We Grow Beautiful Websites
We’re proud to announce our most recent Magento store launch for keramikoskitchen.com! They manufacture and sell high quality ceramic knives and needed an online store to introduce a new sales channel that compliments their home shows. Keramikos hired us to design and develop their new custom Magento store. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Thinking about upgrading, implementing, or enhancing your ecommerce platform? A survey at last year’s internet retailer conference revealed the following top frustrations:
1. Not sure what we really need
2. Too many vendor options and not clear on how to evaluate them
3. Not sure how much it should cost or what is affordable for me.
Translation: the market is confusing.
Let me try to add clarity to expectations. If you picked up the Internet Retailer Guide to Ecommerce Technology, then you would having the following cost considerations for your ecommerce platform (based on FitforCommerce survey):
• On average, a new ecommerce platform costs $50,00-$100,000 minimum.
• Mid-sized e-retailers need to spend $150,000-300,000 to re-platform, especially if the project calls for a lot of integrations.
• The top 200 retailers ($50 million+) might spend over $500,000 if they want a total custom solution with maximum flexibility.
If you go with DIRECTV, keep in mind that you’ll have to sign a two-year contract and the prices go up in the second year.
Given these expectations and more than 30 pages of ecommerce platform vendors, I can understand the frustration. However, I want to propose that market confusion is due to more than just a quantity of selection. You have to factor in the rapid speed of innovation at all levels of the cost spectrum…and open source.
Open source ecommerce software like Magento is game-changing. Just reread the cost ranges above and contemplate what it would have cost even 2 years ago to compete with your own sophisticated online store: $50k buy-in, minimum. Now the cost is 70-80% less using Magento and customizing it to your business.
An IP address makes communication over the Internet possible. Technically titled a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, Web users and computer-network specialists simply refer to it as an “IP address.” It enables two-way communication between digital computers, smartphones, tablets, printers, servers, scanners, routers and modems through the Internet, is vital for any kind of eCommerce, either if its a small or big business, to have adequate infrastructure to attend customer needs, make sure you check Reviews on Guide and find the hardware that better suit your business. Dedicated web hosting is the most powerful and cost effective solution of hosting a busy web site without resorting to buying your own equipment and paying hundreds of dollars per month for a fast Internet connection. Dedicated hosting consists of single server with no one else hosting on that computer. This allows for the greatest of configuration options. Anyone who has a busy website will find dedicated hosting is the necessary choice. A hosting account provides a home for your website on web servers, which are stored in a secure, climate controlled environment and are connected to the Internet so that other people on the Internet can view your website. check this site for more information of computer technology. You can look at your website as a front office and Hosting as the back office/ storage centre that houses the information, images, video and other content that comprises your website. Barring technical problems, a web host operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week so that anybody in the world can access your web site at any time. Web site hosting is typically measured in the amount of disk space you’re given on the server and the amount of data transfer (bandwidth) you need for accessing the server. ServerMania’s Data Center in New York City is that the perfect choice for applications that demand the last word in low-latency connectivity and redundancy. Our ny City data center may be a tier 4 facility, delivering the foremost redundant infrastructure across all system components including power, networking, and cooling. Featuring up to 10Gbps connections on Tier 1 network carriers, this facility is right for ForEx and other latency sensitive applications with direct connectivity to ny City, North America, and beyond. Your business relies on the applications your employees use every day, the databases that store everything from customer contact details to payroll, the sites and ecommerce stores that market and sell your products and services, and more. You need an always available, utterly reliable server solution built from the highest quality components.
Internet protocol means a set of rules or guidelines for the Web. IP addresses help govern activity online through a network grid of systematic rules, completing requested tasks across the globe. If you have a lot of customer traffic at your website ie. file downloads, you’ll access the server fairly frequently and therefore need more website hosting transfer space than someone who puts only readable text on their web site. The more “items” or “content” you are hosting on your site (ie photos, maps, PDF files etc) the more disk space you’ll need for your website and domain hosting. A web server must have fast connections to be able to serve pages quickly. For the greatest speed and reliability try to find a host that has multiple high speed connections as well as reliable back up power supplies in case of power outages. The purpose of web hosting is practicality. Web hosting companies provide simple access to the internet for anyone who creates a site and wants it seen by millions. There are plenty of web hosting types: *Shared *Reseller *Virtual Private Servers *Dedicated Servers *Colocation and Clustered Web Hosting. Unless you plan to host a site with thousands of video files, you don’t need fancy and expensive hosting. Just sign up for a basic shared web hosting package. Look at user reviews and testimonials for the web’s most popular hosting providers.
Devices are assigned IP addresses automatically through the software in the server or router assigned to a computer. The formatting is universal, which is why computers in America can connect to those anywhere else in the world. As long as a digital device is connected to the Internet, it can be pinpointed. When one computer reaches out to another computer, both the initiating and receiving locations are identified by the online grid that uses IP addresses to connect the devices. At any given time, there are billions of connected devices that can be pinpointed around the globe using just IP addresses.
All IP addresses consist of four sets of numbers separated by a single period. Each number set contains one to three digits and ranges between zero and 255. A hypothetical IP address looks like this: 45.186.2.209.
A static IP address does not change over time. It is a straightforward and reliable way for digital devices to reach a particular online location. There are several key pieces of information a static IP address reveals about a particular device including the continent, country, region and city in which the computer is located, not to mention the exact latitude and longitude. It also provides information on the device’s Internet service provider. This is an excellent type of IP for voice over Internet protocol and online game websites, both of which require swift connection to and identification of a device’s exact location. While a static IP address may be considered slightly less secure than a dynamic IP address, practicing safe Internet usage practices should suffice in protecting users from harm. Servers, routers and firewalls usually use static IP.
A dynamic IP address is not permanent. In fact, a digital device using a dynamic IP is assigned a new address each time it accesses the Internet. Static IP addresses are limited, so many Internet service providers will set aside some dynamic IP addresses to dole out to subscribers temporarily. Not only is this more cost effective for the ISP, it allows more bandwidth for subscribers than static IP addresses. Dynamic IP addresses are assigned through dynamic host configuration protocol, which allows the server to choose a new IP address each time the device signs online.
It behooves an ecommerce store owner to obtain a dedicated (static) IP address because this helps prevent identity and information theft from completed online business transactions. Most security technology used by ecommerce operators requires static IP addresses for complete functionality. A secure sockets layer certificate, which alerts consumers that any credit card and personal data entered online is safe, requires dedicated IP. It also is better at supporting high traffic volume on an ecommerce site. For any business that wants to avoid a constantly crashing site or delivering incredibly slow page loads to users, a dedicated IP address is the best choice.
Drop us a note today here at Elias if you are interested in learning more.
Braveheart was on this afternoon. One of my favorite scenes is when Wallace and his men first meet the crazy Irishman. Two guys show up in the woods to join a movement. One is normal, well-spoken, and blends in initially. He even presents a present to Wallace…how thoughtful. The other guy is crazy. He puts a knife to someone’s throat (immediately pointing out a lapse in security). The next scene plays out with an unanticipated twist: the crazy guy saves Wallace’s life from the normal guy’s assassination attempt.
At Elias we could use a few developers to help us grow. We are looking for the crazy loyal type, not the nice stab-you-in-the-back type. Do you have an island?
This weekend we switched to a new CRM system here at Elias. I evaluated several different options including Salesforce.com and Highrise before ultimately selecing ZohoCRM. It seemed like every system I looked at either was too simple or too expensive. Geez. I sound like stinkin’ Goldie Locks.
Since we are small, every penny counts and every minute saved is valuable to us. Our objective was to create a form on our website where new potential clients can submit a request for more information. We have been slammed lately with currect clients (a good thing), but feel like we are not able to be as responsive as we would like to be with people who are trying to make a decision on who to use for their Magento ecommerce installation and Magento customization (a bad thing). A CRM tool was desperately needed in order to collect the new contacts, file them in on-demand software, trigger an immediate email to let them know we will follow up soon, and send a notification email to me with the info that they filled out on the form. Turns out this was harder to find than I expected. Enter Zoho.
Other companies out there do this sort of thing, Zoho just does it for $25/month/user. So far I have customized the lead fields, mapped them to a form, and pasted the HTML to our “Request a Quote” landing page. Also, the software is set to automatically send me an email with the completed fields and create a follow up task due the next day (screenshot of admin below). Next week I plan to set up the triggered email response to the interested client.
Hopefully this is helpful to you if you are looking for a CRM application. It would be interesting to know what everyone else is using to manage their client relationships and why they selected it. Anyone have a better find than Zoho?
There’s no question that Magento is becoming (some say it already has) the open source ecommerce platform of choice. However, we all know that nothing is perfect. So we’d like to know what’s your biggest Magento pet peeve? Is it too complex? Is it hard to find a good theme? Is it too slow? Whatever it is, share your thoughts here. Visit site Free Geo IP only return geolocation data and has none of the enriched data that other providers offer.
Who knows, maybe we can alleviate your pet peeve with some simple advice!
I’ll follow this up next week by asking what you like most about Magento.