Category: Blog

Benefits of Outsourced Product Development

Posted on by admin
Outsourcing product development has become a popular option for companies looking to develop high-quality software solutions while minimizing costs and reducing risks. There are several benefits to outsourcing product development that companies can take advantage of.

Access to a Wider Talent Pool

Outsourcing allows companies to access a wider talent pool than they would otherwise have access to. By outsourcing product development, companies can tap into the skills and expertise of talented developers and designers from all over the world. This can be particularly beneficial for companies that are struggling to find the right talent in their local area or that need to quickly scale up their development team.

Cost Savings

Outsourcing product development can also lead to significant cost savings. Companies can avoid the costs associated with hiring and training new employees, as well as the costs of maintaining an in-house development team. Additionally, outsourcing can help reduce the costs of development by taking advantage of lower labor costs in other countries.

Faster Time-to-Market

Outsourcing product development can help companies bring their products to market faster. By outsourcing development, companies can take advantage of the expertise and experience of their outsourcing partners, who are likely to have developed similar products before. This can help speed up the development process, leading to a faster time-to-market and a competitive advantage.

Reduced Risk

Outsourcing product development can also help reduce the risk associated with developing new products. By working with an outsourcing partner, companies can benefit from their partner’s experience and expertise, as well as their established development processes and quality assurance practices. This can help ensure that products are developed to a high standard and meet the necessary regulatory requirements.

Focus on Core Competencies

Outsourcing product development can also allow companies to focus on their core competencies. By outsourcing development, companies can delegate the technical aspects of product development to their outsourcing partners, freeing up their internal resources to focus on other areas such as marketing, sales, and customer service.

Increased Flexibility

Outsourcing product development can also provide companies with increased flexibility. By working with an outsourcing partner, companies can quickly scale their development team up or down as needed, without the need to hire or lay off employees. This can help companies respond to changing market conditions and customer needs more quickly and effectively.

In conclusion, outsourcing product development can provide companies with several benefits, including access to a wider talent pool, cost savings, faster time-to-market, reduced risk, a focus on core competencies, and increased flexibility. By outsourcing product development, companies can develop high-quality software solutions while minimizing costs and risks, and focus on their core business objectives.

Being one of the Best outsourced product development company in India, we at SplendorNet Technologies have delivered various solutions and are managing IT partners of various companies, and startups. We have been catering to clients from the USA, UK, India, and many European countries.

5 Best Open Source Shopping Cart eCommerce platforms

Posted on by admin
There’s a lot of discussion going on in the eCommerce world on which is the best shopping cart platform.

While, it’s a fact that the right choice will be dictated by the position the business is in, we can still rate a few Open Source platforms which will be able to have you covered at all the stages.

While one is identifying the right platform, here are some aspects that should be taken into account:
  • Security – Is the platform secure?
  • Control – Do I get the source code so that everything is always in my control?
  • Customizability – Can the platform be customized to suit some special needs of your business?
  • Extensiveness – Does the shopping cart offer enough extra features off the shelf which otherwise, would’ve needed to be custom built?
  • Usability – Is the software easy to use and navigate for the customer?
  • Performance – In traffic conditions, does the platform work smooth and fast? Does it keep crashing time to time?
  • Maintainability – Is the platform easy and less costly to maintain?

Here are 5 best Open Source platforms which qualify under all the above criteria :

#5 – Prestashop

French brand PrestaShop offers a very thorough shopping cart software. PrestaShop allows you to select from one of many professional themes to make your store look the part. It also offers a global SSL secure selling experience, and a variety of languages through translation add-ons, paid though.

When it comes to the shopping cart itself, the software is also very extensive, with summary pages, confirmation pages and a variety of payment options.

Built with PHP programming language, Prestashop scores decent on control and maintainability. But lags a little bit behind on security and customization aspects due to lack of a standard development framework.

#4 – Magento

Magento is one of highest used Open Source platforms all across the world. Magento is an old platform which has kept evolving with time and technology evolution.

Magento core is developed using PHP and it provides a robust process to add readymade or custom plugins. There is a huge marketplace where you will get every plugin covering a great deal of requirements.

As the platform is built using a strong MVC framework, it scores high on the security aspect.

But when it comes to customization, Magento makes it pretty tough to do that.

While the platform works decently in the initial stages of business, as the traffic increases, the performance starts becoming a pain.

#3 – Oscar

Django Oscar is the best Python based shopping portal platform that is available.

With Python programming language at it’s core and a fantastic development framework like Django, Oscar scores the highest on security, customizability and performance aspects.

The biggest strength of Oscar lies in it’s programming language, Python. Python is currently the worlds’ most favored language when it comes to anything cuttent edge. You will easily get packages for AI/ML, IoT or even BlockChain in Python. If your business is moving towards something from these, Oscar is THE platform for you.

But it’s not a very widely used platform and also lacks a little in community support. Because of these points, you don’t get a lot of ready extensions and packages available when you want to quickly add new features and facilities to the platform.

Also, Python developers are relatively costlier than PHP resources. This makes the maintenance costlier as well.

#2 – WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free self hosted WordPress plugin that adds a shopping cart and eCommerce functionality to your store. The brand is well known for being one of the market leaders in its sector, and claims to have 28% of the world’s stores using its plugin. Most of the entry level businesses choose WooCommerce as the first platform.

Being a plugin of WordPress, it’s highly SEO friendly. But it can be challenging to use if you are unfamiliar with WordPress. However, WooCommerce does offer support via email and forums, that can guide you through issues.

Built with PHP, WooCommerce is pretty strong at security. But customization is something that most of the developers would love to avoid because of it’s pretty basic development framework.

As it primarily works as a part of WordPress setup, it obviously has challenges when it comes to performance. Especially, when there’s a higher traffic, WooCommerce tends to become slow / non-responsive or even crash.

#1 – OpenCart

Hong Kong based OpenCart offers a free shopping cart option, which you can modify to suit your needs. OpenCart has multiple language functionalities, but despite that the default language used is English. The brand is ideal for smaller businesses due to the initial cost being free. However, if you plan to build a business, OpenCart provides you a LOT of extensions to suit your needs.

A PHP based platform, OpenCart scores high on security and performance aspects. With a nice MVC development framework being used, OpenCart makes it very easy for customization. The same framework also makes the maintainability very easy and cost effective as well.

With these fantastic features and specifications, OpenCart becomes the top Open Source platform in our list.

SEO Tips for increasing traffic to your eCommerce site and also increasing sales

Posted on by admin
For any eCommerce site to thrive, customers are the most important need. (Obviously, right?)

The problem is, getting customers’ attention is expensive. According to some surveys, the average cost per click in the apparel industry is around 89 cents, while the average cost per action is almost $10.

This simply means you may have to spend thousands to gain just a few new customers.

But wait, everything is not that bleak. If you focus some more of your energy on SEO, you can gain free (yes, free!) organic traffic by helping your site show up in the Search Engines.

Following are some important aspects for you to work on.

1. Keywords

Arguably the MOST important aspect of all.

Do you know that every 60 seconds, 3.8 million searches are run only on Google? How do you then make sure that your site and products feature in the results?

For this, the first step is identifying a targeted list of keywords. This list needs to be categorised in “Short Tail” and “Long Tail” keywords. Short Tail keywords are searched way more but also result into a LOT of results and are lower on conversions. Whereas, the Long Tail keywords get fewer searches but the conversion percentage is higher.

2. Website Flow / Architecture

The site architecture allows you to map out how the user flows through your website. As the business owner, you want the user to be able to quickly identify key pages and the relationships between the pages.

You need to make sure that you categorise the products and overall the website pages in such a way that it’s very intuitive for the customers to reach up to the product that they are looking for.

To arrive at a logically right flow, ask yourself :
  • What are the searches that bring the customers to your site?
  • What are the searches that customers run once they’re on your site?
  • Which are the highest traffic-receiving pages on your website?
  • Which are the top “Exit Pages”?

3. Naming and Linking

Once you know the right keywords, you have to ensure that you make use of those while naming the products, categories and sub-categories.

Remember, the categories and sub-categories will have the Short Tail keywords as on in their names. And the products will have one or more Long Tail keywords as or in their names.

4. Technical SEO

Apart from all these, there are a lot of technical aspects which matter big time if your website is to appear in searches.

These are the aspects, in which your tech partner needs to be well-versed.

Action plan for you is simple. Speak with your tech partner about technical SEO aspect and make sure that he can explain you all the things that are in place on this aspect.

Loading time of your website and landing pages also turns out to be THE most important criteria.

SplendorNet team, with all the experience and expertise generated out of it, has prepared a list of a lot of processes and checklists that are taken care of automatically without their clients giving instructions explicitly.

5 Most Important Analytical Reports for eCommerce Businesses

Posted on by admin
We all are always thinking that we are running your eCommerce businesses. But most of the times, the truth is, our eCommerce businesses are running us.

The main reason behind this is, not having proper handles to get hold of the business and drive it in right direction.

It’s been observed that many eCommerce business owners tend to ignore the need of intuitive analytical reports. While they are using some out-of-the-box platforms, they keep themselves limited to the simple analytics that are provided by the platforms.

Here we are trying to give you a list of 5 most important reports according to us, which will help you take charge of your business and take it in the right direction in a “Data Driven” mode.

1. Sales Conversion Report

A store conversion report is a must for any eCommerce store owner. This report gives you insights into the number of visitors of different types, geographies, age-groups, visit times etc and how many of them completed a purchase on the website.

Having these details can help you grow your business in multiple ways. Simply put, this report gives you the opportunities for creating optimization and retention strategies, as well as improving your marketing tactics.

Similarly, you can also use the report to remarket to prospects who were close to buying from you but didn’t. How? By getting a list of visitors who didn’t purchase (find their names in the second last step in your conversion report). Then re-engaging those people by sending them a promo code, for instance.

2. Abandoned Cart Report

There are a lot of instances when website visitors add items to cart, reach the checkout stage and abandon the process. Having a lot of abandoned cart instances and details about at what point did they quit, give you very strong inputs for bringing improvements in the checkout experience.

This makes it very important for you to have this report in your eCommerce website and keep a watch on it almost on a daily basis.

3. Order fulfillment Report

This one of the most important eCommerce reports which is crucial for keeping a constant eye on customer order statuses.

Essentially, the Order Fulfillment Report provides information about customer shipments, including tracking numbers for individual packages. Through this report, managers know when they have been shipped off and how many items were included in a particular shipment.

Having this information at hand is critical for solving any customer queries related to shipping and returns that may come in.

Not only this, but as we are aware, shipping costs play a big effect on the profit margins, this report also gives the owners an opportunity to see if and how they can optimize the shipping process to expedite the delivery and possibly decrease the costs.

This report is also important for those of you who are aiming to improve customer experience by offering reliable and fast delivery – something that 79.3% say is important to them with 28.6% admitting delivery dates influence their buying decisions.

4. Purchase Funnel Performance

On any eCommerce website, it’s very important to get to know the leakage location and reasons of customers.

The purchase funnel is very nicely elaborated in the illustration below.

This report aims at giving you the exact number of customers reaching at every stage in this funnel. And with this insight, you can take right decisions on bringing improvements at various steps.

5. Combo sales Report

This is another clever report that helps you in improving the upsells.

This report simply gives you the list of products that were bought together most times. With this, you can decide on creating these as products bundle and sell separately, may be at a little discounted price.

There are a LOT of reports that you can keep a close watch on. But the above are a few that are missing from many eCommerce portals and the business owners are missing the Emmens power they bring in terms of decision support.

Technology platforms best suited for E-Commerce businesses

Posted on by admin
One of the most difficult challenges for any online business is choosing the right eCommerce platform because it is an all-in-one software solution that empowers online businesses to seamlessly manage their website, marketing, sales, and operations. If you start with the wrong eCommerce platform, it’s going to hurt your business soon. By keeping these four essential factors in mind make a wise and balanced choice:
  • Growth: You need the ability to expand your services and offerings quickly.
  • Running costs: The cost of building your eCommerce platform is just a starting point, but one must check to consider the factor in ongoing maintenance costs.
  • Customer engagement: To engage with customers what built-in tools does the platform provide?
  • Service: To support customer conversion, loyalty, and retention prioritise customer service.
Following are technology platforms that are known to be the right options for sustaining rapid growth in traction.

Shopify:

Shopify is a well-known eCommerce platform containing everything you need or look for in your eCommerce store exhaustively. This secure eCommerce software serves as a complete package for your eCommerce website and allows you to effortlessly create different pages with an inbuilt online editor, sell in multiple places through the integration of regional language support and customize online stores. This platform powers over 500,000 businesses in 175 countries. It’s a one-stop shop for eCommerce traders who are willing to leverage their online store. There’s a myriad of reasons why Shopify is the best eCommerce platform.
  • Hosted solution
  • Inbuilt Marketing Tools
  • Commendable Technical Support
  • Speed & Security
  • Reduces Errors & Data Duplicity Issues
  • Advanced Functionality
  • Own Payment Gateway
  • Visually Appealing Online Store.

Open Cart:

In the online environment, every online business has to discover e-commerce solution in order to choose the best one. Among the various available shopping carts, Open cart is seen as one of the best solutions that combine simplicity, flexibility, and multi-functionality. It is perfect for small-scale businesses as well as large-scale businesses. Open cart is ideal for businesses who are looking for simple, easy manageable tools. As the Open cart platform has a responsive framework available, one can access the website across all mediums, desktop, mobile, and tablets. Here are a few features which make OpenCart a quite popular option today:
  • OpenCart is easy, reliable, and flexible
  • Functional Administrative UI
  • Options for managing multiple stores
  • Can levy multiple tax rate
  • Access to a variety of payment gateways
  • Management of Sales report
  • Highly SEO optimized
  • Available in multiple languages

Magento:

The eCommerce landscape is changing and growing. With more users now preferring to go online to make a purchase, it is imperative to leverage the best platform for eCommerce website development. For businesses and individuals looking for developing a professional eCommerce site for the long term, they should think of Magento as a priority. To build an online store Magento is the best open-source. Here are some of the features that make Magento one of the best platforms for building an eCommerce platform as follows:
  • Open source – Highly customization
  • Freedom to choose the hosting services
  • Responsive mobile
  • Easy multi-platform integration
  • Increase Website Speed
  • SEO friendly
So if you are looking for any of the above platforms to build an e-commerce website. SplendorNet is one of the few Shopify, Open Cart, and Magento development companies in Pune (India) with strong expertise in the Shopify, Open Cart, and Magento platforms. If you are looking for a Shopify, Open Cart, and Magento partner, a Shopify, Open Cart, and Magento developer, a Shopify, Open Cart, and Magento development company, or a Shopify, Open Cart, and Magento programmer, we would love to discuss your requirements and come up with the right solution at the best possible price / hourly rate.

Challenges and Limitations faced by E-Commerce businesses

Posted on by admin
E-commerce is raging across the globe including in India. While most retail sectors have taken a blow, one of the most interesting changes taking place in 2022 is the shift to digital. With many people at home, the number of Google searches has multiplied and people have started using e-commerce to buy products they preliminarily would have purchased in physical retail stores. Coming to the scenario in India, businesses and majorly start-ups face many limitations and challenges, not without reason.

The following are the main limitations and challenges faced by businesses and startups:

Cyber & Data Security:

One of the biggest challenges faced by e-commerce businesses is security breaches. While dealing with eCommerce there is a lot of information/data that is involved and a technical issue with data can cause severe damage to the retailer’s daily operations as well as brand image. If not dealt with well, this aspect can result in dire consequences.

Agility Challenge:

Agility means the ability of businesses to advance, develop and deploy digital content, and respond to seasonal changes rapidly. One of the most critical initiatives in eCommerce businesses and start-ups is agility, which drives immediate digital fulfillment. At the heart of the digital business lies agile transformation, and scaling is also essential for making it successful. Many businesses and startups face difficulties to move or change quickly to adapt to customers’ needs. The reason is they cannot integrate new technologies efficiently with their existing system, and hence penetration into the market gets more complicated.

Being Consistent:

For an eCommerce business, consistent performance of the website is a very essential factor as a good eCommerce performance leads to a higher engagement rate and conversion. Some of the factors that businesses should look for are, choosing a potential e-Commerce platform, Integrating a search box, Mobile optimised site, Integrating a safe payment gateway for secure transactions, Adding an SSL certificate to ensure security, etc.

Technology Partnerships:

Choosing the right technology partner is one of the most important decisions for any eCommerce business. Many businesses tend to choose a technological partner based on costs without first setting the right expectations or understanding their work scope. Much is at stake when businesses join hands with a technology company to bring their idea to life. On the other hand there are various platforms available in the market like OpenCart, Shopify, Magento and many more. Bisinesses should choose wisely which platform suits their business.

Customer Retention:

Many eCommerce businesses struggle to retain their customer base. There are various factors that affect customer retention such as a website being down due to poor hosting, poor UI/UX, the evolving expectation of the consumer, similar options, the failure to create a pleasant shopping experience, etc. Customer loyalty is a very important factor for a business’s success, and even a minor change in the business can ruin the brand’s reputation.

Here are the some marketing strategies to Boost your sales: eCommerce Marketing Strategies

Future Of Automation In The Transportation & Logistics Industry

Posted on by admin

IoT monitoring as standard for freight of all varieties:

The internet of things has made huge strides in recent times, and it’s now considered entirely pedestrian to link nearly anything to the cloud. IoT- based solutions can allow clients, logistics, and transportation companies to know where goods are located at all stages of the transportation process and monitor transport conditions such as temperature, humidity, vibrations, etc. This information is crucial in cases of sensitive goods transportation such as food, dangerous goods, medicinals, medical outfit, etc. Thus, IoT can be used to control transport conditions and make delivery more efficient.

Improved warehousing and space utilization:

For utilising resources to the fullest not only using warehouse space is an important part of the transportation process, but also using vehicle space is important. Any unutilised space on a vessel that could have carried more cargo is a waste of resources. By bringing automation into the process one can automate the movement of inventory into, within, and out of warehouses to customers with minimal human assistance. Also, automation helps, a business eliminate labor-intensive duties that involve repetitive physical work and manual data entry and analysis.

Chatbots enhancing internal and external comms:

Automation offers a lot in the area of communication too! With so much data being collected through IoT systems, and manually logged data where necessary by the staff, utilising this data properly is necessary. All sorts of data are dealt by chatbots in transportation. To provide up-to-date information on a particular query to bots and users this data is organised and structured. Chatbot also helps in site navigation as well as tracking shipments in real-time.

Further optimization in route management:

Route optimisation is used to optimise the delivery routes by providing the most efficient routes for delivery with the help of route optimising software solutions. In simple terms, its is a process of finding the route that is most cost and time- efficient to get from point A to point B. With route optimising software solutions, organisations can optimise multi-stop deliveries by leveraging real-time dynamic routing capabilities, ensure end-to-end visibility of shipments for delivery stakeholders through real-time tracking, tracing, and alerts, make deliveries flexible by using easy-to-change customizable business workflows, improve delivery happiness score by ensuring timely and transparent deliveries.

Top tech trends in supply chain & logistics shaping the future.

Posted on by admin
From all perspectives, technology brings dramatic changes in every aspect of our day-to-day life, revolutionizing our traditional approach to getting things done. The transport, logistics, and supply chain industry is no exception. The emergence of new-age digital technologies and innovative business models is drastically changing the outlook of transport, logistics, and supply chain management.

1. Internet of things (IoT) for Fleet Management.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to transform the transport industry by profoundly altering how transportation systems gather data and information by bringing together the major technical and business trends of mobility, automation, and data analytics. IoT refers to the networking of physical objects through the use of embedded sensors, actuators, and other devices that can collect and transmit information about real-time activity in the network.

The following are advantages of IoT in the Supply chain and Logistics Industry:
  • Telematics for Fleet Management.
  • Global Visibility for Delivery Management.
  • Increased Customer Satisfaction.
  • Meeting Regulatory Compliance.
  • User-based Insurance and Recovering Stolen Vehicles.
  • Defining Future Market Relationships.

2. AI and ML for optimization of routes

AI has emerged as one of the most important and efficient technologies in various industries including transport, logistics, and supply chain. Digitally transformation in the transport, logistics, and supply chain industry has opened new doors to efficiently manage the operation, scheduling, and gain end-to-end visibility. AI computing methods make it easy to analyze huge volumes of data in a sophisticated and efficient manner.

The following are advantages of AI and ML in the Supply chain and Logistics Industry:
  • Accurate Inventory Management.
  • Warehouse Efficiency.
  • Enhanced Safety.
  • Reduced Operations Costs.
  • On-Time Delivery.

3. Transportation Management Systems (TMS)

The Transport Management system (TMS) is a game changer in the industry. The TMS automates the transportation process and makes moving freight efficiently, reliably, and affordably. It provides businesses to handle a wide range of freight, from small packages to large shipments of commodities. It provides a cutting edge over the competition. One can have a customized TMS solution for providing a better experience according to their customer demand.

The following are advantages of the Transport Management System in the Supply chain and Logistics Industry:
  • Better Customer Service.
  • Improved Warehouse Productivity.
  • Tracking Deliveries.
  • Inventory Management.
  • Lower Shipping Costs.
  • Supply Chain Visibility.
  • Enhanced Routing Capabilities.
  • Aligned Dock Scheduling.
  • Load and Route Optimization

4. Cloud Computing for data protection and Real-time Vehicle Tracking

The cloud-based solutions find their application in many industries having a wide range of diverse customers. The cloud computing solution provides flexibility and scalability which make it nearly a one size fits all solution. Transport, logistics, and supply chain companies can leverage cloud-based solutions as a way to keep, share, and secure information and data. Data is a priceless asset in the transport, logistics, and supply chain industry, especially nowadays, wherein it’s vital to have access to actual data for decision making. Utilizing cloud computing is the best way to manage such a critical asset.

The following are advantages of Cloud Computing in the Supply chain and Logistics Industry:
  • Increase in efficiency.
  • Data protection through redundancy.
  • Scalability.
  • Providing a cost-efficient alternative.
  • Real-time Vehicle Tracking.

Registration Forms

Posted on by admin
[ra_section_title style=”resolve” title=”” alignment=”align-left” content_font_container=”tag:p|font_size:18px|color:%23b0b0b0|line_height:24px” content_use_theme_fonts=”yes” use_custom_fonts_content=”true” css=”.vc_custom_1650610958017{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]Every additional field in your form is losing you leads – so consider whether each question justifies the incremental loss in leads or opt-ins.

  • 58 Form Design Best Practices & Form UX Examples

[/ra_section_title]

[ra_button style=”btn-solid” title=”Back” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fsplendornet.com%2Fblog%2F” text_color=”#ffffff” htext_color=”#ffffff”]

New Gmail functionality Allows Users to Send Self-destructing Emails

Posted on by admin
The new Gmail allows the user to protect sensitive information by allowing the sender of the email to set an expiration date for each individual message sent to the receiver.

Confidential Mode

Users can now enable a ‘confidential’ option when sending an email which means that recipients can only see the email for a set period of time. Recipients can also be blocked from being able to forward, download or print an email.

The new layout will allow users to click on attachments without needing to scroll through large conversations. The snooze button will allow users to delay some emails until they have time to address it.

While confidential mode prevents copying of the information it doesn’t protect the email from a screenshot, furthermore the confidential mode can be compromised if the user has been affected by malware.

Smart Replies

The new design has smart-assistant features such as ‘suggested replies’ to messages. This predicts how users might respond and automatically suggests a response – saving users from typing one back manually.

Security Redesign

As part of the re-design, Google’s machine-learning algorithms will run safety checks on every message received and will alert users in bold when it spots something that appears to be a threat.

In the update Gmail will also suggest when users should unsubscribe from newsletters or offers they no longer care about.

Awards & Recognition's

Let's Discuss Your Project!

Share the details of your project like scope or business challenges. Our team will carefully study them and then we’ll figure out the next move together.