Tag: indus net technologies

How to Command Respect from Your Clients?

October 28, 2015

When it comes to client retention, there is nothing more important than ensuring that you are respecting them. How do you get people to respect you? It is not all that easy, it may seem. To be honest, respect has to be earned and that axiom holds true even when it comes to retaining clients and customers. To retain a client, you need to be the first person that comes to their mind when they think about a problem related to your domain. The only way to do this is to prove your worth as an individual or as a company and show to the world that you have what it takes to solve problems and that you can ease off their burdens in your chosen domain. Also, earning respect is not about overt displays of proficiency or authority. It requires you to be a little more subtle than that. In this article, let us discuss the  subtle ways through  which you can heighten your respectability among your clients. All these tips are given assuming that you are already good at what you do and that in spite of your efficiency, you still desire to be respected more in your area. 1.      Don’t be clingy People who are clingy usually write back to their clients or call them up if they do not hear from them often. This shows that they lack confidence and probably are insecure as well. Just like a lover can smell insecurity, clients can smell your lack of confidence and insecurity from afar. This is never a good thing. Make sure that you do not bombard your clients with repeated calls or emails if they do not respond to you. 2.      Be available The other kind of people who are not respected are those who seem distant. If you are too distant and do not communicate with your clients often, they will forget you. The axiomatic phrase ‘out of sight, out of mind’ holds good even here. Make sure that you talk about things that are not always related to what you do. This helps to build a relationship and helps you to remain in their minds. They will respect you for the person you are. 3.      Don’t be arrogant The other kind of people that everyone dislikes even if they are good at what they do, are those who are arrogant. Arrogant people think they are being truthful about their accomplishments and end up bragging. However that makes you look like an undesirable person. This will also mean that you will not be respected by your clients and you will probably not figure in their minds when the time comes to get something done. 4.      Don’t be pathetic The other opposite of being arrogant is to be pathetic. Don’t be that person either. Being pathetic is not being humble. A lot of people confuse these two qualities and end up looking or acting pathetic. It is a very bad idea. Ensure that you are confident and in control of whatever you say or do. This will help you to gain respect from your clients instead of acting pathetic. A person that requires respect should not be pitied. When you are looked at with pity or sympathy, you will not be respected. Finally, be yourself A lot of people try very hard to be someone that they are not. They do this in order to be respected by others and to show that they can be better people than what others think they are. Ironically, as long as you are yourself and are not trying to be someone, you will be respected.

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Lime – Axis Bank’s New Mobile Banking Application

October 27, 2015

India’s third largest private lender, Axis Bank rolled out a mobile application “Lime” which integrates a mobile wallet, banking, payment and shopping facilities. This launch comes soon after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has approved licenses for payment banks for third party transactions. Speaking about the Lime app, Shikha Sharma, Managing Director and CEO, Axis Bank, said, “Customer preferences are changing rapidly and technology is transforming the way these preferences are being met. Our effort has been to constantly innovate through the use of smart technology to meet these evolving needs. LIME is the next big step in this journey.” The app is open to customers from other banks as well. This integrated mobile app aims at offering high customer engagement through new financial and digital behaviours. It can make seamless peer to peer, online and offline merchant payments. Users can add money from credit/debit cards or net banking and authenticate the payment using a 4 digit mPIN. Not only this, users can also shop and compare products across different shopping portals through this app as well as plan vacations, book flights, bus and movie tickets. This app would be a sure shot hit as it can keep a track of the user’s spending habits and provides insights to help them spend better. Our Marketing Manager, Mr. Mainak Biswas also believes that this is indeed India’s first mobile app that can enable any individual to transact and manage money through a single mobile app. It is the best way to boost payment banking.

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success-of-ecommerce-in-india

Why Is Ecommerce So Successful In India?

October 26, 2015

E-commerce has become the most exciting sector in India today. With a growing number of aspiring rural and urban internet-connected customers, there is a tremendous scope of online selling. There is a huge one-time customer base in India. The concept of e-commerce is not new to India. Domestic players like Rediff Shopping, Yahoo! Shopping, Indiatimes Shopping, Sify Shopping and HomeShop18 have been in the market since early 2000s; though they figure nowhere close to the top 10 players in India today. The chief reason is their failure to sense the market demand, limited product catalogue and skewed focus towards sellers rather than consumers. Moreover, the consumer sentiment was also not so strong at that time due to lack of trustworthiness for buying online. Winds of change However, over a last couple of years, the ecommerce market has drastically evolved witnessing an influx of start-up companies. Currently, Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal are the market leaders. Flipkart grew at the rate of 476% in terms of goods sold in the year 2012-2013 which clearly is a sign of aggressiveness in the market. But with growing internet connectivity in tier-II, tier-III and rural areas, the number of internet users is rising exponentially. According to an estimation by Gartner, India’s ecommerce market is expected to reach $6 billion by the end of 2015. According to Goldman Sachs, India’s ecommerce market will account for 2.5% of India’s GDP by 2030 and expected to touch $300 billion. Global players like Amazon and Alibaba have entered the market to reap the advantage of this huge market potential. What makes India an attractive destination for operating ecommerce shops? The following article will profoundly analyze the story of ecommerce success in India. 1. Changing consumer demographics According to a report released by UN in November 2014, with 356 million 10-24 year-olds, India has the world’s largest youth population despite having a smaller population than China. India is prepared to include 300 million new online shoppers in the next 15 years. With increasing online mobile penetration, India is hooked to have the second-largest digital population in the world by 2030 followed by China. Changing consumer demographics with high disposable income both in urban and rural areas has become the driving force in ecommerce growth. It has led to bigger online order sizes and changes in consumer lifestyle. Besides that, consumer purchase behavior has evolved significantly especially in tier-II and tier-III cities. The idea of sitting at home, comparing prices and product features has excited the Indian users by enhancing their shopping experience. After travel; apparel and electronics remain the most popular categories people prefer to buy online. 2. Telecom infrastructure The internet penetration and the number of broadband users are increasing rapidly. According to Google India, Indian internet user base is likely to touch 500 million by 2018-19 which will stoke Indian economy beyond measure. The number of internet users surpassed 300 million in December 2013. India Inc. has pumped a lot of money into spectrums and building telecom infrastructure to provide 3G internet to 25-30% of the population. Moreover, 4G internet has already become a reality in India with the introduction of Airtel 4G services in Vishakhapatnam. It will give a much desired thrust across India once services are initiated in different cities. 3. Proliferation of internet-enabled devices Increasing adoption of devices like smartphones, tablets and laptops has contributed significantly towards ecommerce growth. Moreover, 3G-enabled smartphones are available in the market at highly affordable rates. According to research firm Gfk, the total mobile phone sales in India was recorded at 200 million units in 2014 and smartphones comprised more than 25% share at 53 million units. Globally, India is seen as the fastest growing smartphone market especially due to falling prices of smartphones and impetus towards smartphones from feature phones. 4. Exponential growth in mobile application market With increasing mobile internet connectivity and growth of smartphone users in India, m-commerce is a major contributing factor towards the success of the sector. Remarkable growth witnessed by online mobile medium is slated to overtake ecommerce in few years. The increase in mobile application download to access e-retailers is solid testimony. According to a KPMG report, it is estimated that mobile application download would grow six-fold by the end of 2015 touching 9 billion apps. Moreover, India has been the fastest growing mobile app market consecutively in 2013 and 2014. The growth in mobile app market is so high that many ecommerce companies are considering discontinuing their full-fledged websites to focus solely upon mobile platform. 5. Evolving payment landscape Indian economy largely runs on liquid cash basis. Most Indians do not trust to make payments online because online transaction is a relatively new concept here. Also, payment gateways have also not been very effective due to high transaction failure rate. This made it imperative for ecommerce companies to introduce cash-on-delivery. Around 60% of total trade happens in cash-on-delivery mode only, according to Goldman Sachs report. Apart from that, ecommerce companies and banks are devising new methods of making online payments. Launch of digital wallets like Mobikwik, Pockets, Airtel money has instilled a level of confidence among consumers and is finding rapid acceptance. 6. Fierce competition The competition in ecommerce has become too intense with leading players adopting aggressive selling strategies. Most ecommerce companies are capable of spending big. The customer acquisition cost is running high. Companies are playing on volume trade and are incurring operational losses. They are offering deep discounts far below the MRP making it a lucrative offer for consumers. Free shipping further adorns the offer. All this is being done to acquire the majority market share. 7. Cultural factors India, the leading emerging market in the world, has a population desperately looking for access to consumer goods at competitive prices. The ecommerce in India is largely classified into travel, e-retail and online classified. The travel trade is composed of flight, rail, bus and hotel bookings while the online classified is broadly subdivided into job, real estate and matrimonial

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How do you Measure the Effectiveness of Your Company’s Blog?

October 12, 2015

Companies have objectives which invariably impact every aspect of their blog. A business blog has different goals to fulfil. These may include building the brand, expanding business reach or supporting sales. However, to accomplish such goals, it is imperative to ensure that the blog is in line with your company/brand. But how do you initiate it? The foremost important thing is to measure its effectiveness on your business and audience engagement. This is referred as Marketing Performance Measurement. The metrics include indicators of the efficiency of your content supply chain. Although there are enough tools to measure your blog’s effort, it is more important to know –  What to measure?  How to measure?  What to do with the data once they’re uncovered? Before you start analyzing your metrics, here are the four most important grounds to measure first: Production of Content    This metrics will help you to manage the –  Number of blog posts planned, in the process and ready to be published  Frequency of blog posts posting  Average time to and from the idea to the publication of a blog post  Total costs involved in the production, promotion and distribution Outlining Creative Elements You tasks include-  Determine who will write the post  Ensure the blog has one consistent voice  Verify whether the content tells a story, be contextually relevant, have a point of view and sound like a real person  Check there isn’t any grammatical error  Test the color scheme, typography, post length and use of other media  Develop an editorial calendar Performance of the Content The metrics should cover  Social media link shares, likes and tweets  Unique visitors, number of page views and average time on site  Page depth and session duration  Number of visits, bounce rate, percentage of return visitors, page per visit Marketing Pipeline  You need to monitor  New leads generated and existing leads touched  Percent and money value opportunity generated, touched and won  Return on investment Here are the blogging metrics you should measure every month to best gauge the success of your blog Clicks – How Often and How Much If lead generation and how much revenue gained are your top priority, you need people to find and engage with your content. Measuring clicks provide directions to a marketer. They are the greatest indicator of who is clicking, from where they’re clicking, whether your topics are resonating with your audience and how well your post is performing in the search engines. For instance, HubSpot, marketing automation software can give you a better understanding of who is clicking and where specific clicks are coming from. Similarly, clicks on and around a publish date give you an insight into how well your posts are resonating with the target audience. You may also include a Call-To-Action button in your blog content. You can use it as a means to promote your other blog post offers and track how effective your blog is at generating leads. However, put something valuable within the CTA to inspire readers to click on it. Inbound links –  More Inbound Links Indicate Higher Rank in Search Engines If you make it a point to link other’s valuable content in your own blog post, they would also reciprocate the same in their content. It helps with your ranking on search engines. This is an indication that others have found your content helpful enough to link to it on their own website. You can use Google Analytics, Open Site Explorer, Backlink Watch or SEO profiler to measure inbound links in content. Blog Search Performance The foremost ways to measure the performance of your blog is to find out How many visitors your blog is attracting? The number will indicate how successful you are at attracting visitors to your website. You get measurements of total visitors, new visitors, return visitors and direct visitors. Google Analytics will take you a step further. This Analytical tool will show you the types of visitors viewing your blog. What is the number of subscribers to your blog? People subscribe to high-quality content. Subscribers will promote your brand and also lead to product purchases and event participation. Tools like Spring Metrics or Google Analytics helps you to measure the total number of feed subscribers. How do the visitors behave? Tool like CrazyEgg measures the user behaviour and interactions.  You get detail data about how visitors interact with the information on your page, what they actually do, how far do they scroll and at what place they stop viewing or deciding to leave comment, make a purchase or subscribe. Social Shares Take the time to discover what factors cause readers to share your post. Indeed, social media buttons on your blog post pages are a direct indicator of the level in which people find your content helpful. Research and studies show that readers share content that-  Induces happiness  They found quite valuable  Are helpful to others Social analytics tools like Open Site Explorer is effective in measuring the volume of social shares any blog post on your website is generating. With each click of the social media button, you’ll receive confirmation that readers enjoyed your content and was engaged with it. A successful content strategy is aligned with measuring the revenue generated from it. This is simple if your blog posts are aligned with the premium content like eBooks that are confirmed ways to bring in business. You may also find several free analytical tools that will help you measure the impact of your blog on the business.

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The Leading Tech Companies Form Alliance to Develop Open Source Format for Online Videos

September 30, 2015

The tech titans Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Mozilla, Intel, Netflix and Amazon formed an Alliance for open media to develop next-generation video compression technology and codecs in the public interest. Compression improvements would pave the way for high-resolution videos that download faster and look better. The Alliance aims at meeting the growing demand for high-quality video, imagery, audio and streaming across the increasing number of diverse devices and their users worldwide. Each of them will contribute to create an open, royalty-free “next-generation” video format that shall adhere to the following principles –  Optimized for the web  Supportive of copy protection  Flexible for commercial, non-commercial and user-generate content  Interoperable and open  Scalable to any contemporary device at any bandwidth  Capable of consistent, high-quality and real-time  video delivery  Optimized for hardware and designed with low computational footprint According to Mozilla, the plan is to release the standard under Apache License 2.0 instead of working in isolation on independent standards. “Customer expectations for media delivery continue to grow, and fulfilling their expectations requires the concerted energy of the entire ecosystem,” said Gabe Frost, the executive director for the alliance. Besides, Ian LeGrow, manager of the Windows partner group at Microsoft opined “Streaming video is where we’re all headed”. The tech giants are assuming that their mission will successfully challenge the powerful force of MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) that has produced many widely used compression standards to dominate video distribution. Our Digital Marketing Project Manager, Mr. Souvik Bhattacharyya in support of the mission said that such a movement will pave the way for a new format which will offer seamless streaming media without any security hazards unlike Flash format videos with countless security glitches. This open codec based format is likely to take over the web very soon and is targeted to offer top notch experience across all devices. Source: Cnet.com, Techtimes.com,

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Google’s Shopping Ads on YouTube Now

September 7, 2015

As we all know how Product Listing Ads (PLA) is a success for Google. It immensely helps online retailers to create unique ads for each product they want to sell. By showcasing relevant ads for a given search, PLA allows businesses to experience higher click-through rates. Pleased with PLA’s striking performance, Google wanted to expand its features further on YouTube platform. Recently, it announced an integration of its Product Listing Ads and YouTube videos in a feature called TrueView for shopping. TrueView for video advertising is an excellent avenue for online merchants and advertisers to grab the attention of the audience that YouTube sees every day. The ads are powered by integration with Google Merchant Centre. YouTube will not be facilitating the transactions. Rather the platform will send the interested users to the third-party sites to buy goods that are relevant to the videos. How Does TrueView for Shopping Work? With Google Merchant Center allowing advertisers to connect their products to the in-stream videos, it is encouraging more interactivity and accurate accounting of audience engagement for brands. These ads are delivered on the YouTube cards, and click on the product ads take the users straight to the merchant’s website. Cards won’t automatically appear when a card-enabled TrueView ad plays. AdWords will ensure that most of the relevant products are presented to the viewers during the time they watch videos. The ads are customized for viewers using signals like demographic details and geographical targeting. Brands can dynamically connect their campaigns to their Merchant Centre Feeds and accordingly select the products that they wish to showcase to the viewers, thus, resulting in increased click-through rates and conversions. Merchants can also add inventory data to Google’s pay-to-play shopping service and enable Google to collect and catalog brands’ product listing to populate the TrueView cards. Does it function across all Devices? With the majority of YouTube views coming from mobile devices, these ad units will seamlessly work across all smart devices. How Does the New Shopping Avenue benefit the Marketers? Marketers can take full control over the ads that appear alongside their videos right with the images, call-to-actions and other details. They can show the right ads at the right time irrespective of whether it’s a review video of a product or an instructional video on how to use a product. This is indeed encouraging for the viewers to click in order to buy products instantly. Besides, retailer’s previous targeted products and demographic details can be used for video content by using TrueView for shopping on YouTube. They can use these ads to remarket to people who may have checked out a product on a brand’s site without checking out. However, if one thinks that they’ll still have to go to the advertiser’s site to make a purchase, both Google and YouTube have plans for them as well – the new ad format makes the path to shopping shorter. Merchants can reach millions of users besides the already existing desktop and mobile PLA’s. When Ben Young, media manager of TV and online video for home goods retailer Wayfair, analyzed the shoppable TrueView ad against a standard TrueView ad, he stated that with both the campaigns targeting the same group of audience, the shoppable TrueView bought three times more revenue than the standard one. Google shopping seems to keep growing and evolving over the years.        

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Indian Programmers Need Nurturing, Not Arbitrary Judgments

June 17, 2015

A few weeks ago, Snapdeal cheerfully declared that “right programmers are rare in India” and the tech world went abuzz about how right or wrong that statement was. Javed Anwar, in an article published on the India Today, a leading Indian magazine, came to certain arbitrary conclusions that many faculty members in India with great CVs did not know even the basics of what they were teaching and that they also lacked insight about the implications of plagiarizing research. The author concluded that Snapdeal had to look for people from outside and that “that is the only way for it to grow”. How much of these conclusions are valid and how many of these claims are without biases and prejudices? If we scratched the surface, it is quite evident that a single company’s decision to recruit programmers from abroad does not say anything about the actual situation in hand. To begin with, some of the largest and most important companies of the world have recruited Indian programmers. For example, Zoho built its entire product team from the scratch in India. Whether in India or in the U.S. or just about any country in the world, what is truly important is nurturing talent where it is found, taking corporate culture seriously and shouldering industry responsibility. These factors can be religiously followed by companies who are in the game for long haul, as we do at Indus Net Technologies. Existing problems and possible solutions It is an often repeated attempt at humor that Indians first become engineers, and then proceed further toward planning their futures and careers. This is mostly because of affordable education because of which more people can access higher education even if they do not have passion for certain subjects. Moreover, software engineering has always been the surest ticket out of poverty, as The Atlantic magazine noted way back in October, 2013. In an insightful article titled “Behind the ‘Bad Indian Coder’”, The Atlantic discussed what is now being discussed post-Snapdeal fiasco – that Indian education system has failed its citizens. It is not the Indian programmers that lack skills but the way they are taught that makes them think in slightly different ways than their western counterparts. This includes rote-learning, lack of researching and Gestalt skills & an inability to be innovative even while they possess the talent. While overhauling Indian education system is going to take time, what really needs to be understood is that the responsibility of nurturing talent falls squarely upon Indian service providers. Indian IT companies that recruit these poorly paid programmers are often in a hurry to churn out codes rather than encourage real talent to grow from within organically. What really happens at the end of the day is, Indian programmers are fired by their Indian employers if they do not meet or achieve targets. Consequently, there is no real room for innovation or nurturing talent. The companies that really excel in India are those that actually take time to nurture their employees and sort of provide a second education. Indian companies that realize the problems are focusing more on polishing and nurturing their existing employees, instead of forcing them to produce code, just as they were forced to produce homework in school. Thankfully, companies that nurture talent, speak for themselves and their employees are in demand internationally, whether they are Indian or not. What do we do at Indus Net Technologies to nurture talent? If companies feel there is a dearth of quality programmers, it is often their own responsibility to train their employees and nurture existing talents. At Indus Net, we nurture skilled resources and use that as a differentiator from the persistent noise in the industry. With more than 550 talented employees in two distinct units, we are able to focus on encouraging each individual to achieve a sort of self-actualization in their professional field. Among the two groups, one focuses on SMBs and the other on the enterprise grade projects. We follow a protocol when it comes to quality bench-marking. This process involves training new recruits and allowing them to form internal teams & build something on their own, under the leadership and guidance of a seasoned project manager. The project manager ensures that skilled resources are individually trained and nurtured before they interact or start working on client projects. The process includes cross-cultural sensitization, technical skills, focus on innovation and creativity & honing one’s existing skills and talents. Indus Net Labs is one of our unique ways to encourage our employees to spend 20% of their time creating something on their own. This is inspired by Google’s similar projects. Some of the products that resulted from Indus Net Labs initiative are SocialFire (a WhatsApp for businesses and organizations), Mobileafs (a digital publishing solution) and InfraFix (an eGovernance and maintenance solution). Let us not be prejudiced and biased To say that Indian programmers are not talented is a prejudiced and biased way of looking at things, to the point of sounding colonial. What really is ailing today’s programmers is lack of opportunities to innovate and nurture their own talent. This can be made possible by following our example of allowing individuality, creativity and ideas to be nurtured. While there are certain cultural problems that seem to portray Indian programmers in an unfavorable light, the onus remains on companies to hire and nurture promising IT talent. With a keen sense of technology and already-existing English skills, Indian programmers can be groomed into world class professionals, just like we have been doing for several years at Indus Net Technologies.

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How Story and Metaphor Combine to Create an Effective Explainer Video

How Story and Metaphor Combine to Create an Effective Explainer Video

October 31, 2014

An explainer video, just like any short or long film, needs to be based on a good script. Good script writing practice involves using stories that are an allegory to something that is unsaid. Let us call them, metaphors. Metaphors in literary usage refer to words or ideas that describe a subject and compare them to an unrelated object or idea, while asserting they both are alike. Metaphors or allegories or similes? What is even more important for us to understand is the concept behind an allegory. Every story of an explainer video or a film must be allegorical in nature. Now what on earth could be an allegory? Is it the same as a metaphor or a simile? How do all these words fit into a storyboard that scriptwriters write before shooting an explainer video? In this article, let us firs describe what metaphors, allegories and similes are, and then look at the importance of stories being connected to these rhetorical figures of speech. If you are a script writer or you are looking for someone to get an explainer video made for you, make sure one of these figures of speech is used. Metaphors and stories A metaphor uses association, comparison and tactics of resemblance to imply that something that is being said is somehow similar to what is being compared. Shakespeare once said “All the world’s a stage”. He used the “stage” as a metaphor to imply that the world should be seen as a drama or a theatre. For him, the world was a spectacle in which we must get involved in order to feel its real essence, just like we would do in a stage play. In the case of an explainer video, the scriptwriter could make use of metaphors to make the audience experience a richer emotional process. For instance, while you are explaining Software XYZ, you could say that a particular software program is like a dentist, carefully going through problematic areas, cleaning them up and fixing them. Here, software XVZ is compared to a dentist and the dentist is the metaphor. One could easily have an explainer video story that personifies the software XYZ as a dentist that cleans, repairs and polishes whatever needs to be fixed on a computer or another software program. Now wouldn’t that interest the viewer more than just telling them how to use the software? Allegories and stories Allegories are a more complex and sophisticated form of figure of speech. They make the entire stories and films as an allegory (or allusion) to a broader idea or concept that is not mentioned. For instance, George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” was an allegory to the communist tyranny. Allegories are not often required in an explainer video script as that would make things way too complex. Your typical audience wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time debating the allegorical significance of the script used in your explainer video. Similes and stories A simile is a very simple form of rhetorical figure of speech. It compares two objects directly with the help of words like “than”, “so”, “as” or verbs such as “resemble”. For example, the expression “white as snow” is a simile. There is no hidden meaning here, and there is nothing that one needs to contemplate on. However, the phrase “white as snow” would make us think of purity, cleanliness, chill and winter. This simile maybe used in an advertisement that sells white cotton clothes. Similes are useful in ad copy creation but are not significantly important when it comes to creating stories for explainer videos. Final thoughts Metaphors can be used to weave into stories before writing the storyboard and ensure that the explainer video is not only entertaining but also of some thought provoking importance. Also, using allegories is better for mainstream movies or artful documentaries and short films. Allegories consume a lot of cognitive energy of the viewer for explainer videos to be successful. On the other hand, similes are great to be used in ad copy but must be sparingly used in explainer videos. In conclusion, we can say that a metaphorical story is always better than a simple script when it comes to explainer videos. To create effective explainer videos for your business, talk to the explainer video specialists at Oomphbox.

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Using Your Existing Magento Platform for B2B Enterprise E-commerce

Using Your Existing Magento Platform for B2B Enterprise E-commerce

October 30, 2014

No matter which business model you are into, it is utmost important to equally focus on the B2B (Business to Business) needs of your business while you run a retail e-commerce business; focusing solely on the normal B2C (Business to Customer) is not enough. Now, you must be wondering why. Here are the key reasons for your consideration and business success: The first and foremost being B2B enterprise e-commerce always co-exists with B2C business. Almost every retail online portal necessitates having the presence of distributors, resellers, sales employees, wholesalers etc. for a continued business growth with sustainable revenue from these business stakeholders. After all, a considerable amount of revenue that gets generated from this channel can be used for boosting marketing campaigns and increasing sales for your B2C business. It’s true that Magento, like any other SaaS or Open Source software, mainly supports B2C model; however, Magento is flexible enough to be attributed with a number of B2B features. This blog would take you through a detailed synopsis of which B2B features Magento can be configured with and which B2B features e-retailing often needs. B2B features Magento can be configured with Some small changes in the As Is Magento installation can provide you with almost all the B2B features required for your business. As nowadays, B2B portal needs are similar to the fundamental B2C business needs, it’s not too difficult to customize Magento with the following features that are mostly required by retailers, resellers etc. like you: Discount details Downloadable data sheets and manuals Invoice and order history Live customer help Order and shipment details Product details with multiple images Product suggestion and wish list Quick re-ordering Video tutorials B2B features your e-commerce portal might need Though B2B business needs are widespread and even 25% of those requirements can hardly be predicted, but here are some of the most common B2B features that e-commerce businesses generally need: Company Account:  If you are into e-commerce business, you would know that the basic difference between B2C and B2B modes of business is that in B2C mode, an e-commerce portal is browsed by consumers, whereas, in B2B mode, partner companies access an e-commerce website. Hence, if you fall within the latter category, your e-commerce business would necessitate having a company account with a list of contact persons who are authorized to place online orders against the name of his or her company. Financial Data Management: If your business deals with bulk orders from companies, then your e-commerce business might need to disable or hide financial details from contact persons of those companies when they browse through your e-commerce website. This B2B feature in Magento would help you do that. Payment Method Integration: B2B businesses depend on different payment modes than B2C businesses. B2C businesses mostly use payment gateways like Authorize.Net, PayPal etc., whereas, B2B e-commerce businesses prefers using conventional or offline payment modes like credit limit, purchase order etc. However, many companies nowadays think it to be wise to use both. If you are among those companies, you would surely need this B2B feature in Magento. Now, Magento includes purchase order by default but to make it more B2B business friendly, it’s necessary to include such a feature that would allow contact persons to attach a PDF based purchase order if they like to. Moreover, credit limit that you can set for your partner companies at the onset of a financial year is something new for Magento. You can set this credit limit on the factors like order frequency, average order amount and payment status etc. Automated Order Approval: You, as a B2B business owner, might require approving orders and hence, need to have a prearranged order approval process in place. However, it’s always good to have an automated order approval process for your business that would enable your Magento based e-commerce website to automatically approve orders based on some criteria like total order amount, quantity etc. However, to set such a criteria specific automatic order approval process, your e-commerce website needs to have a rule engine through which you would be able to set criteria against each organization account. Organization Account Management: Sales employees who are mostly responsible for managing organization accounts associated with your B2B e-commerce business often require doing the following things: Creating and updating organization accounts Placing orders on end customer’s behalf Checking order status and updating contact persons Quickly finding out an organization account in Magento Placing quotations in Magento Now, to make organization account management easier for your sales employees, it is important to feature your Magento based e-commerce website with this B2B module. Other  key B2B features that you can achieve through Magento extensions Company specific product catalog Company specific product pricing Quotation placing in Magento B2B e-commerce requirements are very much business specific and unique for the organization. Through this blog post, we have tried to cover the most common features of B2B e-commerce model. Apart from the aforementioned B2B e-commerce features, there are many other features that Magento can be configured with. Feel free to book a no obligation consultation session with our e-commerce specialists for more details related to B2B features in Magento. FAQs : How can I use my existing Magento platform for B2B enterprise e-commerce?  To use your existing Magento platform for B2B enterprise e-commerce, you need to customize the platform to meet the unique needs of B2B customers. This may involve adding features such as bulk ordering, account-based pricing, and multi-user support. 2. What are some of the benefits of using Magento for B2B enterprise e-commerce?  Some benefits of using Magento for B2B enterprise e-commerce include its flexibility, scalability, and ability to handle large product catalogs. It also has a wide range of features and integrations that can help streamline your business processes.   3. What are some of the challenges of using Magento for B2B enterprise e-commerce?  Some challenges of using Magento for B2B enterprise e-commerce include the need for customization to meet the unique needs of B2B customers, as

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10 Mobile App Testing Interview Questions You Need to Prepare For

February 21, 2014

There is a growing requirement for people who test mobile applications. With an increasing focus on applications designed for iOS devices, Android and Windows Mobile devices, app testing professionals are in great demand. If you are looking for a temporary or permanent job in the field of mobile app testing, you will need to prepare for your interview just like any other professional would need to. First of all, you need to be sure that you are good at what you do. There is nothing more off-putting to an interviewer than an interviewee who learns certain answers by heart and tries to pose as if he or she knows more than they actually do. Poseurs do not stand a chance in winning temporary or long term contracts. If you are reading this blog post, it is suggested that you already know your profession thoroughly and that you are great at what you do. If you are already great at what you do, you may still not be able to crack certain simple and clichéd interview questions. We have listed 10 interview questions that are clichéd, but are nevertheless asked by recruiters while hiring app developers, testers and designers. • How do you understand QA/QC? The answer to this question lies in the question itself. QA/QC is a combination of quality assurance and quality control. You may now be confused about the difference between the two. Quality assurance (QA) refers to the process of measuring and assuring that a certain level of quality of a product (in this case, an application) has been met. Quality control (QC) refers to the process of meeting consumer expectations. With quality control, you will need to focus more on user experience and with quality assurance, you must focus more on bugs, errors and other functional aspects. The two are related to each other and are not mutually exclusive. Quality assurance is process oriented and focuses on the importance of developing a software program and preventing errors that may occur in future. Quality control on the other hand focuses on the application itself and ensures that the final application is user-friendly. •What is the difference between priority and severity? Severity refers to the consequence of a bug or a fault within an application and how serious that fault really is. Severity is something that an app developer must always be aware of. It tells a developer how serious a bug is when it comes to an app’s functionality. On the other hand, priority refers to how important a bug is with respect to customers. For instance, Apple may one day realize that its Calendar application has certain bugs that are high in ‘severity’. The users may not realize it, but the Calendar app on the iOS platform may have certain security issues. On the other hand, when iPhone’s battery heats up after a software update, it is high on a customer’s priority. One cannot say which one is more important than the other. One can rather put it this way: as an app developer, you must constantly be looking for a bug’s severity, whether you receive complaints or you don’t. On the other hand, peering through all the consumer feedback helps you to assign priority to certain bugs. • Why did you choose testing as a profession? This is a question that is so clichéd that it does not require to be on the list of clichés either. Nevertheless, this is also one of those questions that leave many app developers and testers dumbfounded. Take a moment’s deep breath and think. Why did you choose to be an app developer? Well, because it is exciting, and you always learn something new and you get to be creative. This is what an app tester or developer’s job is all about. Your recruiter just wants to know if you are happy about your profession or you are not. If you are, then show it to them that you are. It is as simple as that. • How does one manually test the performance of a website? Well, this is what we do all the time, if we are not running those fancy app testing tools. In an open device lab or a private one, we use stop watches and perform certain actions to check if it loads fast. Or, you may even go ahead and say that you mentally calculate the time if you do not have access to a stop watch on your phone (which is next to impossible). The bottom-line is, this is one of the questions that is asked for the sake of asking. You must stand your ground and not be overcome with nervousness or fear. • What are the disadvantages of automated testing? Automated testing does not represent reality. Real time testing helps you to check for yourself how an application behaves on a particular device. If the automated software does not have access to a particular device, you may miss out on that. Moreover, comprehensive app testing programs are expensive. Last but not the least, all the areas of testing cannot be automated. Ensure that you have all these points in mind, and your interview should go well no matter what. • What do you understand by comparison testing? This is a question that looks difficult but is framed in such a manner. Comparison is nothing but comparing your application with that of your competitor. All that you would do during comparison testing is to compare the app you have developed with that of your competitors’. You could compare the speed, quality, user interface, quality and other parameters as decided by you or your client. • Which platform do you like the best? This is one of those questions that is posed rather benignly but hides a malignant intent. If you answer either iOS or Android or another mobile platform, you will have to explain why you do not like the other platform so much. You must rather answer saying that

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