Ecommerce sites are a craze nowadays. And for developing them, Magento is certainly the best platform. Magento is easy to use, highly customizable, robust and secured.This ecommerce platform works great for developing simple and complex sites with equal ease. PSD to Magento conversion has become very popular among developers to make attractive ecommerce sites. Contrary to popular believe, converting PSD to a Magento theme is easy. If developers follow a few simple steps and have firsthand knowledge of HTML coding and of course Magento, the conversion process is like a cakewalk.
Step 1
Planning on paper before switching on the computer is always wise. Scribbling on the paper, fiddling with a few ideas and then having a concrete plan is much better than staring at Photoshop for hours not knowing where to begin.
Step 2
Once the plan is ready on the paper, make it come alive on Photoshop or any other image editing software. Remember to design for the future too and not just for the present. The important elements that should be part of the design are logo, header, footer and main body. Also give attention to fonts used, color scheme etc. Make sure all these elements help you get a unique design.
Step 3
Coding is an essential part of PSD to Magento conversion. But before you begin coding, you will have to slice the design file into different layers. As such the logo, header, footer have to be different layers. When slicing is done precisely, your store’s design will have pixel perfect conversion making the site look better.
Step 4
Once the file has been precisely sliced, the main job of coding begins. Coding helps convert the design file into an HTML/XHTML format. Coding is a meticulous job and needs to be done manually. Manual coding ensures that the codes are clean which boost the site’s performance. CSS gives uniformity to the site and reduces the loading time too. To make the site search engine friendly, semantic coding should compulsorily be used.
Step 5
Once the design is coded into a HTML format, do not forget to get it validated by W3C. W3C stands for World Wide Consortium and is the body which validates the site ensuring that the site functions perfectly. W3C validation also helps improve search engine rankings and keeps the site free from bugs and viruses.
Step 6
Slicing the design file, coding it is not the end of PSD to Magento conversion. The HTML codes need to be integrated into the Magento admin. To do this, create directories for the newly designed theme. Upload the directory which has the HTML/XHTML code files into the web server.
Step 7
After creating the directory and uploading it on the server, test the site on different browsers. Cross-browser compatibility is very important nowadays as users could be using any browser to reach your site. Make sure you test the compatibility on IE, Chrome, Firefox and Safari.
This post is contributed by PixelCrayons, a web development firm that specializes inecommerce store development ecommerce shopping cart design. You may hire developers here for Joomla and magento developers at affordable rates.