Designing an eCommerce Website: Why to Go for PSD to Magento?

None of us will deny the fact that more people nowadays are moving towards eCommerce store for their purchasing requirements, and to fulfill these needs of the present-day world, numerous eCommerce store have emerged. So to make your eCommerce website survive in this competitive environment, it should be well structured and well presented so that your potential customers and visitors would love to spend their time on your site.

PSD to Magento conversion is a wonderful way to customize an eCommerce website as it can give a great web shape to the design of your website. And as we all know, an effective and attractive website can easily grab the attention of its visitors and make them stay.

Aside from being a wonderful open source to start an eCommerce store, Magento provides some interactive features such as multiple payment and shipping options, flexible product catalog, mobile and global commerce, custom development, return management authorization, and many more.

Let's check out the benefits of a good PSD to Magento conversion :

1. Cross-Browser/OS Compatibility : Your site visitors may not be using the same web browser/OS as you. It is must for a website to be compatible with all major browsers and operating systems available so that you can get the maximum number of visitors. And if your PSD is perfectly coded and converted into Magento, you get a 100% cross-browser website.

2. Security : Loopholes in the coding of your Magento estore can make it highly vulnerable. However, a good PSD slicing firm can assure you of a bulletproof Magento estore.

3. Multiple Language Support : Multiple language support function is must as we are living in a world where people use various languages. Though good PSD to Magento service providers do incorporate this support in your website but it's always better to ask them for it.

4. Multi Currency Payment Systems : Each country has different currency and to make make your eCommerce store globally popular it must have a multi currency payment system. Magento can provide a multi currency payment system to your website.

5. Easy Navigation : Easy navigation is another important factor for an online store. When visitors go to a site what they expect is to easily and quickly find the product they are looking for – any complexity can put them off. So it is must to have an easy navigation to make your eCommerce store successful. A firm that knows Magento well will make sure that your Magento store is easy to navigate.

The list does not end here; for a good PSD to Magento conversion can make your eCommerce store visually attractive with W3C-validated, semantic and clean coding, and awesome Magento theme.

PixelCrayons converts your design files from various common image formats into best quality cross-browser compatible W3C validated XHTML/CSS markup. Check xhtml.pixelcrayons.com for our PSD to HTML and PSD to email services.

Why Many Big Companies Trust on Drupal?

Content Management Systems are the preferred mode of managing a business website. Drupal, WordPress and Joomla have become synonymous with website development. While WordPress and Joomla have numbers to boast about when it comes to business websites Drupal is undoubtedly the most popular CMS solution. Its features and scalability make it the first choice for most businesses. Now all this isn’t by fluke as Drupal has strong reasons for commanding this popularity. Here are some of the reasons why Drupal rules over other CMS solutions when it comes to business websites.

• Size Does Matter : Drupal has been developed to handle the interest of large business websites. If WordPress is meant to be the ultimate tool for creating blogs than Drupal has large business website written all over it. How is it different from others? Well, Drupal allows multiple processes to run simultaneously on the server which is one of the basic needs of large sites. The backend can handle multiple queries while catering to a large number of users and their specific needs.

• Modular Structure : Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither are large business websites. Drupal, being highly modular in nature, allows developers to add new sections and functionality to the website as and when required without disturbing its existing structure. This is further assisted by the easy availability of third-party plugins which assist in the development of the website and making it informative as well as interactive for the end users. Complex functions can easily be incorporated in Drupal with minimum coding requirements.

• Security : For any business website one of the major bones of contention is the security of the website and that of the customers who use it. Compared to other CMS solutions that are available in the market, Drupal scores high on the security features. There are multiple levels of security which prevent any unauthorized access to the restricted sections of the website. The admin can also set custom permission levels for different individuals using the website.

• Search Engine Friendly : Online visibility of a website is one of the biggest contributing factors in its success. Drupal generates search engine friendly codes which are easily picked by crawlers which index the websites high on the Search Engine Results Pages or SERP. This allows you to garner highly targeted traffic for your business website, adding to its marketability and competitive advantages.

• Strong Developer Community : Drupal has a strong and well knit community of designers and developers who are constantly working in making the CMS better and working on its loopholes. This community support acts as a great source of help for any developer who faces issues with the development of the website. If you post a query highlighting the issues you are facing this would be replied by some of the most well-known Drupal developers in the world.

The aforementioned advantages make Drupal highly suitable for developing complex business websites.

PixelCrayons is a web development company that offers specialized CMS solutions. You may hire Drupal developers and Joomla developers here at affordable rates.

6 Extensions for Joomla to Make it Social

In this digital age lifestyle, people are so web-oriented that it is must nowadays to promote your business and services online, so that you can reach the potential customers easily. Social Networks are one of the best ways of promotion to the general masses around the world.

Joomla a well-known CMS (Content Management System), offers various social media extensions  that allow the users to share and promote their products to the vast online community.

Here's to some of these extensions :

• The Ultimate Social Bookmarking Plugin : This plugin includes all the major social media bookmarking and sharing applications. It has 60 social bookmarking buttons that can be easily disabled and enabled as per your requirements.

• DiggIt : The focus of this pluign is on the major services like Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious. This plugin is best suited for the people who don't like to have excess of options and need to be with major social networks only.

• Sociable : This plugin automatically inserts small social media bookmarking and sharing links at the bottom of the article that includes all the major social networks and even some not-so-popular also. Plugin enables you to choose the social network buttons you want to share on and to hide the ones you don't like your content to be shared on.

• Tweet Me Button : Sometimes plenty of options aren't the best if you want to emphasize on a particular social network. Tweet Me Button, as the name suggests, is a social media plugin for Twitter, allowing your visitors to send a preformatted tweet to all of their followers.

• JO Facebook Gallery : This plugin allows you to display your Facebook albums directly on your site. You don't have to leave your site to view your Facebook photos. And the plugin also enables you to have full control over the layout of the slideshow.

• Article Footer : Article Footer allows you to create your own social media plugin by inserting the code at the footer of each post. It enables you to put your favorite social media site at the footer of the article with your selected images.

Conclusion : We all know that social media extensions have proved to be a great medium to promote a website. And with the help of above mentioned Joomla extensions, you can establish an effective social media strategy in no time and can leverage its power to increase your website's traffic.

This post is contributed by PixelCrayons, a web development firm that specializes in Ecommerce and CMS website development. You may hire developers here for Wordpress and Joomla Development at affordable rates.

Three Ways to Convert Your Design File to HTML

The purpose of PSD to HTML or XHMTL conversion is to make your site just as you want it. In order to fulfill the purpose of this conversion it is must to have expertise in HTML. Let's discuss how you can do it or get it done!

1. Manual Conversion :
This is one of the best and oldest methods. In this conversion process all the things are done manually. Manual conversion ensures you the perfect results as in this method each and every page is coded manually and hence generates a site free from errors. Manual conversion also offers many other benefits such as cross browser compatibility, W3C validation and many more. To make your website design as good as the PSD file, you must have a professional and experienced HTML developer. And nowadays this method is no more time consuming. Moreover, when it comes to quality of work, not any other conversion method can beat manual conversion.

2. Conversion With Tools :
In this digital age, nothing is there that can't be done with tools. "There's a software for that" has become a commonly spoken sentence for almost everything under the sun. In this method of PSD to HTML conversion, software and tools are used to accomplish this task. Tools can complete this task in a minimal time but to achieve this quick result you might have to compromise with quality. One more advantage of adopting this conversion process is its cheapness as tools can be purchased at reasonable price.

This method of conversion is not recommended to ensure high-quality coding of your website.

3. Hiring a HTML developers :
This is the most popular method of them all, benefiting SMEs and large companies alike. Professional PSD to HTML service doesn't cost you too much, and ensures that you get semantic coding that is W3C validated and cross-browser compatible. But before going to a company for your PSD to HTML conversion needs, it is must to verify its reliability.

Summing Up :
Now you are aware of all the three methods to convert PSD file into HTML. Depending on your requirement, time and budget, you can adopt any of these methods accordingly for your website.

PixelCrayons converts your design files from various common image formats into best quality cross-browser compatible W3C validated XHTML/CSS markup. Check xhtml.pixelcrayons.com for our PSD to HTML and PSD to email services.

How to Use Magento to Expand your Online Business?

In the world of ecommerce web development Magento is a revered name. This open source ecommerce solution allows businesses to build robust, visually attractive and interactive online stores. What separates Magento from other ecommerce solutions is the fact that is user-friendly and scalable allowing you to remain in sync with the changing demands of the market. You can hire a professional Magento developer and get online store which suits your exact business needs and that of your customers. Here are a few ways in which Magento can help you expand your online business.

1. Customized Store - There are no two arguments on the fact that a distinctive looking store adds to your brand value. With Magento you can easily achieve this by opting for PSD to Magento development where the store will be designed from scratch. Apart from this developers can also make use of easily available third-party plugins to add functionality to the website. These plugins too can be customized to cater to the needs of the customers.

2. Usability - Not all your customers are technology geeks and thus you need to design a store which is very user-friendly. The products should be listed in logical categories and sub-categories. Make sure the navigation within the store is smooth and the visitors can make good use of the search feature and customize the search results. This will help in increasing the conversion rate per visitor.

3. Payment Options - The last thing you want is a customer to exit the online store after reaching the checkout stage. This often happens due to lack of options on your online store. Magento supports many payment options such as Credit Cards, PayPal, Authorize, Internet Banking etc. Make sure you offer yous customers as many options as possible as this will help in converting more leads into sales.

4. Use SEO - Search engine optimization is an important factor in the success of any website. You need to attract targeted traffic through the major search engines. This is possible when your website is optimized both on-page and off-page. Make sure you use white hat SEO techniques which will not only ensure growth but also stability to your traffic.

5. Promotion - Last but not the least promotion is one of the key factors in the success of a Magento powered store. Promotion has to be both within the store and off it. You can offer discounts and redeemable coupons to the customers on purchase of certain products. You can also offer good bundled deals using the Magento. Apart from this it would be wise to make use of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to promote your products.

Ecommerce web development is one of the most challenging and demanding spheres of web design and development as it involves two crucial things - one-to-one interaction with the customer and financial transactions. Thus you need to hire Magento developers from a reputed company which has an excellent track record. They should have expertise in custom development of online stores and manually code the website for better SEO results.

Techniques behind a Successful Web Design

If you agree that a website is the best marketing tool you have in today’s world, you will also realize that developing and designing it needs careful planning and execution. Since a business web design literally has the power to make or break your business, it is essential that you give designing a lot of emphasis. When we talk about web designing, you should not just concentrate on the color schemes, the font to be used for the site but also on copywriting, typography, images, multimedia etc. When all these things come together only then a business web design becomes effective.

With the help of a web development firm, you can get almost any design you want. From a simple content driven website to a power-packed multimedia one, almost anything is achievable when knowledgeable web developers are by your side. Instead of hiring in-house developers you can get in touch with an offshore web development firm who will offer you competitive services at a price that doesn’t hurt your budget.

Techniques behind a Successful Web Design

• Understand Your Need : Nothing can be achieved unless you know what you want. You can create a good web design only when you know what is your goal, your mission and your objective. Always ask yourself what you want to achieve with the website? You will not find any user who just visits your site to look at the idea and the design, he is there to look for information and that is exactly what you should be providing. Set your goals precisely and then start working.

• Color Text Coordination : One of the major hurdles that you will need to cross while deciding on the design for your website is the color and the font you should use. It is a major hurdle because if these two things are not correctly chosen then it can mean doom to your business. A bright pink color background will obviously not be the right choice for a news portal while a “Comic Sans Serif” cannot be your choice of font.

• Know Your Audience : This is the age of niche web development, websites are very much audience specific. You cannot be thinking that this is a ‘general’ website that will cater to all kinds of people. You have to understand your audience and know who they are. A market survey will help you know your audiences better.

• Get a Responsive Web Design : A website that detects the device where it is browsed from and automatically adjusts its components works great nowadays. Thus while designing, make sure the to make it responsive to fit into any screen size without distorting the content.

Professional custom web development services by PixelCrayons, specializing in custom design solutions & custom web application development solutions.

Is WordPress Popular because of its Simplicity to Use?

Developing and maintaining websites is no longer difficult. Even without the knowledge of a markup language you can well run a website thanks to content management systems. As the name suggests these are applications that help in easy maintenance of content. The beauty of CMSs is that they can separate the content element from the codes of a site thus making it easier for a person to operate a website. WordPress is considered as one of the easiest CMS available. Though it started as a blogging platform soon it became the most trusted content management system. Why and how did it happen? WordPress is easy to use and it is its simplicity that has made it a market leader in no time.

What Makes WordPress so Simple to Use?

1. Web based Interface: WordPress offers an interface that works as WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). Because of this it becomes very easy to upload, edit and remove content, multimedia elements. The web based interface also allows you to operate the CMS without any prior knowledge of coding. The CMS has all the necessary tabs that are essential to make appropriate changes in a website.

2. Thousands of Plugins: To make things better WordPress web development offers thousands of free and premium plugins that are designed to make a website function better. From social media plugins to analytics plugins and SEO related plugins, you can find any kind of plugin for WordPress. If you are a small or mid-sized business, these free plugins are your best bet. They are robust extensions that have been developed keeping in mind the need of the industry.

3. SEO-friendly: A WordPress powered website is extremely search engine friendly, mainly because it is coded in such a manner that it can easily attract search engine crawlers. The codes are light, ample amount of Meta data are used that help make a website SEO friendly. The use of Meta Tags such as the ‘alt’ tag for image description helps in getting specific keyword-related search engine results.

4. Unlimited Themes: Since WordPress is an open source CMS, you may have the fear that your site may end up looking similar to a competitor’s site. But WordPress assures you that nothing of this sort will happen. There are thousands of themes, both free and premium that help you make a site unique. If this isn’t enough, you can go for PSD to WordPress conversion. With this technique, you can get a theme designed in Photoshop and convert it into a web compatible theme. PSD to WordPress conversion also ensures that your site is semantically coded and structured in such a manner that the design elements are separated from the content elements.

Importance of Magento Website for Your Online Business Growth

Are you working to give new horizons to your business? Then why not launch it on the global platform with Magento website! Let’s see how Magento can work wonders by opening new arenas for your business to flourish and evolve.

What’s different in Magento?

If you haven’t heard about Magento, then you would be impressed once you know what all it has in store for you. A revolutionary platform and the perfect e-commerce solution, Magento fulfils all your business needs and opens up new horizons for your business to grow. It offers you a number of solutions including scalability, flexibility and all what is needed by your business to flourish. The specialty of Magento which sets it apart from other platforms is that it gives you the flexibility to customize the content as per your choice. You have complete control and this is the add-on which lets you yield the maximum output.

Why do online businesses prefer Magento?

Magento is one of the latest entries in the e-commerce market; however most of the online businesses prefer Magento. Let us explore the reason as to what Magento does which makes your website stand out.

1. If you own multiple websites, then you can manage all of them by a single administration panel of magento. This eases your task and would help in better management. In addition, the admin can also view the report containing a complete overview of customer orders which would help in analyzing their preferences.

2. Marketing promotion and tools are also available and as such you can get a higher return on investment. This is because you can avail a number of ways to increase your sales with enhanced conversion rates.

3. Magento also brings your website to the mobile platform. With the increasing number of mobile subscribers, this is indeed a profitable option as customers can view a mobile optimized version of the website.

4. Magento can be easily installed as compared to other open source ecommerce applications. Hence whatever you wish to install including layouts, add-ons or anything else, it becomes simpler with Magento.

5. Magento also allows you to upload high resolution images on your website so that the customers can easily zoom-in and zoom-out the images.

6. Magento has been designed in such a way that is completely search engine optimized. With this it ensures that your business website would have better search engine ranking.

7. Magento development ensures that your customers are at complete ease and comfort. They can view the entire order status and information and hence turn into regular customers.

Hence, Magento is a complete package containing user-friendly features which would give the required boost to your online business. One can easily get familiar with the features and hence can get the best possible output with the same. In addition, this is one of the most reliable platforms designed to fulfill all your business needs. So customize it your way to give new dimensions to your business.