The Top Enterprise eCommerce Platforms Today

For eCommerce businesses that are looking to expand their eCommerce offerings and capabilities, it may make sense to transition to an enterprise eCommerce platform. These platforms are specially designed for enterprise businesses, offering a number of unique tools and security services to ensure that enterprise eCommerce businesses run seamlessly.

When running or transitioning to an enterprise eCommerce business, you want to use a platform that will provide you with the features and services that are most conducive to a high-performing online business. Taking into consideration the target market, desired features, as well as ease of use, support, and fees, of the platform, you’ll be able to find the enterprise eCommerce platform that is right for your business.

Why Enterprise eCommerce?

Before diving into the top enterprise eCommerce platforms, it’s important to understand why a business may choose an enterprise eCommerce platform over a standard platform.  It may be a question of platform features, the business’s total sales, or even a company’s need for special tools or specific functionality.

For example, if your business is on a standard BigCommerce subscription but grows its sales to more than $500,000 in one year, you will be upgraded to an enterprise subscription due to your sales volume.

Or perhaps you have a need for some special customer pricing features that you can’t access on a basic Shopify plan. In this situation, you’ll need to update to Shopify Plus.

The most important thing to do before upgrading to an enterprise eCommerce platform is to understand your true needs and then research which platform will be the best fit for your online business. Here are a few of the top enterprise eCommerce platforms for 2020 to help you with your decision.

BigCommerce Enterprise

BigCommerce launched as a SaaS service in 2015, having developed a large, loyal base of customers since then. A strong force in the US market, BigCommerce is working towards growth and expansion, focusing on its top native feature sets.

With a number of huge partners such as Skullcandy, Ben & Jerry’s, Rand McNally, Motorola, and more, BigCommerce has developed quite a strong reputation. Providing a great deal of top third-party apps, the enterprise eCommerce platform has created a service that offers seamless assistance to its partners.

Top benefits of BigCommerce include:

• Native integrations with both online marketplaces and social platforms
• Native APIs
• Native WordPress integration
• Top B2B features
• Low cost of ownership

Cons include:

• Can be a more complex development process than other platforms

SalesForce Ecommerce Cloud

Once known as Demandware, SalesForce Commerce Cloud was changed after being acquired by SalesForce in 2016. A SaaS-based platform, SalesForce Commerce is hosted in the cloud and is a powerhouse of scalability and stability. It has an abundance of enterprise features and SalesForce provides an unmatchable amount of support.

Pulling itself up as the top of the B2C enterprise eCommerce industry, SalesForce provides an experience like no other. The support and reliability of the platform provides ease of use and peace of mind for all businesses that utilize this service.

There are so many features in the SalesForce Ecommerce Cloud platform. Top features include integrated omnichannel features, internal personalization capabilities, as well as native multi-store support.

Other pros of this platform include: 

• Top-notch multi-channel function
• Easily personalized
• Incredible scalability
• Great integration with other SalesForce services.

Cons include:

• High cost of ownership
• Not intuitive
• Doesn’t integrate with some non-SalesForce services
• Lack of flexibility

Magento Enterprise

The enterprise edition of Magento Commerce is Magento Enterprise. It offers support for both cloud-based and on-premise deployments and comes with access to a vast number of third-party extensions.

Magento Enterprise is designed for enterprise businesses and includes a foundation that is scalable with a high cost of ownership. Features of Magento Enterprise include a high-quality B2B suite, top merchandising ability, innovative content management, groups and segmentation for customers, and is designed for a large number of product types.

Acquired by Adobe, Magento has made a move towards furthering its name as an enterprise eCommerce platform, working with a number of top retailers and partners.

Magento Enterprise has some great benefits for eCommerce businesses, which include:

• High scalability
• Numerous integrations
• Developmentally flexible
• Large community
• BI and order management products

Weaknesses of Magento include:

• Issues stemming from the open system
• High cost of ownership
• Maintenance is costly
• Known for security vulnerabilities

Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus is Shopify’s enterprise eCommerce platform. It is a full SaaS-based eCommerce solution that has a number of advantages for enterprise businesses. With lower maintenance costs and many high-quality third-party apps, Shopify Plus has become a contender as a top enterprise eCommerce platform.

This platform is perfect for more simple retailers and consumer brands, while complex retailers may find that it is limited for their needs.

When considering Shopify Plus as your enterprise eCommerce platform, there are many great benefits, including:

• Efficient launching
• Low ownership cost
• Extensive third-party apps
• In-house hardware and technical assistants are unnecessary
• Very flexible platform

However, you will also want to keep these weaknesses in mind:

• Not proficient at native filtering
• Does not contain as many native product types as other platforms
• It has a closed system
• There is no native support for multi-store
• Not great for SEO

SAP Hybris

Easily utilized with both B2C and B2B businesses, SAP Hybris is an all-inclusive, omnichannel platform. With a number of useful enterprise features including flexibility and personalization, it is built for high-quality performance and scalability.

The platform is adaptable for either on-premise or cloud installations and works great for businesses that sell internationally. It stands out as one of the most adaptable enterprise eCommerce platforms out there and provides a number of capabilities for international and multi-brand businesses.

Top benefits of SAP Hybris include:

• Flexibility
• Customization and personalization options
• Omni-channel B2C and B2B
• Incredible features for pricing and sales performance

While the features stand out as some of the greatest out there for enterprise eCommerce, there are also some weaknesses to consider:

• High cost of ownership
• Time-consuming due to customization

Moltin

Recently acquired by Elastic Path, Moltin is a powerhouse of eCommerce services that create efficient and effective processes for enterprise eCommerce businesses. This top platform differentiates itself with speed, flexibility, as well as control, and personalization for partners. It is used to build powerful eCommerce applications using its headless API.

With an eCommerce API, Moltin provides the resources that businesses need for an effective startup launch. The solutions that Moltin offers match other top platforms such as Shopify and BigCommerce, but offer uniqueness and freedom that cannot be beat.

Other benefits of Moltin include:

• Customizable and brand-centric
• Multiple currencies and languages, making it perfect for international sales
• For B2B, B2C, and B2B2C
• Multi-product
• Optimized for mobile
• Digital marketing assistance

While other top platforms are seeking to compete with one another in terms of enterprise features and efficiency, Moltin creates an experience that takes them to another level.

Picking The Right Enterprise eCommerce Platform

If you’re running an online business that is beginning to outgrow your existing website’s basic eCommerce capabilities, it may be time to upgrade to an enterprise platform.  Finding the best enterprise eCommerce platform for your business needs is essential for success. Determine what aspects of a platform you are looking for and choose the one that best meets your needs.

When it comes time to grow your e-commerce store, it’s important you partner with an experienced e-commerce growth team. Proper Noun has worked with numerous e-commerce store owners to drive traffic and increase conversions through effective content marketing campaigns. We have executed e-commerce SEO campaigns on all of the top e-commerce platforms including Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. If you’d like to schedule a strategy session to discuss your project, just click here to get started.

Tricks to Boost your WordPress Website’s Traffic

If you’re just getting started with WordPress, you should know: building the site is just the beginning. Once you have it up and running, you’ll want to look for ways to boost your WordPress site’s traffic.

Thankfully, there are a host of tools and combined knowledge on the best ways to get more people to visit your site. Here’s a distilled version, with 6 tricks for boosting traffic.

#1: Double Down on Search Engine Optimization

Nothing will give you long-term, sustainable growth on your WordPress website’s traffic quite like search engine optimization (SEO). If you’re not sure what that means, it’s time to do some homework. If you have invested a little time in making your site SEO-friendly, you might want to consider doubling down.

Start by using an SEO tool to audit your WordPress website. The audit will tell you if your site has any big issues that may be restricting your traffic growth, identify organic search traffic sources, and assess whether your content is SEO friendly.  Implementation of proper on page optimization can also often times have a drastic impact on search rankings in a very short amount of time.

#2: Step Up Your Social Media Game

Social media presence has an impact on your search engine ranking, so you shouldn’t be neglecting it. The odds are the majority of your target audience is on social media, and reaching them via social channels is often more straightforward than organic search.

Start by setting up branded accounts on several channels if you haven’t already. Use social media monitoring tools to create and schedule regular content, linking back to your website often. Once you build a solid following on social media, the traffic to your WordPress site is sure to follow!

#3: Start a Backlinking Campaign

Backlinking is a crucial aspect of search engine optimization. It does take quite a bit of work, but the payoff is well worth it. In basic terms, backlinking simply means placing links back to your WordPress site on other authority websites.

In most cases, this involves writing guest posts, making sure your listed in directories and writing testimonials. Many SEO tools will help you get started on your campaign.

#4: Learn to Use Valuable Tools

A host of powerful tools are available to professional and amateur marketers alike, designed to help you stay on track. We’ve already mentioned several of them!

Marketing automation tools can help you take a strategic approach to growing your audience – and your site! A/B testing tools can give you a better idea of what works on your WordPress site – and what doesn’t. Collaboration tools can help you stay on top of communication and projects if you’re working with a team. The point is, the tools are there – so learn to use them!

#5: Take Analytics Seriously

A good web analytics tool will tell you who’s visiting your site, where they are coming from and what brought them to your site in the first place. You can take this information to determine how to move forward marketing your WordPress site.

Do you have a lot of visitors from social channels? Are most finding you with an organic search? Are you getting referrals? The answers to these questions will help you take a strategic approach to driving traffic to your WordPress site.

#6: Invest in Good Content

Consumers love good content. Help your WordPress site stand out from the crowd by creating engaging, helpful and authentic content. Depending on your niche, this could be a shareable video, an informative blog post, or quick how-to guide.

Whatever the case, it should be content that converts your target audience with a specific call to action.

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Brooklin Nash writes about the latest tools and small business trends for TrustRadius. When he’s not writing, you can find him reading YA dystopian fiction (with guilty pleasure) and cooking.

The Impact of WebDesign on Marketing, Branding and conversions

The Impact of WebDesign on Marketing, Branding and conversions

Read the full article here: http://www.tgdaily.com/enterprise/startups/the-impact-of-webdesign-on-marketing-branding-and-conversions

Adding Google AdWords Conversion Tracking To A Magento Website

Spending money advertising with Google AdWords can make or break your e-commerce website, so it’s very important that you have accurate and up to date conversion tracking in place.  Many e-commerce website platforms and e-commerce content management systems make this easy to do, however with Magento, it requires a bit more work on the template side. In this tutorial we’ll cover how you can quickly set that up with a couple of lines of simple PHP and no need for any extensions.

First, start by opening up your success page template, or the success.phtml template within your theme. This file will be located at /app/design/frontend/YOUR THEME/template/checkout/success.phtml.  If you can’t find the file there, look inside the base/default directory and you should be able to find it there.

Next, login to Google AdWords and under the “Tools” tab, you will click “Conversions”.  Find the conversion you are trying to track, for example a purchase, and open it up, you will then see your conversion code on the next page.  Copy this conversion code and paste it in to your success.phtml template near the bottom of the page.  This code should look like this:

[code] <!– Google Code for Purchase/Sale Conversion Page –>
<script type="text/javascript">
/* <![CDATA[ */
var google_conversion_id = XXXXXXXXXX;
var google_conversion_language = "en";
var google_conversion_format = "1";
var google_conversion_color = "666666";
var google_conversion_label = "XXXXXXXXX";
var google_conversion_value = 1.00;
var google_conversion_currency = "USD";
var google_remarketing_only = false;
/* ]]> */
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="//www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion.js">
</script>
<noscript>
<div style="display:inline;">
<img height="1" width="1" style="border-style:none;" alt="" src="//www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/XXXXXXXXX/?value= 1.00&amp;currency_code=USD&amp;label=XXXXXXXXX&amp;guid=ON&amp;script=0"/>
</div>
</noscript>
[/code]

You will notice that there are two sections that ask for a conversion value, but default to 1.00. This is what we will want to swap for dynamic code that will find the order subtotal and pass it to Google AdWords. To do this you’ll first need to include this PHP snippet to create a variable called subtotal.

[php] <?php
$order = Mage::getModel(‘sales/order’)->loadByIncrementId($this->getOrderId());
$subtotal = $order->getSubtotal();
?>
[/php]

Once you have this setup, you will then need to go through your conversion tag and replace the conversion value default of 1.00 with the following:

[php] <?php echo $subtotal ?>
[/php]

So when all is said and done, your final Google AdWords conversion tracking code should look like this:

[code] <!– Google Code for Purchase/Sale Conversion Page –>
<script type="text/javascript">
/* <![CDATA[ */
var google_conversion_id = XXXXXXXXXX;
var google_conversion_language = "en";
var google_conversion_format = "1";
var google_conversion_color = "666666";
var google_conversion_label = "XXXXXXXXX";
var google_conversion_value = <?php echo $subtotal ?>;
var google_conversion_currency = "USD";
var google_remarketing_only = false;
/* ]]> */
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="//www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion.js">
</script>
<noscript>
<div style="display:inline;">
<img height="1" width="1" style="border-style:none;" alt="" src="//www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/XXXXXXXXX/?value=<?php echo $subtotal ?>&amp;currency_code=USD&amp;label=XXXXXXXXX&amp;guid=ON&amp;script=0"/>
</div>
</noscript>
[/code]

Make sure to replace the default not only in the top section of the code, but also within the “img” tag at the bottom of the provided snippet. Once you have all of this in place, you can upload your success.phtml template to your FTP and then run a test by adding a product to cart, checking out, and verifying your purchase with Google Tag Manager.

WordPress Wednesday: The Best Hosting For Your WordPress Website

When it comes to owning and operating a WordPress website, the company that you decide to host your website with is an extremely important factor. We have worked with websites hosted on just about every commercial hosting provider and have had the chance to learn the ins and outs of all of their services. Whenever a someone, whether it be a client or personal friend, asks who I recommend they host their WordPress website with, I only have one answer for them, Nexcess. It would be irresponsible of me to base this recommendation on just the server specs alone, so let’s take a look at what makes Nexcess so special.

Shared Hosting Environments
When it comes to shared hosting providers, the most important thing to consider is the quality of the hosting environments that they offer and the specs of the servers you will be hosting on. Nexcess offers three different highly optimized WordPress shared hosting packages that will exceed expectations when it comes to shared hosting experiences.

The biggest concern with shared hosting, especially when it comes to WordPress, is how fast the website will load and whether or not the server will be able to handle the numerous requests your website will be making. These shared packages are configured specifically for optimal WordPress performance, so they come configured for W3 Total Cache, Memcache and APC cache. And if that’s not enough for you, the support team can help you in getting Varnish installed and configured as well for maximum speed on your WordPress website. They also include access to their Content Delivery Network (CDN) which will drastically improve your sites image and static file load times.

If you are currently hosting your WordPress website with a shared hosting provider like GoDaddy you can expect to see pretty considerable improvements in speed and performance almost instantly once you move your website to Nexcess hosting (provided of course the issues are not code related, but that’s a different story).

Dedicated Hosting Environments
Any WordPress website owner that has a large website with a lot of traffic can understand the need for a powerful and reliable dedicated server to host their WordPress website on. Nexcess offers two extremely well optimized WordPress dedicated hosting options that are sure to exceed your hosting expectations.

Setup with all of the caching and speed optimization of the shared hosting options, the dedicated servers start with a 2x hex core processor, 300GB disk space RAID-10, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, unlimited secondary domains, New Relic Standard Analytics, and also include daily backups.

These servers are finely tuned for premium performance, so if your current WordPress hosting solution is not able to keep up with your website’s needs, you are sure to see an immediate improvement in speed and overall user experience once relocating your WordPress website to Nexcess.

Support
When it comes to support, Nexcess is hands down my favorite hosting provider to deal with. Most importantly, you can their support line and speak directly with a server tech based in the United States. These server techs are knowledgeable about the server technology and are also experienced with WordPress, so are more than capable of assisting with issues you may be seeing with your sites performance, it’s server configurations, as well as it’s speed optimizations and any errors it may be throwing.

The support team also has a very easy to use ticketing system that makes it unbelievably easy to call in, discuss your requests directly with a tech, and then if needed, have the tech update you via ticket once the request is completed. The level of communication via the ticketing system is also unparalleled, where it’s rare the technician answering your ticket is not able to grasp your request and deliver the expected results on the first try. Gone are the days of dealing with inexperienced, under-trained, overseas tech support agents who will leave you in worse shape than when you first contacted them.

Server Pricing
Every WordPress website owners second biggest concern when it comes to hosting is typically how much it will cost. In comparison to other website hosting providers that offer far lower quality hosting solutions, Nexcess is very comparably priced. With their lowest level WordPress hosting package starting at just $12 per month, you’d be hard pressed to find better service and support for a better price.

If you’re in search of a dedicated server option, you can get started with Nexcess for under $500, a price not many can beat and definitely not with this type of quality. With the level of service and support they provide in the administration of your web server, you are definitely getting your moneys worth when you decide to host with Nexcess.