For many brick-and-mortar small businesses, a website may not seem like a necessity. Shops and businesses that have been staples of their communities for years may not advertise at all; what use is a website in that case? However, as the world moves more and more online, with pandemic lockdowns only accelerating that trend, many small businesses are seeing untapped potential in online markets.
Selecting WordPress plugin for your site is a little like walking into a hardware store. You know what job you want to accomplish but are not sure what tools and materials you need. We hope to provide you with some pointers that should make the selection easier.
If you are starting a new Ecommerce business or thinking about migrating from an older Ecommerce site you aren’t happy with anymore, then you will of course have to make a profound decision: what software is going to run this new (or new and improved) shopping experience for your eager customers?
Some of the big players would be: Shopify, Squarespace (with their Ecommerce plugins), BigCommerce, Wordpress + WooCommerce, etc., the list goes on and on (and if you have an ERP system, your ERP system may even have some kind of shopping front-end). And you may have heard of a very popular choice, Magento (current version 2.4.2 as of this writing). You may have already done your homework and found out that Magento 2 is a complete Ecommerce solution, with hundreds of popular extensions to fit a myriad of use-cases, with core features that handle product management, to inventory, to complete order/invoicing/shipping flow (and that’s just the core features!)
Designing a website is a lot of work, but redesigning a website can be even harder. When you start fresh, you don’t bring any baggage from an existing website. When you redesign, there are pages and pages of existing content you have to account for. What do you keep, and what do you change? How does the old content fit in with the new? These questions go on and on, and what started as a simple design change turns into a complete audit of your existing site.
You would probably like your WordPress site to look stunning, represent your business accurately, and attract lots of visitors who, in turn, become loyal customers. A daunting task to say the least, but here are some practical steps to take in planning your website.
In the world of WordPress development, there are often many choices on how to achieve a certain function. From block editing tools to form builders there are a bevy of options to choose from, often requiring a keen eye and years of WordPress experience to suss out which is the best for your particular application. … Read more
WordPress is a great solution for most website needs. It’s easy to install, versatile, and it’s backend makes it easy for relative neophytes to add and edit content to websites without needing an advanced degree in Computer Science. This is reflected in its market share: some 40% of all websites are powered by it.
Microsoft Access databases, along with the Backstreet Boys, Sony Discman and Beanie Babies were everywhere in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Convenient and easy to use, Access became the data bedrock of many small businesses. Fast forward to 2021, and many small businesses and nonprofits have seen the need to leave them Backstreet Boys behind and adapt to the modern era. After all, data often becomes more useful (and easier to manage) when it can be integrated across an organization. WordPress is versatile and powerful enough to do just that, and to automate some functions that used to be manual in Access.
It may sound counter-intuitive, but the successful completion of a web project requires more than just building a website: it is a balancing act of fulfilling a client’s expectations within a specific timeframe and budget and making sure it works across a wide array of browsers and devices.
One of the many wonderful things about WordPress is that its barriers to entry are very low. Anyone willing to roll up their sleeves and spend a bit of time viewing YouTube tutorials can build up a site themselves using the many available WordPress themes and plugins and create and manage their own content. While we certainly recommend working with a professional team whenever adding new features/plugins to a site (especially when needing to modify code), and we recognize that not everyone has the time or disposition to take on the work themselves, we also know there are those who like a “hands on approach” to their website, and for those we present you with a list of useful tools and resources to help along the way.