Developing an Insurance Agency Website: 5 Must-Have Pages to Include

Thinking about building a website for your insurance agency? Here’s a guide to the key pages you’ll need.

We can’t emphasize enough the importance of an online presence in today’s digital age for any business aiming to grow and, in many cases, even just to survive. Businesses across various sectors, including real estate agencies, legal firms, financial institutions, and others, need a website tailored to their specific industry requirements.

Insurance agencies are no exception. Having a website can greatly benefit them. The primary reason lies in the dramatic shift in consumers’ approach towards assessing products and services over the past few decades. Previously, most people would call or visit an insurance agency’s office for more information upon showing interest in their offerings.

Nowadays, the majority of potential clients turn to the Internet to understand what an insurance company offers. They browse through multiple websites to contrast policies, hunt for discounts, ask for a quote, or even make a purchase directly online. Hence, an insurance agency lacking an online presence is bound to lose a substantial portion of its clientele and revenue.

However, merely having a website for your insurance agency may not improve the situation. The contemporary insurance market is incredibly competitive, with companies constantly vying for a position to remain viable.

The number of insurance companies across the USA alone is currently estimated at almost 6,000. Given such fierce competition, going the extra mile to capture clients’ loyalty is necessary, and this includes your website.

When you opt to build an insurance website, you should aim to design and structure it in a way that attracts more visitors and elevates your agency above your competitors. The layout of your website is equally critical.

With over 15 years of experience building insurance websites, among other types, we could delve into discussing their user experience and functionality extensively. We’ll do that in a future post.

For now, we want to highlight the essential pages that every insurance website should incorporate. Let’s get started.

Key Webpages for Building an Insurance Website

Home Page: The Start of the User Journey

Your website’s landing page can be the first and possibly the final opportunity for effective lead generation. It should be engaging and packed with value to keep users interested. If not, there’s a chance they might leave your site quickly and not return.

The landing page of an insurance firm’s website should ideally have these main features:

A video introducing your team and company. Discuss your services, products, experience, accolades, successful case studies, and anything else that can build trust with potential insurance leads. A professionally produced video can significantly enhance your credibility.
A concise subscription form. Keep it simple with just the user’s first and last names and their email address.
An overview of your products. Visitors should get an idea of the services you offer and the types of policies you sell. Each product description should link to its respective Service or Product page for further details.
A link to the Resource Center – a page filled with useful insurance-related information for deeper understanding.
Links to your social media profiles.

About Us Page: Providing More Details about Your Insurance Firm

If users find your landing page intriguing enough to delve deeper into your site, they will likely visit the About Us page, a crucial component of any business website.

The About Us page is a great platform to showcase your company in a positive light. Don’t hold back. Highlight your accomplishments, awards, experience, strengths, and certifications. Featuring client testimonials here can also work well.

You’re not showing off, but rather demonstrating your expertise in your field. The page should also include a profile of each insurance agent in your company, along with high-quality, genuine photos to add a personal touch. Additionally, professional photos of your office and team can be highly beneficial.

In conclusion, the primary purpose of the About Us page is to solidify your reputation as a trustworthy provider of insurance products and services – a key reason for creating an insurance agent’s website.

Contact Us Page: Offer Multiple Channels for Communication

When developing an insurance website, it’s essential to include a Contact Us page that offers various means for clients to connect with you.

A standard practice when creating an insurance website is to prominently display the agency’s phone number and email address on every page. However, having a dedicated Contact Us page is equally important.

This page should list all possible modes of communication that your potential or existing clients can use, such as email addresses, phone numbers, physical location, and social media handles. Including a map pinpointing your office location can enhance the user experience.

Moreover, the Contact Us page should ideally contain a contact form for online quote requests or queries. Like the previously mentioned subscription form, the contact form should require minimal personal information. You can gather more specific details about your insurance leads when they’re prepared to negotiate a deal with you.

Services/Products Page: Highlight the Benefits of Your Offerings

When building an insurance website, ensure your product pages are brimming with value.

Every insurance agency will have this page on their site. It’s self-evident that this page should provide detailed descriptions of your services or products. Important features like coverage, discounts, validity terms, etc., should be listed here.

However, the key element here is to emphasize the benefits of your policies. Outline how a particular product can serve your clients’ needs. For instance, explain which policy is best suited for different demographics, such as elderly people or young couples, and justify why it’s their perfect match.

One more tip: try to steer clear of jargon or overly technical terms on your Services/Products pages. You wouldn’t want your insurance leads to need a dictionary just to understand your website, would you? Opt for simple, comprehensible language for your clients’ optimal convenience.

Blog: A (Somewhat) Effortless Strategy to Boost Organic Traffic Once Your Insurance Website is Up and Running

Consider incorporating a blog into your insurance website. We understand that every agent is swamped with their strenuous daily tasks. This could be one of the main explanations why many insurance websites often lack a blog.

Our perspective: this approach might not be entirely accurate. Sure, a blog may not be the top lead generation tool. However, it carries out several crucial roles that can offer significant value to your organization in the long haul:

It has the potential to draw new visitors with minimal investment on your end. This is achievable if you conduct some keyword research relevant to your field and weave them into your articles. Search engines like Google frequently crawl your blog for these keywords. If they deem your posts pertinent, your overall website will climb up in the search engine results pages.
Your articles will portray your insurance agency as authorities in your professional domain and navigate your visitors through their purchasing journey. You can create various post types aimed at consumers at every stage of the sales funnel, from those who are merely browsing and gathering information to those ready to buy a policy.

The most impressive aspect of a blog is that it only requires a small amount of time to craft posts. Once they’re live, you can sit back and unwind. Your blog will be silently operating in the background, generating more insurance leads with every new piece published online.

Naturally, regular updates to your blog are necessary. Otherwise, search engines might lose their fondness for you. The frequency of updating your blog is at your discretion.

Even if you do it biweekly, you’ll still keep the momentum going quite smoothly. Hence, it’s worth contemplating a dedicated blog page when designing an insurance website.

To Sum Up

As an insurance agency aiming to distinguish itself in a saturated market, mainlining a polished, user-friendly website is non-negotiable. Essential pages include an engaging Landing Page to capture potential leads and provide an overview of services, an About Us page that builds trust by showcasing your experience and credibility, and a Contact Us page that ensures accessibility of communication for your clients.

Additionally, your Services/Products page must be clear and customer-oriented, emphasizing the benefits of your offerings. Each page should serve a distinct purpose and collectively, they should provide a seamless, enriching user experience that sets your agency apart.

Remember, your website is a digital extension of your brand, and it should reflect your commitment to providing top-tier insurance services.

Is Bootstrap the Right Choice for WordPress Theme Development?

Is WordPress theme development with Bootstrap still a valid option? Let’s find out.

When it comes to building a website, there are a few methods you can choose from. The first is the from-scratch approach, which involves hiring skilled developers to create a custom solution tailored to your needs. While effective, this method can be costly.

Alternatively, you can use a site builder that offers pre-designed templates and basic features. This allows you to get your site up and running quickly, but it may lack a professional look and feel.

But what if there was a way to combine the best of both worlds? Enter WordPress theme development with Bootstrap. Many companies are now choosing WordPress as their platform of choice and customizing their themes using Bootstrap.

In this post, we’ll explore whether WordPress theme development using Bootstrap 5 truly provides businesses with the value they desire.

Introducing Bootstrap: The Ultimate CSS Framework

What is Bootstrap?

For those unfamiliar with Bootstrap, it is a CSS framework designed to create responsive user interfaces. Initially developed by Twitter to streamline their back-end engineers’ workflow, Bootstrap’s source code was publicly released in 2011.

Today, Bootstrap reigns as the most popular CSS framework across the internet, with 165k stars on GitHub at the time of writing.

The magic of Bootstrap lies in its responsive capabilities. By providing a collection of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, it simplifies site development through pre-defined CSS classes (built on Object-Oriented CSS).

Take, for instance, aligning an image using a native Bootstrap class:

<img class="img-fluid" src="example.jpg" alt="Example Image">

Bootstrap achieves flawless responsiveness by incorporating media queries that adapt to specific screen sizes. It effortlessly transforms WordPress themes into mobile-friendly layouts:

@media (max-width: 768px) {

 /* Styles for small screens */

}

 
@media (min-width: 769px) and (max-width: 1024px) {

 /* Styles for medium screens */

}

@media (min-width: 1025px) {

 /* Styles for large screens */

}

Furthermore, Bootstrap integrates a 12-column grid system built on top of flexbox (starting from Bootstrap 4), complete with predefined classes. Below is a code snippet that creates three equal columns across various screen sizes:

<div class="row">

 <div class="col-sm-4">

   <!-- Column 1 -->

 </div>

 <div class="col-sm-4">

   <!-- Column 2 -->

 </div>

 <div class="col-sm-4">

   <!-- Column 3 -->

 </div>

</div>

With Bootstrap, developers can effortlessly craft visually appealing and highly responsive websites.

The Key Advantages of Bootstrap for WordPress Theme Development

Bootstrap offers a range of benefits beyond its ability to create beautifully responsive websites. Here’s a quick overview of these advantages:

Bug-Free and Browser Compatible

Ensuring a website performs flawlessly across different browsers is crucial for any web developer. With traditional approaches, browser incompatibility can be a persistent issue. However, Bootstrap is a game-changer. Thanks to its extensive community of contributors, any reported issues are quickly addressed. This means websites built with Bootstrap render impeccably, regardless of the browser being used.

Efficient Web Development Process

Time is money, and Bootstrap understands that. By taking care of routine tasks like font handling, media queries, and layout, Bootstrap frees up valuable time for developers. This enables them to focus on building custom features without distractions.

Additionally, Bootstrap provides comprehensive documentation, ensuring developers have immediate access to answers and solutions on various forums.

Flexible Customization

One standout feature of Bootstrap is its flexibility. It’s like going shopping – you can choose the elements you need from the Bootstrap library and create a custom collection.

Furthermore, you can customize the standard Bootstrap library by modifying mixins and reassigning variables directly in the framework’s source code. This allows you to tailor Bootstrap to meet your project’s specific requirements. If you encounter any technical challenges along the way, the skilled front-end developers at the Site Slinger are always available to assist.

Seamless Integration, Minimal Plugins

Often, websites require numerous interactive features, leading developers to rely on various jQuery plugins. However, excessive plugin usage can lead to compatibility issues and version mismatches. The latest version of Bootstrap (starting from version 5) has transitioned completely to vanilla JavaScript, making integration with your site effortless and hassle-free.

Now that you understand the power of Bootstrap in speeding up and enhancing the web development process, the question remains: “Is Bootstrap suitable for WordPress Theme Development?”

WordPress Theme Development with Bootstrap: Is It Worth It?

WordPress is powerful and flexible. As the most popular content management system on the market, choosing WordPress for your site is a smart decision.

WordPress offers a wide range of free and paid ready-made themes that even beginners can easily install. If you have some knowledge of HTML and CSS, you can customize a theme to make it unique and stand out from the rest.

However, these cosmetic changes may not bring you the desired benefits. That’s why many site owners prefer to build a custom WordPress theme. A custom theme provides a truly unique interface with all the necessary features for your specific business.

Creating a one-of-a-kind theme can be a time-consuming process that requires knowledge and skill. Developers not only need to build the theme, but also test it for compatibility with different browsers and devices. This is where WordPress theme development with Bootstrap comes in handy.

While Bootstrap was not originally designed for creating WordPress themes, you can integrate it into your custom theme in several ways. For example, you can include links in your project files to retrieve Bootstrap’s compiled CSS and JavaScript from a CDN (Content Delivery Network).

Developing a WordPress theme with Bootstrap involves creating a specific project structure and following essential steps. However, we won’t delve into those details here.

What’s important is that once you have integrated Bootstrap and WordPress, you can leverage all the great features of the framework, including its built-in classes and the responsive grid system using flexbox. The result will be a theme that works perfectly across different browsers and devices.

In addition, there are many WordPress Bootstrap plugins available that can enhance the functionality of your site. For example, you can use a plugin to add a Bootstrap carousel or transform your navigation menu into a Twitter-style one. The possibilities are endless.

Does WordPress Theme Development With Bootstrap Come With Any Challenges?

While there are numerous benefits to using the Bootstrap framework for WordPress site owners, it does come with its own set of limitations. Here are some well-known challenges that you may encounter when using the CDN version of Bootstrap. However, by opting to work with source files, you can avoid these issues altogether.

Excessive Code Bloat

Bootstrap provides a wide range of classes for creating various web page components. However, this can become overwhelming as not every project requires all of the framework’s classes. Why burden your website with unnecessary code when you only need a select few?

Rigid Breakpoints

The framework employs predefined breakpoints in its media queries. Customizing these breakpoints to meet unique design requirements can be a labor-intensive task for developers. If you’re seeking a truly distinct design, be prepared for some unexpected hurdles.

Uniformity Among Themes

While easy WordPress theme development with Bootstrap is a boon, it also has its drawbacks. Due to its simplicity in installation and operation, Bootstrap has gained immense popularity, leading to a plethora of themes that appear strikingly similar. Many users opt for basic, functional themes without delving deeper to make them truly distinctive.

It’s important to note that these limitations should not discourage you from using Bootstrap. Seasoned developers, such as the front-end professionals at the Site Slinger, possess the necessary expertise to overcome these challenges effortlessly.

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, the Bootstrap CSS framework offers a wealth of benefits for WordPress theme development. Among its key advantages are browser compatibility, efficient web development processes, flexible customization options, and seamless integration with minimal plugins.

However, it’s equally important to recognize potential challenges such as code bloat, rigid breakpoints, and theme uniformity. Despite these challenges, the framework’s advantages far outweigh its limitations.

Bootstrap’s potential in enhancing and hastening the web development process, and its compatibility with WordPress makes it an invaluable resource for creating unique, responsive themes.

The Pros and Cons of Developing a React WordPress Theme

In this post, we’ll delve into the details of creating a WordPress theme with React and explore the value it brings to the table.

We all know that content is king, but simply creating content isn’t enough. Efficiently manipulating it – adding, editing, and removing – is equally important.

Back in the early days of the Internet, working with content was a daunting task for regular users. That all changed with the advent of content management systems (CMS), and one of the most popular platforms to emerge is WordPress. With its user-friendly admin panel, WordPress allows site owners to effortlessly handle both back-end and front-end tasks.

However, a monumental shift occurred a few years ago when REST API was integrated into WordPress’s core. This decoupled the front-end from the back-end, enabling developers to use other technologies such as React.js to create custom WordPress themes or enhance existing ones. React.js, released by Facebook in 2013, has become one of the most beloved JavaScript frameworks/libraries for this purpose.

So, what makes building a WordPress theme with React so attractive? It all boils down to the REST API, which serves as the architectural style that enables developers to work with React and WordPress. Let’s discuss it next.

REST API: The Architectural Style That Empowers Developers to Build React-Powered WordPress Themes

Previously implemented as a plugin, the REST API is now an integral part of WordPress, revolutionizing the platform.

REST API, an acronym for Representational State Transfer, defines the rules for manipulating website data in the form of collections and objects. Each data type in WordPress has its own endpoint or URL, which developers can leverage in their code to interact with the database.

Data is exchanged between the back-end and front-end as JSON objects, utilizing JavaScript Object Notation. Think of it like a TV remote control – pressing a button sends a signal to the TV, and information starts flowing. In this analogy, the endpoint is the button, and the corresponding JSON object is the signal.

Using the REST API for a WordPress theme with React (or a similar JavaScript framework) offers several advantages. Firstly, the front-end and back-end are distinctly separated, allowing different development teams to work from different locations and servers. This also means you can create a React app as a WordPress theme, resulting in a Single Page Application (SPA) with a unique design and exceptional user experience.

Moreover, a WordPress React theme is highly dynamic, performs well, and can incorporate animations more easily than other frameworks. It can also store data on the client side for faster performance and even function offline thanks to Service Workers.

While using the WordPress REST API isn’t mandatory, the benefits it brings to your project are undeniable. So, why choose React for your WordPress theme? The answer lies in its ability to create a powerful, interactive, and visually appealing website that stands out from the crowd.

React WordPress Theme Development: The Ideal Choice for Your Website

Let’s delve into why React is an excellent library for building WordPress themes.

Fast Development Speed and Easy-to-Grasp Syntax

React’s syntax, known as JSX, combines JavaScript code with HTML elements. Additionally, React treats everything as a component, housing logic, structure, and visual presentation in one place.

Although this may challenge the separation of concerns principle, developers quickly adapt to this concept and find it convenient. Those familiar with JavaScript and HTML can grasp React’s fundamentals swiftly, while mastering advanced concepts may take some time.

The straightforward syntax and familiar technologies make React WordPress theme development fast and efficient, contributing to reduced development costs. However, certain tasks like implementing server-side rendering may require additional time.

Reusable Components

React WordPress theme development offers the advantage of reusing components from one project in another, similar to Lego building blocks. WordPress developers can extract and insert a single ‘cube’ into different sites seamlessly.

While some features might pose challenges when porting them, simple components can be easily transferred. Best of all, these building blocks are independent, allowing modifications without impacting other elements.

Efficient Redrawing of React.js Theme Components

React.js employs a virtual DOM, unlike manipulating the real DOM, which consumes time and resources. Consider a scenario with six checkboxes, one of which is selected. With Vanilla JavaScript or other frameworks, the entire group of checkboxes reloads to reflect the changes in the DOM.

However, if you choose to create a React app for your WordPress theme, only the selected checkbox will be redrawn in the DOM. React provides a virtual DOM object for each real DOM object, serving as a comparison tool. The lightning-fast virtual DOM is re-rendered without delay.

Afterward, React compares the new virtual DOM with the previous version, redrawing only the selected checkbox in the physical DOM. This approach boosts the performance of your themes significantly.

These are just a few remarkable features of React.js that attract site owners towards using React themes for their WordPress projects. To explore more about React’s advantages, check out this post.

Like any technology, React has a few drawbacks, too, but they are minimal.

Limitations of React for WordPress Theme Development

React.js is Continuously Evolving

While React is fast and efficient, it remains a relatively new tool, first released in 2013. Consequently, ongoing development means occasional issues and bugs.

However, with each new version, React becomes more mature and robust. The thriving React development community ensures developers can find solutions to their problems easily.

Additional Efforts for Implementing WordPress REST API With React Might Be Required

Connecting React.js to WordPress through the REST API doesn’t guarantee instant speed improvements. Extensive data retrieval from the database, particularly for complex user interfaces, can hinder performance.

To create a truly fast WordPress theme with React, developers must go the extra mile. For example, they might need to create an indexer to optimize data retrieval or employ other workarounds to enhance the efficiency of the React-WordPress combination.

If you find this overwhelming, the Site Slinger WordPress development team can handle React WordPress theme development for you. With years of experience in React.js, we have created numerous custom WordPress themes harnessing the power of this advanced technology.

React WordPress Theme Development: Frequently Asked Questions

Does a React WordPress theme work well on mobile devices?

Certainly! React is a versatile solution that ensures seamless rendering across all devices. React apps can be built to deliver a flawless user experience on both desktop and mobile platforms.

What about the SEO-friendliness of React?

Search engine optimization can be a challenge when building React apps due to factors like JavaScript rendering and metadata management. Although Google can crawl and index client-side rendered websites, other search engines and SEO tools may have limitations.

To address these issues, developers can employ techniques such as creating isomorphic React apps or utilizing pre-rendering. Isomorphic apps can render on both the client and server sides, enabling search engines to access content while JavaScript loads in the background. Frameworks like Next.js and Gatsby facilitate the development process and help solve SEO-related problems.

Why Is creating React components so efficient?

When building UIs, developers often rely on modern CSS frameworks like Bootstrap, Tailwind CSS, or Material Design. These frameworks offer pre-built components that can be easily integrated into React apps, saving significant development time. By leveraging these ready-to-use components, developers can focus on customizing and scaling their apps without starting from scratch.

Is React suitable for WordPress theme development?

Yes, React is a viable option for WordPress theme development since the introduction of the REST API functionality in the core system. With the decoupling of the back-end and front-end, developers can leverage various technologies to create custom WordPress themes. React.js stands out as one of the best choices, allowing seamless communication with the WordPress back-end through HTTP calls and JSON objects.

What are the benefits of using React for WordPress theme development?

Simple Syntax: React offers an easy-to-master syntax, making it accessible for front-end developers of any level.
Component Reusability: React components can be easily reused across different applications, making the development process faster and more efficient.
Virtual DOM Implementation: React’s virtual DOM concept enables rendering only the elements that have changed, resulting in exceptionally fast UI updates.

Can React be used to build custom WordPress themes from scratch?

Absolutely! Building a React.js WordPress theme from scratch gives site owners complete control over every aspect of their websites. Rather than relying on pre-designed themes and struggling to customize them, React empowers developers to create tailor-made themes that perfectly align with their business needs.

Why PSD to HTML Conversion Tools Won’t Fully Replace Front-End Developers in the Near Future

The field of web design and development has made significant strides in recent years, with frameworks like Bootstrap simplifying the process. Modern websites are now highly dynamic, responsive, and interactive.

Despite these advancements, the initial stages of website building remain unchanged from the early days of the Internet. The process still involves creating a design and converting it to HTML and CSS.

This workflow allows custom site creators to leverage the expertise of professionals in two different fields, resulting in a unique and visually appealing end product. JavaScript developers add interactivity to the client-facing part of the website, while back-end developers connect the site to a database for data manipulation.

But can we skip the design phase and jump straight into coding HTML and CSS?

The answer is no, and here’s why:

Designers use graphic editors like Photoshop or Gimp to create unique and visually stunning designs. Without a visual representation of the webpage, it becomes challenging to assemble the elements correctly in HTML/CSS.
Graphic editors allow designers to experiment with color combinations effortlessly. Trying different color codes in HTML and continuously reloading the page to see the changes is time-consuming and inefficient.
Some visual effects, like lighting effects, cannot be achieved solely through HTML and CSS. Graphic software is necessary to create these effects.

Thus, a graphic editor is essential for creating mockups for complex and unique websites, with Photoshop being the preferred tool. While there are other tools available, such as Adobe XD or Figma, Photoshop remains the industry standard.

Once a design is created in a PSD file, there are three options for converting it to valid HTML and CSS: do it yourself, use a PSD to HTML converter, or hire professional markup developers.

Let’s review these options.

The Most Challenging Way: DIY PSD to HTML Conversion

If you’ve ever purchased or downloaded a design and considered converting it to HTML and CSS yourself instead of using automated tools or hiring professionals, you’re embarking on the hardest path.

Without a background in front-end development, this process can be time-consuming. You’ll need to invest time in reading tutorials and practicing before you even start coding for your website.

Building the page is only part of the challenge; you’ll also need to thoroughly test it across different browsers, platforms, and screen resolutions to ensure responsiveness.

The bottom line: converting a Photoshop design into HTML manually is undeniably more trouble than it’s worth.

The Simplest Method: Use a PSD to HTML Converter

The market consistently adapts to the demands set by businesses. This is precisely what occurred in the realm of PSD to HTML conversion. Companies required quick markups, faster than most existing PSD to HTML conversion services could provide.

This led to the emergence of numerous PSD to HTML conversion software options. Here are a few examples:

It all appears almost flawless, doesn’t it? Just upload a design into a tool like one of these, click a button, and voila! Your HTML file is ready.

However, businesses soon realized that automatic PSD to HTML conversion using specialized software didn’t deliver the value they desired. The low cost and swift conversion time were overshadowed by significant drawbacks found in every commercial or open-source PSD to HTML converter. The following are the most apparent of these:

Converting PSD to HTML using an online tool can be a headache when it comes to making changes to the code. Instead of relying on online tools to convert your PSD to HTML, try using one of them and then open the resulting HTML file. If you have experience in development, you’ll be surprised at how messy the code looks. The elements on the page are fixed in position and have specific pixel dimensions instead of relative units.
This means that even the smallest changes to the code can easily break it. When users scale the page, the elements may overlap or cover each other partially or completely. It’s one of the major drawbacks of using a PSD to HTML converter.
Google doesn’t favor code generated by PSD to HTML converters. Anyone familiar with digital marketing knows the importance of ranking high on search engine results pages. With hand-coded web pages, developers follow Google-friendly practices such as adding Alt tags to images with relevant keywords and optimizing meta tags for better visibility.
However, when you convert a PSD file to HTML using a converter, these optimizations are NOT automatically applied. You’ll have to manually fix these issues if you know where to look. Otherwise, you might need to hire professionals, adding extra time and cost to the process.
Automated PSD to HTML converters can produce bloated code vulnerable to cyber attacks. Even the best software can generate incorrect and invalid code. Improperly closed tags, elements not allowed by the document type, and other errors can cause various problems:
- Different browsers may render the invalid code differently, resulting in inconsistent page displays.
- Hackers are attracted to websites with invalid code produced by PSD to HTML converters, as they can exploit vulnerabilities.
- Bug-infested code from converter software can significantly impact your site’s speed and performance.

The Best Approach: Hire a Professional PSD to HTML Conversion Developer Instead of Relying on Automatic Converters

As you can see, despite advancements in technology, PSD to HTML converter software is far from perfect. That’s why it’s worth considering working with a professional developer specializing in PSD to HTML conversion.

By partnering with an expert, you can expect clean, efficient code that renders perfectly on any device and ensures excellent search engine visibility. This approach also contributes to fast loading times and smooth performance, which no PSD to HTML converter can guarantee.

Why Choosing a Dedicated Development Team Over Freelancers Makes Sense: 8 Compelling Reasons

Web development is a complex undertaking with many variables. It involves finding the right staff, acquiring tools and equipment, and establishing efficient processes. This requires both time and money.

In-house development teams often lack the expertise or resources to implement new features or test existing ones. This is where external assistance becomes invaluable.

So, where can companies find this assistance? The two most common options are freelancers and dedicated teams. In this post, we will compare these two models and highlight why hiring dedicated developers is generally more advantageous for businesses.

Let’s start by looking at situations where each model is typically preferred.

Understanding the Common Use Cases for the Two Models

Freelancers

Freelancers are self-employed professionals who offer services in various fields, including web development. They are often chosen when:

The project is short-term
The budget is fixed and limited
The requirements are clearly defined and unlikely to change
The final release date is known
Quality is not a major concern

Dedicated Teams

On the other hand, dedicated teams are groups of professionals who work full-time for a web development company. They are assigned to projects based on their qualifications. Dedicated teams are usually preferred when:

The project is large or multiple projects need to be completed
The requirements are flexible and subject to change
The exact deadline is uncertain
Quality is crucial
Budget limitations are not clearly defined

While some companies opt for freelancers due to lower costs, the future lies with dedicated development teams. Here are some key reasons why you should consider hiring a dedicated team for your next app or website.

8 Compelling Reasons Why Opting for a Dedicated Team Is Better Than Hiring Freelancers

Reason #1: Comprehensive Expertise in One Place

Modern projects often require expertise in multiple technologies, such as back-end and front-end development. Freelancers tend to specialize in specific areas, making it time-consuming and challenging to find the right professionals.

In contrast, outsourcing companies have developers well-versed in various technologies, with proven experience. Their HR departments have already vetted these developers, saving you the hassle of reviewing countless CVs.

Dedicated teams may also include experts in other fields like marketing, search engine optimization, design, and user experience. Having all these skills under one roof improves communication and boosts efficiency. Freelancers simply can’t match the level of expertise and organization provided by a dedicated team.

Reason #2: Ensuring Accountability

When it comes to sensitive business data, one of the drawbacks of working with freelancers is the lack of liability. There’s always a risk that a freelancer might disappear in the middle of a project, leaving you uncertain about the fate of your proprietary information.

Moreover, if you hire multiple freelancers for the same project, the chances of your project specifications falling into the wrong hands increase. In case your information gets stolen, you might not even be aware of it or be able to identify the culprit.

On the other hand, when you hire a dedicated team of developers, you are dealing with a single entity. You can establish a formal contract that legally binds the provider to keep your confidential data secure. Reputable companies do not vanish overnight; they have a legitimate business address and can be held accountable.

Reason #3: Valuing Reputation

Unlike freelancers, dedicated teams are genuinely invested in the success of the company they work for and the projects they undertake. Freelancers bid farewell once their agreement term is over, forcing companies or individual entrepreneurs to start the hiring process from scratch, which can be time-consuming and complex.

In contrast, a dedicated team’s project manager can swiftly find a suitable replacement for any developer who may drop off for any reason. This is because large companies value their reputation and prioritize long-term cooperation and positive reviews.

Reason #4: Unwavering Commitment

When a team is labeled as “dedicated,” it means they are fully committed to your project, ensuring all your requirements are met and all your requests are fulfilled. They have no other distractions or competing tasks, ensuring stability and delivering high-quality results.

Freelancers, on the other hand, often juggle multiple projects simultaneously. Their focus on more clients and higher earnings can result in compromised quality. As the saying goes, “Between two stools, one falls to the ground.”

Reason #5: Transparent Communication Through Multiple Channels

Effective communication is vital during the web development process. Both the vendor and the client must have a thorough understanding of each other’s needs. Otherwise, the client may face unpleasant surprises upon project completion, not necessarily due to the vendor’s fault.

While various communication channels like Skype, Slack, Telegram, and email facilitate global interactions, there is no guarantee that a freelancer will always be available to answer questions or provide updates, especially when working with freelancers located in different time zones. Keeping everyone in sync can become a nightmare.

With a dedicated development team, a project manager takes charge of the communication process. You can reach out to the project manager anytime to inquire about specific features being worked on or the status of bug fixes.

Reason #6: Comprehensive After-Release Support

Any product requires support and maintenance after its release, including adding new features, updating existing ones, and ensuring smooth operation. To avoid post-release troubles, you can sign a contract with an outsourcer upfront to provide these services.

While freelancers can also offer support for released applications, there is a risk of them abruptly terminating the contract, leaving your app vulnerable. Additionally, they may only cover certain aspects due to limited resources. On the other hand, dedicated developers ensure complete coverage and ongoing support.

Reason #7: Access to Authentic Software and Hardware

To develop enterprise-quality software, web developers need access to the latest versions of development tools such as IDEs and graphical editors. These tools often require significant investments that only larger companies can afford. By hiring a dedicated development team, you gain access to cutting-edge licensed software and hardware, ensuring your project meets industry standards.

Freelancers typically have basic tools that enable them to handle essential tasks. However, it’s uncertain whether these applications are authentic or regularly updated. Additionally, freelancers may lack the powerful resources necessary for enterprise-level testing of your product.

Reason #8: Flexible Team Expansion/Scaling

Projects are dynamic entities that often require adjustments based on budget constraints or changes in customer demand. The dedicated development team model offers unparalleled scalability, allowing you to easily expand or scale down your team as needed.

With a dedicated team, all it takes is a simple communication with the project manager to reduce the number of developers or bring in new professionals. If you’re not satisfied with a specific developer’s performance, you can request a replacement, and the outsourcing company will swiftly find a suitable substitute. This is because reputable companies prioritize their reputation and long-term relationships.

In contrast, when working with freelancers, the responsibility falls on the client to search for a replacement if a freelancer decides to leave. Even when a new freelancer is onboarded, they need time to become familiar with the project’s specifics, causing delays and slowing down the overall progress.

Hiring dedicated developers to fill the gaps left by departing team members is a straightforward process. Returning developers who have previously worked on the project can seamlessly step back into their roles, using their knowledge of the technologies and workflows. This allows the project to resume without any unnecessary delays.

Final Words

In conclusion, the choice between dedicated developers and freelancers goes beyond a simple cost comparison. It extends into the realm of reliability, commitment, communication, post-release support, access to high-quality resources, and team scalability.

Dedicated development teams bring a level of professionalism and dedication that ensures your project’s success, from its inception to after-release support. They provide a stable environment, enabling you to focus on your core business while they handle the technical aspects. Their commitment is unwavering, and their approach to communication is transparent and effective.

With access to the latest software and hardware, they assure quality outcomes. Furthermore, the flexibility to scale up or down as per project requirements makes dedicated teams a practical choice.

So, with all these compelling reasons, investing in a dedicated development team could be the strategic decision that propels your project to success.

Why Your Business Should Choose a Custom WordPress Theme: 7 Convincing Arguments

Some twenty years after its initial release, WordPress remains the world’s most popular content management system (CMS). As of now, WordPress version 6.3 has been downloaded over 53.5 million times and continues to grow in popularity.

WordPress is a versatile platform that caters to various types of websites, from personal blogs to online stores. Renowned companies like Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, and Bloomberg are among its many users.

The secret behind WordPress’s incredible popularity lies in its open-source nature, user-friendly setup and management, and extensive community support. Additionally, WordPress offers a vast selection of plugins and themes to meet the needs of businesses.

While the features of a WordPress website are undoubtedly important, the visual appeal and functionality of the theme can greatly impact the success of a business. In this post, we will explore why choosing a custom WordPress theme is preferable to using a premade free or paid one.

Different Types of Themes: Exploring the Concept and Variants

A WordPress theme consists of files that determine the appearance and layout of a website’s content. These files include CSS stylesheets, templates, images, JavaScript files, PHP files, and more.

There are three options for obtaining themes:

Downloading a free WordPress theme from the official vendor’s website.
Purchasing a premium theme from various sites.
Hiring a professional designer and developer to create a custom theme tailored to your specifications.

While it is possible to customize a premade theme by tweaking its code, building a theme from scratch offers numerous benefits for your business. Let’s explore them.

The Main Benefits of Selecting a Custom WordPress Theme for Your Project

#1: A Custom WordPress Theme Aligns Perfectly with Your Company’s Goals, Vision, and Content

A custom WordPress theme is essential to aligning with your company’s goals, vision, and content. While there are many attractive themes available, modifying their appearance and layout may not accurately reflect your business objectives. This requires the expertise of professional WordPress developers who understand the intricacies involved.

Choosing the right colors and fonts is just the beginning. Before diving into HTML or PHP coding, you must answer several crucial questions:

What are your website’s intended business goals? Is it for representation, lead generation, or sales?
What content will be featured on your main page?
Who is your target audience? What do you know about them, and why would they visit your site?

Only after conducting thorough research, analyzing your business data, and understanding your core needs will a custom WordPress theme developer start coding. Customizing a premade theme to the necessary extent can be time-consuming and may not guarantee the desired outcome.

#2: A Custom WordPress Theme Sets You Apart from Competitors

Even if you alter the colors and content, sticking to the same theme as others will make it difficult for potential customers to remember your website and increase the likelihood of them not returning.

While you may believe that purchasing a premium theme and customizing it to your preferences will differentiate you from other companies in your industry, the unfortunate reality is that five premium themes currently dominate around 25% of the market. As a result, even with significant changes to the purchased theme, its layout and features will resemble those used by many other players in the market.

On the other hand, opting for a custom WordPress theme or a custom WooCommerce theme (for online stores) will set you apart from your competitors. With its unique design that you have personally created, it will enhance brand recognition, customer engagement, and ultimately lead to better sales.

#3: A Custom WordPress Theme Enhances Security

Security is paramount for any business, especially in the face of cyber criminals who exploit website vulnerabilities. One drawback of WordPress’s popularity is that it becomes a prime target for hackers. Shocking statistics reveal that 90% of the sites targeted by hackers a few years ago were powered by WordPress.

So, how do these cybercriminals usually gain access to WordPress websites? They often download free themes or purchase premium ones, then dismantle the code to uncover weaknesses. Once they identify these vulnerabilities, they scour the internet for websites using the same theme and exploit the security holes.

By using a custom theme, you can ensure that hackers won’t be able to access your website’s code. While this doesn’t guarantee complete immunity from cyber attacks, it significantly enhances the security of your WordPress website compared to using free or premium themes.

#4: A Custom WordPress Theme Is Better Optimized for Search Engines

If you want your website to rank high on Google’s search results, having an SEO-friendly website is crucial. While many ready-made WordPress themes come with built-in SEO features, customizing them to meet your specific needs is essential for optimal search engine visibility.

In addition to using relevant keywords, the structure of your website plays a significant role in improving search engine rankings. By building a custom WordPress theme from scratch, you have the opportunity to design a structure that allows search engine crawlers to easily index your content.

#5: A Custom WordPress Theme Is Fast and Well-Performant

Many premium themes come bundled with unnecessary features that may not be relevant to your business. The inclusion of these features adds unnecessary weight to the code, resulting in longer loading times for your website.

For a business website, loading speed is a critical factor. If the loading time exceeds two seconds, visitors are likely to leave and find an alternative. This not only leads to reduced sales but also negatively impacts your SEO rankings as the bounce rate increases significantly.

On the other hand, a custom theme is tailored specifically to your business needs and does not include any extraneous features. This lightweight nature allows your custom WordPress website to run faster, providing a better user experience.

Furthermore, you can have peace of mind knowing that the code of your custom WordPress theme has undergone extensive testing to eliminate any bugs, especially when you outsource WordPress development. This level of assurance is not always guaranteed with premium or free themes.

#6: With a Custom WordPress Theme, You Get Direct and Instant Support From the Developer

Encountering problems with a premade theme, whether free or paid, can be quite bothersome. Incompatibility with plugins could render your website useless, requiring professional assistance.

The catch is, if thousands or even millions of websites are using the same theme, their owners may also face similar issues and need technical help. This means you might have to wait indefinitely for a resolution, a nightmare scenario for any business.

On the other hand, with a custom theme, you can rely on top-notch support that’s only a call away. Through white label WordPress development, the theme’s developer is always ready to address any concerns or fix bugs in your custom WordPress site promptly upon notification.

#7: A Custom WordPress Theme Is Easy to Update

Regular updates are essential for maintaining the functionality and security of your website. While premium theme providers may neglect updates over time, leaving your website vulnerable to cyber threats, a custom WordPress theme offers a different experience.

With a custom theme, updating is as simple as notifying the developer, ensuring that your website always has the latest features and security patches. This provides a stable and secure online presence for your business and an enhanced user experience for your customers.

Conclusion

Selecting a custom WordPress theme for your project is a strategic decision that offers substantial benefits. With a custom theme, you can ensure that your website accurately reflects your business’s unique goals and vision, distinguishing you from competitors.

Custom themes also significantly enhance your website’s security and are better optimized for search engines, making them an ideal choice for businesses aiming for a robust online presence. Furthermore, a custom theme is not only fast and performant but also offers the advantage of direct developer support and easy updates

All these factors combine to provide a seamless and enriching user experience for your customers, making the custom WordPress theme an investment worth considering for every ambitious business.

What Exactly Does WordPress Development Involve? The Site Slinger Explains

According to the data on builtwith.com, WordPress (WP) firmly holds first place among similar content management systems (CMSs) and is far ahead of its closest competitor.

What makes this CMS so popular among many businesses and organizations such as the White House or Sony Music? Here are just a few of WP’s benefits to give you an idea.

Flexibility. WP is one of the most flexible content management platforms out there and a good WordPress development agency can work wonders for your business website. While its original purpose was to host and manage blogs, these days, it’s used for almost any type of site, be it a portfolio site, non-profit organization site, or e-commerce store.
Extensibility. A WP site is extremely easy to create, even for someone who has never been involved in web development before. However, basic WordPress has limited functionality, which is not sufficient to handle more complex tasks such as inventory management or video conferencing. To fill this gap, the official WP directory offers tons of helpful plugins, both commercial and free. In addition, WP site owners can hire developers to code custom plugins for their unique business needs.
A rich variety of themes. The way a site looks is no less, and in certain cases even more important, than the way it functions. WP offers its users a huge number of ready-made themes, which represent collections of code in separate folders that you can download and install through the dashboard. Then, you can tweak them to give your site a unique look. Another option is to create a custom theme.
Convenient content addition and manipulation features. WP is a blogging software pioneer. Over the years, it has been improving existing and adding new content creation and management options such as the Gutenberg content editor or autosaving. Even novices can get to grips with these features in no time. This incredible ease of working with content attracts many news agencies to WP, for example, BBC America.

Of course, WP has a lot more advantages than we’ve listed above. When companies start working with this platform, though, they realize that they need more fine-tuning than they can get out of the box. This prompts them to start looking for WordPress developers. Sadly enough, they often come across people who don’t deserve the title.

That’s why we think it will be interesting and useful for you to learn what skills and knowledge a professional WordPress developer should possess and what WP development actually involves. This should save you time, nerves, and money in the long run.

What Differentiates Amateurs from True WordPress Developers?

Amateurs

First, let’s talk about people you can hardly consider WP developers, let alone WP experts.

The ease of using and configuring WP is both its blessing and its curse. Even a teenager can get a WordPress site up and running by spending just a few weeks or even days learning how to do it. This is the reason why there are so many freelancers claiming to be professional WP developers.

However, just installing and tweaking a theme or adding a couple of plugins is far from being classified as professional WP development.

True WordPress Professionals

A true WP developer is someone who knows the platform inside and out — its file system and core functions. They are not just simple users who can install a plugin or change a theme, although they can do that all too.

What distinguishes a real WP expert is the knowledge of the principal web development technologies for the front-end (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) and the back-end (PHP and SQL) sides. Additionally, they should have an eye for aesthetics and be well familiar with the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) principles.

What Exactly Do a WP Developer’s Responsibilities Involve?

WP developers belong to a broader category of web developers. If necessary, they can take on the full website development cycle, starting from the requirements analysis to support and maintenance. However, they are back-end specialists in the first turn.

A WP developer is an expert in PHP, one of the most popular programming languages in the world. PHP is the weapon of choice in the majority of e-commerce projects. Its main purpose is to interact with a database, sending data to it and retrieving data from it through SQL queries, and then manipulating it as required.

THEMES

By using these two essential tools (PHP and SQL), a WP developer takes theme files prepared by a designer and front-end specialist and integrates them into the WP site. Data from forms that a theme contains must be sent to the site’s database safely. Product data with descriptions, prices, and visuals stored in the database must be retrieved and displayed on the site correctly.

All this requires writing high-quality PHP scripts that contain SQL queries. The code must be clean, easy to read, and hard to crack by hackers. It must also be well-tested by the developer himself or herself and by dedicated QA professionals to ensure the best quality.

For example, our WP developers follow the TDD (Test Driven Development) methodology. In a nutshell, it assumes writing tests based on the technical specifications prior to typing a line of code. As a result, our WP experts create top-quality, bug-free code.

PLUGINS

Another major area of a WP developer’s expertise is writing custom plugins or tweaking existing ones. WordPress provides some basic functionality to add and manipulate content. To extend it, WP developers create PHP scripts that perform additional functions, known as plugins.

There are tons of plugins in the official WP directory, fulfilling all kinds of functions, starting from search engine optimization and security and ending with data import and export. Plugins often represent a collection of several types of files (CSS, JavaScript, images, PHP) intended to perform a particular task.

What makes PHP scripts as plugins different from PHP scripts written for themes is that the former are available to all themes, while the latter are attached to the current theme only. Change the theme and your functionality is gone.

That said, the same requirements for code quality concern plugins as well. WP developers must pay particular attention to the security of their plugin code and regularly update it, since plugins are the most coveted of hackers’ targets. To learn more about plugins, visit the official WP website.

ENTRUST YOUR WORDPRESS PROJECT TO A RELIABLE PARTNER

WordPress is the leading content management platform on the planet. With its flexibility, extensibility, and versatility, it attracts a wide audience of users, starting from individual bloggers and professionals who want to showcase their projects and ending with governments and large corporations.

Not everyone who can add plugins and tweak themes deserves to be called a professional WP developer. A genuine WP specialist has deep knowledge of the main web development technologies and can create high-quality custom plugins and themes.

This is exactly what The Site Slinger WordPress developers can offer you. With over 2,415 WP projects implemented to date, our WP pros have amassed unrivaled experience in all WordPress-related tasks.

We can develop a WP site of any scope and purpose from the ground up or tweak your existing site to suit your needs. The Site Slinger WP developers are proficient in using all staple web technologies, PHP and its frameworks like Lavarel in particular, and can integrate a wide variety of external solutions with your WP site, such as WooCommerce or the Event Calendar.

Avoid amateurs, trust professionals! Get in touch with us for any requests or questions regarding WordPress development.

Take Your Advertising Campaigns to the Next Level with Our HTML5 Banners

Advertising has always had a huge significance for businesses of all kinds. In the tough and highly competitive world of commerce today, though, it has acquired even greater importance than ever.

Nowadays, all companies realize the value that online advertising can bring them. The leading position among online promotion methods is rightly occupied by the HTML5 banner ads.

HTML5 banners are highly engaging, visually attractive, and efficient means of conveying business messages and acquiring leads.

We at the Site Slinger saw the value of HTML5 banners right from the start. Now, after many years and thousands of successfully completed projects, we proudly hold the status of a leading provider of this type of display ads. Want to know exactly what we can offer you? Read on.

WHY HTML5?

First, a few words about the technology itself. This is what makes HTML5 so desirable for making banners:

HTML5 banners will look perfect, regardless of the screen resolution of the device where they’re displayed. The Site Slinger builds completely responsive banner ads.
A number of major advertising networks (e.g., Google Ads) accept ads built by using HTML5 and nothing else (e.g., Flash).
HTML5 banners can have moving design elements.
No add-ons are necessary. The target audience will see your message without fail. This is not always possible with Flash if a user has disabled it in their browser or simply forgot to update it.
HTML5 banners weigh much less than ads built with the use of other technologies such as animated gifs. This significantly increases the page loading speed, contributing to better user experience and higher click-through rates.

These and other advantages of the HTML5 technology convinced our banner development professionals to make it our principal tool of the trade, and we’ve never regretted our choice. We’ve already built thousands of beautiful-looking, high-quality HTML5 banners of the following types. Take your pick!

Interactive

As the name suggests, visitors can interact with this type of banner. For instance, they can see more information about the advertised products by using a slider right inside an ad or play a simple game without leaving an ad.

In the end, a prospect or customer is taken to a landing page where they can view the corresponding offer in detail. That contributes to better brand recognition, plus a higher conversion and increased click-through rates.

It’s true that interactive banners are the most expensive type of HTML5 ads we build: $124 for one. That’s because they require more effort and time it takes us to make one such banner. That said, interactive banners can hit the target three times more often than other types of ads on average.

Simple Animated and Complex Animated

While just a bit less engaging than interactive ads, these types of HTML5 banners are still very powerful tools in any digital advertiser’s arsenal.

They represent design elements that move, hiding other design elements that appeared before them or taking their positions inside other elements at certain time intervals. Thanks to this effect, you have an opportunity to provide more information about your business propositions within the same square or rectangular area.

Images or other design components can move once only in accordance with a specific animation effect (e.g., slowly appear on the background or float from one side of the ad to another) or do that a specified number of times. In addition, some elements can remain stationary while others are moving. The final price depends on how elaborate and effect-rich the ad is.

Even though one complex animated banner costs $86, this is not expensive, considering what benefits these display ads can bring you (higher click-through rates and better engagement).

Static

Owing to relative simplicity, one such ad is way less expensive than its more exquisite “relatives.” Our price is $22 a piece.

There are other positive aspects:

Static ads are not annoying, taking up their portion of a page without “dancing” before a user’s eyes.
You can still send your message to the world loud and clear.
Static ads are always in sight. That contributes to better brand awareness.

WE CAN HANDLE ANY OF YOUR REQUESTS

We know that you may require something unique, something to produce the wow effect among your target audience. This is why our HTML5 banner ad service is not limited by the banner varieties we’ve described above. Just tell us what you need. We’ll implement any feature not included in our list.

Have no design yet? No problem. We take care of the full development cycle, starting from the initial design and ending with the final delivery, and all this within one business day on average. We can also integrate a video file into your banner if necessary.

In addition, we’ll make sure that your HTML5 banners seamlessly integrate with any advertising network, including IAB, Display & Video 360, Celtra, Google Ads, SIzmek, and others.

So select a standard HTML5 banner or give us your own ideas. The Site Slinger is always here for you!

5 Effective Tools to Help You Automate Your Shopify Business

Automating any business, e-commerce businesses in particular, helps its owners save money and time as well as increase sales. Automation gives companies real value when they start growing and require larger inventories and more efforts directed to customer retention and support.

Instead of hiring new people to deal with the increased workload and spending money on their salaries and benefits packages, a business can simply take advantage of specialized software that handles the same tasks as, or even more efficiently and costs far less.

Although Shopify is probably the easiest e-commerce platform to set up, new merchants may find themselves at a loss when faced with a multitude of business tasks, from finding products to sell and email marketing to reporting and profit calculations.

Unfortunately, the Shopify core doesn’t provide all automatic business management functions. Not to panic, though. You can find a wealth of tools on the official Shopify App Store. All of them have gone through strict verification and quality checks and can now be safely integrated into your e-commerce website.

The number of apps in the App Store is huge: 3,645 at the moment of writing the post. To save you some trouble, we’ve prepared a review of five apps in five different categories that you can try out to automate some of the most common business processes.

CATEGORY: WORKFLOW AUTOMATION

APP TITLE: Shop Workflow Automation

Before writing a line of code, the app developers had gone to great pains to survey a variety of Shopify merchants on which of their daily routines and workflows could and should be automated. That alone should make Shop Workflow Automation trustworthy.

Consider it your personal digital assistant, responsible for the smooth operation of your shop and promptly responding to any events that need attention.

One of its most appealing features is the automatic removal of out-of-stock items from the store. Simultaneously, the app notifies the store owner that a product is no longer in stock and needs to be restocked. Shop Workflow Automation also conducts the daily monitoring of the stock and redisplays products that it (or the administrator) has removed from the store previously.

Sadly, online merchants fall victim to the fraud of all kinds in 2019, just like they did in the years before. Fraudsters constantly find new ways to cheat and steal. To counteract them, Shop Workflow Automation automatically detects suspicious orders and sends emails to the store owner with the relevant details. This way, the merchant has a chance to study the order carefully before fulfilling it to avoid a chargeback in the future.

CATEGORY: INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

APP TITLE: Simile | Smart Bundles

The Frequently Bought Together bundle you see on many e-commerce websites, including Amazon, is a good way to boost your upselling and cross-selling efforts. You can automatically add a bundle like that to your products too. The Simile | Smart Bundles app performs just this function.

The app looks into your database for past purchases and then applies an artificial intelligence algorithm to create a bundle for each product automatically. Normally, three items are included in a bundle. What’s more, new e-commerce sites with no purchases made yet can have this algorithm applied as well.

With Simile | Smart Bundles you can also add a discount to the items in a bundle, which encourages your customers to buy more products. All of the items in a bundle and only they will get a reduction in price. Once a consumer removes at least one item from a bundle, the discount on the products left in the cart is canceled.

Another feature worth mentioning: as soon as a customer adds a bundle to the cart, they’re immediately taken to the checkout page. This is very beneficial in regards to the speed of the shopping process and contributes to a higher conversion rate.

CATEGORY: REPORTING

APP TITLE: Lifetimely: Profit & LTV

How can you make your sales more effective? By analyzing the data about your purchases and adjusting your marketing strategy accordingly. This is where you’ll find the Lifetimely app invaluable.

With this advanced analytics toolkit for Shopify, you’ll be able to track your customer lifetime value and see your best-purchasing customers’ shopping patterns. You’ll also be able to watch your profits in real time by looking at the data from your Shopify store, shipping data, costs, and marketing data (Google, Facebook, etc.) in one centralized location — profit dashboard.

The provided Lifecycle Grid will help you understand your customer base better over time by letting you see what has changed in it. Thus, you can determine the groups of customers that no longer visit your store.

You can also see what products, channels, or categories are more or less profitable and export the customers or segments for the email service of your choice. The app integrates with Google Ads, Adwords, and Facebook Ads.

CATEGORY: ORDERS AND SHIPPING

APP TITLE: MassFulfill

This app should save a lot of your time on fulfilling orders. If you have a large number of files with tracking data, you can upload them to the app and have them fulfilled in bulk instead of adding the data to your orders piece by piece.

Also, if you ship different SKUs from different suppliers or locations, you can specify the SKUs of that place in the file you upload and thus will be able to fulfill only the line items that correspond to the SKUs.

The app developer has provided the Google Sheets integration feature. You can make a spreadsheet with your orders and send it to your supplier. You can easily fulfill the orders the spreadsheet contains.

How do you know you’re going to fulfill the right orders? You can see what is about to happen on the confirmation page, thus completely eliminating the possibility of an error.

Among other notable MassFulfill features are mass tagging by order number and bulk unfulfilling of orders, should you suddenly realize you’ve done something wrong or need to add products to a file.

CATEGORY: CUSTOMER SUPPORT

APP TITLE: Automated RMAs and Returns

There are a number of reasons why consumers return goods to retailers. An item has a defect, its description on the site is different from what it really is, or it is a size too small or too large. The list goes on and on.

Having to accept returns from your customers is something you simply can’t avoid. What you can do, though, is automate this process. The Automated RMAs and Returns app will take most of the load off your shoulders.

Instead of contacting you in person, a customer provides the information about the order, specifies the products they’d like to return, gives the reasons for their decision, and leaves their email address — all through the app.

After that, they get a prepaid label for dropping off their no-longer-wanted items at the shipping carrier you’ve chosen. Emails with relevant return data are delivered to you and the customer. That’s how it looks in a nutshell. However, the feature list is long. Here are some other benefits:

You can completely customize the messages you send to your customers.
You can set rules to return goods to a different location.
You can automatically keep your customers updated on the status of their return at each stage of the process.
You can export the full list of your returns to an Excel spreadsheet for reporting purposes.
You can accept money from your customers for return postage via Stripe.

CONCLUSION

Shopify makes it easy to automate various e-commerce business processes through hundreds of apps on its App Store. If you’re new to this great e-commerce platform, why not start with the tools we’ve suggested above, exploring the rest of your options in the meantime?

If you have any questions related to running your Shopify store, want a unique theme designed to stand out from your competitors, or need a custom app to perform your business-specific logic, The Site Slinger developers are always here to provide the best services on the market.

Drupal 8 Modules to Make an E-Commerce Website More Profitable

These days, fewer consumers want to waste their time standing in lines or roaming around shopping malls in search of things they need. Why all that trouble? Just open up an e-commerce website, make a few clicks, and get nearly everything under the sun delivered right to your threshold.

Among numerous e-commerce solutions, Drupal is gaining more significance with every passing year. Although it doesn’t include e-commerce features by default, unlike such platforms as Shopify or Magento, Drupal 8 makes up for it with a well-developed system of modules.

If we run a search on the official Drupal website, it returns 1,756 e-commerce modules at the moment of writing this post. While that’s a huge number, you don’t need to install all of those extensions. Just find out what consumers value in an e-commerce solution above all and pick one module for each requirement.

What Do Customers Need in an E-Commerce Site Above All?

While many aspects are important for online stores to succeed, we believe that some areas are really crucial:

SEO. Customers need to know about your offerings and should be able to find your store in the vast space of the Internet.
Convenient purchasing procedure:

The checkout process should be short and intuitive.
There should be a number of payment channels for customers’ convenience.
Prices should be calculated in all possible currencies.
Customers should know exactly how much they will have to pay for shipment depending on their location.
Customers should get a detailed invoice right after they’ve made a purchase.

When your e-commerce site is easy to use, it contributes to higher customer satisfaction, generates more traffic, and ultimately increases the conversion rate. Now, let’s review the top Drupal 8 modules that can make an e-commerce website more lucrative.

Our List of Top Drupal 8 E-Commerce Modules

SEO Checklist

This module helps Drupal site owners remember every SEO task required to improve their online store’s search engine visibility. The SEO Checklist will ensure you don’t forget to clean duplicate content, use keywords in headings, optimize images with descriptive ALT tags, or perform many other essential SEO tasks. You’ll be notified whenever you’ve missed one of the items on the list.

Moreover, if you’re not sure about the best way to handle a certain SEO task, the module will helpfully suggest the best options for you. The same thing happens if you’ve done something wrong from SEO’s point of view. The module will “complain” and tell you exactly what’s amiss.

We all know how frequently Google loves changing its search algorithm. With SEO Checklist, though, it’s not an issue, since it gets updated on a regular basis. Any of Google’s new rules are immediately reflected in the module’s list.

Ubercart

If you’re a small or mid-size business owner, you’ll find this module simply indispensable. It helps you create a ground-level shopping cart system in no time and with a minimum amount of effort.

You can use Ubercart for any type of business, starting from selling physical merchandise like furniture or electronics and ending with downloading digital products like PDF files. This module enables you to do the following:

Add products to a configurable catalog
Create and edit orders
Automatically generate accounts
Add multiple images for the same product
Track stock and get warning messages when some items are about to run out

This list is far from complete. One of the most appealing Ubercart’s features is a one-page checkout — every e-commerce website owner’s dream. Customers don’t have to go through several forms on different pages until they can finally call something their own.

Ubercart also includes an integrated payment system. It lets you select various payment options such as credit card or check, as well as payment processors, including PayPal, CyberSource, and others. That’s what we meant when we stressed the need for several payment channels on an e-commerce site.

Currency

If your own country has suddenly become too small for your growing online business, you may want to move up to the international level. Then, you’ll have to adapt your online store for displaying prices in different currencies. That’s exactly what the Currency module is for.

Convert currencies and present them in the appropriate format depending on a customer’s locale
Show the necessary information about specific currencies

With Currency, you get the entire world covered. More profits without hassle!

Conclusion

The success of any e-commerce site depends to a large extent on a smooth user experience. If a customer can find an online store easily, have one checkout page instead of six, and pay in any currency via a gateway of his or her choice, the chance that he or she will become a regular is higher.

While the e-commerce modules we’ve described in this post are a great help for any Drupal-powered online shop manager, building a truly secure, SEO-friendly, and feature-rich site requires professional assistance.

The Site Slinger’s experienced Drupal developers can take care of many Drupal-related tasks including PSD to Drupal development. Just get in touch with us and let us turn your ideas into a perfect e-commerce solution.