Category Archives: Blog

How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Marketing

Everyone has heard the phrase “remember who your audience is” regarding the presentation of information. If we take this a step further, and say “understand how your audience processes information”, psychology now becomes an obvious resource to help convey your message effectively. While some of the tips presented in this article might at first seem counter-intuitive (“reduce choices” for example), if applied appropriately, they will make whatever information or marketing you are presenting more engaging.

Ten Tips on Business Writing

People often try to spice up writing for business purposes. However, some of these writing methods can end up being detrimental to the overall quality of the message. The following article has a few easy tips to help strengthen your prose. While an item or two in their list of tips can occasionally be ignored, it is important to make sure that you are not committing these transgressions on a consistent basis.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238175

Tips on Making E-mail Marketing Work for Your Business

Most people seem to focus on social media marketing these days. However, people often forget the efficacy of e-mail marketing in reaching out to their customers. E-mail marketing provides a direct link to provide information to customers who typically choose to sign up to receive more information. So, from there it is just a matter of keeping their interest and making it worth their while to continue reading your direct communications. This article provides excellent tips on how to approach your e-mail marketing campaign.

Ten Steps on How to Approach Marketing More Effectively

People often make the error of assuming that copying the marketing strategies of a company that is a nationally-known brand is foolproof. “They are successful and this is what they do, so why would it not work for me?” Well, there are lots of reasons actually. In my past work experience, I have seen first-hand how being smarter about marketing and reducing marketing expenditures actually provide a much better bottom-line without hindering growth. The key is to be smart about what marketing approaches you pursue, and what is right for your business. The article below gives more information about tips that people often do not consider, including one I think is the most important – “…if it can’t be tracked and measured, don’t do it.” Read more here:

Magento Go Migration

http://praxisis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/magento-go.jpg

Need help migrating your shopping cart before Magento Go is Magento gone? Thinking you should wait until after the holiday season? Think again! Magento Go end of life has been set for February 1, 2015 but you don’t have to wait to get your cart onto a premiere platform.

BCS Engineering & Bigcommerce have teamed up to make sure you get the best service and options available for a smooth transition. Bigcommerce is the platform being recommended by Magento for their Magento Go customers. Your store, the way you want it, and hosted for you; what more could you want? Check out Bigcommerce to see which plan works for you.

Customer service is the key to success and the sooner you act, the sooner we can help you get your products moved over to a hosted platform equipped to handle that holiday demand! The holidays are already stressful enough; let us help you with your Magento Go migration today!

Building an Online Presence When Free Time Is an Issue

Sometimes in the world of small business, social media is one of the first things to fall through the cracks due to time constraints. Some people simply do not know where to start. This article provides several tips that can be used as “jumping-off points” for someone who is running into the above issues engaging with social media.

Speed Up Your E-Commerce Store

Any e-commerce site needs speed optimizations. A simple trick to speed up your e-commerce or X-Cart site is to turn on gzip compression. This is as simple as copying and pasting the following code into your .htaccess file:

# Compress HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Text, XML and fonts
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/vnd.ms-fontobject
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-opentype
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-otf
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-truetype
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/opentype
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
# Remove browser bugs (only needed for really old browsers)
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
Header append Vary User-Agent
In addition, if you are using X-Cart, we have a module to help speed up your X-Cart site! Our Speed Booster module for X-Cart can greatly reduce speed times! Check out our FAQ on how it works as well as demos!

Magento Go End of Life

Currently using Magento Go? Have you made plans for Magento Go’s End of Life on February 1st, 2015? BCS Engineering can help you fulfill your future e-commerce needs. Perhaps the most reasonable alternative suggested by Magento for an e-commerce transition is Bigcommerce. Bigcommerce is one of the main platforms BCS Engineering currently supports. If you are looking to begin the process of conversion, let us help you along the way. Click here to get started:

Paypal API Update for X-Cart versions 4.5.4 and Older – IMPORTANT

Are you operating an X-Cart store with version 4.5.4 or older? There is an important API endpoint update being performed by PayPal on November 1st (this was originally scheduled for March 25th). Before this time, there is a patch that you will need to apply to ensure that you continue to receive payments via PayPal.
From PayPal: “If you have any questions, please contact PayPal Merchant Technical Services by filing a ticket; refer to LIVE API integration change in preparation for November 1. For real time system updates, please go to www.paypal.com/sitestatus”
If you want to apply the patch yourself, you can download the PayPal patch at: https://secure.x-cart.com.
If you need help applying the patch, please contact us.