Blog posts of '2015' 'January'

Being a popular e-commerce platform, it is very common for store owners to want to migrate to nopCommerce for its powerful features.

One common problem developers face is to migrate old, existing links (from some other e-commerce platforms) to new links (nopCommerce). Especially for old sites which are already getting tons of traffics and are having very good SEO rankings, it is very important to make sure the old URLs are 301-redirected to new nopCommerce URLs.

If it's static URLs (e.g. those for content pages), you can already use IIS URL Rewrite to do the migration manually. But the problem arises when it comes to product and category urls. Because the URLs are dynamic (and there are tons of those URLs), it is usually impractical to manually add URL Rewrite entries one-by-one.

Take the following URLs for example:

• http://oldsite.com/product-slug-one-p1234.htm
• http://oldsite.com/product-slug-two-p4567.htm
• http://oldsite.com/category-slug-one-c12.htm
• http://oldsite.com/category-slug-two-c34.htm

If you look at the URLs, they are pretty dynamic. Product URLs follow a pattern of {product-slug}-p{product-id}.htm. Category links also follow a similar pattern.

And to make the problem worse (which happens very often), old product IDs (and category IDs) do not correspond to new product IDs. That means in old system, product ID 1234 is product ID 4321 in new system.

So the question now is - how can we make sure old URLs, such as http://oldsite.com/product-slug-one-p1234.htm, will be 301-redirected to new nopCommerce URLs, such as http://nopcommercesite.com/product-one-new-slug?

Often time, setting up your nopCommerce store is just the start. If it doesn't bring in sales and revenue, it's meaningless to set up the store anyway.

E-commerce sales are on the rise and expected to continue growing over the next several years. That’s the conclusion of a recent Forrester study. Total e-commerce sales in 2013 reached $262 billion, a 13% increase over the previous year.  Forrester predicts e-commerce will grow by an additional 10% annually for the next five years.

Of course, some sites are more successful than others.  According to a recent survey of online shoppers, the most popular sites are Amazon, eBay, Newegg, ASOS and Sephora, in that order. What shoppers like about these sites includes affordable pricing, simple navigation, easy checkout, free shipping and useful product reviews, among other qualities.

How can you increase your e-commerce profits and give site visitors the kind of experience they want? 

Here are 4 common sense tips to maximize e-commerce revenues:

In case you do not already know, we sell a couple of free and paid nopCommerce themes on our website. We like creating beautiful and usable nopCommerce themes, and I would like to lay down some guidelines in this blog post on how to choose the perfect nopCommerce template for your next store. (I've earlier written a more generic article on the same topic, make sure you read it before continuing.)

When it comes to e-commerce, the layout of your shop can be crucial to positive user experience (UX), how long a user stays on your site, and even conversion rates. When users visit an e-commerce store they want to easily find what they're looking for while viewing a website that is aesthetically pleasing to their eyes. In fact, a well designed e-commerce template can directly increase your store's sales. 

So how do you choose the perfect theme?

Consumers today have a much different expectation than they did 50, 20, even 5 years ago. The faces of small businesses have also greatly changed. That is why it is so important to make sure your business is changing to meet the needs of its consumers. Often times, first impressions either make or break your customers' willingness to continue their shopping with you. 

In fact, all it takes is 0.2 second for your customers to establish their first impression. This makes it so vitally important to have a functioning, aesthetically pleasing and profitable website for your business.  

Some websites have perfected this technique and have reached great success. Here is a list of the year's most beautiful e-commerce websites according to AWWWARDS where you can gain inspiration and learn from the best.

Here are the list of well-designed e-commerce stores: