Empowering Women Entrepreneurs: The Impact of Magento Ecommerce Solutions

Empowering Women Entrepreneurs: The Impact of Magento Ecommerce Solutions

Streamlining Success for all women entrepreneurs. How NeoSolax the Magento Company Enhances Back-End Strategies

A big shoutout for the women who brighten the world with their smiles and who relieve the world with their kindness and compassion, Happy Women’s day.If you're a woman entrepreneur venturing into the dynamic world of online ecommerce business, you understand the importance of a seamless and efficient back-end ecommerce strategy.In today's digital age, ecommerce serves as a powerful tool for women entrepreneurship. It provides a platform to showcase products, reach a global audience, and compete in the market on an equal footing.

In this article, we'll explore how Magento ecommerce system and Magento company plays a pivotal role in your company, supporting and empowering women entrepreneurs in their digital journey.

One of the key advantages of leveraging Magento company is the streamlined business processes it offers.Recognizing the unique challenges faced by women entrepreneurs, Magento ecommerce agency provides tailored solutions. Understanding the nuances of your business allows them to craft strategies that resonate with your target audience.

Breaking Barriers and Boosting Visibility: The Role of NeoSolax in Nurturing Women-led Businesses

Breaking barriers and providing accessibility are fundamental aspects of empowering women entrepreneurs in the digital marketplace. Magento company contributes to women entrepreneurship by creating user-friendly interfaces and implementing strategies that enhance online visibility.

Implementing effective SEO strategies is a key element in boosting online presence. A well-optimized website increases visibility in search engine results, attracting potential customers.

Breaking Barriers and Boosting Visibility

As a women entrepreneur or investor data protection and fraud prevention are critical concerns for any online business. NeoSolax as your Magento ecommerce agency partner we will implement robust security measures to safeguard sensitive information, ensuring a secure and trustworthy shopping experience.

Women are the embodiment of facing and winning challenges. NeoSolax is always behind you to assist women entrepreneurship by navigating their challenges and providing a better service.

Selecting the right ecommerce agency is crucial. NeoSolax as a Magento ecommerce partner we provide practical tips and criteria for making an informed decision, emphasizing the importance of compatibility with your business goals.

In conclusion, the partnership between women entrepreneurs and NeoSolax is a powerful synergy that propels businesses to new heights. The seamless integration of technology, tailored solutions, and a collaborative approach creates an environment where women entrepreneurship can thrive in the digital marketplace. Your success is our success, Happy Women’s day.

Magento Open-source frontend features – 1. Product

Magento Open-source frontend features – 1. Product

One can say that this Product is the atom of Magento.  A product in Magento can represent any physical product or service to sell.

 

 

As a merchant, you need to show the right amounts of accurate information to customers which will help decide and buy. Both visible and invisible information provided here helps the search engine to determine whether to show your product page for its users’ query or not. Placing correct information in the valid HTML tag would be the Basic SEO implementation for your website.

Magento Product Page may have the below-listed information
  1. Product Image (Multiple Images, Videos)
  2. Product Short Description
  3. Stock status
  4. SKU
  5. Price (Special Price)
  6. Custom or Configurable options
  7. Related Products
  8. Upsells Products
  9. Product Detail
  10. Product Information 
  11. Rating and Reviews
  12. Quantity box 
  13. Add to Cart button
  14. Add to Wishlist button
  15. Compare button

Other than the above visible information, product page can have hidden information to help search engines. These are called Meta information.

 

  1. Title
  2. Meta Description
  3. Meta Key Words

 

Other places to display products are categories, site search, promotional areas such as “Featured Products”, “Related Products”, “Upsells”, “Cross-Sells”. Most of the time, it will only be a short description of the product with the image and prices displayed in these areas. Other than the information, a product may have “Add to Cart” button, “Add to Wishlist” button, “Compare” button, “Learn More” link and configurable information.

 

 

Magento has different types of products to display for different characteristics and functionalities of the physical service or scenarios.

 

  1. Simple Product
  2. Simple product with custom options
  3. Configurable Product
  4. Virtual Product
  5. Downloadable Product
  6. Grouped Product
  7. Bundle Product

In our next articles, we will discuss the above product types in details.

About Us

At NeoSolax (Pvt) Ltd, we are accountable for the growth of our clients as we know that is what accelerates our success. By providing services not only limited to the technical scope, but we also help our clients to grow their business by acquiring a more extensive customer base. We would do this by making sure that the designs we do, follow best in user experience, a website will develop the best SEO strategies and make sure to maintain the quality and efficiency of the online stores we build.

As the team NeoSolax, we invite you to join us to experience the true e-Evaluation of eCommerce.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Muditha Ediriweera is passionate about Magento and has nearly a decade of experience in Magento eCommerce development. He has developed a lot of Magento 1 and Magento 2 sites with both OpenSource (CE) and Commerce (EE) platforms. His experience is not limited as a Developer as he guides a lot of people to discover Magento platform capabilities in both code level as a Magento Trainer and features wise as a Magento solution consultant. Muditha is currently helping merchant to sell products online with Magento as a Founder & CEO at NeoSolax with his high calibre Magento development team.

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Ecommerce for Beginners

Ecommerce for Beginners

What is eCommerce?


eCommerce is the common practice of sending money over the internet for exchanging goods or services. Based on the type of parties involved in the transaction this can be categorised into the following segments.

 

  1. B2C – business to customer
  2. B2B – business to business
  3. C2B – consumer to business
  4. C2C – consumer to customer
  5. B2G – business to government
  6. C2G – consumer to government

 

From all these categories, B2C is the most common segment of the eCommerce, and sometimes it is interchangeably referred to as the eCommerce.

If you think about the most successful companies in the world, many of them are eCommerce businesses such as Amazon, Alibaba & Walmart. Chances of failing in the eCommerce industry are minimum if you follow the basics of selling online. As you are not bound to a single location, the globe is the limit for your business. Most of the time, an eCommerce business can be started on a small scale without much investment and can grow to a limit. Even individuals can start with minimum capital if they address the pain point of any consumer segment.

Applications of eCommerce

There are many applications in eCommerce. And some of them are,

  1. Retail and Wholesale
  2. Online Marketing
  3. Finance
  4. Manufacturing
  5. Online Booking
  6. Online Publishing
  7. Digital Advertising
  8. Education
  9. Health and Beauty
  10. Services
  11. Auctions

There are many more applications of eCommerce which provides loads of benefits to the consumers around the world.

Benefits of eCommerce


The reason why eCommerce is so successful is that it is so convenient and provides a lot of benefits, such as discussed below.

    • Faster buying/selling process – as all the transactions are done through the internet, it is much faster.

 

    • Cost reduction – reduces costs as you don’t need large spaces and office areas as you’re making sales through the internet.

 

    • Affordable advertising/marketing – You don’t need to spend large amounts as you can advertise.

 

    • Flexibility for consumers – Your consumers can log onto your site and place their orders at any time of the day.

 

    • No, reach limitations – Almost every consumer in the world can come to your website to see your content.

 

    • Product and price comparison – It’s easier to compare products and prices on the internet.

 

    • Faster response to buyers – Your business is on the web, you can respond to your buyers in the blink of an eye.


There are many more benefits in eCommerce, which makes eCommerce the future of the business world. Some impressive figures about the eCommerce market below,

    • The total number of sales for eCommerce in 2019 is worth more than 3.5 trillion dollars.

 

    • The average growth rate percentage of eCommerce is 25.6 from 2014 to 2017.


These two points only reflect the potential of the eCommerce industry for any big or small company.

The future technologies of eCommerce

 

  • Use of AI
  • Voice Search
  • BigData
  • Augmented Reality (AR)
  • Virtual Reality (VR)
  • PWA

    In B2C selling, reachability and accessibility are essential. While the website provides high reachability, mobile apps offer accessibility. Up to now, businesses had to develop at least two separate applications for websites and mobile. Developing two applications like this decreases profit and will need two different expertise to maintain the different applications, which will give more headaches than profits. With PWA that hassle is no more. When developing the frontend application, it automatically creates the mobile application which you can download through your website (No need to bother about redirecting your customers from your website to Google Play Store or Apple Store). The downloaded apps will behave similar to any other mobile app, with the same features like push-notification, speed and responsiveness of a mobile app.

What is NeoSolax’s involvement in eCommerce

NeoSolax is a premiere eCommerce company in Sri Lanka which uses the latest technology like PWA. We are obliged to improve your sales and make your customers’ life easy upon you joining us. Our highly capable team has more than ten years of experience in eCommerce. So we do not only deliver the technical product but any other assistance for you to succeed in your business.

Contact NeoSolax now to develop your eCommerce site, using the latest technology.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Qualid Stanly is a newbie to the professional world. Due to the enthusiasm about the business and technology he chose to take the path as a Business Development intern at NeoSolax just after his final exams at school in 2020.

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Beginner,Magento 2,Training
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Best time ever to move your business online

Best time ever to move your business online

As we all know these are hard times for small and medium scale businesses due to the Coronavirus effect. People around the world now can’t visit their preferred/ favourite shops.

However, the interesting fact in these times is that online businesses aren’t affected as much by the Coronavirus effect. And the reason behind this is that people now prefer shopping online as they are now limited to their homes. Most of the people around the world now spend time shopping through their mobile phones which is the most convenient way for anyone in these times.

So for all the small and medium scale businesses that have been suffering with the Coronavirus effect, this is for you;

Moving to an online eCommerce business

It is indeed the best time ever to move your business online quickly to get back on track and cover up what you have lost all this while thanks to the Coronavirus.

This not only helps you to get back on track but helps you to expand your business because of some typical benefits you would gain by moving your business online.

Benefits of moving to an online business

  1. Expanding of your business territory

    By moving online you could easily overcome geographical limitations by which you can establish your brand all over the market.

  2. You could reduce unnecessary expenses

    When you establish your business online you don’t have to pay on renting spaces for your shop anymore.

  3. Ability to improve sales better than ever before

    While moving your business online you could enable various kinds of deals and bargains to attract new customers.

  4. Ability to provide your customers with a more personalized experience

    When your business is online it is much easier to give your customers a more personalized shopping experience than ever before through the use of email and different social media platforms.


These are some of the common benefits among much more benefits of an online business. Now you know that it’s worth giving a try to move your business online. So now let’s discuss how to do it.

How to switch to an online business

  1. Choose your online platform

    This is the first step in moving online. You have to choose your website’s platform. Some of the most famous and convenient platforms these days are Magento, Woocommerce, and WordPress.

  2.  Find for an expert web developer

    After choosing your platform you need to find an expert in the industry to help you build your new eCommerce website.

    After all, you don’t need to waste time finding a developer, as we, NeoSolax Pvt. Ltd. are experts in web development ourselves. Just contact us now for free consultancy on building your new eCommerce business.

  3. Select what you are selling online

    This decision must be made after considering a few points such as your target customers, the most selling products of your business and the most convenient products to sell online.

  4. Let your customers know

    This step is the most important step for a new online business. You have to let your customers know that you are available online now. You could easily email your customers, promote and advertise on different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and many more.

  5. Setup payment methods

    After following all the steps above you have to decide how you are going to receive payments from your customers in exchange for your products.

  6. Find the right partners

    The final step is finding the right partners to assist you in your business for shipping/delivery services, banking services and advertising services.

Final verdict

At the end of this article, it is clear that switching to an online business is definitely the right way to succeed in the present business world. Moving to an online business can boost up your sales and revenue in just a matter of time.
This is surely the best time ever to establish your eCommerce business to give your target customers a ‘wow’ experience to get your business back on track.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Qualid Stanly is a newbie to the professional world. Due to the enthusiasm about the business and technology he chose to take the path as a Business Development intern at NeoSolax just after his final exams at school in 2020.

Tags :
Beginner,Magento 2,Training
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How to increase your E-commerce sales during this festive season

How to increase your E-commerce sales during this festive season

It’s finally December and usually, this is the most common time period, people fill in stores and shops to complete their shopping. And businesses too make large use of this opportunity to increase their sales and to try to sell all their stocks by the end of the year.

 

But this time around it is different. Times have changed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Now people can’t step into shops to buy their favourite brands as they are limited to their homes. The best option they have now is to shop online, which is a new experience for most of your customers.

This is a time period where online businesses get more revenue than any other time of the year. So it is right enough to say that if your shop isn’t available online you’ll most probably fail in this festive season.

 

And for those shops/stores which are available online, you are already one step ahead. So what do you need to do to increase your eCommerce sales more than your competitors?

Tips to increase your eCommerce sales this festive season

1. Offer a mobile-friendly customer experience

As you are already aware that people tend to shop online more than ever before, it is important to make sure that you make it convenient for your customers to shop online. If you mention the convenience of online shopping, mobile phones are the most convenient method of all, as this is an era which most of the global population possess mobile phones. By offering your customers a mobile-friendly experience you could surely boost up your sales.


2. Offer attractive discounts for your online customers

This is just one of the basic marketing tips. If your shop is available online and it has eye-catching discounts/offers which customer would back out? By offering various kinds of discounts for your customers, you can engage more with your customers and convert those visitors into revenue.


3. Be present everywhere your customers are

In order for you to let know the customers of your products and discounts, you need to be everywhere to convey your messages to them. All the other tips are nothing without you being available all over social media. So basically this is the most important thing you need to do to increase your eCommerce sales this festive season.


4. Organise social media contests

How can this improve your sales? By organising different types of contests on social media and by offering a gift/discounts for the winners you could have more customers engaging with you as the contest would be most probably shared by your customers as much as possible through social media. This is another simple way to attract customers.

5. Personalize your marketing campaign

In order to impress your customers, it is important to give each one of them a personalized experience. You can do this by identifying the needs of your customers and providing them with the best experience possible. Also, you could integrate live chats to make it possible for your customer to get in touch with you easily to find out the relevant information they need. This tip will make your customer happy and will compel them to shop with you.


6. Implement exchange and refund policies

One of the biggest challenges, in online shopping, is to make your customers believe that your business is trustworthy for them to buy from you. And by implementing policies like exchange and refund facilities you can easily make your customer trust in you.


7. Offer competitive pricing

When shopping online your customer will always be tempted to compare your products and prices with your competitors, so to tempt them to buy from you, you need to be standout than your competitors. And an easy way to do this is by offering quality products at competitive prices.

8. Provide free and quick shipping to your customers

After an order is placed by a customer, they are waiting and waiting for the product to be delivered to them as soon as possible. And by you being able to do it for free the customers would be massively satisfied and might tempt them to shop from you again and to recommend your business among their friends and family. By implementing this you could retain your previous customers while attracting new customers.

Final verdict

The festive season is approaching fast and you are still not too late. By following the tips mentioned above your business can surely be on track with your competitors. So what are you waiting for? Go and start working on these points now to improve your eCommerce sales. We wish you all the best in this festive season and hope it brings joy to you and your customers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Qualid Stanly is a newbie to the professional world. Due to the enthusiasm about the business and technology he chose to take the path as a Business Development intern at NeoSolax just after his final exams at school in 2020.

Tags :
Beginner,Magento 2,Training
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Setup Jenkins to run as a different user and automate the Deployment with Git (GitHub/ GitLab/ BitBucket) for Magento 1 and Magento 2

Setup Jenkins to run as a different user and automate the Deployment with Git (GitHub/ GitLab/ BitBucket) for Magento 1 and Magento 2

Intended Audience: System Administrators with primary knowledge, Developers with good experience in hosting web applications.

Before learning the syntax, let’s just spend a few minutes to understand the purpose of installing Jenkins in the first place.

Why CI & CD?

Businesses are growing dynamically and rapidly today more than ever. Softwares act as a crucial part of running business functions smoothly, and sometimes software is the main revenue generation point of a business. Therefore it is essential to deploy any bug or a feature to production soon after the software development team develops it.

Another use case of CI/CD is to minimise the conflicts between developers’ code by adding them to develop branches continuously. Additionally running test cases when merging branches will also generate the errors in the early stages of the deployment process.

What is CI & CD?

CI and CD is a common abbreviation in the IT industry for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery or Continuous Deployment.

Continuous Integration

Continuous integration is when the developer merges their branches to the main branch as soon as they finish the developer testing on partial implementation, completion of a feature or a bug. Upon merging unit tests will run to make sure that the functionality is running according to the test cases.

Continuous Delivery

Continuous Delivery means any code passes the test cases when margin to the staging branch will automatically deploy to a staging environment. If you implement only continuous delivery, probably after manual testing, you can trigger the production deployment. If you are planning agile scrum, this would be ideal as you do not want to worry about the breaking of the Production Environment in the middle of the sprint.

Continuous Deployment

Continuous Deployment is the next level of Continuous Delivery. In Continuous Delivery, we deployed to production manually after the testing in staging. However, with Continuous Deployment, code will automatically merge through branches and deploy to the Production Environment upon merging it to the main branch upon successful development testing. The only thing that stops developers merge getting deployed to production will be failing a test case.

Both of the CD methods have their pros and cons. However, they are not in the scope of this document to discuss. I would recommend reading through the Atlassian article in reference for more detail.

Scope of this article:
This article only intended to explain setting up Jenkins server, Running it under a different user than Jenkins (we will run it with deploy user).

Additional Read:

To see setup AWS EC instances with LEMP stack that run with deploy users, please refer to this[Link] article.

Server Stack

LEMP – Linux Nginx MySql PHP-FPM
Type: Virtual Dedicated Server
Linux Flavor: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
User: Non-root user with sudo access
Run as User: deploy

Install Java for Jenkins

Install the latest JRE

More clarification refers to the Digital Ocean article on How To Install Java with Apt on Ubuntu 18.04 referenced in the link.

Update the repositories
$ sudo apt update

Check whether java is already installed
$ java -version
If you don’t get something like below, you need to install Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to your server.

Install JRE with below command.
$ sudo apt install default-jre

When you run the java -version command, you should get a result like above.

Install latest JDK

You also need to install the Java Development Kit (JDK) for installing Jenkins successfully.

Run below command to install JDK.
$ sudo apt install default-jdk

Setting up JAVA_HOME

Setting the JAVA_HOME Environment Variable will make sure the Java-related application runs smoothly.

 

Check whether $JAVA_HOME is already configured.
$ echo $JAVA_HOME

If not check the java alternative list for java
$ update-java-alternatives –list

Run the following command to setup JAVA_HOME (According to the above alternatives)
$ export JAVA_HOME=&ltpath_to_java&gt
Eg:
$ export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64

Now if you echo $JAVA_HOME, it should display as below.

Installing Jenkins

First, add the repository key related to the source list.
$ wget -q -O – https://pkg.jenkins.io/debian-stable/jenkins.io.key | sudo apt-key add –

Now let’s add the source to the source.list
$ sudo sh -c ‘echo deb http://pkg.jenkins-ci.org/debian-stable binary/ > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jenkins.list’

Run the update so apt can use the new repository.
$ sudo apt update

Finally, it’s time to install the Jenkins
$ sudo apt install jenkins

 

Optional:
However, if you are setting up Jenkins for production, it is highly recommended to use an SSL certificate for the domain to protect passwords. Please refer below article to set up Jenkins with SSL.
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-configure-jenkins-with-ssl-using-an-nginx-reverse-proxy-on-ubuntu-18-04

Configuring Jenkins to run with a different users (Same user as Nginx)

Check the status of the Jenkins with the following command.
$ sudo service jenkins status
If the installation is successful, you should see something like below.

Run the following command to see which user runs Jenkins.
$ ps aux | grep jenkins

Check the Nginx user
$ ps aux | grep nginx

As Jenkins and the Nginx are running with different users, there can be conflicts when doing the deployments. To avoid this best approach is to change the Jenkins user to www-data (Or to change the Nginx users).

Steps to change the Jenkins user.

Stop Jenkins
$ sudo service jenkins stop

Check whether Jenkins is running any more.
$ ps aux | grep jenkins

If there are no Jenkins processes, you can proceed with the steps.
$ sudo vi /etc/default/jenkins

Change the JENKINS_USER parameter value as below. (You can change the group value as well)

Also change the owner of the following files and folders.
$ sudo chown -R www-data:jenkins /var/lib/jenkins
$ sudo chown -R www-data:jenkins /var/log/jenkins
$ sudo chown -R www-data:jenkins /var/cache/jenkins

Restart Jenkins
$ sudo service jenkins restart

Check whether the new user is running and the Jenkins user
$ sudo service jenkins status

You also need to check whether the process is running accurately.
$ ps aux | grep jenkins

Configuring jenkins

  • Once Jenkins installation is finished, you can access the installation by using the below link.

&ltserver_ip&gt:8080
E.g. http://10.0.1.2:8080

  • You have to use the password in a given location to log in as an administrator.
    $ cat /var/lib/jenkins/secrets/initialAdminPassword
  • Select suggested plugins
  • This process will take some time to complete.
  • Enter the credentials and create the first admin user here.
  • Next, Confirm the URL – Can keep the default.
  • Proceed to confirm using Jenkins.

Setup Deployment

Create a New Job

  1. Let’s create a cicd folder in the Nginx running users’ home to clone the code in the process.

    Eg: /home/www-data/cicd
    If the home/&ltuser&gt folder does not exist, create it and make the Nginx running user as the owner.
    $ mkdir /home/www-data

    Create the following sub folders and give permission as shown below.
    $ mkdir /home/www-data/cicd/source/&ltproject-name&gt
    $ mkdir /home/www-data/cicd/config/&ltproject-name&gt
    $ chown -Rf www-data:www-data /home/www-data/ 

  2.  Click on the “New Item” link.

  3. Enter item name & Click on Freestyle Project.

  4. Click on the Advanced button on the “General” tab.

  5. Tick “Use custom workspace” and Enter the folder to download the git repository.
    /home/www-data/cicd/source

  6. Scroll down to the source code management section and select Git.

  7. Get the git clone URL from your repository (https) and enter it as below.

  8. Add the credentials for Git by clicking on “Add” -> Jenkins.

  9. Fill the following popup.

  10. Mention the correct branch here.

  11. Scroll down to the Build section and click on “Add build Setup”.

  12. In the dropdown select “Invoke Ant”.

  13. Give the build file name as follows (Default will be build.xml)

  14. Save the settings.

  15. Install Ant in the server.
    $ sudo apt install ant

 

One more step to set up to conclude the setting up process; That is to place the build.xml file for Ant in the document root.
In our case it’s build_staging.xml as we have overridden the default build.xml to build_staging.xml in the “Build File” field above.

Create build.xml

build.xml is a way to instruct Jenkins to execute a series of commands for the build process. The syntax is self-explanatory, and you can change it as you wish. Here, I am only focussing on automating M1, and you can always change the setting per your requirement.

Eg: Magento 1 example

				
					build.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project name="Nomin M1 Staging" default="run task">
   <property name="basedir" value="."/>
   <target name="sync-files" description="Sync files">
       <exec executable="bash" failonerror="true" newenvironment="false">
           <arg line="rsync_staging.sh"/>
       </exec>
   </target>
   <target name="cache-flush" description="Delet default and amasty fpc cache folders">
       <exec executable="rm" failonerror="true">
           <arg line="-rf /var/www/html/eshop-test-git/var/cache /var/www/html/eshop-test-git/var/amasty_fpc/ "/>
       </exec>
   </target>
   <target name="reindex" description="Reindex all the indexes">
       <exec executable="php" failonerror="true">
           <arg line="/var/www/html/eshop-test-git/shell/indexer.php reindexall"/>
       </exec>
   </target>
   <target name="run task" description="Run target one by one">
       <sequential>
           <antcall target="sync-files"/>
           <antcall target="cache-flush"/>

       </sequential>
   </target>
</project>
				
			

rsync_staing.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash
rsync -avv –exclude=app/etc/local.xml ./app/ /var/www/html/eshop-test-git/app/ –delete
rsync -avv ./errors/ /var/www/html/eshop-test-git/errors/ –delete
rsync -avv ./includes/ /var/www/html/eshop-test-git/includes/ –delete
rsync -avv ./js/ /var/www/html/eshop-test-git/js/ –delete
rsync -avv ./lib/ /var/www/html/eshop-test-git/lib/ –delete
rsync -avv ./other/ /var/www/html/eshop-test-git/other/ –delete
rsync -avv ./shell/ /var/www/html/eshop-test-git/shell/ –delete
rsync -avv ./skin/ /var/www/html/eshop-test-git/skin/–delete
rsync -avv ./.gitignore /var/www/html/eshop-test-git/.gitignore
cp -fv ../../config/nomin-m1/local.xml /var/www/html/eshop-test-git/app/etc/

Eg: Magento 2 example

				
					<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project name="Nomin M1 Staging" default="run task">
   <property name="basedir" value="."/>

   <target name="sync-app" description="Sync app folder">
       <exec executable="rsync" failonerror="true">
           <arg line="-rv app/ /<document_root_absalute_path>/app/"/>
       </exec>
   </target>
   <target name="sync-skin" description="Sync skin folder">
       <exec executable="rsync" failonerror="true">
           <arg line="-rv skin/ /<document_root_absalute_path>/skin/"/>
       </exec>
   </target>
   <target name="sync-local-xml" description="Copy Local XML">
       <exec executable="rsync" failonerror="true">
           <arg line="-rv ../../config/nomin-m1/local.xml /<document_root_absalute_path>/app/etc/local.xml"/>
       </exec>
   </target>
   <target name="cache-flush" description="Delete default and amasty fpc cache folders">
       <exec executable="rm" failonerror="true">
           <arg line="-rf /<document_root_absalute_path>/var/cache /<document_root_absalute_path>/var/amasty_fpc/ "/>
       </exec>
   </target>
   <target name="reindex" description="Reindex all the indexes">
       <exec executable="php" failonerror="true">
           <arg line="/<document_root_absalute_path>/shell/indexer.php reindexall"/>
       </exec>
   </target>
   <target name="run task" description="Run target one by one">
       <sequential>
           <antcall target="sync-app"/>
           <antcall target="sync-skin"/>
           <antcall target="sync-local-xml"/>
           <antcall target="cache-flush"/>
           <antcall target="reindex"/>
       </sequential>
   </target>
</project>
				
			

Eg: Magento 2

				
					<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project name="php testing" default="run task">
   <property name="basedir" value="."/>

   <target name="sync" description="Sync New code">
       <exec executable="rsync" failonerror="true">
           <arg line="-rv app/ /<document_root_absalute_path>app/"/>
       </exec>
   </target>
   <target name="copy-composer" description="copy extension to test server">
       <exec executable="cp" failonerror="true">
           <arg line="-nf composer.* /<document_root_absalute_path>"/>
       </exec>
   </target>
   <target name="composer-install" description="Install composer updates">
       <exec executable="composer" failonerror="true">
           <arg line="install -d /<document_root_absalute_path>"/>
       </exec>
   </target>
   <target name="deploy-mode-set" description="set up and upgrade">
       <exec executable="php" failonerror="true">
           <arg line="/<document_root_absalute_path>bin/magento deploy:mode:set production"/>
       </exec>

   </target>
   <target name="run task" description="Run target one by one">
       <sequential>
           <antcall target="sync"/>
           <antcall target="copy-composer"/>
           <antcall target="composer-install"/>
           <antcall target="deploy-mode-set"/>
       </sequential>
   </target>
</project>


				
			

Conclusion

I have done the basic automation here. With adding better instructions and sometimes using a bash script, you will be able to do a significantly optimised CI/CD process.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Muditha Ediriweera is passionate about Magento and has nearly a decade of experience in Magento eCommerce development. He has developed a lot of Magento 1 and Magento 2 sites with both OpenSource (CE) and Commerce (EE) platforms. His experience is not limited as a Developer as he guides a lot of people to discover Magento platform capabilities in both code level as a Magento Trainer and features wise as a Magento solution consultant. Muditha is currently helping merchant to sell products online with Magento as a Founder & CEO at NeoSolax with his high calibre Magento development team.

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Beginner,Magento 2,Training
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Things You should think before starting an E-commerce website

Things You should think before starting an E-commerce website

1. What is your niche? ( or not)

There are millions of eCommerce websites today, from a website developed by an eCommerce web development company using platforms such as MagentoWooCommerce to Amazon, eBay, Alibaba like multi-vendor platforms. So, how do you find a Niche Market to move forward? Or is it essential to find a Niche Market? We discussed this point with many of our clients when we consulted them.

 

Whether to go for a NIche or not depends on your current capacity of the same domain. If you are physically operating the same business, you do not necessarily go for a Nich. However, if you don’t have an established physical store, it is always best to find a niche and start with very few products, 1 to 10 products would be ideal. It would be slow, but steady. When you have fewer products, you can spend all the marketing budget you have on the specific product catalogue and see the real ROI. Once the business running, with the customer inquiries and the knowledge you gain by day to day operation, you can decide which products you are going to add to your store.

We try to focus and do very few things well. And focusing is hard because focusing doesn’t mean saying yes, it means saying no. So we decide not to do a lot of things so we can focus on a handful of things and do them well.
–by  Steve Jobs 

2. Who is your audience?

It would be best if you decided who is your target market for the website, whether it’s toddlers or monkeys in the Amazon (forest). For example, if you are selling baby products, you may not try to sell pregnancy test strips. Sounds too obvious? Yes, but unfortunately, we have seen this approach often than not from many of the businesses who wish to build an eCommerce website.

3. Operation

Most entrepreneurs don’t think of the operation side of the online store until they get the first order. It is advisable to dry run the process before even you start a discussion of the online store development. Also, you need to role-play the process from ordering to delivery before you start with a real customer. Otherwise, it is inevitable to lose your first customer, which, of course, you do not want to happen.

4. What is SEO? In that matter SEM

SEM would play a significant role than you realise. A physical store would get business from the customers who walk by seeing the name board and products in the showcases. Name board and showcases for your website on the internet is the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing). With improving SEO, you will get better organic traffic.

 

Like stores get customers by marketing from the paper advertisements, you need to implement PPC (Pay Per Click) advertisements. With PPC you tell about your business to a target audience. Ads in social media like FB, Youtube and Google are ideal places to start. A detailed article will follow in the future, further explaining this.

our process

5. Choosing the right platform to sell.

You can either sell your products in a sharing platform like eBay, Amazon or sell products on an FB page or in your eCommerce website. Everything has pros and cons. If you have the growth and full control in mind, you should go for your own eCommerce website. Platforms like Magento and WooCommerce can help you to build a website with minimum cost.

 

Risk of sharing a portion with giants like eBay and Amazon is that with one lousy reputation, your business will end up when you wake up in the morning.

 

I advise my clients not to build an eCommerce website from scratch as there is no point of reinventing half of the wheel when there are platforms like Magento and WooCommerce available to build sophisticated eCommerce websites.

 

In our future articles, we will give more information about how to build a Magento website and sell your products in the Amazon and eBay with a few clicks.

About Us

At NeoSolax (Pvt) Ltd, we are accountable for the growth of our clients as we know that is what accelerates our success. By providing services not only limited to the technical scope, but we also help our clients to grow their business by acquiring a more extensive customer base. We would do this by making sure that the designs we do, follow best in user experience, a website will develop the best SEO strategies and make sure to maintain the quality and efficiency of websites we develop.

 

As the team NeoSolax, we invite you to join us to experience the true e-Evaluation of eCommerce.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Muditha Ediriweera is passionate about Magento and has nearly a decade of experience in Magento eCommerce development. He has developed a lot of Magento 1 and Magento 2 sites with both OpenSource (CE) and Commerce (EE) platforms. His experience is not limited as a Developer as he guides a lot of people to discover Magento platform capabilities in both code level as a Magento Trainer and features wise as a Magento solution consultant. Muditha is currently helping merchant to sell products online with Magento as a Founder & CEO at NeoSolax with his high calibre Magento development team.

Tags :
Beginner,Magento 2,Training
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What is Magento

What is Magento

What is Magento

‘Fast delivery’ is the key to success in today’s business world. In eCommerce, arriving a day prior would give an immeasurable advantage to your competitors.

Selling a product online has become a common issue faced by millions today. Software industry always comes with pre-built models to commonly recurring problems. So if the same problem occurs in next time, it is less time consuming with very less effort to provide a solution. Magento is one such platform built for running an eCommerce website quickly and efficiently for people who want to have an eCommerce website to sell their products online.

Selling a product online has become a common issue faced by millions today. Software industry always comes with pre-built models to commonly recurring problems. So if the same problem occurs in next time, it is less time consuming with very less effort to provide a solution. Magento is one such platform built for running an eCommerce website quickly and efficiently for people who want to have an eCommerce website to sell their products online.

Selling online is a science. For that, you need to concentrate on aspects such as user experience (UX), search engine optimisation (SEO), technology stack, performance, conversion optimisation, reporting and measuring. These are other than the necessity features like displaying products, order processing and payments and user management. To develop a platform with such capabilities, one should do hours of research on these topics to implement a successful online store.

 

With analysers, data scientists, user experience engineers and engineers in different disciplines, Magento researched to identify the best way to present the online content for an eCommerce website. Then they have come up with the “basic model” which suits most of the businesses. This process is an incremental model which they make their “basic model” up to date to compatible with the other industry and internet standards.

Magento is built with the understanding that different businesses have different types of requirement. The extendability Magento provides is impressive. You can add any feature to Magento without touching the core code. Also, its support for the caching helps to speed up your online store and provide a better user experience. Thousands of plugin in the Market place helps Magento developers implement new features with no time. Regular security patches and feature upgrade help to have a more secure online store. Powerful admin area helps to customise many of the features without touching the code.

Above is a brief introduction to Magento and we are going to help you out to understand what are all the features of Magento and how you can use it to your business to gain more traffic and more conversion.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Muditha Ediriweera is passionate about Magento and has nearly a decade of experience in Magento eCommerce development. He has developed a lot of Magento 1 and Magento 2 sites with both OpenSource (CE) and Commerce (EE) platforms. His experience is not limited as a Developer as he guides a lot of people to discover Magento platform capabilities in both code level as a Magento Trainer and features wise as a Magento solution consultant. Muditha is currently helping merchant to sell products online with Magento as a Founder & CEO at NeoSolax with his high calibre Magento development team.

Tags :
Beginner,Magento 2,Training
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What is Omni Channel Commerce and how do I navigate it?

What is Omni Channel Commerce and how do I navigate it?

What is Omnichannel Commerce?

Omnichannel Commerce is a sales approach that uses multiple channels to give a seamless and personalized experience to its customers through connecting online-store platforms, offline-store platforms and social media platforms altogether.

Omnichannel Commerce focuses on the overall customer experience not a customer’s individual experience on different platforms.

Before further discussing Omnichannel commerce, lets first discuss what Single-channel Commerce and Multichannel Commerce means.

Single-channel Commerce

Single-channel Commerce is a sales approach which uses only one platform to sell your products. This could be either a physical store or an online store only.

Multichannel Commerce

Multichannel Commerce is a sales approach which uses multiple platforms to sell your products both online and in a physical store. Multichannel Commerce is already a great way to attract customers.

But is attracting customers just enough for you to establish your brand? No, it’s not. For you to establish your brand there should be a connection between all the Multichannel platforms in your business. By doing so you can not only attract new customers but hold on to them.

 

Omnichannel Commerce

Omnichannel Commerce is actually the process of connecting both online and physical stores experience together. It makes it clear to us that there can be no Omnichannel without Multichannel. This means that your customer can have a seamless experience across all platforms.

 

Benefits of Omnichannel Commerce

  1. Improvement in sales

    Research shows that a customer tends to spend 4% more in physical stores and 10% more in the online platform, than those who use Single-channel only.

  2. Better customer experience

    According to research, it shows that 9 out of 10 customers want an Omnichannel experience with every channel seamlessly connected together. By taking down the obstacles of communication between different channels, companies can build a more natural relationship with their customers.

  3. Increased customer loyalty

    Research shows that within 6 months after an Omnichannel shopping experience customers log in 23% more to repeat their shopping habits with the retailer.

  4. Better data collection

    As retailers are able to collect more data about their customers over multiple channels they can provide their customers with a more personalized experience.

Challenges of Omnichannel Commerce

  1. Physical store stocks vs Online stocks

    This means that in-store stocks update and online stocks update should be connected together. Or else it can get difficult to keep track of stocks records and will lead to losing customer trust.

  2.  Lack of latest technology

    When a business is trying to implement an Omnichannel system, their technology often is not up to standards.

  3. Teaming up with right partners

    When using an Omnichannel approach you should be able to find the right partners for logistics, shipping and eCommerce partners.

How to implement a successful Omnichannel Commerce strategy?

Steps to start off an Omnichannel strategy,

 

  • Get to know your customer
  • Select the right channels
  • Connect all channels
  • Maintain all channels

What’s next in Omnichannel Commerce?

Physical only stores are now investing in online stores.
For example, consider Alibaba, previously a physical-only store, who are now investing in establishing online stores and expanding them. Alibaba has certainly understood the importance of Multichannel and Omnichannel strategy. Looking forward to it, more companies in the future should be trying to implement this strategy.

The building of personalized mobile apps.
Now, people do not go anywhere without mobile phones. It’s an era in which most people are using mobile phones to complete their daily shopping. And with the latest Covid-19 pandemic situation, people shopping through their smartphones have rapidly increased. So shopping using smartphones is definitely the next big thing in Omnichannel strategy, and retailers should be trying to build more convenient mobile apps for the use of their customers.

For this, companies can use PWA application which allows you to have a website and mobile apps for any application of the same code, which could cut down your costs in developing and would be more convenient for your customers. Read more about PWA here: https://yoast.com/what-is-a-progressive-web-app-pwa/

Final verdict

Omnichannel Commerce is actually the next big thing in the retail business. People expect to reach their preferred brands always. So being reachable for your customers at any platform of their preference at any time is very important in giving a seamless experience to your customer for a complete Omnichannel experience.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Qualid Stanly is a newbie to the professional world. Due to the enthusiasm about the business and technology he chose to take the path as a Business Development intern at NeoSolax just after his final exams at school in 2020.

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Beginner,Magento 2,Training
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How to Master Magento 2 – For beginners to Advance Guide

How to Master Magento 2 – For beginners to Advance Guide

Magento 2 - Guide to be a Top Magento Developer

If you are looking for a spoon feeding course you may need to stop reading from here. This guide will simulate the real world company environment that you have to work in.
In a company, you will not be spoon feeded but you will be guided to overcome difficult situations. When you are a software developer, your best friend will be “Google”. 99% questions you encounter have been previously experienced by someone in the industry and those good developers posted the issues and answers on the internet (You should do the same once you become a level to figure things out on your own). You just need to improve your skills to break down your problem to smaller portions and turn into lexicals and past in the search box.
So if that is the case why do you need training. You need the training for two parts. 

  1. To understand the problem and break it to pieces.
  2. Alter the solution you found to match with your problem.

Other than that, you have to learn how to resolve a solution when no help is available (very rarely in the Software Community).

As we mentioned above, we have guidance or most of the time ‘terms to search’. What you need to do is follow the tasks step by step. Only follow the date guid if you are allocating your full time. Do not worry about the duration. Sometimes you will get stuck for days to find a solution for a small issue or a bug created because of a typo. In my opinion more you encounter with those situation, you will get more knowledge. What is important is to grab the knowledge as much as can during your training. As spartans says “SWEAT MORE IN TRAINING — BLEED LESS IN BATTLE” 

We are always there to help you. But you must make sure at least you try 2 days to resolve your issue and if you have no luck, you can comment your questions below. We will surely reply to it but may take two 3 days to come back. By that time if you have found the answer (Probably you would), you can post your answer here before we do.

Day 1:

Install Magento, and experience the admin area

  1. Install Ubuntu
  2. Install LEMP: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-nginx-mysql-php-lemp-stack-ubuntu-18-04
  3. Create a virtual host neosolax.test
  4. Install Magento community with composer: https://www.simicart.com/blog/magento-2-composer/
  5. Enable Sample data
  6. Install PhpStorm
  7. Setup the project in PhpStorm.
  8. Install xDebug
  9. Subtasks

From the Magento frontend

    1. Add product to the cart
    2. Add product to the wishlist
    3. Complete an order
    4. Create a user
    5. Logout with the user
    6. Log in with the user
    7. Add products to wishlist
    8. Compare products
    9. Add products to cart
    10. Complete the orders
    11. Add new address to the user from the customer account section
    12. View the orders
    13. ReOrder the previous one.

From the magento admin:

    1. Create a category
    2. Create a simple product
    3. Create a Configurable Product
    4. Create Group Product
    5. Create Bundle Product
    6. Create Virtual Product
    7. Create Downloadable product
    8. Create Website
    9. Create Stroe
    10. Create Store View
    11. Create CMS page
    12. Create CMS Block
    13. Include CMS Block in to CMS Page
    14. Change the currency to LKR
    15. Change the timezone to Sri Lanka
    16. Create product attribute
    17. Create product attribute group
    18. Create front-end customer
    19. Create customer group
    20. Create tax group
    21. Create a backend order
    22. Change the order status to invoice
    23. Change the order status to ship
    24. Do a Credit Memo
    25. Create an order from the frontend and cancel it.
    26. Create a paypal sandbox account.
    27. Create a promotion for all the product to give 50% discount at cart
    28. Add a new url to the product that you created before.
    29. Export all the products

Day 2:

Magento Extension Development

Day 3

Magento Theme

Day 4/5:

Start Developing the first Magento Model with the knowledge you absorbed

Go through the following tasks and provide detailed estimation in a google sheet before starting the exercise.

  1. Create a sample module NeoSolax_Staff.
  2. Create a database table called employees with below fields.
    1. employee_id
    2. name
    3. email
    4. mobile_number
    5. marital_status
    6. created_at
    7. updated_at
  3. Create a route called {base_url}/neosolax/employee/details
    1. On this route, the user should be presented with a grid that has all the details of the users. (Employee ID, Name, Email, Mobile Number, Marital Status).
    2. Should have another column as “Action” at the end of the column set
    3. It should have two links as ‘Edit’, ‘Delete’. The respective function should trigger upon clicking on them 
    4. Also should have a “New” button. The respective function should trigger upon clicking on them 
  4. Upon clicking “New” button, it should redirect to {base_url}/neosolax/employee/new. In here, the user should be able to 
    1. User should be able to enter the details through a form.
    2. User should be able to save the details.
  5. Upon clicking “Edit” button, it should redirect to {base_url}/neosolax/employee/edit. In here, 
    1. User should be presented with existing data.
    2. User should be able to update the details through a form.
    3. User should be able to Save the details.
  6. Upon clicking “Delete” button, it should popup a message for delete confirmation and if the user accepted need to proceed with the delete.
    1. Once delete is the success it should come to the grid view. ({base_url}/neosolax/employee/details)

Note:

Any action should be presented with respective error, success, warning messages.

Concern about the styling as well.

Should add the proper validation.

Day 6:

Magento 2 - Handling dynamic frontend content

Day 7:

Magento 2 - Database

Day 8:

Magento 2 - Apply your frontend knowledge

Redo the Day 5 task using KO Js.

Day 9 to 100:

Learn from Magento Guru

https://alanstorm.com/category/magento-2/
1. Magento 2 for PHP MVC Developers (Tutorials)
2. Magento 2: Advanced Javascript
3. Magento 2 and Composer

4. The Magento 2 Object System

5. Magento 2 UI Components

6. Magento 2: uiElement Internals

Once you are done with above, it is recommended to finish below.

https://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.3/frontend-dev-guide/bk-frontend-dev-guide.html

If you have followed this guide till the end, I would guarantee you that you will become a Magento superstar. Not only that, you would learn any technology within one to two weeks.

One last thing to note, follow the best practices as much as possible and try to write efficient and well documented code always.

With you all the very best for your software engineering career!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Muditha Ediriweera is passionate about Magento and has nearly a decade of experience in Magento eCommerce development. He has developed a lot of Magento 1 and Magento 2 sites with both OpenSource (CE) and Commerce (EE) platforms. His experience is not limited as a Developer as he guides a lot of people to discover Magento platform capabilities in both code level as a Magento Trainer and features wise as a Magento solution consultant. Muditha is currently helping merchant to sell products online with Magento as a Founder & CEO at NeoSolax with his high calibre Magento development team.

Tags :
Beginner,Magento 2,Training
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