Unfortunate news for online retailers was announced by FedEx early this month. Beginning in January 1, 2015 FedEx will be transitioning all ground packaging to the same dimensional (DIM) weight pricing structure as their Express services. This will have a big impact on shipping costs for retailers of large, yet lightweight items (think ping pong balls) as well as e-commerce websites who will now need to change the way they are calculating shipping costs. DIM weight shipping fees take into account the size of the package, not just the weight. This is done by taking the cubic volume of your package and dividing by 166 (the international calculation is divided by 139). For example, the shipping price of a 12” x 12” x 12” box that weighed 3 pounds would really be calculated using 11 pounds. If your business ships in smaller boxes, it’s likely you won’t be affected by the rate increases, but for shops that will be affected it’s going to amount to a significant increase in shipping costs. It’s also likely that FedEx won’t be alone in this change as there have been rumors that UPS will soon follow suit.


Magento shops facing the new FedEx DIM weight changes are now facing the challenge of calculating the shipping on the front end using the DIM weight of the shipment. Currently, Magento doesn’t take into account package sizes for products so that it can make this calculation. If the Magento team decides to roll this out into a future release, which it seems would be likely with this new announcement; it still won’t solve the problem of pricing products that can be shipped together in single boxes. If a customer buys 4 items that would normally be shipped solo in an 6” x 6” x 6” box, but could all be shipped together in a 12” x 6” x 6” box, the difference in the calculated DIM weight rate your customers would see (8 pounds) and what you would really pay for (3 pounds) is 5 pounds. This increased price in live rate calculation is sure to send your customers searching elsewhere for a better deal. So besides moving carriers or switching to table rates, what are the options for Magento store owners? Luckily, the Magento team at Fruition has the experience of setting up systems that will offer accurate DIM Weight rate calculations. We’ve implemented solutions that will let store owners add their shipping boxes to the Magento system, apply products to them and choose ways that products can be combined into larger boxes. More accurate rate calculations on the front end of your store will ensure your customers will receive a better shopping experience and you won’t miss out on the added expenses. If you’re interested in learning how Fruition can help your Magento store prepare for the upcoming changes feel free to give us a call at **303-395-1880** or send us a message.

Fruition offers solutions for Magento shops to navigate FedEx's dimensional weight pricing changes for better front-end rate calculations and shopping experiences.

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Optimizing FedEx DIM Weight in Magento: Solutions by Fruition

Google shopping bag Google Shopping is an insanely helpful tool for bringing new customers to your store. However, merchants who sell apparel online may have recently run into an issue with the 2014 Google Shopping update. During this update Google seems to have taken a slightly harder stance on acceptable product feeds for apparel and is now enforcing the rule that requires merchants to provide variants for these products. We recently encountered this issue with an existing Magento client who generates a large number of sales through Google Shopping. Prior to the update, their feed would only send a single entry to Google Shopping for a product that had multiple size and color options. This had worked without any issues for over a year, but after the new Google Shopping update took place, their feed was soon suspended because it didn't provide the now required product variants.

## How Google Shopping Product Variants Work

To start, Google only requires product variants be submitted for products that fall into the “Apparel & Accessories” Google Shopping category. This applies to shirts, shoes and other clothing items that may be available in different colors, materials, patterns or sizes. If your store sales these types of items and you want to push product to Google Shopping, you’ll need to come up with a feed that accounts for all of your product’s available variants. On the surface, understanding how this works is pretty simple. Google provides a straight forward solution for how these variants should be accounted for in your feed. A quick example would be a product called **‘Mens V-Neck’** with an id of **‘m-vneck’** that is available in **‘Medium’** and **‘Large’**, and comes in colors **‘Red’** and **‘Green’**. Google requires you provide a unique entry with a unique ‘id’ for each of these variants, but also provide an **‘item group id’** that ties all of these products together. Here is an example:

id	item group id	title	size	color
m-vneck-m-r	m-vneck	Mens V-Neck	Medium	Red
m-vneck-m-g	m-vneck	Mens V-Neck	Medium	Green
m-vneck-l-r	m-vneck	Mens V-Neck	Large	Red
m-vneck-l-g	m-vneck	Mens V-Neck	Large	Green
(You can see the full specs for product variants on Google Shopping here.)

This example is still missing a lot of required attributes, but shows how **‘id’** and **‘item group id’** should be used. The attribute ‘id’ still needs to be unique for all of your individual entries, and for products that belong to one group, the **‘item group id’** should remain the same.

## Automating the Google Shopping Feed on Magento
After defining what we needed to supply in the feed to make Google Shopping happy, our next task was automating this process so the daily generated feed included the new ‘item group id’ tag. This is where things started to get a little hairy. Our client manages around 1900 SKUs with an average of roughly 5 color options and 10 size options for each product. Instead of managing 65k individual SKUs and using Magento Configurable Products, we opted to use an extension called Advanced Product Options by MageWorx in order to manage a single product for each product group. This extension also allows us to manage price, SKU and q at the Custom Option level using a Parent > Child relationship between a color and a unique run of sizes. Our custom options area for each product is pretty robust, but our client is able to save a lot of time in overall product management. For the existing feed, we were using Wyomind’s Data Feed Manager extension to automate the daily generation of the XML. Wyomind offers a lot of configuration for managing which products are added to a feed based on category, product type, price, availability, cost, color and almost every other attribute assigned to your products. It also takes care of assigning Google Product Categories at the Magento category level which is very helpful. We did have a problem though, Wyomind wouldn’t handle the Parent > Child relationship that APO provided for its custom options and it was impossible to have the two extensions work together to generate a feed without any customization. Luckily we had a great naming pattern in place for our APO options, and Wyomind offered a way to at least run through every custom option that was assigned to a product. Because each product always started with the color options “Color”, and because every assigned run of sizes was named “Color in Size XX’, we were able to update the output of the Wyomind export and generate an XML feed that we could post-process in order to generate a feed that Google would happily approve. We ran into some other minor challenges related to Google needing a unique image for each color option, and having to adjust the feed generation code to load the final Color > Size QTY vs. the Simple Product QTY. These were all fairly easy to adjust once we had the heavy lifting out of the way and our client is once again an approved Google Merchant with over 16,000 individual product ids being fed in their Google Shopping feed instead of their original 1,200. If product variants have you stumped and you’re unable to properly push your Apparel catalog onto Google Shopping, you’re missing out on a huge marketing opportunity. Reach out and see if our team can fix your product feed and help your store gain more visibility. Post by Chance Carlin



Having issues with product variants in your Google Shopping feed? The Magento pros at Fruition developed a custom extension to feed product variants.

Generating Apparel Product Variants for Google Shopping

Anyone working with Google Shopping and AdWords to create PLA’s for their products has gone through the tedious process of data clean-up and the feed generation process. For online retailers new to the process, it can be a bit overwhelming. This is especially true for e-tailers who have large product databases that might not have the cleanest data. Unforturnately, Google is ramping up to start enforcing a further data requirement in shopping feeds.

### About the New Google Shopping Requirements
Last year, Google added to this workload by rolling out some requirements for the data they receive from customers in their feeds. Two stood out as possibly being more challenging to overcome than others. First was the requirement for products with color and size options to be fed to Google with Groupings. We covered this update in a previous blog post, Generating Produce Variants for Google Shopping Feeds. Next was Google’s requirement for products in feeds to be submitted with a GTIN and Brand attribute value set for all products listed with a Condition of ‘new.’ GTINs, or Global Trade Item Numbers, are unique values registered and assigned to a single product. For example, a GTIN would be unique to a size 10 shoe, and can’t be assigned to all sizes of a style of shoe. Some products will have UPCs, EANs, JANs, ISBNs and ITF-14s, which are all a subset of GTIN and can be used. This doesn’t seem like a huge hurdle, but for a lot of retailers it can definitely be a hassle for a few reasons:
1. If an e-tailer doesn’t have the GTIN data available from their vendors it can result in a lot of manual lookup to find the correct information.
2. If an e-tailer’s data feed isn’t set up to spit out GTINs, it can cause some extra development work to get this function working properly.
3. If an e-tailer has variant products (ie. Color and Size combinations) and doesn’t have these set up so that individual options have a GTIN assigned, there is likely both development and data work that needs to take place in order to get these feeds up to Google's new standards and requirements.

Luckily, enforcement of these requirements is relegated to a handful of retailers at the moment, about 50 major brands. It’s also limited to PLAs targeting Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US.

### Upcoming Enforcement

That limited reach is about to change. Google sent out an email on February 2 that stated it would begin enforcing GTIN requirements more strictly in 2016. Starting on February 8, online sellers should have started getting Google Shopping Feed errors on products that don’t have the required ‘brand’ and ‘gtin’ status filled in. These are simply a warning letting you know that you should start to look at these items and ensure these missing attributes are showing up in your feed. On May 16, Google reportedly plans to start fully enforcing this rule and will begin to disapprove products in your feed that don’t follow the guidelines. This can cause major headaches for e-tailers who drive a large amount of business through their feeds. Fruition had a client that was hit with the update to product variants. Luckily, we caught it while they were still receiving warnings. Had it resulted in full-on disapprovals, the e-tailer would have missed out on a large amount of traffic and revenue from the suspension of ads. Don’t let yourself get caught unprepared by this update. Google is only going to continue growing this requirement by including more brands. If you’re an online merchant that submits product feeds to Google, be aware and be pro-active at making sure your data and feeds are ready to cope with the coming changes. If you're concerned that you're unprepared, or you begin to see disapproval issues, contact Fruition. It is worth noting that not all products fall under this enforcement and there are some other cases where an e-tailer’s feed might be okay. Products that aren’t new, don’t fall into the brand guidelines, custom made products, antiques and some items of apparel don't have to adhere to the new requirements. Still, the best rule of thumb and the best way to avoid an issue is to submit GTINs with your products if they are at all available. You can find some more information on specifications in some of these related articles:

- 2015 Feed Specification Update
- About Unique Product Identifiers
- Product Feed Specification


Explore the latest stricter Google GTIN rules for Shopping & AdWords. Understand how these changes will impact e-tailers & prepare for your data feeds compliance.

Google GTIN Requirements for Shopping & AdWords

E-tailers breathe a sigh of relief after the holiday rush – the crushing wave of shoppers is done, their revenue has climbed, and with proper preparation, foundation and maintenance, their website or mobile app stayed up, functional and fast! Then comes March, and e-commerce companies need to start planning for the spring and summer shopping seasons – the time of Moms, Dads and Grads is quickly approaching. This set of holidays and celebrations centers around personal gift giving, meaning just about every type of e-commerce company can see an uptick in web searches, site traffic and sales. Unlike Valentine’s Day that mainly benefits florists, chocolate shops and jewelry stores, everything is fair game for Moms, Dads and Grads – from grilling accessories to dorm room supplies to home décor. This means all e-tailers should be doing their due diligence in planning and preparing for the next heavy wave of online shopping. To maximize sales and profit during the spring and summer shopping seasons, e-commerce companies need to prepare website infrastructure, marketing campaigns and more.

### Do Your Research
One of the best ways to prepare for an upcoming rush is to look back at what happened in previous high seasons. Check your website analytics to identify when the rush begins and when it peaks. Knowing when your customers shop will help you plan promotions and get your website ready to handle the additional traffic. Also pay attention to what day of the week these surges happened. Did the rush start because it was a week before Mother’s Day or did it start because that happened to be a Saturday (when people had a little more free time to browse online)? While you won’t be able to determine the exact cause from analytics, you should plan for both instances and track your tests so you can enhance your process even further next year. Also pay attention to top selling items last year. These are key items to create special promotions around and feature prominently on your homepage, checkout process and other key areas. Go beyond top sellers from this time last year and identify what items have been your top sellers lately. These items could be trending in general now and promoting them could help you increase sales even more. To really capitalize on today’s hot items, expand your research beyond your own data. Pay attention to “what’s hot” according to popular publications and the items featured on the “Best Gifts for XYZ” (Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, college graduates, etc.) articles that inevitably takeover online this time of year. Knowing all this information will help you create promotions and content that have a better chance of driving sales. Another good thing to research is drop off or abandon points. All e-commerce sites deal to a certain extent with “window shoppers” who load up their digital cart but never hit the Buy button. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and mitigate site or cart abandon rates. Identify common points your shoppers leave from then investigate further to see if there’s a usability, pricing or some other reason that might be driving them away. If you can correct those issues, you can increase your sales.

### Prepare Technically
An e-tailer’s worst nightmare is their site crashing during a peak shopping period or experiencing a data breach that leaks sensitive consumer information. A strong foundation and continual maintenance and upkeep help guard against these scenarios, but it’s still a good idea to put your site through extra testing and tune-up as you approach a busy season. Work with a software testing company to complete a security audit. You need to make sure network access points, e-commerce transactions and other vital interactions are secure. More traffic is a good thing, unless it slows down or crashes your site. If all your marketing is done properly, you will see a spike in traffic during this upcoming shopping season, so prepare you site for the anticipated additional traffic beforehand. Site speed and bandwidth are two major areas to pay attention to. Today’s consumer has little patience for websites that are slow to load and if your site doesn’t load within a matter of seconds they’ll leave. Page abandonment increases by 25% if you site doesn’t load within four seconds. That metric is from 2011 – imagine the expectations of today’s online shoppers five years later. This higher bounce rate also has a negative impact on your search rankings, so there’s a double benefit to ensuring fast load times and a good user experience. If need be, consider getting a CDN. Finally, walk through the flow of your site and see if there’s anywhere you get frustrated. While there likely isn’t enough time for major site design changes, if there is low hanging fruit that can enhance the user experience make the changes. The same goes for last year’s main drop off points. If people were abandoning their carts because of a cumbersome check out process, see if it can be improved. If changes can’t be made and tested in time, leave the existing process in place through the next high sales season but make plans to address the issue immediately afterwards. This should give you plenty of time to implement a new process without introducing potential issues and bugs during a busy season.

### Plan Your Themes
It’s definitely tempting to try and be everything to everyone, but the ROI of your marketing and sales campaigns will be better if you make focused, well-informed decisions. The nice thing about the spring and summer shopping season is that it’s a bit stretched out, giving you the chance to create campaigns that target each upcoming occasion. While high school and college graduations stretch from May through the end of June, Mother’s Day (in May) and Father’s Day (in June) are set and have limited shopping seasons. Identify what shoppers you’re going after with each campaign and what type of outreach they’re most likely to respond to. Email, landing pages, retargeting ads and social media outreach should all be in your plans. Start by creating landing pages you can drive visitors to from a link on your main page, external links and paid ads. Make these page super theme specific both in appearance and in the “top gifts” you choose to feature. Do keyword research for each campaign and populate the landing pages with keyword and longtail keyword rich content to help your search results (just be sure not to go overboard with the keywords or you could get dinged by Google). Adding related items or “Customers Also Bought” sections on these pages is a great way to appeal to impulse buyers. Now that you have your themes, keywords and promotions outlined, create a blog calendar that includes content that matches up with and promotes these efforts. Consistently creating new content around your target keywords will give you a better chance of being found in search. Be sure to plan some highly shareable content, such as a Top 10 Gift Ideas for Mother’s Day list or an infographic of dorm essentials. This type of content has a better chance of being shared across social media, earning you more eyes and traffic. Remember to ad links to any specific products you highlight within a blog post – you want to make it as easy as possible for a shopper to become a buyer. Once your content is planned out, create a social media calendar for sharing and promoting your specials. This is how you’ll get your sharable content and new promotions seen by even more people, so having a regular posting schedule is important. Hot promotions like holiday sales are also a good time to use social advertising – there are a lot of fun paid social options out there right now that are extra attention grabbing.

### Make It Even Easier to Buy
You’ve already analyzed drop off rates, (hopefully) addressed any difficult usability areas and added similar item call outs to your landing pages, which will all help with conversions. Now it’s time to take the final push-to-buy even further. Extend the “Customers Also Bought” items to the cart and checkout pages to encourage a few more impulse buys. Also consider special promotions like free shipping. Many shoppers abandon carts because of unexpectedly high shipping costs – if you can eliminate this issue during the peak of your sales season you can encourage more sales. If you don’t want to do away with shipping costs altogether, consider offering free shipping on orders over a certain amount or put out ads with a promo code for free shipping or a percentage off. Additional promotions like these can give buyers that last little push they need. If you’re ready to take your promotional and marketing efforts to the next level, implement personalized offers. If you have cookies enabled on your website and know a user keeps returning to look at a specific item, showcase that item on your homepage the next time they visit or send them an email about it. If you know a user is shopping from an iPhone or iPad, surface offers and items that highlight iPhone accessories. Personalization possibilities are worth exploring during times when people are already driven to buy – like when they’re shopping for a gift for mom, dad or the grad in their life.


Prepare your ecommerce site for success this spring and summer shopping season. Necessitate your due diligence in strategic planning and preparation for increased online shopping demands.

Prepare Your E-Commerce Site for a Profitable Summer Season

These days, retailers can’t afford to not sell online. You need to get your products where your customers are, and that’s on their screens. But getting into eCommerce is no small feat, and finding the right software to power your store is an important decision.

## WooCommerce Experts Guide
The ecommerce experts at Fruition recommend WooCommerce for businesses that are already using WordPress to power their websites and are ready to start selling on their own online marketplace. WooCommerce is a free, open-source eCommerce solution that’s built on top of Wordpress. It’s technically a Wordpress plug-in and was released in 2011 to add eCommerce capabilities directly to a WordPress website.

## WooCommerce Can Automate Most of your Ecommerce Operations
WooCommerce offers all the features you’d expect from a robust ecommerce Platform. In fact, 21% of eCommerce stores today are powered by WooCommerce, and that’s no accident. WooCommerce has a ton of great features. For starters, it’s easy to use, supports 100+ payment gateways, automates sales tax, simplifies shipping and fulfillment, and can be used to sell just about anything.

## Robust Features of WooCommerce
If you’re considering adding ecommerce capabilities to your site or want to explore updating your current store, the Fruition team can get you started. We regularly help our clients build eCommerce sites from scratch, integrate WooCommerce into existing websites, and maintain, optimize, and add features to existing WooCommerce stores. We can help you make the right decision for your customers and get your store where it needs to be: in front of the right customers.

Let's discuss WooCommerce for your business

Unlock eCommerce potential with our WooCommerce guide, ideal for WordPress site owners ready to enter the online selling market.

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Quick Guide to Starting Your Online Store with WooCommerce

Email marketing helps you raise awareness and keep your products and services top-of-mind for your subscribers. But since the average email list naturally degrades by about 22.5% every year, it’s becoming more and more important to proactively grow your list.    But, how do you get your emails into the right inboxes and increase subscribers? For many companies, the easy way out is to simply purchase a list to build your numbers back up.  Let us be the first to tell you - this is a bad idea. A purchased list will give you a short term lift in subscribers, but your deliverability will almost certainly drop. If you need help configuring your long SPF records follow this guide. Plus, you could hurt your IP reputation, which could stop active subscribers from receiving your content since your emails will bounce or be directed to spam folders. So, how can you build your list with actively opted-in and engaged subscribers? Let us count the ways.  

## Incentivize Opt-In Messaging   
Give your audience a reason to subscribe to your email lists. Offering discounts, like a flat rate or a percentage off a purchase is a good way to do this, but incentivizing your audience to opt-in doesn’t have to break the bank.  Appeal to your audience’s desire to know what’s going on by using calls to action (CTAs) that encourage them to stay in the loop. Or, use gated content to gain subscribers. Asking website visitors to sign up for a free copy of a whitepaper or ebook can help you show your value to consumers and spread your message. 

## Use Sign-Up Forms On Your Website 
If visitors are on your website, chances are they’re interested in what you do. Capture them at this stage by using a pop-up or footer sign-up form. To get the most out of your form, follow these tips: 
- **Keep it simple!** Asking too much of visitors will make them less likely to sign up. 
- **Add a subscribe checkbox on eCommerce checkout pages.** These bottom-of-the-funnel users are more likely to sign up for email.  
- **Create a preference center landing page.**  A well set-up preference center page gives subscribers the opportunity to get more of the emails they love and less of the ones they don’t. Having specific options lets your users customize their experience with you, which increases the chances that they’ll stay subscribed.  
- **Don’t pre-check the opt-in box.** It may be tempting to pre-check the box, but by doing so, you’re opening yourself up to a whole lot of people who will hit the “unsubscribe” button. Adding a smaller number of high-quality subscribers will be more valuable to your business in the long run than adding a bunch of users who aren’t that interested.

## Utilize Your Other Platforms 
Having strong website CTAs and an intuitive preference center will boost your subscriber list, but don’t rely solely on your website. A well rounded marketing strategy uses every platform you have, and building your email list is no different. Use social media to promote contests and giveaways that involve a subscriber signing up for emails. Add a sign-up CTA on your Facebook page, and tease gated content on Pinterest or Instagram.  You can even use YouTube end cards to encourage viewers to subscribe to your newsletter.   

## Have Great Content 
Once you have subscribers, the best way to keep them is having great content. Great content will vary widely by industry and audience personas, but focus on making your content engaging and shareable. If your current audience loves the content you’re sending them and it’s easy to share, they’re more likely to forward it on to new potential subscribers.  

## Lets Grow your Email Lists
Could your email marketing use a boost? Let’s explore your options and grow your audience! 



Discover proven strategies for organically growing your email list. Our guide empowers you with the knowledge to build a strong, engaged subscriber base.

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Proven Strategies for Growing Your Email List Organically

# How To Choose A Website Platform

In the vast ocean of Content Management Systems (CMS) available to power your website, making a definitive choice can be overwhelming. Your options range from hosted plug-and-play systems like Squarespace or Wix, open-source solutions like Joomla, ExpressionEngine, WordPress, or Drupal, headless CMS like Strapi, and specialized systems like Magento, Shopify, or BigCommerce. Each of these systems has its own set of pros and cons and caters to different business use cases. It's imperative to understand your business needs and select a system that helps you fulfill them.

At Fruition, we value open-source solutions for their customizability and the absence of hefty licensing fees. These platforms have consistently delivered satisfactory results in terms of search engine optimization and integration with other crucial marketing initiatives and tools. Today, we'll review WordPress, Drupal, Magento, and Strapi to illustrate why these systems best serve the majority of our clients' needs.

## Drupal
### When To Use It: 
Drupal is a powerhouse of a CMS and has a large amount of customizability that makes it a great fit for large sites that:
- Are highly transactional 
- Have a wide variety of content to show users 
- Have a lot of content entries 
- Have many different user types 
- Need to integrate with other platforms to consume & send data  

### What We Like About It: 
Drupal is open source, which allows Drupal developers to create free Contributed Modules for the community. These modules provide extra functionality to your site, including:
- E-commerce capabilities 
- Form creators 
- Headless capabilities
- Advanced search
- Google Analytics integrations  

As an open source platform, there aren’t any licensing fees to use the software. Your upfront costs to use Drupal would be the initial site design, site development, and ongoing hosting and maintenance. 

### What You Should be Aware Of:
The power and customizability of this platform requires more Drupal-specialized developers to deliver on project requirements. Since Drupal has been around for a long time, there’s a large pool of active developers who can help build a new project or maintain an existing site, and these costs will vary drastically based on your needs. As for long-term maintenance, you will need to make sure your software is up-to-date with the latest Drupal releases and security updates. **READ MORE:** Whitepaper: What to Consider When Updating to Drupal 8

## Magento 
### When To Use It: 
Magento, now owned by Adobe, continues to be an e-commerce platform ideal for companies heavily invested in online sales. We suggest Magento for stores with numerous SKUs and intricate needs.

### What We Like About It: 
You can utilize Magento’s open-source version without incurring any licensing fees. Consequently, you'll only need to cover the costs for design and development work to launch your site.

### What You Should Be Aware Of: 
Magento, being a highly sophisticated system, demands a high level of expertise for proper implementation. Development costs can be steep. It's crucial to choose a partner well-versed in integrating your payment systems, return processes, fulfillment systems, tax calculators, CRMs, and all other necessary elements for successful store operation.

Post Adobe's acquisition of Magento, some users have raised concerns about the increase in costs and potential neglect of the open-source community. Therefore, businesses with budget constraints or those prioritizing open-source philosophy might want to consider alternatives like WordPress + WooCommerce or Shopify.

## Strapi
### When To Use It: 
Strapi, a headless CMS, allows you to build, deploy and manage content flexibly. This CMS is ideal for businesses that:
- Require a CMS for their mobile applications, websites, and other platforms
- Desire more flexibility in presenting their content
- Want to manage their content through RESTful or GraphQL APIs

### What We Like About It: 
Being open-source, Strapi is free to use and provides remarkable customizability. It gives developers the freedom to choose their preferred databases, frameworks, and languages. 

### What You Should Be Aware Of: 
As a relatively new platform, the Strapi community is smaller compared to that of established CMSs like WordPress or Drupal. It might be a bit more challenging to find support or hire developers with extensive Strapi experience. 

## WordPress
### When To Use It:
WordPress is the most widely-used CMS on the market, and for good reason. With a huge following of developers, WordPress has a lot of templates and hosting options that make creating a new website easy.  Additionally, WordPress has a great option for adding ecommerce to your store via the WooCommerce plugin. We recommend WooCommerce to any of our clients that have a smaller SKU count (under ~1000) and don’t have extremely complicated requirements for customer groups, fulfillment, and payments. WooCommerce also has great add-ons for offering subscription based services/products, supporting special pricing, and offering promotions. 
### What We Like About It: 
Like Drupal and Magento, WordPress is open-source and free to use, but is much easier to get started with. This flexibility, plus the ability to create different types of content to power your site, makes WordPress a great option for smaller brochure sites that:
- Posts blogs
- Showcases products and services 
- Shows team members 
- Business with multiple locations
- Has web forms 
- Delivers valuable content to users  

### What You Should Be Aware Of: 
There are a lot of free plugins that can be used to gain functionality, but you should be careful to only use those that are well-vetted and well-maintained. This same advice applies to premium plugins – make sure to read the reviews and consult with your developer, because not all plugins are built with the highest quality.  

**Fruition is a WordPress VIP Partner:** We're one of only a handful of [certified WordPress development shops](/services/wordpress-website-services). 
**READ MORE:** Your Guide to Selling Online with WooCommerce

## The Bottom Line
If your current platform doesn't align well with your business needs, you're not alone. Many clients approach us with this issue, and we seize this opportunity to revamp the site design, features, and functionality. As we migrate your site to a more suitable platform, we ensure to implement positive changes to your existing site. If you're exploring web platforms and unsure about your choice, we'd be more than happy to discuss your options!

## Checklist for Choosing a Website Platform
At Fruition we're big on checklists. You can checkout the [SEO checklist](/blog/seo-checklist) and below is a checklist to guide your decision making process for selecting a CMS. 

## Checklist for Choosing a Website Platform

### 1. Purpose of the Website
- [ ] Is the website primarily for blogging?
- [ ] Is the website for selling products?
- [ ] Is the website for showcasing a portfolio?
- [ ] Is the website to provide information about services?
- [ ] Does the website need to handle bookings or appointments?
  
### 2. User Experience (UX)
- [ ] Is the platform known for good site speed?
- [ ] Does the platform support responsive design (mobile-friendly)?
- [ ] Is the platform user-friendly for non-tech savvy users?

### 3. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
- [ ] Does the platform support SEO-friendly URL structures?
- [ ] Does the platform allow full control over meta tags?
- [ ] Does the platform have an efficient way to manage redirects?

### 4. Content Management
- [ ] Does the platform have an intuitive content management system (CMS)?
- [ ] Does the CMS support content versioning?
- [ ] Can you schedule posts for automatic publishing?
- [ ] Does the CMS support multi-language content?

### 5. E-commerce Capabilities
- [ ] Does the platform support e-commerce natively, or via plugins?
- [ ] Does it integrate with multiple payment gateways?
- [ ] Does it support different types of shipping methods?
- [ ] Can it handle taxes and other accounting requirements?

### 6. Customizability & Extensibility
- [ ] Does the platform allow design customization?
- [ ] Is the platform open-source?
- [ ] Does the platform support a wide range of plugins or extensions?
- [ ] Can the platform be integrated with other systems (CRM, ERP)?

### 7. Scalability
- [ ] Can the platform support increased traffic as your business grows?
- [ ] Does the platform allow you to add more features as your needs evolve?

### 8. Security
- [ ] Does the platform have a strong track record for security?
- [ ] Does it support SSL?
- [ ] Are regular security updates released?

### 9. Support and Community
- [ ] Does the platform have a strong community for support?
- [ ] Are there easily accessible resources and tutorials?
- [ ] Can you hire developers easily for this platform?

### 10. Cost
- [ ] What is the initial setup cost?
- [ ] What are the ongoing costs (hosting, maintenance, security)?
- [ ] What are the costs of premium features or extensions?

Remember, there's no one-size-fits-all solution. Every business has unique requirements, and it's crucial to align your platform decision with your business objectives. Use this checklist as a guide, but feel free to adapt it to your specific circumstances.


Let us guide you on navigating through the numerous website platforms. Explore the pros and cons of WordPress, Drupal, Magento, and Strapi to make an informed decision.

Fru_Blog-Feb03.png

Comprehensive Guide to Picking Your Website Platform: WordPress, Drupal, Magento & Strapi

# What Does End-of-life (EOL) Mean For Your Website Platform?

End-of-life (EOL) is a term used when a company or creator will no longer support their current product version. EOL can be used to refer to website platforms, software, apps, or even a physical product. For web platforms like Drupal, Magento, or WordPress, an EOL announcement is typically made when the organization decides to focus its energy and attention on a newer version of its product.

## Why Does End-of-life Happen?
EOL is a natural occurrence in the technology world and makes room for continuous innovation and improvements. For example, consider your smartphone’s operating system. We’ve seen many iterations of smartphone software come and go, and each version supports the latest technology advancements. As new capabilities become available, smartphone creators begin building new operating software that capitalizes on these new advancements. You’ll continue to see support on older smartphones for some time, but eventually, the old phones stop supporting new software. The same is true with website platforms. As technology continues to evolve, platforms must change with it. 

## What Should I Do If My Website Platform Is Nearing Its EOL Date? 
EOL dates are announced well in advance to allow businesses to upgrade to the newest version. Leading up to the official EOL date, your site will continue to receive support. However, once the date passes, your site won’t receive platform updates or security patches. Not only does this open your site up to more security risks, but as time passes, it may become more and more difficult to maintain functionality. When an EOL is announced, it's in your business’s (and your customers!) best interest to upgrade by following these steps: 

### 1. Make Sure You Know The Official EOL Date 
Before you make more decisions, make sure you know your platform’s EOL date. Depending on the complexity of your site, migrating to a newer version could take several months, so don’t wait until the last minute to find a developer or agency that can perform the migration for you. 
### 2. Look Into Your Options
Before you immediately decide to migrate to a newer version of the same platform, take some time to evaluate what’s best for your site. Is your site meeting your current and projected needs? Are you planning on doubling down on more complex functions, like online scheduling, eCommerce, or eLearning? An EOL deadline is a great time to re-evaluate the effectiveness of your site and determine what future capabilities it should be prepared to handle. 
### 3. Look At Your Data 
A migration is a good time to make much-needed improvements to your site. Dig into heat mapping or Google Analytics data to see how users are currently interacting with your site. If you notice trends, like a high bounce rate or that visitors aren’t following your ideal user flow, it may be a good idea to redesign all or part of your site. 
### 4. Make A Priority List 
Once you develop your wish list for your new site, prioritize each functionality. What do you need right now, and what can you wait on? Having a prioritized list will help your team understand which features they should spend the most time on now and which can wait until after the initial launch.  
### 5. Make A Development Plan 
Now that you have an idea of what you want out of your new site, evaluate your development plan. Do you need to pull in additional resources to complete the project on time? If so, you’ll need to start your research early to find the right partner for you. When evaluating potential development partners, be sure to look at: 

- **Experience:** Have they worked on this platform before? Do they have examples of similar migration projects? 
- **Quality:** What quality control do they offer? Are there checks and balances to make sure your site meets your expectations? 
- **Style:** If you’re migrating and redesigning your site, can they do both? Does their design portfolio speak to your business’ style? 
- **SEO:** Part of your site’s development, including the site architecture, page titles, and content, will be impacted by SEO. If you’ve worked hard to help your site rank well, you want to make sure it’s transitioned well so you don’t miss a beat. A team that has experience in development and SEO can ensure your new site has the right optimizations to earn traffic and gain conversions.

  Hearing that your website’s platform is reaching end-of-life can be overwhelming, but with the right team, migrating to a new version (or new platform) can breathe new life into your business’s online presence. If you have questions or concerns about your current platform or an upcoming EOL date, we can help! With experts in design, development, and marketing, we can transform your new site into a user-friendly, lead generation machine. If you are ready to get off an EOL platform we can migrate you to something modern and secure.

Learn what end-of-life means for your website platform, what to do if your platform is nearing an EOL date, and what to consider when migrating your site.

Fru-Blog-EOL.png

What Does End-of-life (EOL) Mean For Your Website Platform?

Title: Elevate SEO Strategy with Automated No-Index Tag Monitoring 
Automate the complex task of monitoring no-index tags and ensure improved visibility with our state-of-the-art No-Index Checker. As an expert in SEO or a business owner, nonchalant no-index tags can gravely affect your client's online visibility and business growth. Fortunately, with our No-Index Checker, you can smartly manage indexability across various websites, thus contributing to your clients' digital success.

## Level-up with the No-Index Checker: Your Answer to Indexability Concerns 
The No-Index Checker was developed aiming to ease the tasks of SEO professionals: optimizing clients' websites for search engine indexation. A slip up with a no-index tag can negatively affect a website's search engine rankings for months. To address this common error, we created a tool that automates indexability monitoring, letting the SEO teams direct their efforts on important aspects of their client's online success.

## How to Manually Verify Noindex Tags
Sometimes, manual checks can be handy. Here's how to do it:

Investigating the Source Code, utilizing Browser Extensions, inspecting HTTP Headers, and the robots.txt file.

## Inside the No-Index Checker
Our No-Index Checker evaluates indexability by checking three main elements: Robots Meta Value, Robots Headers Value, and Robots.txt Value.

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Our No-Index Checker utilizes a powerful tech stack, including Airtable, Datafetcher Pro, AWS Lambda/Gateway API, and Browserless.io /fetch API to effectively manage the indexability monitoring.

## Get Notified with Regular Alerts
Stay ahead of issues with the No-Index Checker's daily alerts, ensuring your team is always informed and ready for fix-ups.

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Final Content: ## Automate Noindex Tag Monitoring for Enhanced SEO
Streamline the process of monitoring no-index tags across various websites with the No-Index Checker. This tool is designed to ensure optimal website indexability by search engines, thereby safeguarding your clients' online visibility and subsequent success.

## The Why and How of the No-Index Checker
Created to solve a prevalent issue faced by SEO professionals— optimizing websites' indexability by search engines. It is a game-changer that automates indexability monitoring, allowing marketing and SEO teams to focus on other vital tasks that contribute to their clients' web success.

## Manual Checking of Noindex Tags
For one-off manual checks, you can look into the Source Code, use Browser Extensions, probe HTTP Headers, and inspect the robots.txt file.

## The Technology Behind the No-Index Checker
Analyzing a site's indexability is done by inspecting three key aspects—Robots Meta Value, Robots Headers Value, and Robots.txt Value. The tech stack includes Airtable, Datafetcher Pro, AWS Lambda/Gateway API, and Browserless.io /fetch API.

## Stay Alert with Regular Notifications 
The No-Index Checker runs 24/7 and delivers daily alerts to equip you to rapidly address any arising issues.

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The No-Index Checker paves the way for efficient indexability monitoring, assuring maximum SEO effectiveness. To get started, simply fill out a form. Unlock enhanced SEO success today!

Streamline website indexability with our No-Index Checker. Automate monitoring, receive daily updates and proactive alerts. Avoid accidental noindex tags, secure better rankings.

noindex-checker.png

Safeguard SEO with Automated No-Index Tag Monitoring

# Airport Cyber Threats

In the increasingly digital age, the [aviation industry](/industries/airport-website) faces an evolving threat landscape, with airport websites becoming prime targets for cyber-attacks. Recent high-profile incidents, such as the <a href="https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/killnet-claims-us-airport-ddos/" target="_blank">KillNet</a> attacks and the  <a href="https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article291482420.html" target="_blank">Seattle Airport outage</a> , underscore the critical need for fortified web hosting and application security. As these threats grow in sophistication and frequency, C-level executives in charge of technology and marketing at major airports must prioritize robust security measures. As a web hosting and security provider for some of the largest airports in the world, Fruition has a deep understanding of the unique threats airports face and how to protect against them.

## Understanding the Threats

Cybercriminals employ diverse attack vectors, ranging from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) to sophisticated malware intrusions. These attacks aim to disrupt operations, compromise sensitive data, and damage reputations. Fruition’s responsibility as a leader in web hosting and security is to ensure that the airport websites we manage are resilient against such disruptions, maintaining their integrity and availability under all circumstances. 

## Our Strategic Approach to Airport Cyber Defense
To safeguard airport websites, we have developed a comprehensive security strategy centered around three key pillars:

### 1. Proactive Alerting Systems

Our first line of defense is an advanced alerting system that integrates seamlessly with our web application firewall (WAF), ingress, and hosting components. By continuously monitoring traffic patterns, we can rapidly detect anomalies indicative of an attack. Early detection enables us to respond swiftly and effectively, minimizing potential damage.

### 2. Collaborative WAF Management
Effective defense against cyber threats requires a collaborative approach. We establish strategic partnerships with airport IT and security teams, tailoring our WAF management to accommodate varying expertise levels. Our preferred tool, Cloudflare, allows for granular adjustments in real-time, ensuring that WAF rules are optimized both proactively and reactively. This partnership enables us to share intelligence and coordinate responses, enhancing overall security posture.

### 3. Resilient Application Architecture

Recognizing the dynamic nature of airport websites, we architect solutions that withstand high traffic volumes and maintain performance. Our approach includes:

- **Asset and Database Caching:** Utilizing Varnish, Cloudflare, and Redis for efficient asset delivery and reduced server load.
- **CDN and Media Offloading:** Leveraging services like Amazon S3 and Google Buckets for media delivery, reducing server strain during peak loads.
- **WebSockets for Dynamic Data:** Offloading dynamic data (i.e. FIDS data, parking lot availability, and TSA wait times) delivery to microservices, easing the demand on web servers.
- **Load Balancing and Auto-Scaling:** Implementing these techniques to accommodate traffic spikes seamlessly.
- **Security and RBAC:** Enforcing strict role-based access control to protect sensitive information from unauthorized access.
- **Automatic Updates:** We’ve built an automated software update workflow for hosted applications that alerts and stages security vulnerability patches for immediate testing.

## Our Airport Hosting Offering

With our strategic approach to mitigating attacks established, Fruition developed a hosting platform to power our resilient application architecture. To meet the unique demands of airport websites, our hosting infrastructure integrates advanced security and innovative technologies:

- **Geographically Diverse Infrastructure:** Utilizing Kubernetes clusters across multiple locations to ensure high availability and robust security.
- **Automated Updates and Scalable Operations:** Streamline code updates and scale operations efficiently to handle traffic surges.
-  **SSL Management and Multi-Environment Support:** Simplified SSL management and support for development, staging, and production environments.
- **Comprehensive Data Encryption:** Employing modern encryption protocols for data in transit and at rest, ensuring compliance with industry standards.
- **Advanced Bot Management and Rate Limiting:** Providing flexible controls to manage traffic spikes and mitigate automated bot attacks.
- **Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity:** Containerized hosting and comprehensive backup solutions ensure rapid recovery and minimal downtime.


## Ensuring Business Continuity with Disaster Recovery

The last important piece of this is preparing for the worst-case scenario—a successful attack or infrastructure outage. In either of these situations, it’s our responsibility to ensure that we can redeploy the application quickly to get the site back online. These are some of the disaster recovery techniques we follow to allow our team to quickly respond to a site outage.

- **Containerized Hosting:** Utilizing Rancher and Kubernetes for rapid deployment across multiple cloud providers, ensuring minimal downtime.
- **Comprehensive Backup and Recovery:** Storing backups across various locations to facilitate quick restoration in any hosting environment.
- **Effective Communication Systems:** Maintaining direct communication channels with airport partners to ensure coordinated, timely responses.

This is a very high-level overview of the core elements that allow us to recover from a major disaster. Underneath the hood, we utilize robust services and orchestration that allow our team to redeploy sites to different zones, regions, or cloud providers in a very short amount of time. This gives us flexibility and numerous options to quickly restore a site in the face of an attack or infrastructure outage.

## Conclusion

For marketing and technology leaders at airports, partnering with a dedicated, experienced digital service provider is crucial in navigating the cyber threat landscape. Our track record with esteemed partners such as <a href="https://www.flyontario.com/" target="_blank">FlyOntario.com</a>, <a href="https://www.flydenver.com/" target="_blank">FlyDenver.com</a>, and <a href="https://metroairport.com/" target="_blank">MetroAirport.com</a> demonstrates our commitment to delivering secure, reliable web solutions. By implementing the strategies outlined above, we ensure that airport websites remain resilient, secure, and prepared for whatever challenges the future may hold. We look forward to sharing our expertise and strengthening our collaborations with airports seeking a steadfast digital ally.

If you have an upcoming hosting or redesign RFP, or just want to learn more about how we could support your current site, [contact us today](/contact).


Discover how airports can protect their digital operations from cyber threats with expert insights on web hosting security, DDoS protection, and disaster recovery. Learn proven strategies from Fruition's experience securing major airport websites.

Strategy & Research

Digital Marketing

Web Development

Creative

AI Data & Analytics

Chance Carlin

VP of Web Development

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