5 Essential Steps To Open A Free Shopify Store Now In Cyprus
5 Essential Steps To Opening A Free Shopify Store Now In Cyprus

Are you thinking about venturing into an e-commerce business? Are you an entrepreneur with a brick and mortar store in Cyprus? If any of these answers are in affirmation, it is time to open an online store with one of the leading e-commerce platforms! Shopify is currently powering more than 500,000 online stores across the world with its useful features. Moreover, it is easier to open a Shopify store than one using Magento or WooCommerce.

The popular e-commerce platform also has a unique partner program that enables Shopify store solution providers to set up a free eshop Cyprus within no time. However, remember that the free eshop means a Shopify store with a free trial for 14 days so that you can fully discover its potential for your business. There is even no need to enter any credit card details!

Let’s discuss the 5 easy steps to open a free Shopify store now.  

Step 1:

Go to the official website of Shopify, enter your email address, and click on the start free trial button. You will be directed to a page to enter your password and online store name. Enter a store name and a strong password and click on create your store button.

Step 2:

Enter the details in the form, such as where you are an existent seller, your current revenue, and all. You can skip the page to move to the next in which you need to enter your personal details such as first name, last name, address, city, postal code, and contact number so that you can get your payment. Once you have filled this form, you will be then directed to a dashboard.

Step 3:

Add your products, customize the theme, accept payments and set the shipping rates. You can always explore the free themes to make your Shopify store as you have envisioned. Remember, this will take longer as you need to fill several forms.

Step 4:

Now, you can add pages in your online store that you get under the online store on the left side of your store dashboard. For the same, you need to click on the add page button.

Step 5:

On the left, you will also find settings and can see plenty of things that you can do to set a fully-functional and responsive Shopify Store.

It is easy to open a free eshop in Cyprus, but it consumes much of your valuable time. As an entrepreneur, you may want to give your full attention to grow your business. So, the best course of action is to hire a developer at Online Solutions. With us, you can get your dream Shopify store quickly at an affordable cost.

We also provide valuable services, including translation of your store into local languages, the configuration of delivery, and general settings. Moreover, our digital marketing experts can connect your store with various marketing tools and promote your online store without any delay!

Cyprus Restaurants: Why you should create your own online ordering system!

As a restaurant owner, deciding on whether or not you should create your own website (in the form of an ordering system) can sometimes be a bit confusing. You might be thinking “Wolt and Foody are perfectly suitable for me at the moment”. And we are not saying otherwise.

However, before making the decision to ditch creating your own ordering system altogether, we suggest you look a bit more into the benefits of it and evaluate your current situation!

The process of researching this stuff can be overwhelming sometimes since the internet is filled with more information than we can possibly process all at once.

That’s why we created this post, using our experience and expertise to help you make an informed decision.

First things first, what’s an online ordering system?

Quite simply – an online ordering system is a platform that allows your clients to order your food online. The customer places an order and you get notified of their order, as well as all the specifics you’ll need (address, name, etc.), on your machine.

What’s in it for you?

1. 0% commission – all the revenue from the order is yours!

Given that you will create your own online ordering system, you will basically need to pay nothing to no one every time a customer orders from your website. No commissions per order, nothing. The only extra cost you will have per month is a €60 fee – for running the website, and your delivery costs.

Needless to say, that if you have a respectable number of orders per day, your revenue will exceed your costs by a very very significant amount.

2. Loyal customers

When people order food from your restaurant, through a third-party provider such as Wolt and Foody, it’s safe to say that most people will associate a great customer experience with Wolt and Foody, instead of your restaurant. This means that even if customers are happy with your food and everything, you are sharing customer satisfaction with the ordering system of the third party.

If you look at this from the customer’s point of view:

“Foody and Wolt and other ordering system companies, are so cool!! They connect us with so many restaurants!”

And that’s why they’ll be back to order from Foody again and again! But guess what? Foody and Wolt have a thousand more options for customers to choose from. And this is where the risk comes in for you. They might be browsing through Foody and skip your restaurant just because they have a thousand more distractions.

On the other hand, once you create your own ordering system, and use effective marketing (i.e. giveaways, coupons, etc.) to market it to your clients, you’ve got control. The way we make sure you’ll have returning customers is by creating ordering systems that are easy and fast to use. We want to make the process as effortless as possible for your client. This, combined with great execution of the food and delivery, will make your customer happy. But this time, you get full credit for their satisfaction. There is no Foody or Wolt in the picture. Therefore, the customer creates an association of a great experience, with your brand. This means you are far more likely to see that customer in your ordering lists again and again!

And this is loyalty. And as you probably know, it is invaluable for a business!

3. Creating a contact list

Contact lists might be one of the most attractive aspects of creating your own ordering system. When people order something from your website, all the information they choose to share is for your company.

You have client’s names and email addresses and phone numbers if they choose to. This means you have the ability to actually message them and market your special deals, or monthly giveaways, etc.

We cannot stress how important this is for a business. Imagine having a contact list of 200 people, which will be informed and REMINDED of your services every couple of days, or every week.

How many times did you see an ad, or got a message from one of your favourite restaurants, and it just sparked your appetite for that specific restaurant? And you ended up a few hours or days later ordering their food?

Well, that’s the power of a contact list!

You remind people that they have you as an option!

4. Cyprus is tiny!

The reason we are listing this as an advantage is that being a very small island, we can target more people easier. If you own a restaurant in Limassol, and just offer delivery in Limassol, we can create your website and optimize it to target and rank for people looking to eat in restaurants in Limassol!

Therefore, this great specificity that comes with effective SEO and a specific target market, can help you reach the right people easier.

Let’s talk!

Does having your own ordering system sound appealing to you? Are you tired of paying high commissions to 3rd parties? Do you want to explore your options?

We’ve had a lot of experience in creating online ordering systems for many of our clients. And we know how to do it the right way!

If you think this is something that would suit you, don’t hesitate to give us a call or email us!

Shopify Store
Why A Shopify Store Is The Best Store For E-commerce In Cyprus

With over 500K active stores in more than 170 countries across the world, Shopify is now a leading e-commerce platform. It is helping countless people in starting online stores within no time. Opening a Shopify store is extremely easy in comparison to other e-commerce platforms. So, if you have a brick and mortar store in Cyprus with some products that you want to sell to a large customer base, open a free Shopify store now! However, you must know the reasons due to which a Shopify store is the best store for e-commerce in Cyprus.

So, let’s have a look below.

Enables Product Selling on Several Channels

Here, you can utilize social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest as a sales channel to boost your overall sales. It also enables you to sell your products on Amazon or through a custom mobile app. Moreover, you can unify your products with the help of Shopify’s built-in POS system. Therefore, with Shopify, you can sell your products anytime and anywhere!

Offers Multiple Payment Gateways

When you open an e-commerce store, your store must support trusted payment methods, or else you have to exclude a large proportion of your target customers. The same does not happen when you choose Shopify in Cyprus, as the platform supports multiple payment gateways to offer a smooth shopping experience to your customers.

Fast Loading Speed and Excellent Performance 

Nobody loves to wait for more than a few seconds during online shopping. So, if your online

store loads slowly, most of the store visitors may never return. You may lose a big chunk of your potential sales. So, loading speed matters a lot, and the Shopify store guarantees excellent performance. Your customers will never have to wait, even at checkouts.

Facilitates Selling of Digital Products

While many e-commerce platforms only enable the merchants to sell their physical tangible products, Shopify allows you to sell your digital products such as digital arts, e-books, music, etc. It enables you to classify your products into different categories so that if you have digital products, their delivery can be through email or online storage.

Easy Integration with Shopify POS

If you are not eager to abandon your brick-and-mortar store completely after starting an online store, you can do this easily by integrating it with the Point-of-Sale system of Shopify. With Shopify POS, you can have shared data between your online store and your physical store to manage your inventory, sales, and everything else in a hassle-free manner.

However, if you are worried about the process that goes to open a free Shopify store in Cyprus, don’t worry! Online Solutions offer Shopify e-commerce solutions, everything starting from designing and converting your online store into local languages to SEO optimization at a reasonable cost. Remember, selling online was never this easier and faster. However, many merchants fail to get the expected return.

Our professionals build secure, reliable, and flawless eCommerce websites to get your maximum ROI.

Contact us Today and we will send you a Free development Shopify Store with Unlimited Trial Days

Website design desktop 1 1
Website Design in a nutshell. What is Web design?

In a nutshell, website design includes the looks of a website.

Kind of like a house that is designed to look pretty and be practical. Web design includes everything from the content on the website, the layouts, and apps used to make it look the way it does. It is the process of selecting the appropriate images, videos, fonts, and colours. And also includes the functionality of a website, such as navigation, backlinks, and internal links.

More simply

The visual characteristics of a website and the way you experience it as a visitor, are a result of web design.

Coding is important for web designers 1

Does web design require coding knowledge?

If you want to pursue web design as a career you might be better off learning code and getting comfortable with it. Code allows you to go above and beyond the limitations of visual builders and editors provided by website builders.

In other words, code gives you the flexibility to make a website look exactly the way you want it to look. It also gives you the ability to resolve any technical issues or ‘defaults’ you might come across in the process of building and designing your website.

In addition, most jobs today expect you to know how to code as a web designer.

Why should you care about web design anyway?

Your website is the face of your company.

If you think about it, the design of a website either attracts or repels a visitor.

In the digital world we live in, you show people what your business is all about through means of social media. This can happen either through a YouTube video, a page on Facebook, or LinkedIn, a blog post, a website or landing page.

Mainly, however, your website is one of the first things someone will check out when they hear about you or if they want to do business with you.

A website usually includes all the information about your company, your brand, or possibly you as an individual – if you are a freelancer.

And it provides an outline of the services you provide, and the mark you aim to leave on the world – your vision/mission.

Website design desktop 1

Components of a professional website.

Content:

For starters, coming up with your website’s written content should be one of your priorities.

What will you say on each page? How to write in ways that attract a visitor to read more?

Deciding on the content for each page, how many pages you’ll have, etc. can be quite daunting at first. If you aren’t someone with the skillset to create well-written copy, then you might want to find people specialized to do this.

At Online Solutions, we focus on working as a team with you. We bring the expertise, and you bring the vision. And we create content which combines copywriting with content writing in innovative ways.

Design:

After you have what you want to say ready, it’s time to make it look good.

Design – sets the vibe, sets the tone.

Sometimes, design can affect people’s trust. What we mean by that is:

If you are providing web design services, but your website looks pretty bad, then you are repelling your visitors from the first glance – you lose their trust.

The feel of the website plays a major role in how your content is perceived as well.

Some services you can find include web design in web development services. But you sure can find freelance web designers as well. Our team is made up of talented copywriters, developers, and web designers.

So now, the web designer will make sure that the colours and fonts and layout of your website match the vibe you want your brand to have.

The images, videos, and graphics are all important elements needed for both SEO and people!

What we mean by that is, you wanna optimize your pages for web crawlers, but you also want to optimize your writing for the people that will read it. It’s creating the perfect balance that makes web design so interesting!

You need to keep your visitors emotions on the edge by making the website visual. Aim to provide valuable information, offer freebies, and of course, make people feel that they have something to lose if they leave your site.

In addition, web design aims to make user experience (UX) as great as possible.

How? Our years of experience in this field have taught us that the more the internal links – the better. What we do, is basically build the website in ways easy for anyone to navigate. We set up links between your pages, we make the website straight forward to use and guide the visitor to find what they need fast (through headings, menus, and links).

This not only provides a good UX, but it also helps your website rank in Google search.

How we do web design differently at Online Solutions.

We believe that one of the beautiful aspects of web design is that the designer is free to put their creativity into play and let their visual skills and instincts create a masterpiece.

When we work with clients, we make sure to provide the best experience we possibly can.

We adapt our web designing strategies to your needs.

Given that we are a small company with few people, we give a very personal experience to every client.

We focus on you, your needs, and the goals we set.

As to what we would suggest to a website owner who decides to hire a web designer is – give freedom to your designers. Let them create without limitations and ‘don’ts’, and when they are done, give feedback and suggest the improvements you want.

Do not forget that an experienced web designer is essentially an artist with lots of skills, you might lack.

Trust them, but make sure you do your research as well – blindly trusting someone might not always be the best option.

If you keep yourself updated and informed about a subject, you can have a valid and reliable opinion on it. And potentially avoid many mistakes that come with unawareness.

web hosting cyprus 1
What is web hosting? Do I really need one?

When starting off a website, the web hosting questions start to appear. You soon find out that you probably need to get one of those web hosts…

But what is a web host really?

The web hosting subject is all over Google and YouTube, with blogs and articles giving you tons of information on what it is and if it’s needed.

And the answer always sums up to

Yes, you need a web host if you want to run a website.

At first, everyone is a beginner when it comes to websites and how exactly they work. Even the people who are experts now were beginners back in the days they were starting off.

We believe that knowledge of web hosting and what it consists of is vital. When you are informed you are more likely to make the right decisions when choosing to start off your website and avoid making costly mistakes.

Why do I need a web host to run my website?

Before we answer this we must understand what a server is.

Web servers are computers that are stored in spaces of very high security and controlled conditions, sometimes called data centers. These computers are the reason you are able to read this article right now on this website, from wherever you are. It interconnects users to websites and makes it possible for webpages to exist.

Now, what’s the relationship between a web host and a server?

Let’s draw a picture and it will all become very clear.

Imagine that our Earth is the server. Now imagine that every house on Earth is a website filled with furniture and materials which resemble the code, files, and images of the website. Houses need a piece of land to be built on, exactly like websites need space on a server to run.

The process by which a website owner pays to rent a space on the server is what we call Web Hosting.

massive area with thousands of computers called a data centre with lights

Different types of hosting.

The type of hosting you will choose will depend completely on your needs. It will also largely depend on your technical and coding skills as well as your website’s traffic.

Let’s Dive into 4 of the main types of hosting and let’s see which one suits you best.

Shared Hosting:

With shared hosting you basically have ‘server neighbours’ which you share the same resources (software) with.

You share the space you use on the server, with other websites.

black square with white lines representing the server, and a blue circle in front representing the space of the server you rent with little white houses representing the websites that share the same space on the server with you

This is the lowest budget choice and is almost always a good enough option for beginners.

However, bear in mind that shared hosting isn’t built for websites that get high amounts of traffic. In addition, if some of the hundreds of websites you are sharing resources with, get boosts of traffic, then your website’s performance might get hurt.

VPS (Virtual Private Server):

This type of web hosting can be considered as the ‘sandwich’ between shared hosting and dedicated hosting (covered in the next paragraph).

VPS hosting basically sums up to this:

You share the server with other websites, but your website has it’s own space on the server.

 

VPS hosting' should be placed right under the second paragraph of the section 'VPS Hosting

This option offers more flexibility in customization and control over resources. It also allows more storage space and possibly better performance than with shared hosting.

This type of hosting costs slightly more than shared hosting but a lot less than dedicated hosting.

A downside to VPS hosting might be that your site’s performance might still get affected by the sites you share the server with.

And bear in mind that, for VPS you might need some technical skills.

Dedicated Hosting:

This type of hosting basically means that you share the server with no one.

black square with white lines representing a server, and a house which indicates that you don't share the server with anyone

You have complete control over the software, and you can modify anything regarding security, functions, etc.

If you have a website that gets big amounts of traffic daily, then this hosting type might be the best option for you.

Dedicated hosting is quite pricy, and expertise is needed regarding the managing of the server.

If you are worried that you do not have the expertise needed to pull this off, you can purchase a dedicated hosting plan which will provide experts on server management. At Online Solutions, we host websites on our own dedicated servers, and we take care of all the technical operations for you.

Managed Hosting:

Managed hosting means that you have experts on software making sure your website will be performing perfectly (optimized, updated, etc.) It is versatile as a hosting type since it has different package deals that satisfy different needs.

Therefore, depending on the amount of traffic your website generates and other features you’ll choose to have, you will rent an appropriate space on a server. The space you rent on the server will be managed by the experts of the company you purchased your managed hosting from.

This means that you don’t need any expertise to pull this one off. And the cost of it depends entirely on your needs and the specific hosting plan you chose.

Conclusion:

To sum things up…

Yes, it is vital for you to have a web host if you are serious about creating a website.

You have some good options regarding web hosting types, but we recommend you do some research before getting excited and purchasing the first web hosting plan you see on the web. Every website is different, it generates different amounts of traffic and has different needs.

All of the above translate to a specific type of web hosting that will be able to satisfy the needs of your website at the moment.

You can always switch from one hosting type to the other if you outgrow your current one.

Make sure though you are aware of what you are looking for upfront.

We can host your Website!

Online Solutions is proud to own dedicated servers, to host our client’s websites.

We have been involved in this area for years now. And our experience has taught us valuable lessons that we use to provide you with the best services we can.

Looking to launch your website? Do you need someone to guide you through web hosting and your options?

We would love to speak to you and help you out!

Lets chat!

GOOGLE ADS CYPRUS
4 Distinctive Ways to Make the Most with Google AdWords
4 Distinctive Ways to Make the Most with Google AdWords

The whole ordeal behind Google AdWords has a lot to do with how digital marketing has evolved. Despite a large number of methods of application, Google AdWords is still the most important of the lot. Implementation of these is done carefully, and here are some distinctive ways to use, as listed by Google Adwords Cyprus based firm:

Shift Focus on Prospects that are Unsure to Purchase at a Given Time

You might wonder what sort of argument may come up here while urging those who are unready to purchase or avail services. Google AdWords interpretation plays a significant part. Most of the advertisers focus on targeting high-buyer keywords as they consider them a source of conversion. Instead, targeting lesser intent-keywords will establish a new traffic flow altogether.

The Ability of SEO Objectives

SEO plays a distinctive role in triggering leads in search engines while considering digital marketing concepts. SEO plays an impactful role in generating organic leads that are not due to Google Ads. Although writing quality content and indulging Google AdWords Cyprus based services is a long term process, the practicality in conversion is always high. Much like paid traffic diversion, free keywords, thanks to SEO is a more practical way and establishes a long face run for any business firm.

Sensationalize Concepts

Google AdWords can turn the tables, especially if you are considering a quicker result. With this said, using sensational AdWords is sure to raise eyebrows, especially in those businesses, where the application looks believable. The process is time-consuming and has a weaker target volume, in comparison to the much relevant high-volume keywords. However, if you consider longer tail keywords with less search volume and have the potential to change the future, do not leave any stones unturned to make the most of the opportunity.

Analyze Customer Feelings for Good

Irrespective of brands and services, engaging with customer sentiment plays a resourceful part in turning the tables. With this said, trying out Google AdWords and carrying out campaigns to test a newer product is sure a productive way of going ahead with the business.

Afterthought

Google AdWords is best known to turn the fortunes of companies using these keywords extensively and productively. However, while doing or implementing any of the Google AdWords correctly, users should always vary of the rules and regulations, without which a potential site could get buried even with correct AdWords. In the end, if you are looking for a professional level help, avail the Google AdWords Cyprus based company, Online Solutions Cyprus for better assistance.