Web Development Trends

This is how it might look. If more collection has to be added, only the number of rows have to be increased. But if there are also other products to be considered, Let say a jeans also has to be added to the stock and its attributes also will be added. Considering this, several other products like skirts, trousers etc will be added. If the same approach is followed, this is how it will look.How you can choose the right software company for web application development

The present scenario has been tough for all businesses especially the retailers of non-essential items. People have been flooding the usual physical stores to get items for daily survival. Considering the new purchase behavior and preference it is obvious that retailers are involved in selling other products online.

Does that imply that these retail selling businesses have no future? Or they demand a change of strategy?

The answer to this question is switching to digitalization and embracing the power of the internet to start selling their products. With the spurt in online retail sales increasing every year, now surely is the best time to begin your own website for your products. In this article we highlight the necessary points for starting your own website at the earliest. We will cover:-

How you can choose the right software company for web application development.

Steps taken by a software firm to build the website from scratch.

Technical requirements of building a website.

Why a website is a need in these times.

How you can choose the right software company for web application development

Choosing a software development company can be a daunting task, but when you engage in extensive research, then things will be a tad easier. We give you certain parameters which you can use to compare different companies on. But, it is required that the search is done on reputed platforms, that is if you are looking for quality work.

The first thing that needs to be seen is whether the company offers custom software development solutions. The needs of a website are complex as the user traffic gradually increases, hence the need to follow every stage of SDLC is an absolute must. Ensure that the web application development company doesn't use pre-developed themes. 

The end-user of the software plus ensuring that the company can provide the needed user experience is another point to be considered. 

If a company is referred by someone who got their software developed by any firm, it is always better to inquire further about the firm. A strong recommendation is a result of good experience. 

The need for building faster websites is a need now. It is then important to have a major round of discussions with the project development team and a detailed discussion with the team to understand if they can cater your needs.

Security is another concern and it should be taken care that the company you outsource the work to has to respect the confidentiality of the information so provided. 

Be very careful of choosing a firm that has transparent policies. It should be noted that several firms charge hidden costs that come out in the open when it is too late to object.

Steps taken by a software firm to build the website from scratch

It is possible to change the purchase behavior of an individual. People are now increasingly moving towards online shopping, and when you get your build, these steps will be followed. 

Need for a domain name

If there is a website there has to be a domain name. It is important that it should be related to the kind of products you will be selling. It is an important first step as it will help your customers look for you.

Web hosting

You also will need a hosting provider to make your website live and to send data back and forth from a website every time a customer visits your site.

Choosing the CMS platform

Choose the best CMS platform based on three parameters: 

Business requirements- First determine the type of your website. Will it be a simple single brochure one or a multi-connected one with 3’rd party software integration. Based on your business priorities, a good CMS platform can be chosen. For a platform that can provide you wide audiences with multi-lingual support, we support the use of WordPress.

Security- Choosing a CMS also means factoring in the security issues. It is then important to read realistic reviews about the CMS platform. 

Mobile-responsive- WordPress is considered the best when it comes to supporting mobile responsive websites. It also runs some enigmatic responsive themes which can be chosen.

Selecting the right Ecommerce platform

There are many E-commerce platforms to choose from but building a website is not for today but for the future as well. Hence choosing one should be done from that perspective. The platform that one chooses is done so keeping in mind the scalability needs. 

Building site Architecture

Site architecture is extremely important as it denotes the qualities of a well-developed site navigation for your e-commerce business. It is critical that product images are displayed well with proper sub-categories mentioned. A different section also has to be devoted to best-selling and discount products to get customer attention. Some important parts are product details, Reviews and testimonials,Trustmarks, Payment options, website speed and shipping partner selection.

Technical requirements of building a website

The model denotes the logical structure of a database that depicts the relationships and constraints pointing out how data is stored and accessed. For an ecommerce website this is an important aspect as storing product information and accessing product information is critical. When one usually runs a store, keeping the count of the let’s say merchandise is usually done on RDBMS or a sheet. Take the case of shirts that are stored with different aspects like ID, type, color, size and SKU. 

This is how it might look. If more collection has to be added, only the number of rows have to be increased. But if there are also other products to be considered, Let say a jeans also has to be added to the stock and its attributes also will be added. Considering this, several other products like skirts, trousers etc will be added. If the same approach is followed, this is how it will look.

For a small dataset this is fine, but for a large dataset the EAV approach or the entity attribute value can be employed most often used on Woo and Magneto. With EAV, product information is stored in multiple tables. The common factors will be saved in one table and the attributes in another. 

Security

There is nothing as important as the need to protect your site from hackers especially when financial transactions take place. Our recommendation is to have a 256-bit layer transport layer security for end-to-end encryption. HTTPS is recommended which is nothing but HTTP layered with TLS protection. 

High performance

Page load times and irate customers are directly proportional. If the load times increase chances are the customer gets so irritated that they decide against using the site. Page load speed matters as even one second delay can result in a 7% loss in conversion. For high speed these strategies are best to be followed”

Rather than utilizing multiple JS or CSS files or making several requests by the browser, it is better to combine it into one individual file allowing the browser to make one overall single request.

Caching assists the website become fast. It also helps in achieving a better SEO score leading to greater conversion and user satisfaction. 

Content Delivery Networks (CDN) are the right way of delivering content to customers. Its primary role is that it caches the contents on servers which are located in different parts of the world.

Data Compression

Using data compression tools like GZip, data can be compressed before sending it to the browser. It also is good to make modifications in the server configuration files. This will lead to faster load times and superior performance.

Scaling

For a webstore, it is important to scale up when the user traffic increases on the website. In the case of flash sales and discounts, inventory also has to be increased  up to support the increasing load of demand. 

Why a website is needed

Several businesses now flocking to gain IT edge due to COVID-19 might be assuming that all this is temporary. But the reality is that post-covid also the situation shall remain in favor of online retail as this is the new normal. If an organizations does not build one sooner, it will not be able to catch up with the competition.

With the competition heating up in the public cloud service vendors, the addition of new features and a regular drop in the price will decide who the winner is. In this article, we intend to throw light on the mounting competition between AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, and GCP. AWS already has a head start of years over the others, but there is no denying the other two public cloud service providers are not far behind. It is important to compare them to understand which one suits your project the most.

A detailed comparison

Our comparison guide is a thorough take on all the three cloud service providers based on parameters like:

Compute — The compute services of AWS were offered in 2206 and are still market leaders in providing a wide global infrastructure with a comprehensive set of features in order to run all types of workload. Azure’s compute services also has a relatively good infrastructure that is great in use. GCP also offers a smooth learning curve with the lowest instance as well as usage price.

Storage — Every cloud service provider out of the three have their own set of capabilities across different functionalities. They all have a good inward with automation and an extensive range of options available. Azure also has a strong foothold in hybrid deployments as well as disaster recovery options. GCP has competitive pricing.

Database — AWS offers fleeting storage. It is given the moment an instance begins and gets destroyed when it ends. AWS offers block storage equal to hard disks which can be attached to any instance. Azure depends on the D drive, page blobs, and S3 service for archiving service. It supports the NoSQL database and big data. GCP offers temporary disk storage. It is available for Object storage. It supports relational databases through Google Cloud SQL.

Availability zone — AWS is the oldest hence it had had more time to expand its network. AWS is hosting in multiple locations along with GCP and Azure but there is a difference in the availability zones. AWS services 66 availability zones and 12 more are to be added. Azure offers 54 zones and is currently available in 140 countries. GCP is presently available in 20 regions and is planning to add three more.

Pricing — Amazon offers the Pay-as-you-go mechanism that implies that the under will pay for the individual services without the need for any long term licensing. Azure on the other offers much affordable pricing as compared to AWS as they charge on a minute basis. GCP also charges on a minute basis but there are no up-front costs nor are there any termination fees.

Being a renowned IT consulting company we gathered a lot of information to draw comparison of different features for the parameters are mentioned above:

Conclusion

Net Promoter Score

An agile software metric essentially is a software characteristic that is quantifiable and countable. Agile metrics are important for different reasons including software performance, planning work, productivity measurement and so on. Within the product software development process, there are many metrics that are related to each other and form an important part of the success.

Agile methods have been transformative for many companies but merely working on the method won’t suffice. It is equally important to measure the changes and see if they have been successful or not. For that, the article focuses on ten of the most powerful agile metrics that will help in building software projects in a better and bigger manner.

First, let’s understand what Agile Metrics are

The term is nothing but a standard of measurement that helps the development teams to understand the progress and the process refinement of their products across different levels of custom software development. These metrics help companies to focus on certifying the software quality

 Ten Agile Metrics needed for project management

Sprint Burndown report

Under this metric framework, scrum teams work together for the project. Here each process is divided into sprints. Every sprint is given a time limit and the progress of each sprint can be calculated along with the project. The sprint burndown report helps in the easy management and completion of different tasks during the sprint.

The forecast is done at the start of the project workload at the beginning of the sprint. The prime target is to ensure that by the end of the sprint the entire workload is complete.

Epic and Release Burndown

In this agile metric progress is tracked at a macro level rather than micro pieces of the project. The workflow is known at the beginning which is valuable to construct the chart. This method evaluates the progress of the team against the work for an epic.

Control Chart

It is the duration from the beginning of the development to the complete status. The metric is used to check the cycle time of a single issue. It is a good metric to have high throughput as it comprises shorter cycle times. The metric is excellent to improve the scalability of the process. Even the changes so made can be seen with results instantly shown. Based on the feedback adjustments can be made immediately. 

Lead Time

The lead time concept is a very basic concept that denotes the time between the request made and when the actual delivery is made. The teams identify the duration between identification of the issue and its fulfillment. It comprises several processes that bring a product close to the completion stage. It also includes the bug fixing time and it also provides accurate time for every process.

Velocity

It is a measure that brings out the average work that the software development team does in a sprint. The report contains many iterations and the more the iterations the better forecast. The unit of measurement can be story points or hours. It helps in understanding the ability of the team to work in backlogs. 

This is one of the methods widely used that talks about how much the customer is willing to refer the product to someone else. The NPS is an index ranging from -100 to 100. 

Work Item Age

This metrics help in tracking the progress of the development cycle and also talks about the time that has been sourced between the start and the completion of the task. The team uses this metric to understand the timeline, especially for unfinished tasks. With the use of this metric one can evaluate the movement of the current tasks in hand and also make a relative comparison to the earlier performances under the same context. 

Throughput

Another important metric often used by the organization in combination with other metrics is this. It depicts the team’s productivity level and also understands how the performance of the business unit is affected by the workflow.

Escaped defects

Software bugs can be a huge impediment to the progress of the project. It can hamper the smooth flow of the process and bring the work to a standstill. Such problems have to be addressed in the initial stage so that they are tackled within the initial stage itself before it is released for production. Here the quality of the software can be determined in the raw form itself.

Failed deployments

This metric measures the number of deployments done. It also helps in the rational understanding of the strong working environment and is a great indicator to see if the teams are building user-ready software or not. The sprints are carefully analyzed in order to check if the software is production-ready or not.

Wrap up

It is not merely enough when you switch over to agile methodology for your software development process. It is also important to measure how the processes are working after the application of application principles. If you are aiming at success, then these metrics have to be used. 

Covid-19 has unsettled human civilization. Despite them being in their homes, lockdowns have taken a toll on humans, especially emotional toll. Industries all across the world are facing the brunt of the lockdown and they are fighting it hard to retain their identity. But amidst the lockdown mayhem, mobile application development services has gained momentum like never before as consumers have more time in hand. 

Social distancing norms are getting stricter and businesses of today are changing their strategy to occupy the current situation. These plans are rock-solid because they are meant to utilize the online platform and access digital tools so that they do not defy any regulations. Many industries have suffered but they have also been very quick to adopt the online mobile application market, dominant in the time schedules of locked down people. We will be taking a look at how these 5 industries given below are coping with the heat with their mobile apps.

Education Industry

Healthcare Industry

Crowdfunding

Ecommerce/marketplace

Logistics and supply chain industry

Education industry

Students run the risk of contracting the virus maximum because educational institutions are crowded. The education industry has a mixed reaction to the lockdown because those players which were technologically ready have managed to leverage their LMS platforms to conduct E-learning and ensure that learning doesn’t stop. Several other unprepared players have realized their folly on not going the online long way back. Several AI integration tools in the mobile app development services suite have managed to fulfill the increasing appetite of learners. Online educational apps are in much demand and smart learning technology has literally converted every classroom into smart classrooms. 

Now students are spending a great deal of time on social media apps, but with the education sector seriously offering provisions for online education via apps, now the equal time is being consumed on these platforms as well.

A few encouraging trends are given below:

67% of US companies are already offering mobile learning through mobile applications. 

Between 2000 - 2017 the E-learning culture has increased by a huge 900%.

By 2025 the overall E-learning market can be anywhere close to $325 Billion

 E-learning offers several advantages including flexible scheduling and savings in costs. A total of $200 million was saved by IBM when it turned to online learning.

Healthcare industry

The Healthcare industry has always been stable and posts the occurrence of covid-19, there has been a rush of patients that are fearful of every little symptom. While the lockdown has affected the economics of several countries, the global healthcare market is seeing a huge surge. The healthcare segment with its linkages to technology has helped people to not get infected because they do not have to visit hospitals. With the help of several telehealth applications and mobile applications, they are able to provide remote care, remote monitoring, virtual consulting, online medicine delivery and much more. 

The crisis also has paved the way for companies employing the Internet Of things (IoT) giving the additional boost. The global IoT healthcare market will witness an annual growth of about 20% for a 5 year period from 2020 to 2025. At present the three most important apps that are offering such services are:

DocClocker mobile application is a mobile application that lets the patient know about the waiting time to consult the doctor and also provides temporary relief in terms of what they are suffering now.

Another mobile application called the Medici Healthcare mobile application which gives the patients the chance to connect with top doctors who are also a part of this network. The online consultation results in massive savings as the patient does not have to visit the premises. 

Orion also had brought in its own monitoring platform that helps in engaging the patients in their homes and will also help in easy communication between the quarantined population and their relevant healthcare service. 

 Crowdfunding

In order to raise collective and community capital, efforts of collaborating with family and friends along with individual investors help the case of crowdfunding. The current crisis has brought in immense uncertainties because the industries across have stopped their operations and a large portion of blue-collar workers are rendered jobless without any jobs. In many nations, people are struggling to find safe places to stay and their daily need for food. Digital crowdfunding platforms have massively contributed to this as it has given rise to newer ways of collaborating and mobilizing support in times of crisis.

Advertising budget has shrunk but crowdfunding has provided campaigns especially on social platforms like FB and Insta which are hugely popular. For instance, in the US’s Prompt had launched a funding goal on 25th February. This funding goal was achieved in 19 days. Amidst the turmoil in the US, the company continues to go upward in terms of funding. Oros which is a popular apparel brand also came forward with its campaign on March 10th. It got fully funded in 2 hours and still continues to raise money and have exceeded $210,000 in their collection. 

E-commerce

With respect to E-commerce platforms those products which are of no use to them in this crisis, are suffering, but those which are considered a necessity, are seeing huge jumps in their sale on the online marketplaces. These facts will prove the same.

Among the products that were selling the most,  the maximum sale was registered for products like toilet papers, antibacterial sprays, sanitizers. It has understandably seen an increase of 817% compared to what they usually experience.

The sale of medicine also has been registered on these apps. The demand for medicines related to cold, flu and fever has seen a major increase to the tune of 198%.

Grocery purchases including perishable and non-perishable items have been a major push.

 Supply Chain

The essential supply delivery is considered the most important because if this does not cater to the needs, people will surely come out in the crowd and make purchases. The automated software available to strengthen the supply chain and distribution networks has led to easy order processing, inventory forecast, on-time delivery and much more. 

Conclusion