TransPacific Software

E-commerce Experts Consulting and Development www.transpacific-software.com [email protected]

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Migrating from Magento Enterprise Edition (EE) to Magento Community Version (CE)

If you initially opted for Magento Enterprise version (with around $18000/Yr. cost) and would like to migrate to magento’s Free Community version here are valuable insights from our experience

Moving from Magento Enterprise (EE) to Magento Community (CE)

There are two  approaches.

Removing EE files:

1) You can try to downgrade your installation EE by remove  enterprise files. There is a blog written here http://blog.yanted.com/2014/02/21/downgrading-magento-enterprise-to-community/

However this approach does not work.

The better but more lengthy approach which works is rebuilding the site fresh CE version

2) You can start fresh with a new community install and bring over your code, design modifications and data from EE to CE.

The key here is to migrate the most useable code from EE version to CE version.

But before taking any of these two approaching  complete analysis of the project is essential

Initial Analysis

1 In initial analysis following study to be madeIdentify and document any custom modifications/ changes done in EE version and ascertain if all these can be emulated in CE version.

2  Make a list of Extensions installed and check If the CE versions of the extensions are also available

3 Create another web hosting account wherein you may load the CE version for migration. The original EE installation should never be disturbed till you are sure that CE version is ready for migration and replace EE version

Our Migration experience: Step by step:

Initial study : During initial study we analysed the  scope of a project . We analysed the project requirements, functionality flow, database structure, frontend design  and template structure.

Planning  -  Magento has a large code base and database. To make things easier ; work should be broken down in following distinct tasks

 1 . Theme Migration (HTML and CSS)

 2 : Database migration

 3 : Third party extensions.

Step 1 : Theme Migration

 1.1 Template Integration(HTML) - Copy the enterprise edition template to community edition .

 1.2 Skin Integration (css) -Copy enterprise edition skin(css) to community edition.

 1.3 Assign new theme to magento frontend store.

  1.4 Integrate local code in template.

 Step 2 : Database Migration

  2.1 Export product data to csv format.

  2.2 Create products attribute set , attribute groups and attributes as per enterprise edition.

  2.3 To assign images to products, put images into /media/import folder and change your  images path in csv relative to  /media/import folder.

  2.4 Import the product data from CSV file.(increase import file size )

Step 3 : Third party extensions installation which we freshly installed on CE version.(fortunately all had CE compatible versions)

3.1 Integrated banner slider extension.

3.2 Integrated one page checkout extension.

3.3 Add zoom plugin for product details page .

3.5 Integrate Custom_Login_Redirect extension.

3.6 IntegrateAngelleye_PayPal_BML_Banners extension.

3.7 Integrate BL_CustomGrid extension.

3.8 Integrate ParcelPro_Carrier extension.

3.9 Ebizmarts_MageMonkey  extension.

Some other issues to be noted

1) Customer login section template - enterprise version doesn't work :  

Form validation method change in new community version (i .e 1.9.0 ). So use community version base template instead of using the legacy EE version.

2) Data import :

Customer & Product data : Export from enterprise version and import in community version(create same attributes and attributes set) is possible .

However one cannot directly import subscriber and order data in CE version fro EE version. A custom script needs to be written for the purpose .

3) URL re-direct management  : Enterprise version in built functionality of url-redirect whereas community version has url redirect management functionality .

4) Indexing :

In enterprise edition data  indexing is auto for URL Redirects, Stock Status,Catalog Search Index,Product URL Rewrites,Category URL Rewrites,Catalog Category/Product Index and Catalog product price;  whereas In community edition index management is manual.

The downside

One of the biggest issue we faced after migration was speed. Indeed! Magento Enterprise version site is much faster due to its indexing and cache management . We had to do some ultra tuning up on Magento CE including installing memcached & Varnish.

For More Info and questions contact: [email protected]

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Have your own integrated platform for diamond trading

If you are a B2B diamond trading company or a diamond dealer; you should have your own diamond trading platform . You can list your inventory with mark-ups and have your sub-dealers as its members.

The platform comes with:

· Responsive website

· Android and IOS app

Demo is available on:

http://diamonddealer.transpacific-software.com/

For backend admin walk-through contact us on [email protected]

Features :

1) Ability to add/ remove sub-dealers with individual mark-ups

2) Full integration with Rapnet/IDEX/Custom diamond feed

3) Blazing fast diamond search Engine

4) Custom built Android /IOS version APP of the site

5) Ability to put different markup for different users

6) Site is fully responsive

2) Built on Opencart e-commerce framework

3) Customization and Branding of the Platform

Detail Features: http://goo.gl/z43cvO

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How to install and activate SSL Certificate for Opencart

SSL certificate is a must for payment gateways. So if you are processing payments,  you must have your SSL certificate in place.SSL certificate will allow payment process  through secured https protocol.

How to activate your SSL certificate on Opencart; Step-by Step guide:

1)  Buying and installing SSL certificate : You need  to buy an SSL certificate  by generating CSR (certificate signing request) and further validating your domain and company name.

Buying and installing certificate is a common process for any type of installation irrespective of whichever platform you are using (eg. Magento, Opencart etc)

You are strongly suggested to contact  hosting provider who will get this process done for you.(if you buy the certificate from them)

2)  Once you have SSL in place here is the process to activate it on Opencart

a)  Switch on SSL from admin section

Go to opencart installations admin section .Go to  system> settings> edit store>  Go to server tab . Switch on “USE SSL”  . save the change.

b)  Change path to https on root config file

Use FTP to connect to your server . On root you will find config.php open(to edit) you will find

define(‘HTTPS_SERVER’, ‘http://opencart.transpacific-software.com/‘);

change it to https    (‘HTTPS_SERVER’, ‘https://opencart.transpacific-software.com/’) re-upload the file

3)  Go to “admin” folder on FTP . You will find one more config.php . open it to edit you will find / / HTTPS settings

define(‘HTTPS_SERVER’, ‘http://opencart.transpacific-software.com/admin/’);

define(‘HTTPS_CATALOG’, ‘http://opencart.transpacific-software.com/’);

change the URLs in this section to https (Note that changes should be made only under https section  NOT  http section)

define(‘HTTPS_SERVER’, ‘https://opencart.transpacific-software.com/admin/’);

define(‘HTTPS_CATALOG’, ‘https://opencart.transpacific-software.com/‘);

Re-upload the File.

SSL on your OpenCart installation is fully activated

For More info questions contact :  [email protected]

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Saving Hacked woocommerce stores

Google labeling yoursite as “ hacked” is nightmarish. You will lose almost 95%traffic and 100% SEO.

What is a hacked site

When google bot detects malicious script or spam links inserted within your website; it identifies  it as “hacked” . Further Google takes a manual review and if reviewer confirms the malicious script inserted within your website,  it labels it as “Hacked”  In search results Google will explicitly warn visitors that its a “hacked site”

Hacking of a site may happen on any e-store including Magento , Opencart , Prestashop we find it a recurring problem in Woocommerce-Wordpress based sites.

So how a woocommerce-WP site gets hacked?

A hacker pushes in the malicious code and spam links by exploiting a loophole in poorly coded plugins and themes installed. Many a times user installs nulled plugins or free available themes  by downloading them from untrusted sites. These already have malicious trojan horse kind of code hidden in. Once the hacker confirms that your site is infected he uses the same malicious code to move it or hide it at multiple locations within a target site, making it  difficult to detect

Typical code injection and hideaways locations

1. Themes : /wp-content/themes/downloaded_themes ( injection code is hidden inside the theme ,plugins etc)

2. Plugins : /wp-content/plugins/

3. Upload directory : /wp-content/uploads/

4. wp-config file in root directory

5. Includes folder : /wp-includes/

So what needs to be done If my site is infected?

e get at least 2 requests a week to recorrect such websites and here is our approach.

Manual Auditing

1. Nothing can replace better clean up than line by line code  manual auditing . We download the entire site and go through it file by file  to identify the malicious code locations. These are removed manually

2. Its also necessary to find the source of these infections (may be theme or plugin) . once the source is identified either it is removed /updated or replaced. Identifing source requires considerable development experience.

Automated Tools

3. Then automated code scanning tools are used to scan the site . Good quality antivirus plugins are available on Wordpress extensions. which may be installed and put of periodic scanning mode.

4. Lastly a third party tool like Sucuri is used to check site online for any infections.

Request to Google

5. Finally a request is made through google webmaster tools for Google to reconsider the site and remove its “hacked “ label. Typically Google reviewer will revert in about 1 week after auditing your site

What can be done to Prevent woocommerce WP stores from getting hacked

1. Always keep updating the plugins and WP installation.

2. Install themes and plug-ins only from trusted sources and after checking its reviews.

3. Remove the default user “admin”

4. Install well rated anti-virus plugins which are available free on WP-Extensions.

5. Use a good strength password and keep backing up your website.

More Info Contact: [email protected]

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Creating large e-Commerce Store with Opencart

A case study on how we created large web store with opencart.

The Myth

A myth circulating on ecommece forums is “Opencart” is only for small & mid size e-stores . It cannot be scaled up to the enterprise level; cannot handle thousands of products.. its a myth! Indeed

OpenCart can be scaled up to any level to enjoy dual benefit of simplicity and enterprise wide functionality.

The Case:

When Blackheath ( a leading UK based Distributor of decorative laminate and kitchen products.) through its development agencies approached Transpacific to develop its new e-store on Opencart. It had its challenges.

Challenges

It is a large storefront with 50,000 products 112 categories: 104 Sub categories and more than 1,50,000 images . Further It required an efficient Content Management System(CMS) to handle its ever growing number of technical documents , case studies & brochures. Blackheath required the CMS to be managed by its non-technical staff through intuitive backend interface.

It also required a connection to its ERP system to pull and push inventory seamlessly into website through automated cron jobs.

The Project Execution

Custom built content Management system for Opencart

Arguably the biggest shortcoming of Opencart is its feeble content management system.Rich informative content ( articles, guides etc) form the backbone of SEO : Say if you wish to create 50 page Educational section with topic- sub topic type structure; Its not possible in opencart.

OpenCart has basic information module wherein you may create individual pages but that’s about it. . One of the Top priority of TransPacific was to create a top quality intuitive CMS system .

Taking a cue from Joomla a complete custom made CMS system was developed

The CMS was developed by improvising on Opencart layout block concept and further making it similar to Joomla . These blocks could be edited independently and assigned wherever required in any pages (left , Right or centre) and even the same block could be placed in multiple pages.

For regular article style CMS management the current OpenCart information page section was improvised to have hierarchical structure where in the admin can manage parent topic and sub-topic from backend .

Additional custom build modules in Backend

Technical document Module and Case Study Module

Blackheath had the requirement of regularly keep uploading new case studies , brochures and Technical documents. A customized module was created to upload these files and to get them associated with appropriate product. However these documents were in multiple formats like Cdr , PDF , PSD , various video format.By default OpenCart allow only few selected image formats like jpg. PNG. To overcome this issue TransPacific’s popular “All Files Type” extension was applied. Which permited the user to allow additional formats to be uploaded through Image Uploader.

Site optimization

1) Product total count in Menu

In Opencart by default in menu total number of product count is displayed. The site had more than 50,000 products and thus loading pages was slowing down pages. This functionality had to be removed for speed improvement. .

2) Data insertion

Initial load of data insertion (more than a half a million records) was carried out by coding a parser script which read through ERP systems inventory XML files and inserted the data with images in Opencart.

Each data insertion cycle had to be checked for accuracy. If it failed to insert the data and image correctly it wrote a log file and moved on. Log File was examined atter to correct the missing images

For More info contact : [email protected]

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“All File Types Extension” for OpenCart: Upload any file format through Image Manager

What If you would like to upload product specifications in .doc , instead of a product Image in Opencart. The Image manager won’t allow it.

Let’s say if you wish to upload pdf document  and place it for user download along with product Images ; you won’t be able to do it. Image Manager allows only common image formats like png and jpeg.

What if you wish to upload product video in newer web  or  MP4 format; Not possible through Image Manager

Try uploading and It will throw up “Invalid File Type” Error.

“All File Types” Extension allow you to upload any file format on Image Manager

No More “ Invalid file format”  errors.

The Extension is available on OpenCart  Extensions for $45

Or you may contact us for free installation on [email protected]

Installation:

Pre-requisite:  Need to have vQmod installed

Step -1:

Install “All File Types” Extension

 Step 2 :

Add new file type extension (eg. .pdf , .doc  etc) with an icon representing the file

Add correct MIME type (If available in pre-populated list; enable it)

Save the setting

Step 3 :

You may try uploading the file through Image Manger.

 Full installation free of cost and support available. Please contact [email protected]

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Opencart Nulled Extensions: 6 Reasons You Should Not Use Them !

“Opencart nulled” or “Opencart nulled extensions” is a breakout search string (as per Google Trends) . Increasing number of developers keep searching   the net for Nulled extensions. On other hand many spurious web sites hosting pirated/ nulled scripts have mushroomed.

What is a nulled script?

It's a pirated script. 'nullified' usually means that any security measures the software developers put into it have been removed. For example, copy right info, license codes etc. In Opencart case the nulled opencart scripts (extensions or plugins) are original scripts put up for free download through unauthorized channels.

Deploying a nulled or pirated script can have negative consequences on your development efforts:

1)  Malicious script embedding:

 The nulled or pirated scripts hosted on shady website may have malicious scripts embed  especially within its JS or vQmod  files and can steal sensitive info from host  ecommerce site.   Few such nulled extensions downloaded by us for checking even contained base64 encoded strings as well as obfuscated code. You never know what it contains.

If you are a developer you certainly don’t want to put your client’s e-commerce business at risk

  2)  No Support for nulled scripts

OpenCart Extensions purchased through authorized channels  will have support from their creators. Support is absolutely essential during installation, it may also require minor tweaking   of code to suite your theme. Sometimes an already installed extension may interfere with new extension or it may not work with the Opencart version you have. Such issues can be addressed by support provided by developer of the extension. Nulled script have no support system. At TransPacific we provide complete installation free of cost for extensions developed by us.

3) You are damaging the OC ecosystem

Opencart is open source & free. Its primary earning is through sale of extensions in arrangement with extension creators. By using nulled scripts you are damaging the very fabric of opencart  free ecosystem. Further it is extremely painful for a developer to see his copy- righted work circulated free. A big dis-incentive for creating more extensions.

4) OC extensions are low priced:

Most of the Opencart extensions are available for less than $99. And majorly of them are less than $50. That is a very reasonable cost.

5) You are a target for DMCA or copy-right in infringement actions.

 If your (or your client’s server) is in USA there is probability that original extension developer may slap DMCA take down notice. If Hosting provider finds the code on the server he may immediately take down the website and ban your account.

TransPacific has two popular extensions Google Rich snippet and Pinterest  Rich Pin snippet. On finding pirated versions of these on some website we have successfully invoked DMCA.

DMCA can be quickly issues by aggrieved party without attorney at almost no cost. In European countries (if your server is based in Europe) similar Copy Right laws are enacted

The last One

6) Its outright unethical, Illegal and unscrupulous to use nulled scripts. 

For More information contact [email protected]

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Integrating Prestashop with Rapnet Diamond (Raplink)

Recently one of our European clients came up with a requirement of developing an enterprise wide jewelry e-store with Rapnet diamond data integration. The client wanted  development on Prestashop. Prestashop is an  open Source popular e-commerce framework similar to Magento and Opencart.

The Catch: Prestashop integration with Inventory Link( Raplink)

However the catch was : client had Raplink services with Rapaport (instead of DLS service)

More info about Raplink and DLS click.

Raplink  essentially connects to Rapnet server in real time through SOAP calls to pull diamond data.  Unlike DLS services no data is maintained on client server.

To integrate Prestashop with Raplink We had to out of box retrofitting.

Here are the highlights

SOAP calls through web-services

1. Diamond data is fetch from Rapnet servers through SOAP call i.e getDiamonds.

2. To pull data  we have created controller with  Rapnet login details which makes SOAP calls with required criterion including  shape, carat, cut etc.

Data saved in database only when required

3. Fetched data is not stored in database. It is directly displayed on diamond listing page.

4. When user clicks on “view diamond” another soap call is sent with diamond ID i.e  “getDiamond”. To get diamond attributes including  carat wt., cut, clarity, color, florescence , cost(with added mark-up) , origin etc.

6. Response from Rapnet is displayed on diamond detail page without saving in data in database.

7. When user clicks on buy diamond or add to wish list; only at that instance diamond details as saved in database as data will be required persistently.

8  “Saving the diamond data only when required” rule is adhered to while designing build-a-ring feature. Only  when  diamond and ring are finally selected by user for purchase data is persistently saved in database.

Demo of Prestashop + Rapnet diamond integration with inventory link  is available here

Questions contact: [email protected]

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Opencart to Google docs: Pull and sync data through scripting

You can pull data from an Opencart shop to Google doc spreadsheet auto with just click of a button.

This is of great use for retrieving data in spreadsheet format.

Here is a step by step Guide:

The demo below explains how to retrieve product data from Opencart on to Google spreadsheet

Step-1   Create a spreadsheet within your Google Drive

Step -2 Create a new spreadsheet and insert the script provided in below link.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iA3284ZrSEAGdwJQeb5dJXLRTkECMb52z4KwBqxUBZQ/edit?usp=sharing

How to insert script

To insert the script in Google spreadsheet go to Tools> script Editor

On opening script editor you will find a Google Apps Script pop-up Close it.

  On closing pop-up you will also find some pre-written function tags. Remove them completely

Paste the script provided in script Editor.

Step -3: (Important step) Adding your MySQL database credentials and correct table names

Jdbc.getConnection('jdbc:mysql://demo.transpacific.me/opencart_db', 'admin', 'pass123')

Replace the place holder credentials (host, user, pass) for mysql

Also change place holder table names in script oc_product and oc_product_description as per your MySQL database (correct table names you can check through your cpanel phpmyadmin)

Step-4 Run the Script

You are all set to run the script!!

Run the script from top menu <Run> and it will pull the product data from your Opencart shop.

(it will ask for  script authorization on first run  accept.)

Script will take anywhere between 20 seconds to 1 minute to pull data depending on connection speed and data size.

Step -5 (important step) connection error & White listing Google ip’s

To Pull data; Script from Google Docs connects to your Opencart MySQL database. In some cases your MySQL database will not allow this unless you white list the visiting servers ip.

Google has provided a list of ip’s you need to white list. (this can be done through your servers  cpanel )

Below is the list of Google ip’s you need to whitelist. More details on:

https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/jdbc#authorization

216.239.32.0 - 216.239.63.255

64.233.160.0 - 64.233.191.255

66.249.80.0 - 66.249.95.255

72.14.192.0 - 72.14.255.255

209.85.128.0 - 209.85.255.255

66.102.0.0 - 66.102.15.255

74.125.0.0 - 74.125.255.255

64.18.0.0 - 64.18.15.255

207.126.144.0 - 207.126.159.255

173.194.0.0 - 173.194.255.255

Scope for customization:

The script is written for a default Opencart but can be customized to any extend. It can also pull data from order table, from abandon cart table and  any additional tables as required.

Its of great help to quickly backup the OC data on your Google spreadsheet environment.

Please post your comments/queries here.

For customization work please contact: [email protected]

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Is Your Diamond Jewelry e-store not converting? “9 and a half “ Questions to ask yourself ..

Your jewelry e-commerce store has a great designs, exquisite jewelry, competitive pricing …...but visitors are not converting into buyers. You are baffled and don’t know what to do. You are burning  a lot of cash on Google ad-words campaign, still visitor conversion rate is  low.. What could be the reason? 

Based on my company’s years of experience in designing and developing e-stores for diamond and jewelry industry here are some insights and a list of “Nine and a half” (9.5) questions to ask..

  Is your e-store slow ?

A typical online jewelry buyer spends lot of time surfing within a jewelry site. She goes though almost all available designs and metal options. If there is “build-a-ring” feature than considerable time is spend on making combinations of ring design with diamonds. If your website is sluggish it is an instant put-off. Frustrated with slowness,  a prospective buyer will never visit your store again. Jewelry stores need to be fast with lot of ajax based features.(without page re-load)

Get a speed audit done from various geographical locations. Use online speed testing tools like webpagetest.org.  Do a user testing from third party sites like usertesting.com. Invest in server or cloud hosting with CDN.

Speed is important.

Are enough Trust cues displayed?

Trust cues are logos of accreditation which help to instill trust in a prospective buyer.

They may include your membership logos with various industry organizations, or security related badges which certify PCI DSS compliance.

Diamond Jewelry buyer is not an impulsive buyer. Buying jewelry online is serious shopping. As a buyer surfs through your site she verifies that the website is a credible place to do purchase.

Trust cues can be broadly divided in following categories : Industry specific, security specific and Press mentions.

Industry specific trust cues for jewelry and diamond industry   include:  British Jewelers’ Association ( BJA) , GIA , ASSAY Assured

Press related links could be permalinks to press references to your company in reputed publications.

Security related cues may include third part security auditors certifying your site as safe to do business with. These may  include Trustwave, Comodo ,Verisign , Geotrust etc.

Ensure that all these logos are pulled from concerned body website with link which will provide info on your company’s membership/certification details. Simply pasting the logo is out-right illegal and will be counterproductive.

If you don’t have adequate security certification hire a consultant to get these through due diligence auditing of your site.,

Does you site has link/design sharing feature ?

An online jewelry buyer doesn’t buy on first visit. She finalizes a design then adds it in the wish list. Picks-up it’s permalink. Circulates the link to friends and family and so on…

Do you have “share” or e-mail a friend provision on product pages. It’s one of the most essential features in a jewelry website design.

If you are using e-commerce framework like Magento, OpenCart, Prestashop or wordpress Woocommerce than they have ready to deploy plugins for sharing.

  Is your physical office address and phone number prominently displayed with real world shop photographs ?

Jewelry and diamond buying online perhaps has biggest “assumed trust” factor. Based on your website a buyer, before making a purchase need to develop enough trust within your business. One of the biggest factors is assurance of physical presence.  Do you have your phone number and office address with Google map pinned location prominently featured on your site? Are your office / showroom photographs available?  Do you have appointment scheduling form available wherein a prospect is invited to visit your showroom?

Get your brick and mortar presence well represented on your e-store.

   Are you displaying shipping packaging details?

As per our estimate, as high as 60% of purchases on jewelry websites happen for gifting. Very special gifting to loved once. No one would like to send and receive these exquisite jewelry items in business like packaging.

A buyer would like to know what packaging are you offering ? Is it complimentary or chargeable?

Do you provide a choice for packaging? Have you displayed the photographs of  gift box ? Do you provide customizations on gifting like not printing item cost.

Display the packaging details prominently they help in conversion.

    Does your e-store display customer reviews and testimonials ?

Prospective buyer consistently checks for  product reviews and testimonials. Do you have enough product reviews and authentic testimonials on your site ? Instead of publishing reviews yourself; link them to third party review sites like TrustPilot, Yelp, reviews.co.uk, BBB and Google reviews. They carry more trust factor over self-published testimonials.

If you don’t have client reviews yet;  start building them by requesting your existing customers.

If you already have few testimonials on your website, evaluate them for trust worthiness from a buyer’s point of view.

  Is your “About Us” section  a Boiler Plate display?

 About Us section on a jewelry e-commerce is one of the most important pages and works as make or break page for final conversion. Over the years of studying Analytics and conversions for a jewelry e-store we have observed that as high as 90% of time a buyer checks “Above Us” page  before making a final purchase.

About us should show real faces with key functionaries name photographs and direct e-mail ID should have a comprehensive backgrounder on your  company.

  Have you provided a statement on How your diamonds are sourced?

Are your diamonds sourced through ethical channels? Have you provided a statement/declaration that they are not “conflict diamonds”.

If you have made a pledge through “The Campaign for Ethical jewelry ”  or are members of “Stop Blood Diamonds”  display the logos prominently. As per our experience buyers from US and Europe are very sensitive about this.

Is your “Return Policy” well defined?

Is your “return policy” clearly defined? Or does it have too much small print ?

It’s essential that jewelry e-stores have a liberal return policy which should include “ 30 Days Money back Guarantee” Make your policy well defined in case of custom engraved items. Your return policy should also consist of step by step guide on how to return merchandise and care to be taken during  return packaging. Check with your competitors return policy to see if you can do better.

In a jewelry , Diamond , color stone e-store return policy is of paramount importance.

We have mentioned 9 critical questions to ask yourself.. Now here is the remaining half question ?

Do I have to…….Fill in rest of the question as you like.

keep asking yourself new and critical questions.

They could be

Do I have to make the site Responsive?

Do I have to up date the site interface ?

Do I have to have a jewelry consultant available live for chatting..?

Jewelry e-commerce business is super competitive. Complacency could be detrimental.

Keep asking and keep improving user experience on your jewelry e-store

Prashant Telang is the Founder Director of TransPacific Software Pvt. Ltd.

TransPacific Software specializes in design ,development of e-commerce stores for diamonds, gems, jewelry and color stone industry. It has developed jewelry e-commerce websites in Magento, OpenCart, Prestashop, Woocommerce and  Wp-commerce for jewelry retailers from all across the globe

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Integrating Woocommerce with diamond data from Rapnet or IDEX

Many  jewelry web-sites developed on Woocommerce ( A WordPress e-commerce  plugin) require  integrating diamond data from diamond trading exchanges like Rapnet , IDEX, MID or Polygon.

Unlike Magento Opencart or Prestashop which are built ground up for e-commerce,  Woocommerce is a plugin on WordPress blog framework ,  to  improvise it to ecommerce store.

 Essentially the “posts” in WP are altered by woocommerce to show as items/products, this makes it restrictive for customization. Furthermore  for massive diamond trading  data (typically Rapnet feed may go into 50,000+ diamonds) with numerous diamond specific attributes like carat weight, color, fluorescence, clarity, cut etc; integration becomes complex.

As a specialist in Diamond Jewelry websites ; Transpacific regularly receives project requests to integrate Woocommerce or WP-ecommerce with Rapnet data as well  as to build front end diamond search interface for build a ring feature.

The biggest problem:  Inserting bulk (more than 100k)records in Woocommerce-WP

How is it done:

a)  Prepare the database  to handle additional diamond attributes

 CSV format Diamond data is downloaded from trading exchanges like Rapnet/IDEX/ Polygon or MID.

Unlike a other products a diamond has many specialized attributes including cut, Florescence, table , symmetry etc.  all these  are  necessary for creating front end “diamond search engine”

So the first step to prepare database, is by creating additional tables for diamond specific attributes to be joining to posts table with “post ID

b)CSV parsing and inserting extensions

WP has few good quality extensions available for  CSV import . However most of them could  not go beyond inserting 10k+ products.

During our testing all of these flashed

“Fatal error: Allowed memory size Exhausted”

 error .

This happens due to WP native data insert functions to insert product data including      wp_insert_post();

-      wp_set_object_terms();

-      add_post_meta();

-      update_post_meta();

Consume extensive server memory ; by the time they reach 8K-10K product inserts “memory exhausted error shows up”

Out-of-Box approach for 100K CSV data insert

An out of box approach had to be taken for inserting 100K products by developing a separate custom plugin  which parsed the csv files through Core PHP queries .TransPacific’s  specialized module efficiently inserts about 100K product records in about 17-20 minutes.

Front end diamond search engine:

Front end Diamond search engines forms an integral part of the Diamond web-site. A spate WP plugin had to be built for diamond search which queries more than 100,000 diamond records on more than 10 filtering criterions.

A demo is available on  http://www.techtps.com/woo/?post_type=loosediamonds

Do contact us on [email protected] for more details 

[techtps]

Developing a new ecommerce web-site ? then a must read ..

Most of the first time ecommerce starters have their priorities skewed. At least that’s what our experience is. Invariably they will start researching open source shopping carts and going through hundreds of spin-off article on Prestashop v/s Magento v/s Opencart…. Or which shopping cart is the most SEO friendly. This is like putting cart before the horse.

First things first: Want to start a ecommerce venture. Get your data and photographs organized. The biggest problem we have identified with dozens of ecommerce ventures we work with is: unavailability of data and good quality photographs.

First get your product info ready in a spreadsheet format like Excel.

There are two ways to add new content in any ecommerce site. Either you do your content compilation in a spreadsheet like Excel or Google docs and get it bulk imported in the shopping cart database or do one by one entry from backend from admin section. Most ecommerce vendors prefer to work on spreadsheets and get it bulk imported. All shopping carts like opencart, Prestashop and Magento have open source plugins to import data from csv or spread sheets; provided it is in correct order.

Most of the e-commerce carts have a similar category structure at top level. This consist of Category, subcategory description size…. Here is a general template which you can refer to for data organizing. However for different type of merchandise such as electronics or apparel this structure may vary to some extent.

Get your spread sheet data ready with product descriptions, categorization, image names etc. Initially this may be cumbersome but it is a onetime effort. Further updates on data can be directly done though cart admin interface.

Photographs Your website doesn’t stand a chance without good quality product photographs. Have your product photographs of good quality with white background and of squarish size. (aspect ratio between .85 to 1)

Remember few things while photography 1) Atleast 3 photographs of a product is suggested from different angles. 2) Size typically can be 900×900 or similar. 3) White background. 4) Nomenclature of photographs should have a fixed format which is self-explanatory example: red_shirt_men_sizexxl.jpg and 5) Image names should be entered in the spreadsheet for corresponding products.

Content Pages

Once you are done with above data organization the third part is getting your text ready for static page.

This Include: Home Page introductory text, About us, Contact Us, Terms and conditions, Return Policy etc.

Once these three core contents i.e. data, photographs, static page text are ready you may proceed with selecting which shopping you would like to select.

Feel free to communicate with us on [email protected]

[techtps]

5 OpenCart Extensions from TransPacific to put your Opencart shop on Steroids

1. Prism - Ecommerce Analytics

Details : Ecommerce Analytics installed on your Opencart shop

A better alternative to Google Analytics. Pulls out host of e-commerce analytics /data information from your OpenCart shop.

Cost : $99 Download and More info : http://www.transpacific-software.com/opencart_analytics.php

Contact on [email protected] for installation

2. GR Rich Snippet Extension for Google

Details : Will display additional info with your search results e.g. Reviews, star rating, cost. With additional info displayed ; it is expected to improve search engine visibility, CTR, ranking and conversions. Cost : $25 Download and More Info Link : http://www.transpacific-software.com/opencart-ecommerce-extension.php

3. Pinterest Rich Pin Plugin Extension

Details : Embeds additional info within Images Pined from your OpenCart shop on to Pinterest boards. Additional info such as cost , availability , reviews is expected to increase conversions from Pinterest Cost: $25 Download and More info : http://www.transpacific-software.com/pinterest_rich_pin_extension.php

4.Pull Jquery from Google CDN

Details : Speed up your website by pulling Jquery from Google CDN Cost : Free Download and More info : http://www.transpacific-software.com/blog/opencart-extension-load-jquery-from-google-cdn/

5.GR Rich Snippet Info with Business semantic tags

Details : GoodRelations (GR) is Google Recommended vocabulary for publishing all of the details of your business, products and services in a way friendly to search engines, mobile applications, and browsers. By adding semantic mark up to your Web content, you make sure that potential customers realize all the features and services and the benefits of doing business with you, because search bots can extract and present this information with ease in search results. Cost : Free Download and More info : http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=extension/extension/info&extension_id=10192&filter_username=TranspacificSoftware

[techtps]

OpenCart Extension: Load Jquery from Google CDN

E-commerce site speed is one of the most important criterions to enhance user experience . Every bit  of effort to improve site speed counts.

Here is a simple plugin available free for OpenCart which will modify the paths of  your hosted Jquery  to download it  from Google’s hosted  Javascript libraries . It will serve jQuery to your users directly from Google’s network of datacenters.

  Click Here to Download the OpenCart Jquery Plugin

  What are the advantages of using this plugin?

Speed through Google’s CDN infrastructure

As your Jquery will be hosted on Google’s Content Delivery network ; download time will be reduced. Your users in Europe will hit the Google’s hosted library servers  in USA and your users in the Europe should hit the Europe CDN.

Speed through caching

if they have  visited another website that references the same jQuery library then jQuery library is already cached in the visitor's browser. In this case, the visitor won't even have to download the jQuery library.

 What if the Google’ Hosted Library  is down?

Google’s CDN down ..is the rarest of the rare possibility still suppose  if your user can't access the CDN for some reason.. The Plugin has a fail-safe system. It will download the library from your server.

  To What Extent it improves the speed

 Here are some analysis from our in-house experiment

We installed a default Opencart on our server…and tested on webpagetest.org There is considerable speed enhancement when Jquery are switched to Google CDN

    More Details and customized Plug-in Extension Development contact:  [email protected]

[techtps]

“Simplify Commerce” payment solution by MasterCart for Small and mid-sized e-retailers

Off late numerous Mom and Pop shops”, Small traders and family owned businesses; are opening e-front as complimentary to their brick and mortal shops.

Free and ready to use open source e-commerce carts like Magento, OpenCart and Prestashop are enabling them to start e-retailing within weeks.

However one of the challenges is to integrate a viable payment gateway.

Most of the payment gateways charge considerable installation fees over and above transaction fees. Integrating these payment gateways is complicated and a merchant has to pay anywhere between $700-$1000 to get the payment gateway integrated.

Master card seems to have recognized this pain area in ecommerce implementations. Recently master card rolled out “Simplify Commerce“ designed to accept both e-commerce and mobile payments within minutes.

MasterCard describes it as a three-step process:

-          use MasterCard's new APIs.

-           activate a merchant account.

-           and then start accepting payments.

The Simplify Commerce includes Extensions made for OpenCart and Magento shopping frameworks.

Simplify Commerce is available to merchants in the United States for now but soon will be extended to Europe.

Here is a demo TransPacific Software has put up by integrating demo version of Simplify Commerce on OpenCart Framework.

http://www.techtps.com/demo/trendz/

  For more info feel free to contact us on [email protected]

[techtps]

TransPacific Software releases Extension for OpenCart shops to make it Rich Pin enabled

Extension for OpenCart shops to make it Rich Pin enabled

In a survey by Bizrate, "70% of online consumers visiting Pinterest found an item they’ve purchased ; compared to only 40% of  who visit Facebook."

This makes Pinterest a formidable marketing platform for online retailers. However making an ecommerce portal Rich Pin enabled requires considerable expertise in semantic web. TransPacific Software has recently released a vQmod based extension which will make a OpenCart shop Rich Pin enabled through embedding Open Graph Tags in Product Detail page. The extension is easy to install and there is no configuration required.

When someone pins product image from Rich Pin enabled  ecommerce site . The image will also be embedded with actionable meta data like Stock, price etc. This information helps in better conversions and enhanced sales …More info

[techtps]

Clamp down on virtual currencies. Liberty Reserves down who would be next?

With shut down and prosecution of Liberty Reserve;  authorities in US have clearly declared war on  virtual and crypto currencies like bitcoin, litecoin and PPcoin.

Here is a presentation on understanding crypto currencies like bitcoin

http://www.businessinsider.com/presentation-what-is-bitcoin-2013-3#in-theory-no-one-controls-it-and-you-can-also-take-it-anywhere-since-its-just-code-10

  Most of the e-commerce carts like Opencart , Magento ,Prestashop  have bitcoin payment plugins which will allow a merchant to accept bitcoin or litecoin as payment through payment gateway providers like bitpay.com.

However to accept or not to accept crypto curries as payments is a matter of judgment. As the things stand  crypto currencies  sit between gray-zone of legal and illegal.