Thứ Sáu, 19 tháng 6, 2015
Design deals for the week
Magento or Shopify: which one should you choose for an eCommerce site
With the growing demand of online shopping, the platform for creating eCommerce websites are equally being competitive. Choosing the most suitable platform for your online store that can manage and maintain your products and payment options is a very critical step for any business owner. An immature choice can lead to failure of your business. That is why in this today’s blog, we are talking about two hottest platform for building an eCommerce website i.e. Magento and Shopify.
Both Magento and Shopify are shopping carts that allows you to create and manage online store. Both have the pros and cons as well. Let’s look at them individually below!
Shopify
Pros:
1. Ease of use
Shopify is good if you hate coding because you can easily set up your website via its simple and intuitive admin panel. It’s user-friendly and you do not need to depend upon developers to make small customizations.
2. Awesome free templates
It offers multiple killer templates for free which means you can attract your prospects via beautiful designs.
3. Great bandwidth
Shopify provides great bandwidth without any extra charge.
4. Multiple add-ons and extensions
Whether you are seeking to boost your website via SEO extensions or add some cool features via add-ons, Shopify has multiple free and fee-based extensions and adds-on to help you with.
5. Good customer/technical support
Shopify offers 24/7 customer/technical support. They are active on discussion forum and blogs where you can put your queries and get it resolved. You can even like the Shopify page on Facebook and follow the cart on Twitter.
Cons:
1. Product features
If you are seeking for some features such as email newsletters, one page checkout in Shopify, it will cost you extra charge whereas in magento, these are completely inbuilt for free.
2. Transaction fee
Shopify charges 1 to 2% transaction fees depending on your chosen plan.
3. Hosted solution
Shopify is a hosted solution and hence your online store is hosted by them so you have to pay hosting charge and the site is under their control.
Magento
Pros:
1. Open source
Magento is an open source software that is available for free. Also, hosting is in your own hand. It’s not in control of Magento as it was in Shopify.
2. Product features
The order management tools of Magento are much better compared to shopify. It also has broader range of product browsing options. You can easily find the cart that supports several marketing promotions like newsletter, coupons, surveys and polls.
3. No transaction fee
In compared to shopify, Magento doesn’t incur any transaction fee.
4. Payment processing
Magento integrates with several processors and offers one-page checkout which makes it better than Shopify.
Cons:
1. Difficult to newbies
If you do not know coding at all, then, using Magento might be problematic to you. You’ll be taken to several get started steps while you walk for the first time in this platform. It might also be difficult to edit themes without any coding know-how.
2. Customer support
Magento do offer 24/7 customer support but it has been faced by many users that it takes days to have your query answered via tickets. Some even wanted the inbuilt blog and mobile themes as they have found the cart too complicated to deal with.
3. Server speed
Many Magento users complain about the slow server speed.
4. Bandwidth
Users are unhappy with extra bandwidth charges.
Which one to choose then?
It actually depends upon your requirement. If you want a simple interface where you can quickly setup your store for your small business, then you can go for Shopify, but, if your store is for large business then the powerful product feature of Magento will let you choose it. So, what type of business do you possess? Let us know in the comments below!
Divi 2.4 is here, and it’s more than just an update! (sponsored)
Divi is ElegantThemes’ most popular WordPress theme for a very good reason, it’s much more than a simple template, it’s a powerful website builder that truly extends the capabilities of WordPress. ElegantThemes releases today the version 2.4 of it’s coolest theme, and the new features and re-design are just stunning.
Now let’s take a look at what changed in Divi 2.4…
A Reinvented Interface
Based on users experience, the UI of the theme was totally reinvented to make it even easier to use and more beautiful.
Even more layouts available
Layouts are one of the best features of Divi, as it makes it possible to create advanced web design with just a few clicks.
Totally responsive
Google has made it clear that websites that are not adapted for display on tablets and mobile will be penalized. No risk of this to happen with Divi, the layouts are all 100% fluid and Responsive.
24 unique fullscreen headers
Do you like these fancy fullscreen headers that you see on many well-designed websites? Well, you’ll be able to create these as well with Divi.
New navigation options
The navigation menu is another key element of your website, Divi knows it and offers many options to create exactly the one you need.
Post builder
Whether you want to create a landing page or do a Medium-style blog post, the post builder will be just right to create posts that tell a story.
Page elements
Another incredibly useful building block of Divi is the ability to add page elements that are synced accross multiple pages. That’s even more power for advanced layouts.
Spacing controls
For anyone who’s ever done web design and worked with CSS, you know how painful it can be to arrange spacing for block on the page. Not with Divi, the theme let you deeply customize the spacing between building blocks.
Advanced settings customization
If all these customization options aren’t enough for you, the customizer was revamped and get tons more settings to arrange your theme exactly the way you want.
Advanced settings
During the creation process of Divi, designers and developers were not forgotten. There are some advanced settings you can change, as well as the possibility to add custom CSS to your theme to make it really personal.
The most advanced theme on the market
To conclude, I’d say that Divi 2.4 is probably the most useful and comprehensive WordPress theme on the market. It works perfectly for developers and people who aren’t too tech-savvy. Get it now and you get many themes in one.
8 important tools for web designers and developers
Today, here we have a wide range of tools and resources for kick-ass web developers to make their development projects run smoothly and efficiently. Check-out these handy tools below!
1. BugHerd
BugHerd is a great tool for tracking bug built by web developers that makes collecting feedback from non-tech users a breeze. You can get this tool here.
2. Net2ftp
Net2ftp is an in browser FTP platform that lets you login, upload and edit web files. You can get the tool here.
3. Apiary
Apiary is a tool for the whole design and development team that automatically builds interactive documentation for API designs to make the development stage easier. Get this killer tool here.
4. Remote Debugging With Google Chrome DevTools
Remote debugging with Chrome DevTools lets you debug live content on your Android device from your development machine. Get this tool here.
5. Annyang
Annyang brings the power of voice commands to your development projects in this teeny javascript library. Get this tool here.
6. PageSpeed
The PageSpeed tools analyze and optimize your site following web best practices. Get the tool here.
7. Moz’s SEO Cheat Sheet 2.0 For Web Developers
This is a resource rather than tool by Moz that is an invaluable reference for web developers throughout their projects to ensure their code keeps search engines happy. Get the resource here.
8. Userium
This is also a resource rather than a tool in the shape of an interactive checklist for you to comb through your projects and check for usability issues. Get it here.
Chủ Nhật, 14 tháng 6, 2015
Wallpaper of the Week - 80s
The wallpaper of this week is an amazing image that I created last weekend inspired by the Kung Furry movie. As you can see the image is all about the 80s with neon/light effects with the classic computer generated grid.
If you want to know how the image was created in Photoshop check out the tutorial at: http://abduzeedo.com/80s-artwork-photoshop
Desktop Version