Paul Henry

So, you have finally decided to make it on your own. You have left your 9 to 5 job and have decided to become an entrepreneur. You have an office space (even if it is your basement), you have a small team ready to go, and you have a business plan all set up. Is there something missing? What about your website? We live in a truly digital world where no matter what industry your start-up belongs to if it does not have a website, it is not going to be taken seriously. This is not in any way an exaggeration of facts. A website is a basic aspect of your company that potential clients or customers look towards to know more about your brand and company mission. Your website has to resonate with who you and your team are. It is a matter of brand image or brand persona. Do you need convincing? Honestly, I don’t think anyone needs to be convinced these days of the benefits of having a website. There are over 2 billion people that are present on the internet. That is a huge pool of potential customers. Nearly half of these users use the internet for making various purchase decisions. In fact, nearly 50% of internet users have at one point or another made an online purchase. This gives you a small idea of how the internet has become a global marketplace for businesses. Need more reasons to have a website developed? If you want to learn some more benefits of availing website development services and set up your business’s online identity, here they are – It is a competitive world No matter which industry your business belongs to, you will have competitors. For a start-up, chances are that your competition would already be an established organization with a large customer base. These competitors are all going to have websites as well. These websites would be loaded with information about their offerings and portfolios to attract visitors into becoming customers. In order for your start-up to stay alive in the market, it needs a website to help in this competition. Gives major boost to branding For a company that is starting out, you need to quickly make a name for it. Branding plays a big part in that. You cannot carry out any branding activities these days without having a website. Your website is where you talk about what makes you different, what makes you stand out. Everything else branches out from there. Whether it is digital promotions and marketing or social media, your website is the backbone of these efforts. It opens a world of opportunities The cost of having a website developed is not that high these days. You can have a professional and interactive website designed and developed at a competitive rate even by an experienced website development company. But once you have it taken care of, the potential of what you can gain with your new website is limitless. The initial investment in the development and the cost of web hosting will seem like a small investment that gives you huge returns once your website starts generating business. E-Commerce benefits await you Through a website, you will have the option of implementing an e-commerce like the business model that will let you handle transactions through the website itself. These days the types of companies that use this business model range from software services companies to companies selling physical products overseas. Your website will not only be like a giant billboard attracting customers but will also become a tool for generating revenue. I am sure you are convinced now! Now that you know all the benefits that your start-up can gain from having its very own website, time to make a decision and hire a web development company Los Angeles. You need to partner with a company that can guide you as per which platform will be the best for your new website. Whether it is WordPress, Magento, Shopify or any other, whichever is best suited for your start-up, will be used to create your site. A good web development company would also be able to create a responsive website for you that perform perfectly on all devices since a majority of internet users are now choosing to browse the web using their smartphones. If you finally ready to get your website created, contact Clap Creative to get a free quote today.

So, you have a website for your business and it been functional for some time now. However, you believe that it has run its course and now you either need a serious revamp or you need to start from scratch. How do you really determine whether it is time to hire a web development company Los Angeles? In this post, I guide through the signs you need to identify in order to decide whether your site needs an overhauling or not. These signs revolve around both the look and feel of the website and also the functionality of it. Here are some of them – 1)    Not Responsive One of the biggest demands that website owners have these days is that the site should be responsive. That means that your website should work properly on all devices, whether desktop, laptop, mobile or tablet. If your website does not function well on handheld devices, you would be losing out on almost 50% of your potential customers. Users today prefer using smartphones for browsing the internet more than desktops or laptops. A web development company can help you either make your website responsive or create a responsive site from scratch. 2)    Not Aesthetically Appealing The look and feel of your website are very important as an attractive design of the site engage your visitors better. It helps get repeat visitors and build loyalty to your brand. Take a good look at your website. See your fonts, background colors, website theme and compare it with that of your competitors to see the difference. If you come to the conclusion that your site’s design needs a do-over, it is time to approach a web design company for help. 3)    Not Optimized for SEO Today, search engine optimization is very important for websites to rank on Google. SEO leads to organic traffic and business. In order to rank well in Google, your website needs to be optimized as per SEO guidelines. There would be some serious changes needed to the content, design and overall structure of the website. Hiring a web development company that has good SEO knowledge would give you the assistance you need. 4)    Lack of Security Every website needs security. There are always people with malicious intent looking to hack websites. If your websites contain the financial information of your visitors like a banking website or an e-commerce website, leaving your site unprotected can be a costly mistake. There are so many types of viruses, malware and other harmful programs that are a threat to all websites. You need help from professionals in setting up security protocols for the existing website or develop a new site with upgraded security. 5)    Takes Forever to Load Users prefer websites that are fast and efficient. No one has the time to sit around waiting for your website to load slowly. Even in terms of a good SEO ranking, Google prefers a website that has a good page speed. A good page loading time is up to 5 seconds. If your website takes longer than that, then it is a matter of concern.  In order to improve the speed, there are many changes that need to be made in the website like compressing images, optimizing media and many others that require professional help. If your website ails from these above issues then it is a collective sign that you need to hire the services of a web development company that can help improve your website or better, create a brand new website that is attractive and responsive. Clap Creative is a Los Angeles based web design and development company that offers web design and development services across various platforms like WordPress, Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce etc. Contact us today for a free quote.

BigCommerce is a very popular platform for creating online stores. That is something that I am sure all the readers of this blog are well aware of. However, what you all may not be aware of are some killer hacks that you can use in BigCommerce that can make your life easier and increase the functionality of your e-commerce website. Without further wait, let us jump right into our top 10 BigCommerce tips – Tip 1. Displaying the “SOLD OUT” message If you are out of stock for a particular product and want to display a “sold out” message, here is what to do. Simply go to Settings Store Settings Display and check ‘Show Inventory Levels’. Once the inventory of that particular product goes down to zero, it will display – ‘Current Stock: Sold Out’ on that product page. Tip 2. Displaying the same logo on top of each page This is a rather simple instruction to both impart and follow. If you want the same logo to be displayed on top of each page, you should select Design Logo and upload your image. That is all. Tip 3. Enabling purchase option without an account If you want the visitors to your BigCommerce store to be able to make purchases even when they do not have an account created, this is how you can do it. Simply go to Settings Checkout Settings and ensure ‘Yes, enable guest checkout’ is checked. Tip 4. Hiding products from being displayed in your store If you are out of inventory, you may want to temporarily hide products from your website’s visitors. Doing this is easy and here is how you do it –  Go to Products View Products, select the product, click ‘Edit’, and on the ‘Details’ tab make sure that ‘This product cannot be purchased in my online store’ is selected. Tip 5. Adding the free shipping option to products Want to give your customers free shipping? That’s great. Here is how you go about doing it – go to Edit a Product Details and check ‘Yes, this product has free shipping’. Tip 6. Changing default product image size When a customer clicks your product image, you can set the default image size when the product image opens up. If you want to change the default image size by going to Settings Store Settings Images. Tip 7. Adding new web pages New pages to you BigCommerce site can be added in this manner. Go to Website Content Create a Web Page. If you want the new page to be displayed in the store’s menu, just select –‘Yes, show this web page in the navigation menu’. Tip 8. Know about all panels If you want to know about all the panels of your site, then follow these steps – Go to Design Template Files. If you see an orange arrow that means it has been edited by you. If you see a white arrow that means it has not been edited. A green arrow means that it has been recently created. Tip 9. Removing panels Removing panels from a page is not a difficult task. It can be done very quickly. There are majorly two ways that you can do it. The first is – Go to Design Design Mode and clicking ‘Open My Store in Design Mode’. Right click on the panel you want to remove and select ‘Remove Panel’ from the popup menu. The second way is to directly edit the File in the HTML editor and uploading it to you sit using File Transfer Protocol. Tip 10. Changing the footer of your email By default, your emails will have an appealing footer that has a default message like “powered by BigCommerce”.  You can do by going to Design Emails. Click ‘Snippets’. Then edit the file called EmailFooter.html. By following these above tips, you can customize your BigCommerce site and improve its functionality according to your needs. If you need BigCommerce web design services by a team of professional BigCommerce web developers, contact Clap Creative today.

BigCommerce provides a fantastic platform for you to build and run your e-commerce store, all thanks to its various features such as an easy-to-use dashboard, no transaction costs, round-the-clock customer support and much more. Apart from a solid build in marketing features, BigCommerce Web Design also provides tons of marketing apps and extensions to make the conversion and sales process much easier and streamlined. But before diving into that, let’s take a look at what BigCommerce apps can accomplish for you in the long run. Most Affordable Platform for immediate and long-term goals. Automated Accounting System that saves lots of your time. Template Based Structure can be up and running in no time. Gain more Insights into your customers’ Easy and User-Friendly for developers, retailers, and customers. Improves Customer Service which helps repeat customers. But with thousands of apps present in its app store, it can get both tricky and time-consuming choosing the right ones. So, on your behalf, I have taken the liberty of reviewing the BigCommerce App Store to present 13 amazing apps to help you smoothen out your e-commerce sales journey. Sweet ToothSweet Tooth provides a loyalty-based solution for BigCommerce users by building a point-based loyalty program to reward points to customers based on their behavior (in this case, profitable actions). Apart from the multi-option loyalty program, it offers 6 themes and also helps in segmenting your customers based on their loyalty. ShipperHQRetailers mostly don’t pay much attention to shipping but if left unchecked, this is where you may lose a lot of your potential customers. Using ShipperHQ can help you calculate shipping costs globally (by using the IP address of customers), so your customers don’t have to pay any additional (and unexpected) shipping costs. Retail TowerRetail Tower is another powerful app by BigCommerce that helps you make the advertising and promotion process a lot more simpler and easier by using just one interface to upload your product feed to multiple shopping comparison engines. JustUnoJustUno is all about free email marketing. It provides an email capturing system that allows you to capture email addresses (including discount codes, exit intents, welcome mats etc.) through pop-up messages. And that’s not all, you can even run A/B tests to help determine the effectiveness of your BigCommerce store. Sales PopBuild from the concept of encouraging new customers to start buying from you, this BigCommerce app provides a great help in building trust and authenticity on your brand by showing recent sales notification popups (with flexible customization options) in order to create the sense of a busy store. CompassWe are all prone to making bad business decisions when we don’t have enough contextual data to work on. Compass helps you make sense of your data by incorporating a comprehensive report of all your analytics metrics such as Customer Acquisition Costs, Refunds, Repurchase Rates etc. into 1 dashboard for easy access. Boost SalesBoost Sales is a great app that uses upselling and cross-selling (of relevant products one might be interested in) along with Sales Gamification feature to help increase the average order value, in order to earn more profit (by selling more) on each order. It even provides a large collection of themes esp. for the holidays season. AfterShipAfterShip is another brilliant app that allows your customers to check in on their order status along with sending SMS and emails delivery updates to them. Your customers will also love you for keeping them updated as well as not sending them to 3rd party sites for payment or not letting them deal with couriers. PrintfulPrintful is an awesome dropshipping app that not only let anyone with the designing skills to upload his design and start printing on selective items be it pillows, mobile cases, t-shirts, coffee mugs or anything but also allow them to push these items directly to your BigCommerce store. SellbriteSellbrite uses a single interface where you can simultaneously print discounted labels as well as ship all your orders. It also prevents overselling by automatically syncing the central inventory in real time. Plus, you can list your inventory by bulk from the central catalog to various other online markets. OneSaasAny Web Development Company Los Angeles or elsewhere will claim that OneSaas is the best automation app when it comes to accounting, inventory management, marketing, fulfillment and shipping along with syncing data between sales and CRM. It even scales with your business and is compatible with the majority of software. The Cart CloserThis Cart Closer app provides a unique solution to the ‘cart abandonment’ problem faced by most e-commerce stores today. It tries to save the sale by offering a freebie or discount whenever a customer is about to leave your shopping cart page. PayWhirlPayWhirl is everything that you can ever ask for in a recurring billing model be it wholesale programs or payment plans or layaway programs or subscriptions or pre-orders or literally anything. And that’s not all, this app even lets customers log in and manage their billing information and make changes accordingly. Closing In: And that’s our list of some of the best BigCommerce apps that we found in the App Store from our own research, hope you liked it. So, which of these apps are you planning to use? Do let us know in the comment section.

Smartphones have made such a huge impact on our lives in such a short time that today it’s just impossible to imagine our lives without them. Equally undigestible is the fact that something that has been introduced so recently into our lives is now defining ourselves from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep. The primary reason why smartphones are so addictive is that of the presence of millions of apps available in the mobile app development market to choose from which can assist us in almost everything we do in any given day. Apps or applications as we know, are computer programs designed to run on a mobile. Today, the three biggest app stores available to us are- Google Play for Android App Store for IOS Microsoft Store for Windows and Xbox One Businesses nowadays are using more and more mobile apps to improve their processes and increase the level of accessibility their customers have to them. Let’s look at the few mobile app development trends that will make waves in 2018: AR or VR Apps AR or Augmented Reality is a live view of physical world environment perceived via computer generated information by multiple sensory organs. Apart from the gaming industry, these apps are helping the companies to present in detail the product and services to their clients in real time. VR or Virtual Reality is also a computer-generated scenario that stimulates a realistic experience through headset, smartphone or a tablet device. Its apps are used for company branding and aggressive marketing by providing a 3D vision of products using a blend of photography and technology. Android Instant Apps Instant apps will forever change the way we are used to downloading and installing the apps before running them. Thanks to these native apps, one can run the app almost instantly without downloading it. These apps support the latest version 8.0 (API level 26) and go all the way back to 5.0 (API level 21) so one doesn’t have to worry about purchasing the latest device to operate instant apps. The functionality of these apps is an upgrade to your app and not a separate app for you to download. Business Bots Business bots or chatbots, in simple words, is a computer program that is capable of conducting a conversation through audio or textual methods. Though started just a few years back, chatbots already made up a market worth of $703 Million by 2016 which by 2021 is expected to reach up to $4.5 Billion. With such a fast-growing pace, business bots are much ahead in setting the new trend for 2018. According to a current research, consumers already love it with 95% of them believing that the customer service is going to be the major beneficiary of business bots in the upcoming years. Artificial Intelligence Apps Artificial Intelligence or AI is the intelligence displayed by machines. The chatbots we were talking earlier are also powered by AI technology through its applications cover a much wider range of Virtual Personal Assistants to Intelligent Apps to Cyber Security. AI and machine learning have provided innovative ways to acquire more and more customer data to gain insights which in turn help in taking right decisions, formulating and implementing market strategies. Therefore, corporate giants such as Google, IBM, Adobe etc. are investing heavily in AI apps such as Cortana or Siri. IoT and Wearable Apps IoT or Internet of Things is the combined network of devices that can be uniquely identified through its embedded computing system to connect and transfer data. Experts claim its value to reach $7.1 Trillion by 2021. These devices or Things operate through wearable apps that give you access to hardware such as sensors and the GPU. Wearable apps only differ in design and functionality but they all run on similar Android SDK used in other apps. Wearable devices cover a wide range from smartwatches to fitness bands to something totally unexpected such as smart shoes, clothes or jewelry. M-Commerce Apps M-commerce or mobile commerce is the present and future of mobile payment options, not sure how? The paying apps you are currently using such as Apple Pay and Google Wallet or the recent initiative of scan and par system leveraged by Visa and Samsung are such examples. These apps provide state-of-the-art security with coded encryption, secure back-end and API along with reputed payment gateway. These security measures seem justifiable when you consider the total net worth of mobile commerce which is roughly $700 Billion as of last year. Cloud Computing Apps Cloud computing is an IT paradigm that literally fetches data from the cloud, it enables unlimited access to shared pool of data including streamlined operations over internet thus relieving your phone memory too in the process. Cloud apps such as Dropbox, Google Drive etc are prompting more and more businesses to develop apps that are cloud driven this year with the help of companies specialized in web design Los Angeles and elsewhere. Conclusion Research proves that the mobile app development market of today is growing at an exponential rate with 197 billion apps downloaded just last year with users spending 90% of their time on apps rather than the mobile web. Companies understand this fact well enough and as a result, invest heavily in the production of these apps. So, I believe it’s safe to assume that 2018 too will see a lot more applications leveraging these above-mentioned trends.

In today’s competitive market, one can never take enough steps to ensure success, there’s always seem to be some efforts lacking. What one can do, in fact, is constantly upgrade his abilities and knowledge to stay up-to-date in this ever-changing world. This ever-changing world enabled businesses to move from real-world platform to online e-commerce platform, so they can generate even more cash-flow by targeting more people. After all, that’s the whole point in starting a business in the first place. Today e-commerce industry stands at a whopping $7.7 trillion for B2B and $2.7 trillion for B2C as per Statista. This online industry works by providing e-commerce platforms for businesses to lay their foundations on and during the recent years, BigCommerce development has emerged as one of the leading e-commerce platforms. But just building your website on BigCommerce won’t generate business on its own, you need traffic for business and that’s where SEO comes in. Using SEO effectively will place your site among the top searched options. Below are some such tips to improve your SEO ranking: Create distinct product description The product description is something that differentiates you from your competitors. Use this to your advantage, write unique product descriptions for every product available in your store. I understand it’s a wearisome and time taking process but will definitely help you in the long run. You always have the option to hire a BigCommerce web design team to help you get the job done. And do not under any circumstances try to copy your competitor’s content, it will get you busted if found out. Identify every image This is a minor but mostly ignored way you can improve your rankings. Always add alt tags to any image uploaded to a product as search engines are practically blind to images and can only understand texts. Whenever you upload a product image, include tag optimized keywords as this will enable search engines to associate the image with the given keyword. Apart from that, change your image number (such as IMG_201801.jpg) to something more relevant (such as 2015-Maruti-Zen-Grey.jpg) to help shoppers and search engines to identify the product even if the image is unable to load. Create and maintain blogs regularly Potential customers these days look out for the authenticity and credibility of your website way before diving in for products and blogs have the power to offer both. Providing a constant stream of blogs for your website on a regular basis informing about new and existing products, current market trends etc. is the next best thing you can do for your company’s growth. It also helps build the customers trust and provide legitimacy to your company. Search engines too seem to like websites that post blogs regularly and thus provide your website with a better SEO ranking. Special emphasis on keywords BigCommerce being a popular platform hosts thousands of shopping websites. So how the shoppers are going to find you in such a haze? The answer lies in the careful selection of keywords. But how to decide which keywords are appropriate? Google provides a user-friendly tool to help you deal with this issue. It’s called the AdWords Keyword Planner, just fill in few necessary details and it will do the rest. And always include keyword phrases which are basically longtail keywords. These phrases have a much higher chance of bringing in traffic compared to individual keywords. Use videos for brand promotion One thing you cannot argue on, no matter how engrossing is the content, how descriptive is the specifications and how accurate are the guidelines, videos always have a special way of appealing to people. Having someone showing you the products, familiarising you with every detail and demonstrating its proper usage to you will actually increase his chance of buying by 85% which is way more than any written text could do. BigCommerce website design is extremely friendly to featuring promotional videos and will double your website’s chances of appearing on Google’s first page. Statistics too support this claim, stating that videos improve conversion rates by 80%. Know your competition This golden rule can always be applied in every field esp. in e-commerce sector to improve ranking. One can never hope to gain an advantage over his competition without knowing who or what his competition actually is. An easy way of doing it is searching on the Google bar for exact keywords you wish to target and view the result to list out your direct and indirect competitors. Then analyze your competitors to know what strategies they are using that have placed them so high on the search list. Look out for terms related to the higher number of searches and use them accordingly and effectively in your keywords. Apply social-media skills effectively One offbeat way of improving your SEO ranking is by working on your social media skills. I said offbeat because this actually has more to do with promoting your company on social media platforms. The advantage of using social media is that it covers a much wider platform. Facebook alone accounts for over 1 billion monthly users which exceed far more than any e-commerce or any other sector ever hope for. It won’t take rocket science to conclude the publicity your company will receive once it starts incorporating social media skills to its advantage. And guess what, advertising on social media is completely free of cost. In this ever-changing world, choosing just BigCommerce for your business isn’t enough anymore, you need to improve your website’s ranking to make it appear on top search lists. The above-mentioned tips for search engine optimization or SEO will help you get the desired sales if you know how to utilize it effectively.