. People love being treated specially. The thought of an offer or discount, especially for them makes your business stand out from the rest.
  • Help you create a VIP area or clubhouse for your regular and loyal customers. A customized SMS can help you reach out to them and maintain their business.
  • Help you make special announcements for events, celebrations, festivals and the likes. All nightclubs try to set up special events on New Year’s Eve or Christmas for their customers. The customized service, menu and events promise a special treatment for their customers. It is also a good time to increase their clientele, since most people look to celebrate this time of the year.
  • Helps you gain a higher return on investment than other medias of promotion such as newspaper, e-mail, TV ads or website ads. The low cost of SMS mobile marketing and their ability to reach the mass enables a greater chance of increased return on the investment.
  • Help you introduce mobile coupons, wherein customers can avail special offers just by showing the text.
  • Help you treat your customers exclusively on their birthdays. It can enable you to sign up customer’s birthdays and anniversaries so that they can celebrate the night at your place.
  • Help you send special reminders to your customer on their special days.
  • Help you sign-up customers for newsletters and other modes of promotions and communications.
  • Start your SMS Marketing Campaign today!

What is IDX and How Can I Use it for My Real Estate Website?

IDX stands for Internet Data Exchange and is used as the data connection with the MLS. Most Realtor websites to not take full advantage of the MLS and IDX.

Over 90% of first-time home buyers use the internet to research homes for sale.

IDX Benefits

  • Property Syndication
  • Updated Property Listing
  • Lead Tracking and Lead Forwarding
  • Ability to Customize Properties That You Want to Display

10 Must Have Features for Real Estate Websites

Websites in general have evolved over the past several years, and in some areas have evolved over the past several months. Website that rank well have great content, are user-friendly and have features that help the user browser or use the website.

1. Language Translation
Most real estate websites feature only one language. If you do not have a language translator, you could easily being missing out on 3-5% of the traffic.

2. Contact Lead Forms
Contact Lead Forms are one on the many ways that potential leads will reach out to you. We suggest having unique contact lead forms for each of your segments. If you focus are rentals, commercial properties, condos rentals and short sales. You should have 4 unique contact forms for each of those segments.

3. Website Sharing
Giving your website the ability to share it with friends and families will help you get the word out.

4. Custom IDX Feeds
Give your user base the information the information they need. IDX and MLS links can be customized by area, zip code, bathrooms, bedrooms, prices, residential property type, community and more.

5. SlideShows
Visitors love slideshows and images. Creating custom slideshows for each of your properties will enhance any website.

6. Realtor Blog
Creating strong, relevant and local content will help you increase your search engine visibility.

7. Social Media Integration
All your properties and blog posts should be posted to you Social outlets.

8. Email Marketing Sign-up List
Give your visitors the opportunity to sign-up and receive updated property information.

9. Paid Search Landing Pages
Driving traffic to your website to increase your listing and leads is crucical for any website, and real estate professionals. Paid Search landing pages should be setup for each targeted segment and should be unique to the Paid Search campaign.

10. Mobile Device Friendly
Your website should be able to be viewed on a mobile device without errors. Your phone number should be coded in HTML and should be coded to make it clickable.