Category Archives: technology

Woocomerce vs Shopify, which is the best E-commerce platform?

WooCommerce and Shopify are the two most common platforms in e-commerce, currently Woocomerce has approximately 1’000.000 downloaded online stores while the Shopify platform is used by about 800.000 users worldwide.

When an entrepreneur decides to create an online store, different factors about which is the best platform that fits his/her business model and needs need to be considered.

For instance, WooCommerce is an e-commerce plugin that helps to become a WordPress website into an online store. This platform is open source, which allows to be easily modified and also can be installed for free. However, users must pay for security and hosting.

Likewise, Shopify is dynamic, easy-to-use and a reliable platform with great design themes and templates. However, its premium versions and add-ons come at a cost. In the following analysis, I will show both platforms main features and advantages:

Themes and Flexibility.

Shopify has its own template store, which includes 180 designs both premium and free that are easily adaptable and customizable without the need to touch a line of code.

Similarly, Woocommerce templates are easy to tailor and modify thanks to its open source, functional structure and lightweight which allows the pages to look attractive and load quickly.

Ease of use.

Shopify is considered by UX/UI design experts as one of the easiest solutions available for online stores.

Shopify didactic installation instructions, guide users through a step by step process about all the necessary functions needed for each particular store, avoiding undesired technical coding details that could make its installation difficult.

Also, Woocommerce user friendly environment, allows a high degree of flexibility to create a versatile virtual store without coding skills needed for its installation.

Product presentation.

Both platforms offer easy options to upload images, add videos, create product descriptions, enlarge images and to add variations such as changing the color or size of the products.

However, as WooCommerce operates “inside” a personalized WordPress theme, some images or galleries may not work as well as in Shopify, which can create a negative user experience.

SEO Optimization.

Shopify automatically performs SEO optimization which can be ineffective in terms of improving the quality and quantity of the organic traffic because it displays some elements of the metadata such as article availability or user ratings which can lead to a loss of control over the SEO strategy.

Moreover, Shopify assign URLs to each page, avoiding users to choose the structure of the URLs and limiting accurate web page descriptions of strategic keywords.

Similarly, WooCommerce requires paid plugins such as MOZ or Yoast SEO to achieve optimal functionality and thus rank high in the search engine results page.

Finally, both platforms are the best ecommerce solutions for those who wish to create an online store because of their flexibility, diverse themes, price and ease of use.

Shopify vs Woocommerce

What is the importance of online brand communities in product design?

The concept of community has been defined as a group of persons that build through different signs or actions a sense of identity and belonging to such group. This definition has taken new connotations since the emergence of the web 2.0 and the rise of virtual communities.

Within the fabric of meanings that describe virtual communities, the “online brand communities”, have spawned great interest among product engineers and marketing professionals as the interaction generated in such spaces have become significant sources of market intelligence.

Some theoretical principles of digital anthropology, suggest that if a group of consumers admire and follow a brand in a virtual community, a process of class consciousness is developed through multiple rituals that reproduce the sense of belonging to the community and foster the affective bonds among members and the brand.

For some companies, learning about online brand communities’ rituals and traditions has been crucial in order to gather key customers’ behavior information. Moreover, such learning approaches have helped companies to exploit the affective bonds that connect community members with the brand, generating dynamics of active participation with mutual benefits for both parties.

How can brands interact in online brand communities to design products?

A successful business case of active participation happened between the Danish manufacturer of plastic toys, Lego Corp. and the followers of the brand who interact in the online community; Lugnet (www.lugnet.biz). The interaction between Lugnet and LEGO Corp. is determined by LEGO’s necessity to know what kind of products Lugnet members would like the company to produce and buy.

In order to capitalize the interactions created with Lugnet, LEGO corp. designed a strategy aimed to encourage Lugnet members to participate in a contest to design different products that they would like LEGO corp. to produce.

During the contest, LEGO provided a software of prototypes to the community so members could design a specific product online and share the design with other members. Once the leaders of Lugnet in partnership with the engineering department of LEGO Corp. choose the winning model, the company developed the product, rewarding the most active members in the contest.

LEGO strategy of empowering Lugnet members to take part of its product design process was beneficial for both parts: On the one hand, LEGO benefited from gathering key business information that improves product sales and customer satisfaction. On the other hand, Lugnet members buy products designed by themselves while reinforcing the affective ties with the brand and with other community members.

Why our societies are technologically deterministic?

Technological determinism is a reductionist theory that explains how society’s structure and cultural values are driven by technology. This concept, has gained relevance in the last two decades since most of the basic human social skills such as meeting new people or fostering existing bonds of friendship, have become activities highly mediated by technology.

According to some technology analysts and the companies that develop social network platforms, these technologies are effective tools that help to resolve the subjective necessity of promoting friendship or to seek new relationships. Their main argument states that people’s lack of time, society’s cultural changes, people’s new life styles and the growth of the migratory flows, have triggered the use of these social networks.

However, other authors claim that factors such as the lack of a real communicative interaction beyond virtual platforms, the low levels of trust created in online relationships and the e-commerce interface of the “matchmaking apps” for example, have created a technology with multiple flaws that can hardly address such social needs.

We are consumed by a technological deterministic rhetoric.

Considering the above mentioned arguments, some relevant questions might help us to put the concept of technological determinism into context:

Should we assume a neutral point of view on the social, economic and cultural changes, social networking technologies are creating in our societies?

Should we be more critical about the implications social networking technologies might have in our daily lives and in the way we construct our relationships with other people using such technologies?

Are societies aware that the development of these technologies happens because societies organize themselves to give support and expand these technologies once they have been introduced?

Are companies such as Facebook, Apple and Google delivering a technological deterministic discourse that leads us to believe that their technological developments have positive effects on society inherent to themselves?

Is Twitter a viable business?

Since its foundation in 2006, Twitter became one of the most useful tools companies have to communicate with their customers. By the year 2014, Twitter was the second most used social network service by companies in several markets.

However, different technology analysts have expressed their concerns about Twitter business viability due to current financial issues that are undermining investors’ trust in the future of the company.

In the year 2012, Twitter had 500 million subscribers who wrote an average of 340 million “tweets” per day. Most of the traffic is generated in highly globalized markets such as the United States (40%), Japan (23%), Spain (7%), England (6%) etc. That same year, Twitter search engine made 1.6 billion searches each day.

Yet, in the year 2015, eight years after its foundation, Twitter Inc. had not yet reached a break-even point (BEP) or the point at which cost or expenses and revenue are equal, even though for the same year the opportunity costs had been paid and capital has received the risk-adjusted expected return.

Twitter financial uncertainty

Although, Twitter financial statements show annual profits, the uncertainty about its future as profitable business is still unclear. For instance, in the fiscal year 2013, Twitter’s net revenue were US $400 million, its shareholders investments during the same period was US $ 1.16 billion and its brand value was about US$ 8 trillion. Such numbers have made many financial analysts to believe that the company is highly overvalued.

It is important to remember that Twitter’s main source of income is the sale of advertisement spaces within their site platform and the sale of the so-called “promoted tweets”. Therefore investors might be asking:

Should Twitter Inc. implement a business model that can help to increase the company’s profits? What alternatives can Twitter Inc. explore in order to improve its business efficiency from a financial point?

Which managerial strategies that have been used by other internet social networking service companies’ and that have proved to be successful, could Twitter Inc. undertake as an opportunity to redirect their financial statements?

Are Twitter Inc. future financial goals unattainable in the highly competed market of internet social networking services? Should Twitter Inc. consider the possibility of a business “take over” by other technology companies such as Facebook Inc. or Google Inc. in order to survive?

Twitter Business Model