Category Archives: Ecommerce

How to Move Hosting Companies

Man Carrying Laptop

 

Have you ever been fed up with your current hosting provider? Do they keep going down or have poor customer service?

Sometimes moving to a new hosting company is the answer. The biggest thing is, how do you do it, especially with eCommerce sites, with minimal to no down time?

The key is someone skilled at moving sites and DNS preparation.
How do you know if someone is skilled at moving sites? Ask them how long it takes for your site to come up on the new server during the transition. If they tell you a day or two, or even three, then they do not know how to properly prepare DNS. The answer should be an hour or less if they know how to prepare everything in advance.

Steps to moving to a new hosting provider

  • Create an account on the new hosting provider and copy your site to the new hosting provider
  • Use a development subdomain for this so you can test it. For example: dev.yourdomain.com
  • Once everything is set and working, start preparing DNS by turning the TTL (time to live) down on the DNS server settings. Put it as low as your DNS hosting will allow, however note what it is set to before you change it. We like to put it to 5 minutes.
  • After the time has past for the old DNS TTL setting you can get started doing the actual live move!
  • Start by copying the site again to the new hosting and re-test everything. This is your ‘dry run’ to make sure the copy will work seamlessly.
  • Note any issues, fix and try the dry run again until there are no issues.
  • If you have an eCommerce or dynamic store of any kind, close the store/put it in maintenance mode.
  • Copy the site to the new hosting provider and test one last time.
  • If everything works correctly, update your DNS to point to your new IP at your new hosting provider.
  • Open up the eCommerce store on the new hosting provider and you should be good to go!
  • If everything is good, you can later update the DNS to have a longer TTL if you’d like.

Summary

With this proper preparation, the only down time should be copying the site that one final time to the new hosting provider and then the minimal time for DNS to propagate! So it should be about 5-10 minutes depending on the speed of the copy of the site!

Keep in mind, sometimes bigger is not better when it comes to a hosting company. It really is the service that matters and level of support they provide. If you have an eCommerce store and aren’t happy with your service, contact us today to see if we would be a good fit for you!

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Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Cumulative-Layout-Shift

 

Have you ever visited a website and as you were reading it, the website content shifted and moved? Have you been ready to click on a button or link and the page shifted causing you to click on something else or not click on anything at all?

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is Google’s new metric that has rolled out the summer of 2020 and will be in effect in 2021 as a ranking factor. This will be come a very big deal for ranking and honestly fixing it will improve user experience; which is what Google aims for. To present to you, the user, with websites that are a good user experience with relevant content.

Why Does CLS Occur?

Some common reasons for CLS include:

  • Images without dimensions
  • Tables without dimensions
  • Embedded elements, such as iframes and ads, that have no dimension defined
  • Dynamic content that doesn’t have a preset size on the page and loads after the page is mostly rendered

What is a Good CLS Score?

You should strive for a CLS score of less than 0.1. There are many tools out there that can help you measure this including Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

What Can You Do About It?

Make sure every area that contains content has dimensions to it. This includes images, video, tabled information, etc.

A properly designed site should have all areas of it pre-defined before the page starts to load. This gives the best user experience. So not only will you be helping your google rankings in 2021, but you also will be improving your user experience if you fix any CLS issues.

How we can help

Sometimes fixing CLS issues can be an involved task that you’d need a programmer to fix. We have been helping clients since this summer fix their issues and help improve their rankings in search engines. Contact us Today to help!

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Which Shopping Cart is Right for You?

Which cart is right for you?

 

Picking the correct shopping cart for your business can be a daunting task! Especially with the number of eCommerce shopping carts available on the market today! We have customers ask us many times what shopping cart is best, especially given we have been working with and customizing shopping carts since 2002.

Just like there is no correct answer to the perfect car for everyone, there is no perfect shopping cart. It really depends on the features you want, how easy it is to maintain, how reliable it is, and how much you are able to pay.

We will be discussing the 2 shopping carts we work with most, X-cart and Magento.

Start by listing in order what is most important in an eCommerce shopping cart to you

  • Built-in Features
  • Shopping Cart Cost
  • Maintenance costs
  • Hosting Costs
  • Developers available
  • Flexibility

Magento eCommerce Attributes

Magento for example, is a very flexible shopping cart with a large set of built in features. You can even get a free version of this shopping cart. There are a very large number of developers available to help you with MagentoCommerce, including us.

However, Magento requires a much more robust server to run on than most shopping carts. Our eCommerce Hosting for Magento requires a lot larger server base. You would need at least the Medium level of hosting to properly run Magento, but more likely need the Large hosting server or above depending on how much traffic you expect to your shopping cart.

Magento can also be extremely expensive for most businesses if you wish to run the paid version of it and is much more difficult to maintain by the average store owner. You’re very likely to need a Magento Developer to help you out.

X-cart eCommerce Attributes

X-cart has been around since 2001 and has become quite the feature-rich shopping cart. Especially the long running X-cart 4 version and X-cart 5 is working on catching up. X-cart can run on a much smaller server than Magento. Our eCommerce Hosting packages for X-cart can utilize our Small Server base for many businesses and can easily expand into the larger servers as needed.

X-cart 4 and 5 are much easier for the average business owner to maintain for most day-to-day tasks and has several options for X-cart Developers including us. Some business owners we’ve seen be able to pick up some small and medium customizations as well!

For more complicated customizations, you will need an X-cart Developer to help you out.

Picking the Right eCommerce Package

Still not sure which one would work best for you? Start by listing out what features you need, and Contact us! We will be happy to help you walk through critical thinking to help you pick the product that’s best for you!

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3 Steps to Test Your New eCommerce Site

As a non technical person, being asked to test your new or upgraded website can seem like a daunting task, however it doesn’t have to be! This short article will give you the guidelines needed to make sure you cover all the basics in site testing.

By testing your own site, you can help ensure that all the pieces are there to make sure your business processes are effectively implemented and that there isn’t something missing!

1. Think like an Established Customer

Ask yourself questions like:

  • What products do I want to buy?
  • What information do I need to decide to buy?
  • Are there any features of the website making buying difficult?

Pick your top 10 products you want to be selling and try to find them on the new website. Fully complete a checkout process including creating test orders using all the payment methods you have available.

2. Think like a New Customer

Ask yourself questions like:

  • What would help me build buying confidence?
  • Are the shipping and delivery options clear?
  • Are the descriptions on products clear and concise?
  • Does my About section clearly tell my story?

Browse your site with the eyes of a stranger. Do you trust it? Enlist some friends not familiar with your site too. Do they feel comfortable purchasing from your new site?

3. Think like an Admin of Your Site

Now that you have created test orders in the previous steps, go through the admin side of your site.

Admin tests:

  • Pretend like you are filling those orders you created
  • Create new products
  • Edit existing products
  • Use any custom tools you have

Are there any business processes missing? You are the best person to test this part as you know how your business operates.

Have a staff of many? Enlist the appropriate staff members to test their specific area of the site they use. Usually the more testing the better!

eCommerce Testing Summary

Programmers and developers can thoroughly test your site from a technical perspective and many times user perspective too. However having one type of person test your new website, will limit the perspective of the testing. Having many different types of people, and many different knowledge backgrounds will help your site be much more successful in launch! Everyone sees the website differently, just like everyone sees the world differently!

Need user testing or help upgrading your site? Contact Us today! We have launched and upgraded countless eCommerce sites since 2002!

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Top 5 Fall Maintenance Items for your Ecommerce Site

Just like you have a list of maintenance items you would do on your house or building every Fall to prepare it for winter, so should you be doing maintenance and preparation for the upcoming Holiday season! Even if your business doesn’t rely on Holiday Ecommerce Sales, you should be regularly maintaining and reviewing your website. What better time to do it than before the end of the year?

1. Security Patches

Lack of applying Security patches is one of the number one reasons eCommerce sites get hacked. If you run X-cart or Magento, they regularly push out security patches a few times a year.

Security Patches for X-cart and Magento generally are fairly easy to update and install. If you are hosted with us, you automatically get security patches applied. Make sure if you are hosted somewhere else, that you have us apply them for you or hire a developer if you are unsure how to patch your site!

2. New Content

Do you have a blog on your site, a news area? If you aren’t consistent throughout the year at creating new articles, you should at least once a quarter be creating a new article. Having new content on your site shows Google that you are still there and still updating the site. Otherwise you become stale and less important to the search engines.

So having a plan for new content, even if it’s only once a quarter is key. Be consistent and stick with it. Your topics can even vary and don’t have to be directly about your business. Just keep them interesting and tell your story!

3. Review Old Content

Have you looked through your website lately? Do you have any old articles that are so out dated, they do not make sense anymore? Be sure to review your site at least twice a year to remove old, stale and out dated information.

Keeping old content can be good and key for search engines, but if you know it is not in any way relevant, then get rid of it. So when you are reviewing, think from an outside readers perspective.

Ask yourself:

  • Do I want a prospective customer having this page as my first impression?
  • Does this article provide good information still?
  • Do I need to rewrite this to keep it relevant?

4. Test your site for usability

How long has it been since you pretended to be the customer? Have you tested your site on Desktop, Mobile and Tablet devices recently?

Standards change and devices change, it is a good idea to explore your site regularly with multiple different brands and types of devices. You may find some glaringly obvious issues that weren’t there before! It could be preventing you from getting the sales you need and want! Usually just a quick typical testing of your site is key to finding any big issues that may be new.

5. Review your Competitors

Regularly checking in on your competitor’s sites is key. You may find something they are doing really well that you should be doing as well. You may find something they are not doing well, that you do well. In this case, you can work to highlight what you are doing well and be able to stand out from the crowd.

One thing you never want to be though is a copy-cat. Make sure if you do find features or functions that your competitor does well, that you put your own twist or uniqueness when you work to implement something similar. Your customers want to shop with you because of you. Never try to be something or someone else than you are!

Need help with a Site Review?

Give us a call or contact us! We would be happy to set up a consultation for a site review!

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Carding Prevention with Payflow

Paypal has recently announced that they have added a new feature to their popular Payflow Payment Gateway. The new feature aims to limit the impact of carding, or a process that


fraudsters use to determine whether stolen card numbers are active and not yet reported lost or stolen

Source: 3dcart

Carding can take on many forms, including:

A single card repeatedly used in quick succession for low or identical dollar amounts
Multiple cards repeatedly used in quick succession for low or identical dollar amounts
Cards with the same information (name and/or billing address) from the same IP address
Multiple cards with differing information (name and/or billing address) from the same IP address
Multiple cards with different billing addresses but an identical BIN (Bank Identification Number)

Source: 3dcart

The the new carding module for Payflow e-commerce stores will now get notified of suspected carding activity. Paypal will return a new result code, 170, indicating that “Fraudulent activity detected: carding.” The account will also be blocked at Paypal from purchases in your store.

Don’t worry, you’ll be able to easily unblock accounts in your Paypal Manager.

Look for forthcoming updates to the Paypal modules for Magento, X-cart, and other e-commerce packages. Most stores will still handle this new error code and prevent the purchase from registering to the vendor even without an update.

For more information on Payflow Carding Protection, visit the announcement.

And if you’re concerned about excessive carding attempts occurring with your e-commerce store contact us today to see how we can help!

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Granting Access to Google Analytics

Frequently, we find ourselves needing access to our client’s Google Analytics accounts. In order to provide access to us, follow these simple steps:


Step #1: Login to your Analytics Account.

Step #2: Navigate to “Admin” in the lower left corner.

Step #3: Select User Management for either a particular Analytics Account, Property, or View. (Generally, if you are unsure, you can simply add a user to your analytics Account and they will be able to see everything you see.)

Step #4: Select Add User from the large “plus sign” menu.

Step #5: Enter in the user’s email address, adjust permissions if you desire to give the user more control than simply viewing the data, and then select “Add”.

That’s it. You’ve now added a user to your Google Analytics account!

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Consulting Services

Consulting Services from BCS Engineering

BCS Engineering is the largest third-party developer of X-cart modules and customizations. Since 2002, we’ve been helping e-commerce retailers improve their sales, customer engagement, and customer satisfaction.

And we’re not just X-cart experts! Our staff includes Magento-certified developers, and we can honestly say that for one project or another, we’ve worked with every major e-Commerce platform, web framework, and sales tool under the sun.

That’s why we’re uniquely suited to help you.

Our Diverse Expertise

Strategy and Planning

Our team has over 65 years of combined e-commerce experience. This expertise allows us to deliver an unbiased, comprehensive assessment of your e-commerce strategy. We can help you refine your processes to be more efficient, most cost- and consumer-friendly, and most importantly deliver better results year-over-year.

Design and Implementation

Above all, e-commerce implementations are complex. Our team has the experienced needed to not only assess your needs, but also to deliver the functionality that those needs demand as well. We are expert e-commerce developers with experience using the X-cart, Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, and PinnacleCart platforms.

Development and Customization

We’re engi-nerds at heart. We love making existing tools do new and useful things for our customers. That’s why we pride ourselves on knowing our platforms, building useful tools, and making the machinery of e-commerce work efficiently and in customer-friendly ways.

Marketing and Search Optimization

We’ve implemented thousands of e-commerce projects that are generating tens of millions in digital sales for our customers every year. Therefore we have the know-how and have e-commerce best practices down to a science. Our e-commerce consulting team will help you transform great digital experiences into amazing revenue generators.

How can we help you?

Give us a call or send us an email today, and let us discuss how we can help your e-commerce business. Whether you’re a new store looking to acquire customers or you’ve been doing this a while and would just like an outside perspective, we can help. Our 4-hour engagement will typically include:

  • firstly, we provide an site assessment and evaluation of your current e-commerce practices,
  • secondly, a one-on-one discussion with a member of our engineering team about concrete next actions you can take to improve your business and online presence,
  • next we’ll provide recommendations for new integrations of development that we can assist you with,
  • and lastly we’ll engage with you in open, honest discussion about any questions or concerns you bring to us about your business.

We want to see your store succeed. We can help your store succeed. Our consulting services are designed with your best interests in mind. So reach out to us to schedule an e-commerce consultation or discuss other ways that BCSE can help you today!

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Last Minute Prep for Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Are YOU ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?!Thanksgiving is next week, which means the e-commerce world is frantically preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. While others prepare to gorge on turkey and spend some serious dough, are you sure your store is ready for the rush? Here’s some quick tips to get your store in shape for the busiest shopping days of the year!

Prepare Your Store

Do you have your Black Friday and Cyber Monday graphics ready to go? Do you know the plan for pushing them live? Have you tested the look-and-feel out in a development environment?

Are your offers ready? Do the coupon codes work? Have you checked to make sure the appropriate limitations on those codes are in place? And, most importantly, is your site secured?

Optimize Search

If you don’t already have robust keywords in your store, now is the time to add some! Have you properly configured Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools? These tools provide starting points for seeing what the major search engines know about your site. You can then use a good SEO mod, or tools built-in to your cart to make sure your key words have been properly added and are positively affecting your search standings.

If your business is tight on cash flow, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do! A little bit goes a long way, and since SEO should be a major component of any sales strategy in e-Commerce, if you’ve neglected this, there’s no time like the present to step up and make your site search-friendly.

Prepare for the Worst

What’s your Black Friday disaster plan? Do you have support staff on standby? What will do you if you run out of stock? Is your fulfillment team ready to get those Black Friday and Cyber Monday orders to customers?

And what about technical problems? Do you know what to do if the store is crashing on Black Friday? Do you have site backups? What about the database? One small error can massively mess that up for the whole weekend if you don’t have a contingency plan in place.

Your most likely source of problems on Black Friday or Cyber Monday will be the customers. Do you lay out your store policies on returns and shipping, and list your Holiday delivery deadlines in a clear manner on your site? Making sure your policies are clear can make working with unhappy customers easier and less time consuming post-holiday.

Aim for the Best

You should aim to give your customers a great shopping experience on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If you haven’t refreshed your store’s look and feel in some time, now is not the time to try radical changes, but small quality of life improvements can go a long way.

  • Do you have mobile friendly pages? Will your Black Friday / Cyber Monday images and promotions look nice on mobile devices?
  • Do you have abandoned cart reminders enabled, so that you can re-capture those customers that are on the fence about their purchase?
  • Are you offering a loyalty program, and rewarding your loyal customers?

And, last but not least… social media. Are you engaging with your customers about what deals you’re bringing to them this Black Friday / Cyber Monday? Much of your attention this week and in the run-up to Black Friday should be on how you can capture your (future) customer’s attention next weekend. Here are some tips:

Appeal to the vanishing deal!

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over fast… encourage quick purchases by appealing to your customers sense of urgency and implying scarcity of your products.

Update Your Profiles

Give your social media presence a quick make-over with new graphics, and make sure your information and correct and concise.

Use Your Blog

Write guides (like this one) in the run-up to your Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals. Review products you want to sell, or create short tutorial videos to soak up the customer’s attention.

Research

Do your homework. There’s tons of amazing guides! Her’s just a few to get you started:

When in doubt, seek help!

BCS Engineering is staffed with e-Commerce experts that have been working in the field since 2004. If you’re not sure you’re ready, or if you just want to get some feedback about a particular issue, we’re here to help you survive Black Friday and BEYOND! Contact us today to see how we can help you!

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PHP 5 Deprecated This December!

PHP 5.x will be deprecated at the end of 2018!

One of the most popular platforms on the web — PHP 5 — will stop receiving security updates at the end of the year.

According to The PHP Group, security updates will only be issued for the popular PHP 5.6 branch through the end of this year.

This will have a huge impact on the web at-large and the e-commerce community more specifically. Many popular cart solutions rely upon PHP, including X-cart, Magento, and WooCommerce. Many stores also rely on PHP to run their blogging/news components in the form of CMS tools like WordPress.

“This is a huge problem for the PHP ecosystem,” Scott Arciszewski, Chief Development Officer at Paragon Initiative Enterprise, told ZDNet in an interview. “While many feel that they can ‘get away with’ running PHP 5 in 2019, the simplest way to describe this choice is: Negligent.”

from “Around 62 percent of all Internet sites will run an unsupported PHP version in 10 weeks” (ZDNet, 14 Oct 2018)

What do I do?

If your site is currently operating on PHP 5, you should determine which of the 5.x branches you’re currently using. Updates have ceased for the 5.4 and 5.5 branches of PHP 5 since September 2015 and July 2016 respectively.

PHP Calendar from https://secure.php.net/supported-versions.php [Retrieved 15 Oct 2018]

How quickly you need to deploy a new version on your site depends upon just how out-of-date you are. Generally speaking, anyone using any branch of PHP 5 should update as soon as possible. If you’re on 5.4 or 5.5, you should contact your hosting provider ASAP.

However, our experience is the moving from PHP 5 to PHP 7 is a non-trivial process. A lot has changed. Some of those changes are very fundamental. Therefore it’s not at all uncommon for us to see sites break when site move from 5 to 7.

Don’t host your site with a provider that automatically
updates major versions of PHP without warning!

BCSE will be migrating our hosted clients to PHP 7 in the coming weeks. We encourage our customers to monitor their inboxes for notification of pending updates. And, as always, don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any questions along the way.

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