Course Content
Solid Free(mium) Tools For Designing, Developing, and Deploying Websites
You see ads for basic website builders everywhere, but real web development is more than drag and drop. From start to finish, you might end up using dozens of tools to get the job done.
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The Rise of The Unicorns AKA “Full-Stack Developers”
These days, there’s increasing pressure for developers and coders to be able to define themselves as “full-stack”. This basically means they need to have a “very particular set of skills”, though the skills are a little less cool than in Taken.
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How Long Will PCs, Tablets & Smartphones Reign?
A recent Gartner report revealed that worldwide shipments of PCs, smartphones, and tablets will increase by 2 percent in 2018 — reaching the highest level of year-on-year growth since 2015
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What is GraphQL? (And is it Really Better than REST)
As new technological innovations continue to emerge, buoyed by an explosion of digital devices and changing consumer habits, businesses continue to search for the fastest and most effective means of keeping up with the changing digital ecosystem.
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GDPR Compliance: 25% Of Brands “Unprepared”
While the GDPR go-live date (May 25, 2018) is still a fair few months away, it’s something that a lot of our customers and partners are asking about — which is why we were so surprised to read that 25 percent of brands are unprepared for GDPR according to a report from the British software and services company Advanced.
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GDPR Fines: Everything You Need To Know
Protection laws called General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These laws are enforced on any company that handles data coming from EU citizens, regardless of where that firm is based. Companies that fail to comply with GDPR standards for privacy protection will face some of the stiffest fines in the history of online commerce.
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Here’s How AI and Machine Learning Will Affect the Future of eCommerce
eCommerce is a $2 trillion market, and we expect Artificial Intelligence (AI) to push this number even bigger. Here’s why: AI can help merchants make better future predictions about sales, provide better customer support, and retarget customers who got away. When you first launched your online store, the last thing you probably thought is that one day you’d have to work alongside robots! Well, that day has now arrived in the form of AI and machine learning.
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3 Web Development and Programming Ideas Every Marketer Needs to Know
It happened again. You’ve gotten yourself through another complex technical marketing project, for now, but you can’t help but acknowledge the sinking feeling that you can only “wing it” for so long.
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SAP Commerce Cloud: 10 Things You Should Know
Today’s online shoppers expect ease, speed, personalization, and reliability wherever they shop - online or in-store.
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5 Dos and Don’ts of Hiring a Developer
Developers are the unicorns of the modern labor economy. Their ethereal talents often bewilder the most seasoned of marketing professionals. As they navigate multiple screens of what appear to be a sea of foreign numbers and strange hieroglyphs, many of us may develop feelings of awe as our technical colleagues concoct complex digital systems and design beautiful user experiences, all through the magic of their keyboard.
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What is Git and Git Hub: A Summary of Terms and Definitions
“We can Fork it before we make any changes to the code.” Huh? The obscure sentence was one of several the two developers exchanged as we were going through a development proposal for a new client.
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8 Powerful Ways Chatbots Can Transform Your Customer Experience (Insights From David Cancel, CEO of Drift)
Chatbots are changing the way brands interact with their customers, and when the chatbot is of high quality, those changes are usually positive.
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Chatbot Customer Experience Failures (And How To Avoid Them)
Chatbots are taking over. But there’s no need to panic because you can rest assured that chatbots aren’t bloodthirsty androids (yet) — they just want to help answer FAQs, speed up sales processes and lighten the load of customer support representatives. A report from Forrester Research showed that more than half of the companies surveyed stated that they either had a chatbot system in place, or were planning on developing such a system within the next twelve months.
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Website Security Best Practices: And How You Can Do The Same
The biggest threat facing the modern internet is the number of websites running outdated code - millions of websites have been left wide open to hackers, as a result.
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Your eCommerce Site Has a Conversion Problem (And It’s Because of Your UX Design)
Don’t be mistaken into thinking that the UX of your website is just what it looks like (this is the User interface or UI design), yes that might be a part of what’s holding back your eCommerce site from fulfilling its potential, but more likely there is a wealth of untapped opportunity by exploring the UX design.
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How SSL Certificates Work & Why The Internet Was Broken on May 30
In case you didn’t notice, the Internet was broken on the 30th of May in 2021.
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Enterprise IT: From Differentiator to Obstacle?
Technology is a commodity. We’ve all heard people say this. In fact, some readers may recall Nicholas Carr’s 2003 article in HBR titled “IT Doesn’t Matter”, which posited exactly that. At the time, it was a controversial opinion.
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Digital Transformation Roadmap: 10 Steps To a Successful Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is the process of improving business operations, customer experiences, and employee experiences through the adoption of technology—and the benefits are well documented.
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5 Reasons to Shift Your Site to the Cloud
Your website is the heart of your operation. It is how your customers and clients learn about what you have to offer. Thus, it makes sense to have your site on a reliable network that is going to provide you with the strength and dependable service that you need.
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Comparing Open Source Software vs Closed Source Software
You’re no technical guru and have been charged with finding a web content management system (CMS) for your business.
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eCommerce Website Development Specialist Course

The 3 ways to obtain technology software

You have three choices when it comes to creating and managing software. Before you go about choosing one of these options, you must understand the problem that needs to be solved using the software.

Take into account strategic goals, external partners and required systems support. This will tremendously help you decide which approach would best suit your requirements.

You ‘buy’ the technology

You pay some company for a platform that has all the functionalities you need, and that’s about it. Everything else is taken care of.

Buying software not only saves you time but also maximizes your employee resources and lets you customize the platform with a specific functionality to meet your business needs.

Every business has unique requirements. Some are looking for accounting or scheduling, others may just want customer relationship management.

An extreme example is Salesforce.

Salesforce buys software companies that have the technology they can reuse for its customers. Last year, they purchased Demandware, a cloud eCommerce company, for $2.8 BILLION to help grow their eCommerce offerings.

There are a number of other software companies that offer a buy option for their platforms.

Once you’ve paid for the software, all you need to do is get someone onboard to manage it or train your existing employees to work with the platform.

Just like with any technology, it has its advantages and disadvantages:

Pros of ‘buying’ the technology

  • Commercial software is relatively fast to deploy. You can install it as soon as you purchase it, saving you a hell lot of time.
  • You can integrate third-party software. For example, if you’re using MySQL for your databases, but the new software you bought uses Amazon RDS, the software will make the transition smooth by letting MySQL integrate with the platform.
  • They are customizable (to an extent).
  • There is a strong community behind every major software to answer your questions in no time.

Cons of ‘buying’ the technology

  • Commercial software has an upfront cost.
  • More often than not, you end up paying for features you don’t need because they come with the package.
  • There are ongoing costs of maintenance and upgrades.
  • In case you run into a technical issue, the software provider may charge you extra to fix the problem.

You ‘build’ the technology

Build or buy?

A question that haunts every executive.

Think of it as a choice between buying an existing home or building your own.

You will need to employ developers to create the solution. Ask yourself — how important is technology to your business? If you think it’s at the core, go for it.

The level of customization you get with customized software is perhaps the biggest benefit. In the early stages, off-the-shelf software might do the trick. But when you start to grow, your day to day operations may lead to inefficiency and manual processes.

Pros of ‘building’ the technology

  • Developers know exactly where to cut the corners based on the requirements and make the product as efficient as possible.
  • You get software tailored exactly to your needs, which gives you greater control and a familiar interface that is much easier to use.
  • There are no licensing issues.

Cons of ‘building’ the technology

  • The team you hire may lack the knowledge and skills to build a sophisticated software from scratch.
  • The software could end up having frequent bugs and glitches which may require you to bring in outside consultants costing you time and money.
  • The whole process is quite time-consuming.
  • It could be difficult to keep up with the evolving technology.

You ‘borrow’ the technology

Borrowing software should not be looked as a compromise between buying and building. You get what you pay for. You’re usually billed monthly depending on the plan you choose to use the platform. Continuous updates are automatically installed by the company.

Pros of ‘borrowing’ the technology

  • Plug and play. Super-fast implementation.
  • Requires zero maintenance.
  • It usually has most of the functionalities you need.
  • Thanks to the updates. The software keeps getting better over time. You could always write to the developers in case you have a specific requirement.

Cons of ‘borrowing’ the technology

  • You have less control over the product.
  • If the product is newly built, you may encounter some bugs. Maturity comes over time.
  • Integrations can be an issue.
  • Depending on the vendor you choose, watch out for a “lock-in” period.