Category: SaaS

SaaS

Magento Development: is it Still the Best Out There?

Miley on March 25, 2022

Magento is one of the best and most widely used eCommerce app development platforms. Choosing Magento development services for your eCommerce platform is a wise decision.

A plethora of eCommerce or web app development platforms are available in the market, and choosing the best amongst them is a very crucial thing. A lot of deciding factors are there to choose the best platform.

What is Magento?

Magento is mainly an open-source platform that can be used to develop a flawless eCommerce web application. The best Magento development services platform has many options for in-built themes and templates.

It is a platform that provides flexibility, scalability and is expandable. Magento provides three significant varieties of its Magento enterprise edition, Magento community edition, and Magento commerce cloud edition.

Features of Magento

Magento has fantastic features that can be used for developing an excellent eCommerce platform. The features are:

Analytics and reporting
Product browsing
Catalog management
Customer accounts
Order management
Payment and shipping
Search engine optimization
Marketing and promoting tools
Site management
Mobile commerce

Advantages of using Magento

If you still doubt why to use Magento as the best eCommerce app development platform, then here are some of the advantages you can consider to clear your doubts.

It is a flexible management system

Magento is the best choice for an eCommerce platform by contrast with other platforms. The platform has an intelligent and flexible content management system.

It is compatible with every store irrespective of the product they have. Developing an eCommerce platform for various sizes and types is easy to develop with the help of Magento.

Advanced SEO

Every business owner of an eCommerce platform wishes to have a higher ranking for their application or products pages, lead in SERP of every search engine, and even in the top lists.

The owners take all the measures through which their website can rank higher on the search engine optimization page. Due to it, Magento has developed Advanced features SEO to help the owners to improve their ranking.

Extensions

Magento provides a high range of in-built extensions that a Magento developer services provider can utilize to develop an eCommerce platform. It will allow the facility to extend the Magento store feature.

The extension in feature will depend on your targeted audience and what they require. Gradually when your store gets famous, it will need more advanced features to attract users, and extensions will help you.

Highly secured

Magento is one of the most highly secure platforms compared to other eCommerce platforms available in the market. Magento follows the globally accepted security standards.

Business owners who deal with the global market have to worry more about the security of the payment they need to collect online, and according to them, Magento is the perfect fit.

Faster loading time

The main aim of Magento is to provide faster loading of an eCommerce website. According to research, the loading speed of a website plays a paramount role in increasing the users and your business.

As no one likes to wait for the website to load and if the website’s loading speed is low, your eCommerce app can lose users permanently, and if the speed is proper, it can attract more customers to your eCommerce website.

Hosting options

Magento allows various hosting options for business owners to choose from according to their businesses; it won’t be the business to stay with the hosting that is provided by the platform.

Magento allows every eCommerce store owner to select a hosting provider based on their demands openly. It will provide freedom for online businesses to choose their file and the hosting companies.

Why is Magento development the best choice for eCommerce?

Here are some of the reasons that will answer your question and make you understand why to use Magento development services. Let us go through the various reasons deeply.

It is open source

One of the primary reasons to select Magento for the eCommerce platform is that it is open source. It simply means that anyone aware of using Magento can use it easily and can use its advantages.

As Magento has 3 main editions and amongst all the three editions, Magento Community Edition is free to use. You can easily install it for free cost and can use any version of Magento Community Editions.

Magento Community

Another essential reason to select Magento is its vast community that consists of certified developers, bloggers, programmers, project managers, and much more. You can also hire a certified Magento developer from the extended community.

The Magento community assures that everyone stays on the same page. If you are a developer and facing any problem, you can rely on the Magento community to solve your problem.

Compatible for eCommerce platform

Magento is a default content management system that is compatible with online businesses. Magento allows various facilities to the eCommerce store to help the owners improve their business.

Magento also supports multiple store management, which can help the eCommerce website handle multiple stores simultaneously. It also has various payment gateways useful for making in-app payments to provide a smooth purchase to the customers.

Superior support

It is integral to have strong support for running a successful online business, and it is also essential for business growth. So when it comes to online support for the eCommerce store, the technical support team will handle the critical things.

High performance

Magento provides high performance to the eCommerce store with the faster page loading speed, query processing time, and other static and dynamic operations.

It assures high performance for your eCommerce website even by using minimum server resources. Magento understands the disadvantage of the low performance of the website, so it provides such facilities to improve the performance.

Multitasking

Magento enables eCommerce to do various tasks simultaneously, and it will be easy to perform other essential tasks simultaneously while monitoring the Magento website’s performance.

Thus it also helps you to save your precious time. The owners and developers can also handle the items, bills, customer information with just a single admin panel that is user-friendly.

Conclusion

The above blog shows the benefits and reasons why Magento is considered the best eCommerce platform. Magento is the most loved platform for business owners and developers as it provides various facilities to improve the business.

One can hire a certified developer who is willing to have a successful eCommerce website for their business. Magento platform provides a smooth experience to the users for shopping through the website.

About Author:

Rahim Ladhani, CEO and Managing Director at Nevina Infotech, Enterprise Web App & Mobile Application Development Company, helps global businesses grow by the eCommerce website development services.

LinkedIn:- https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahim-ladhani-7841a237/

Development SaaS

Why Unit Testing is Important in Software Development?

Miley on March 2, 2022

So finally you have decided to delve into the software development world, great start! I hope you won’t miss out on the penultimate step that is supposed to be taken before the launch of the software product to the market. I am talking about none other than software testing!

Of course, till now it has been pretty common for businesses to ignore this step due to enormous reasons such as it is not budget-friendly or it’s fine what we need is a properly developed software. More or less, I have heard many people saying that this would lead to no major consequences. Well, what you may miss out on is software testing is a must-do thing as it offers a plethora of benefits ranging from enhanced product quality to improved security, detect compatibility with different devices and platforms and a lot goes more.

However, I am not going to get into the details of what software testing is or why one must look into finding relevant software testing services as I am pretty sure there are many posts written on a daily basis. The following post focuses on what unit testing is and why unit tests are a significant aspect of the software testing space. So without any further ado, let’s begin!

Define Unit Testing?

As the name implies, unit testing can be considered as a subset of software testing where components are being tested individually. In any software testing life cycle model (STLC), unit testing is the very first level of testing and it comes prior to integration testing. In other words, I would say that unit testing is a white-box testing method mainly performed by the developer. However, this is not true for each and every case as of now, developers due to time restraints are unable to conduct relevant tests due to which QA engineers have to barge in.

As mentioned earlier, unit testing emphasizes individual units of the software being tested separately. For example, one can test different computer modules to ensure whether they are fit to use or not. This is mainly done to check whether it’s the developer’s mistake or not. Moreover, you can consider it an approach to check how functionally appropriate these modules are individual.

So what is the main objective behind conducting unit tests?

A part of code can be separated
To check whether the code is correct or not
Thorough check through functionality for smooth procedures
Fix errors and easy debugging process to save time, money, and energy
Enhance code reusability

Types of Unit Tests

The ultimate objective of unit testing as mentioned above is to double-check whether things are working as they are supposed to in the first place. But this type of testing is more detailed checking every module individually. You see, the entire system works wonders only if the individual parts are working in great condition. Now there are two types of unit testing: one is manual testing and the other is automated testing.

Now what happens is software testers most of the time tend to choose the automated method. The reason being it’s quick offers accurate results and best when it comes to performance. Here developers are initially asked to write a specific section of test code so that functions can be tested automatically. On the contrary, The manual approach is a bit time-consuming as here one needs to follow a specific procedure for everything to work effectively.

Importance of Unit Testing in Software Development

Now, why is unit testing important? Well, unit testing offers a wide range of benefits in the entire software development process. Hereby performing unit testing software developers won’t be just going through the components of the software individually but also can spot errors in the unit testing phase. Further in case of any error occurs, developers can debug it right away!

Now many of you often get confused between unit testing and test-driven development. Well, there is a difference! There is no specific way of conducting unit tests. I mean one can write them before the code is implemented and even after that. Now when it comes to test-driven development, many of you have this misconception that it is a testing technique. It’s not! This can be considered as a software development practice where different tests are being implemented just to define the code functions. These codes haven’t been written yet! Unlike unit tests, the main goal of test-driven development is to improve the code right on during the development process. Not to mention that unit testing ensures the creation of bug-free code. Now without any further ado, let us begin why it is important to conduct unit testing

1. Unit Tests enhances the code quality

Software developers generally do is they write unit tests first and then write the code. This happens most of the time while conducting test-driven development. And you know what’s the best part, if the code somehow doesn’t meet appropriate requirements or specifications then the code won’t be added. Moreover, here developers can easily modify the code. Yes, even after such modifications there is no change in the functionality of neighboring units. Everything stays the same yet different.

In case, if something happens to the code, nothing can stop developers from identifying the root cause in the given time. Yes, they no longer will be asked to unwieldy go through the codebase to spot the issue. This is the pure magic of unit testing. Now does this mean the code adheres to specified standards? Absolutely!

2. Makes the Agile Software Development Process

Another crucial advantage of unit testing is it makes the development process more agile. Now in a general scenario what happens is when developers try adding more and more features just to make the software more attention-grabbing, they likely or unlikely are asked to change old design and the code. Now, this is a lose-lose situation. On one hand, you are changing the code and on the other hand, you are running out of your budget. As a solution, to refactor things accurately, it is advisable to conduct unit test cases in place.

Unit testing and agile programming are more like chocolate and peanut butter. So to conduct safe refactoring, choose this combo right away!

3. Documentation

Of course, documentation is extremely important whether it’s unit testing, integration testing, or any other software testing type. And unit testing offers very detailed documentation to assist professionals conducting the software development process. In case, if the developers get stuck or misguided, the developers can go through the document at any point in time.

4. Early Detection of software bugs

Issues found at an early stage are the best way to conduct the development process. Now since unit testing can be conducted before and after code is implemented. It becomes pure bliss for developers as they can find issues, fix them and all this happens without interfering with other pieces of code.

5. Changes and Integration Made Easier

Refactoring the application code, Another crucial benefit worth considering here. Here, once unit tests are conducted by professionals can decipher the code that might be hindering the overall app development procedure. By conducting unit tests, the scalability and maintenance of the code automatically improve.

6. Software Is Tested Prior to Delivery

As a developer what is the prime need while writing the code? To ensure that it operates in the best manner possible. And Unit Testing is one such way that can make this happen!

7. It significantly lowers development costs

Now have you ever wondered what happens if the errors are detected later on? Of course, first of all, high loss of money! Then you have to make several system changes. It may quite interest you to know that the price of detecting an error in a unit test is way lower than the price of doing everything right from spotting to fixing errors on other levels of testing. Performing unit tests is all about high-end savings whether it is in the context of time, money, and energy.

8. Design

Psychologically speaking, writing the tests compels a developer to think hard. Most of the time, the life of developers becomes monotonous and they just start working on the process before writing the code. Unit tests won’t let this happen! Apart from making them think, developers can focus more on creating intimidating designs. You only get to know its worth unless it is being tested in time. Similarly, what is the code’s responsibility? This should be your prime concern before you even begin developing.

9. Unit Test improves Performance

What would any business expect from software? That it has to be best in regards to performance, right? And conducting frequent unit tests definitely results in enhanced performance of the product.

10. Provides a Chance for Continuous Integration

Software development is a continuous process where we see a team of software developers working on several features which are cross-cutting concerns. Now if by any chance a developer makes a breaking change and other members are unable to figure that out what could happen? Fortunately, we have a CI server.

CI servers are pretty much beneficial because it not only handles the merging and compilation precisely but also can run your tests whether it’s a functional, unit, integration, etc.

Conclusion

Again I would say all about the software testing realm is very subjective though it does have a brighter side there are certain situations where it might not be a good fit. At the end of the day, it’s the way you make things work. So that’s all for now! In case you have any doubt or issues, feel free to mention that in the comment section below.

test code, unit test cases, unit testing phase, unit testing ensures, code unit testing, documentation unit testing

SaaS

How to Become a Pro at Web Designing? All the Dos and Don’ts

Miley on February 7, 2022

What’s the first thing that you notice on a website? Is it the design or the layout? Or are you more interested in how user-friendly the interface is? Priorities of a web design vary according to designers’ preferences. However, there are certain elements that every designer should take care of. Your top priority should be making them fun and enjoyable.

For the newbies in the industry, it can be a bit of a daunting task. If you find yourself lost and aren’t sure what are the dos and don’ts for your web design, you’re in the right place. As the experts of affordable web design services, we have curated a list of all the dos and don’t that will surely help you in your journey as a web designer.

Let’s Talk About the Dos First

1. Keep the Interface Consistent

One of the primary principles of a good UX is to maintain consistency throughout the design. The overall look across the website pages should be similar rather than being majorly different. Consistency of color schemes, navigation, and writing style will positively impact the UX.

Simply put, consider your consistency a double-edged sword. If it’s not designed properly, the outcome will result in a poor design when you try to make the other parts consistent. So, make sure your design is usable and then move forward with consistency.

2. Should be Easy-to-Navigate

Easy navigation is the foundation of usability. When your website is easy to navigate, it acts as the primary interaction technique. Without it, the visitors cannot find what they are looking for and will leave disappointed. Try to keep too-level navigation for the essential navigation options and sub-navigation with clear and specific categorization. You should also ensure using clear labels for better navigation and easy words to ensure everyone understands them.

Furthermore, your website should be built in a way that takes the users to the destination with a maximum of three clicks. If it takes them more than that to reach their desired option, you need to make some improvements. Including navigation options in the footer is also a good idea. When people can’t find what they are looking for in the tabs, they turn to the footer. So, make sure it has all the essential labels.

3. Make Scanning Easy

Truth be told, no one likes to read everything on the website. When someone visits, they expect everything to be right in front of them, and they can find their desired option by quickly scanning through. Your job as a designer is to ensure that everything is clearly visible and the visual hierarchy is top-notch. By visual hierarchy, we mean that elements should be arranged according to their importance, such as where the eyes should focus first, second, third, and so on.

To make scanning easy, here’s what you need to do:

Avoid text walls – rather than stuffing the page with a lot of text, arrange the information in the form of chunks to make it easier to skim through.
Highlight what’s important – you should put more visual weight on the critical elements. For instance, the call-to-action buttons should stand out, so they catch the visitors’ attention right away. You can use different fonts or colors for highlighting.
Stick to a grid – Scattered information won’t do you any good so, try to make a grid layout. A grid will allow you to organize information and make it look more presentable. It will make it easier for the visitors to get the information and prevent them from getting lost.

4. Pay Attention to your Content

The design and visual appeal of your website are not everything. Sure, it helps grab the viewer’s attention, but if the content inside is low-quality, there is nothing that will encourage the visitor to stay on your page. So, to give them something to stay for, you need good content. If you want to make your website a good one, both visuals and content are equally important. Make sure that the web design complements the content and fulfills all requirements.

Only add the content that’s relevant to your website. Irrelevant content will only kill your website’s image and confuse your visitors. Every word should be valuable for the visitors and offer the information they are looking for. You should also avoid the use of unnecessarily complicated terms. The website is supposed to be easily understandable by everyone, and using difficult words won’t make it look fancy.

Now We More Towards the Don’ts

1. Don’t Test Your Visitors’ Patience

Did you know that 54% of people expect a web page to load within 3 seconds? If it takes longer than that, they’re likely to abandon your website, and that’s something no web designer wants. So, if you want to ensure that your visitors stay on the site, you shouldn’t test their patience. Your web page should load in 2 seconds or less. That’s why high loading speed should be your priority. If you pay attention to the loading time, the chances are that 79% of the people will revisit or even share your website!

2. Don’t Confuse Internal & External Links

You might not know this, but visitors expect different behavior from internal and external links. Therefore, you should keep a clear distinction between them both. Your internal links should open on the same page, so the users have the option to use the back button and return to the initial page. Even if you want to direct them to a new tab, add a warning before automatically opening it. The notification can go along the lines of “opens is a new tab.” On the contrary, all external links should open in new tabs so users know that they are now entering a new source.

3. Don’t Include Too Many Typefaces

As a beginner, you might find it tempting to use too many typefaces; don’t give in to your temptations. Using five or six different fonts and uploading your own fonts is a rookie mistake. It makes your interface look childish and doesn’t give it the classic appeal that you want. Keep it classy and simple, as too many variations can be distracting and confusing. Look at your website from a viewer’s perspective, and you will agree that significant variations in the typefaces can be borderline annoying.

Summing it Up

That being said, your website is your brand’s image. If you fail to satisfy the visitors, they will move on to your competitors, and that’s the last thing you want. So, with every decision, put yourself in the viewer’s shoes and then proceed accordingly. When you ensure offering a delightful experience to your visitors, you will thrive as a web designer.

Author Bio:

Sophie Handrix was born in New York & has vast experience in the designing industry. She is working at Adravity.

Martech SaaS

5 Examples of Progressive Web Apps

Miley on December 27, 2021

Progressive web apps are increasingly finding favor with companies globally. It allows companies to engage better with their clients.

You may ask, what is a Progressive web app?

These are websites that look and function like an app. They use the latest technology to offer the users’ app-like experiences right in their browsers.

To explain to you in detail how progressive web apps helped companies achieve their goals, I have listed some real-life examples here.

Top progressive web apps that achieved their goals

Tinder

The first choice of the millennials when they are looking for a dating app is Tinder. If you look at the structure of this app, you will find that its main focus is mobile users.

Recently, this immensely popular online dating app decided to invest in a progressive web app to target new markets.

While building this app, one of their key goals was to maintain 1:1 feature parity with their existing native application. And if you look at their newly launched progressive web app, then you will find that they have succeeded in this task.

The key points of this app that make it a grand success include the following.

The size of this app is just 10% of the existing native app.
Short development cycle.
The number of users swipes and messaging increased.
The session time of the users also increased significantly.

AliExpress

AliExpress is another example of how the progressive web app helped a company to significantly improve the users’ engagement online.

This hugely popular e-commerce website was struggling in its effort to offer a highly engaging web experience to its users. The company experimented with the concept of using its mobile website to attract non-app users to download their app – this experiment did not give them the desired results.

To rectify the situation, AliExpress looked at various types of web apps and then decided to create a cross-browser progressive web app.

This decision was a smash hit with the users and the overall performance of the website increased significantly.

To help you understand the level of success of the new progressive web app of AliExpress, you need to look at its key performance indicators.

The conversion rate increased dramatically by 104%.
The number of pages visited per session also doubled.
The number of time users spends per session also increased by 74%.

Pinterest also chooses to go with Progressive Web Apps as it aligns well with its business goals and objectives.

The planners at Pinterest were stumped on how to offer highly engaging service to those users who were struggling with low bandwidth or have a limited data plan.

After analyzing the viewer’s activity on their mobile website, they discovered that only 1% of the new users either signed up or logged into their account.

To meet this challenge, they launched their progressive web app and were astounded by the results. Some of the important highlights of their progressive web app include the following.

A huge jump of 103% in active weekly users numbers YoY.
The session length also increased dramatically by 296%.
The rate of signup YoY also saw a gigantic jump of 843%.

Starbucks

Starbucks always believed in offering its customers a great experience and a good value for their money.

Therefore, with the rise of mobile users, they quickly identified the potential and decided to offer a highly engaging mobile-first experience to their users.

They decided to do this through their progressive web app and the engagement statistics of the app show that it was a big hit among the users.

Some of the points that would buttress my argument regarding the massive improvement Starbucks saw after investing in a progressive mobile app are as follows.

It offered the users ordering offline ordering options.
The performance of PWA was significantly faster than the legacy native app.
The users used the app from their home screen an average of four times a day.
The session time was more.

Twitter

Twitter is a hugely popular social media giant with a user base of several million.

Twitter from its early days focused on offering a mobile-first experience to its users.

However, in the emerging market, they faced the problem of users with limited bandwidth as well as legacy mobile devices.

For them, progressive web apps offered an optimum solution of offering their new users in the emerging markets a solution that offers feature parity with their existing mobile app.

The result of this investment was dramatic, to say the least. Twitter saw an overall improvement in all performance indexes of their progressive web app some of which include the following.

The number of tweets sent increased by 75%.
The length of each session also increased by 65%.
The bounce rate was brought down by 20%.
The frequency of tweets by average users increased to 4 times a day.

Conclusion

The examples I have put together in this article show conclusively why companies all over the world are slowly switching over to the progressive web app.

SaaS

Is WhatsApp Chatbot Right For Your Business Growth

Miley on October 21, 2021

WhatsApp has approximately 1.5 billion monthly active users in 180 countries, making it a messaging industry pioneer. Furthermore, the app has 96 million downloads in February 2020, demonstrating its widespread appeal. Although WhatsApp began as a platform for consumers to interact with family and friends, a portion of the network is now used by businesses to communicate with customers.

As a result, the WhatsApp Business API and WhatsApp Business application were created. WhatsApp for Business was created to assist medium and large enterprises in engaging with consumers all over the world and sending quick and automatic responses. We will learn about the WhatsApp business, the WhatsApp chatbot, and its different benefits and applications in this article. Let’s get started!

Reasons How WhatsApp Chatbot Is Right For Your Business:

Omnipresence:

Customers who have had a positive experience with customer service are more inclined to buy from the company again. Customers want businesses to be where they are when they need them. A chatbot takes care of the “when” with its 24/7 automation. WhatsApp also allows you to optimize for the “where” because of its massive market penetration. Your brand and organization are never more than a click away with WhatsApp. Your products are simple to find, and your services are simple to use.

Human intervention:

The issue with brands’ unmanned channels/tools is that human intervention is never fast enough. An email thread can take hours to enlist the help of the appropriate department or agency. Humans, on the other hand, can effortlessly and instantly pick up chats from a WhatsApp Business Chatbot. This allows agents to provide outstanding customer service without having to deal with thousands of repetitive interactions.

Excellent Metrics:

WhatsApp is one of the most effective marketing platforms available. WhatsApp achieves outcomes that leave its competitors in the dust because of its convenience and simplicity. Furthermore, the best WhatsApp chatbot has a delivery rate of 100%, a read rate of 95%, and a conversion rate of nearly 3x that of other channels. This guarantees that your brand’s digital assets engage all of the people who are supposed to see them.

Simple To Automate:

A chatbot enables businesses to automate a major portion of their consumer interactions. WhatsApp Business chatbots can handle everything from generating and qualifying leads to automating FAQs and decreasing support tickets. But that’s just the start; Verloop enables businesses to automate even more. Automatically transfer data from your chatbot to your preferred CRM/OMS system. Use webhooks to pull data from your systems and offer it to your customers in a seamless manner.

How WhatsApp Chatbot Is Right For Your Business?

WhatsApp business chatbots provide businesses with a fantastic opportunity to reach out to a larger audience and provide them with the best customer care that keeps them coming back to you. The following are some of the advantages of using a WhatsApp chatbot for your business owners:

Small, family-run businesses, as well as major corporations, can use the platform

Chatbots on WhatsApp provide a more enriched client experience, which aids in customer retention and engagement

Enhances customer interactions while increasing brand exposure and loyalty

Makes your company accessible through a variety of methods

Clients can receive broadcasts and outbound notifications

Businesses can use an interactive and visual medium to connect with customers

WhatsApp is available worldwide (except in China), allowing you to create a customer-centric chatbot that caters to a global audience

Functionality Of WhatsApp Chatbot:

The following are the top 3 functionalities of the WhatsApp chatbot to look upon:

Secure:

WhatsApp is one of the most secure services on the planet because of its end-to-end encryption. End-to-end encryption on WhatsApp means that only you and the person with whom you’re conversing can read what’s sent, with no one in between, including WhatsApp. As a result, WhatsApp is an excellent platform for sending messages containing sensitive information. WhatsApp can be used to send OTPs, transactional updates, and follow-ups.

Media Rich:

Apart from its mobility and ease of use, WhatsApp’s media richness makes it an excellent platform for businesses to communicate with their customers. Unlike email or phone support, brands can send photographs, videos, gifs, audio recordings, and documents using WhatsApp.

Ease Of Use:

WhatsApp is known for having one of the most user-friendly and straightforward interfaces available. As a result, all clients will be able to use the platform to its full potential – without needing to be technologically savvy. This facilitates user onboarding and increases user retention. When businesses utilize WhatsApp Business Chatbots for customer service or lead generation, their customers get the same great experience they’ve come to expect.

Wrapping It Up:

Today’s businesses recognize the necessity of reaching out to clients where they are already. One of the most significant benefits of WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp Business chatbots is that they can assist in the development of a steady and long-term relationship with your clients without requiring them to seek you out on multiple platforms.

Businesses can profit from the benefits of a devoted audience and better engagement afforded by WhatsApp by developing a user-friendly chatbot. Customer support operations may be streamlined with the correct chatbot platform, and your consumers will receive better service than your competition.

________________________________________________________________________

Author’s Bio:

Alishba Memon is a content writer at Botsify. She is a staunch believer in the theory of making anything happen. She specializes in SEO writing and content writing. She aims to spring up in a pragmatic way.

Head Shot:

Links To Profile:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alishba-memon-2b38a7190/

Twitter:https://twitter.com/ialishbamemon

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amdec24

Email: alishba@botsify.com

Development SaaS

Progressive Web Apps: Future Of Web Development

Miley on October 14, 2021

Introduction

Mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, have changed the way that many people access the internet.

According to Statista, there are 7.1 billion smartphone users in the world now, which indicates that 80.76% of the world’s population owns one. These numbers show that a huge amount of internet users are now connected via mobile devices.

A very important challenge faced by businesses is how to reach out to both mobile and desktop customers without having to create and manage both a mobile app (iOS and Android) and a responsive website.

With so many people using mobile devices to browse the web, developers have started designing more simplistic websites for users who don’t have time to download bulky applications.

These websites are called Progressive Web Apps (PWA), and they behave like native mobile apps but can be accessed from almost anywhere with an internet connection. Because of this, PWA is the latest trend in web development.

In this Progressive Web Apps post, we’ll cover what PWAs are and the difference between Progressive Web Apps and native apps. We’ll also go over some of the benefits of developing a PWA and how organizations use PWAs.

What are progressive web apps?

Computer — As seen on monitors, the new website is developed

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are web applications that use modern web capabilities, such as service workers and push notifications, to deliver an app-like user experience, such as working offline or push messages, making them more user-friendly than traditional web apps.

Components of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) include a website, which is the basis for your application; service workers, which allow PWAs to work offline or on low-quality networks; and a web manifest file, which describes the web app to the browser so it can be displayed full screen on launch.

Website

The first step is to create a website that will serve as the basis for your application. It should adhere to responsive web design principles and be as small as possible: the first interaction should be quick and painless. There is no need to install a development environment because PWAs are created using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, just like any other website.

A website that uses different technologies (e.g. web app manifest, push notifications) to make it act like an app. The web app works like a normal website, but once saved to the device home screen, it can send push notifications and work offline.

Service Worker

A service worker is a script that runs in the background of your application. It is only active when you’re online, which allows you to send push notifications and keep data synchronized even when the web app is closed.

Website Manifest File

A manifest file is a simple JSON file, which tells Chrome how your web application should look once installed on the user’s device. It provides information about the application’s name, its icon, where to start or activate it, and more.

Top benefits of progressive web apps

There are many advantages of using PWAs over traditional native applications, and they include:

Smaller and lighter

The average application is about 25MB, while PWAs are usually less than 100kb. This is because the only file required to run a PWA is the manifest.json, which can be as little as 4kb in size.

Budget-friendly

They are a cost-effective way to engage with your existing user base and gain new users as they can be saved to the device home screen. It is also possible to send push notifications to both Android and iOS devices without building two separate applications.

Easy to maintain

Because PWAs are web-based, there is no need to update them separately. Instead, they can be updated as and when required, directly from the server. This means no additional storage space on the device is used as well as the user requires less effort as they don’t have to download a new application after an update.

Low bounce rate / increased customer engagement

PWAs provide a way for users to engage with your website even when they’re offline. For example, users who add your web app to their home screen won’t have to wait for it to load each time they open the browser, which leads to lower bounce rates resulting in higher customer engagement.

Offline mode

PWAs also work offline and can be used even when the device is not connected to a network. This is because the data required to use the application is stored locally. This means that your site will still be accessible even when a connection isn’t available, ensuring continuity of service and making it an attractive option for users with poor or no internet connectivity.

No app store submission

There is no need to go through the app store submission process and wait for approval. The Google Chrome store automatically detects changes made to the manifest file, allowing you to distribute updates directly from your server without resubmitting your app or making changes on a developer’s end.

Use of hardware features

PWAs can be used to access a device’s hardware, such as the camera or microphone, without going through the app store submission process. This is useful if you want your users to take photos and upload them directly to your website – something that would otherwise normally require an app store submission.

Mobile like behavior

PWAs behave like mobile apps and load instantly on devices. They can also send push notifications to users, which means you can stay in touch with your customers without them having to manually check for updates.

Progressive web apps vs native apps: Difference?

Gadets — Progressive web apps are the future of web development and are easy to access

A native app is a non-web program designed for a specific platform, written in a programming language specifically for that platform. This means it can only be run on the operating system for which it was developed, while PWAs work across different platforms, including iOS and Android devices.

A progressive web app uses modern web standards to provide an app-like experience using Application Cache (AppCache) and service workers. These features must be used in combination to take advantage of the “app-like” nature progressive web apps provide.

One of the main differences between a PWA and a native application is that PWAs run on different platforms, while native apps are for one platform only. This means fewer development costs as well as app store fees. Additionally, there’s no need to build or maintain two code bases since they can be built and maintained on one platform.

PWAs run on browser-like websites, while native applications are installed onto a device like traditional software. This distinction makes PWAs more secure, reliable, and faster than native applications.

Cost of development and maintenance

Native apps require developers with expertise in the particular platform for which they are intended, as well as a great deal of time, effort, and monetary investment. This means native app development is usually more costly than PWAs.

Due to their browser-based nature, PWAs can be tested on real devices through an emulator or a simple addition of a meta tag on the website’s head section. No installation is required, so it can be tested directly from a web browser. This saves time and lowers development costs since no developer expertise is required for specific platforms.

Convenience

PWAs can be easily distributed and updated on the web, while native apps must go through an app store where they need to meet strict requirements set by platform owners. This means that the frequency of updates is greatly increased for PWAs.

SEO & discoverability

PWAs are discoverable through search engines, making them a quick way for users to find your app. Since they behave like traditional websites, PWAs also have the advantage of being indexed by search engines as opposed to only those that meet specific store requirements or those that are submitted as per store guidelines.

Security

PWAs are more secure than native applications since there is no need to protect the operating system or device from application threats.

Installation

A PWA does not require installation like a native application, making it easier and more convenient for the end-user. However, some browsers will prompt users to add the website as an app if they visit often enough. With this method, there is still no need for an application store submission or update process since PWAs can be updated from the browser itself.

Performance

PWAs are faster than native applications since they run on a web engine rather than directly on the device. In contrast, they may be slightly slower when compared to a fully optimized native app. However, this difference in speed is offset by their advantage of being updateable from within the browser itself with no outside interference required.

How Do Organizations Use PWAs?

Leading businesses are driving increased support for PWAs by adopting that they are used to their maximum potential. Below are some instances of progressive web apps to demonstrate the growing importance of progressive web apps:

Google is using PWAs in their NewsStand, which offers users the ability to browse various topics, download content for offline browsing, listen to podcasts, and more with little data usage. On top of that, Android users will now see an “Install” button when they search for apps on the Play Store – this feature will be rolled out later this year.

Apple app store functions as a PWA that allows users to search for apps from their browser, then install them from the mobile device itself. This is similar to how Google Search works on Android devices with the Play Store.

Forbes is using PWAs in a way to improve page views and time spent on their site. Instead of visitors having to wait for the web page to load with ads, Forbes has created a PWA that allows users to download content for later use when they have no connection. Additionally, when not online, users can still read articles from the cache version of the website allowing for a more fluid user experience.

Flipkart also uses PWAs in their online shopping experience by keeping track of user preferences and allowing for context-based search results. Customers can also integrate the Flipkart app with the website, so they don’t have to leave the device to check out.

Twitter has been using PWAs for a while now, allowing users to open the app from a mobile browser without going through any extra steps. This has been great for users since opening links from non-native apps fall back to mobile websites.

Conclusion: Are PWAs the future of web development?

PWAs are becoming more and more popular among smaller companies that want to increase their user base but don’t have the funds for a fully-fledged app. They’re also great for larger corporations who are already used to web software which can save them time, money, and effort when it comes to updating content or rolling out new features.

The bottom line is this: PWAs may not be able to replace native apps altogether in every industry – but they offer many benefits that make them worth considering if you’re looking into creating your own mobile application. If you need help deciding whether progressive web applications are right for your business needs, contact our web development company today! Our team of expert developers and analysts will show you how we’ve helped other businesses succeed with PWA solutions.

SaaS

Modernizing Cloud Platform: Don’t Worry Data Lake Got You Covered

Miley on October 11, 2021

Data lakes are succeeding hybrids frameworks that are capable of addressing big data problems while also enabling new heights of true intelligence. Their scalability system can handle very huge data quantities, and it accepts data in its rawest form from a wide range of data sources, including the internet. In order to serve as a complement to your database system, it also serves as a foundation for computer vision and genuine analytic tools in a cooperative way.

Despite decreasing compliance issues and shortening time duration of discovery, Snowflake data lake services allow the democratization of data via identity entry while also democratizing data. By successfully creating and using data lakes, businesses may reap a variety of advantages.

Some of the major advantages of Snowflake Data Lake:

Development is being accelerated.
Connection with organizational objectives
Adaptability and adaptability
Administration and successful implementation are two important aspects of every organization.
Quality, safety, and confidentiality are all important considerations.

Modernization of data warehouses and lakes presents many difficulties

Customers encounter a variety of obstacles when it comes to speeding their cloud machine learning algorithms projects. In fact, as per McKinsey, approximately 70 percent of companies attempting to grow digital applications in the cloud will fail in their efforts. A study of the business noticed that 95% of CIOs had difficulty putting combining data from various platforms in order to evaluate the effect of IT expenditures on the company’s bottom line.

Common problems, such as those listed below, may cause cost and complexity to rise.
The amount of data being generated is increasing all the time.
There is a lack of synergy among individual solutions.
Failure to adhere to especially data and control standards
The integrity of the network system from beginning to finish is lacking.
keeping up with constantly evolving technology is a challenge
Materials are in short supply.

How is Data Lake the trend and how can it overcome the challenges?

A simplified view of database storage on the internet

Data lakes, whether managed or unmanaged, are the trend of a not future, and they are set for becoming crucial parts of the contemporary data structure. It allows businesses to handle the large amount, variety of data formats, and real-time accessibility of data that is produced today with the versatility, durability, and mobility that they need. They may also democratize access to the data for a greater number of people for almost any reason.

Data lakes may be an excellent initial step for many businesses, especially when used to supplement an established corporate data warehouse (DW). Additionally, it provides you with greater versatility and efficiency in terms of information handling and collecting uncontrolled, semi-structured and method of investigating, as well as allowing you to free up capacity in your data warehouse for data analysis analyses. It’s also a use case that, in most cases, results in a definite return on the investment.

Data democratization is also beneficial when it comes to avoiding data silos. Users who have been granted access to the data are not subject to any limitations. The Data Lake method helps in managing all of your data from a single location, centralizing a variety of data forms and kinds, and providing access to everyone authorized stakeholders at any time.

DLs are more versatile they do not need the forecasting of every other business aspect throughout the development process. You may gather data without consideration to its organization initially, provided you plan to impart structure to the data since the very start of the meeting. In other cases, though, this is precisely what you want to accomplish, particularly if a portion of your database is shared and consumable along with a variety of economic activities.

When data is ingested into a data lake, there is no need for data modeling to take place. It is possible to do so throughout the process of locating and examining data effectively. It provides unparalleled freedom in terms of asking any commercial or industry inquiries and drawing inferences.
It is necessary to develop a high availability absorption system that pulls data from a variety of sources, including WebPages, mobile applications, social networking sites, Internet of Things devices, and current Data Management systems. It ought to be able to operate in bulk, yet another, or genuine methods, and it must handle all kinds of data, as well as new information sources, to maximize its flexibility.

Bottom Line

Maintaining a high level of customer engagement is critical to keeping the competition at bay for any company. As the company becomes more digital; the availability of data as well as the quickness with which it can be developed and deployed would become progressively important considerations. The data lake is a pipe dream which could meet all of these requirements.

Development SaaS

Why You Should Start Using Webinars for Your Business

Miley on October 4, 2021

Webinars add significant value to any business. In modern companies, webinars are used for marketing, educating, training, or product launch. Whether you want to promote a new business or increase sales of an existing business, webinars are beneficial to get things done.

In this article, we have penned down some of the top benefits every organization can get by using webinars for their business.

Top reasons to use webinars for your business

Position yourself as an expert in your field

Even though you conduct a free webinar, your audience cares about it a lot. And a free webinar doesn’t mean that you cannot exchange valuable content during the webinar. Your audience has to book a slot for your webinar, mark the date in their calendar and give you more than 1 hour of their time to listen to you. It positions you as an expert in your field, even before you start the webinar.

Communicate with people around the world

It is one of the crucial reasons why webinars are considered effective channels of marketing for any business. You can communicate with any number of people around the world, virtually, through webinars. Moreover, both the host and the audience need not move out of their homes or offices to attend the webinar.

Is it possible for every client to travel across the globe to have 1-on-1 sessions? Every business cannot afford 1-on-1 meetings all the time. 1-on-1 meetings in person are more effective in any business than webinars. So, having a remote webinar helps the hosts to connect with hundreds of audiences at once at no extra expense.

Keep your audience engaged with valuable content

Webinars are best for two reasons: Scarcity and engagement. In the first scenario, when the audience misses either a part of an entire webinar, they will miss the valuable content you will deliver. Hence, it gives a feel of scarcity to your audience. They feel the pain of missing your webinar.

In the second scenario (engagement), every audience can chat with you, ask their queries, and solve it instantly. When the audience gets their queries answered, they feel more engaged and focused on your content. Ask your audience as many questions as possible and prepare tailor-made content for them. It will help you establish short trust among your audience and generate sales with no or minimal cost.

Generate new leads and build a relationship

Every business runs on leads. A company with high-quality leads never needs to worry about growth. Webinars are one way to generate high-quality leads for any business, as they attract a new set of audiences and ultimately convert them.

For every webinar, registration is a must. When registering, people leave their personal information like email ID, phone number, and address to attend your upcoming webinar. It means that the audience is interested in whatever information you share during the webinar and opted to join.

You can generate new leads for your webinar through organic promotions like referrals, affiliates, etc., or by running paid campaigns on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Once you have the new leads generated, it is time to share valuable content in your webinar. You must help the audience understand how your product can help solve their problems. Once they start interacting with you over the webinars, a relationship is established.

It will create a great first impression among the new leads and help you drive either regular conversions or seasoned conversions.

Invite guests and leverage their audience

Having industry influencers and specialized guests at your webinar will often help you leverage their audience to drive attendees. Webinar platforms like Clickmeeting allow you to invite multiple guest hosts to make your webinar more effective.

Apart from getting exposure for your business, you can also borrow the credibility of your guests. Since the industry expert is associating their name with your brand, you’ll further establish yourself as an expert. The result will be an increase in attendance rates, social sharing, and overall excitement.

Speed up your sales process and ROI

Revenues are significant to drive your business. If you are unable to convert your potential leads to customers, your business cannot grow fast. Webinars can help to speed up this process as it does the initial funnel set up for you. It enables you to build trust, kill your customers’ doubts, and deliver value to them in the shortest time.

For example, if you have spent $5 to run ads and get each signup for your webinar, and your webinar gets $5 average earnings for every audience, then you already broke even. Post webinar, whatever sale you make is considered a pure profit.

Conclusion

Webinars are one of the most potent ways to improve sales for your business. Whether it be increasing sales, generating new leads, or training your customers, webinars prove to be very effective.

SaaS

Essential Hardware and Software Solutions for a Productive Virtual Office

Miley on May 20, 2021

The concept of a virtual office might not be new, but it has definitely been booming around the world in recent years. Initially driven by technological advancement but nowadays boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual offices have started popping up all over the world to facilitate remote work and keep businesses afloat. After all, just because you were forced to send your employees home doesn’t mean that you can’t resume your operation remotely, or that you can’t effectively manage a decentralized workforce.

However, for all the advantages that remote work brings to the table, there’s no denying that it poses some challenges that you need to overcome in order to thrive in the digital world, especially if you’re running an online business. Building a productive virtual work environment requires the right leadership skills and managerial processes, but it also requires the right software and hardware solutions.

Here’s the kind of software and hardware you need to build a productive virtual office.

Great peripheral gadgets make all the difference

When people are working from home or remotely in general, they need to decide on the kind of devices they’re going to use to communicate and collaborate with teammates. You can choose between a laptop and a PC, for example, but if you want to be as productive and efficient as possible, you should pay special attention to the peripheral components.

These include a mouse and a keyboard, but more importantly, these are your audio and visual gadgets like a proper headset and a quality camera. Ideally, you’d want to get a quality headset instead of using speakers and a built-in microphone, because you want to be able to hear and speak to your colleagues without any interfering noise.

Likewise, a quality full-HD camera with 60 FPS will make all the difference and produce that crystal-clear image that will just make your experience that much more enjoyable during video calls and presentations.

Using the right software to maximize productivity

Productivity tools for virtual offices and remote workers come in all shapes and sizes, but they all serve the singular purpose of making your time at work more efficient and effective. Recently, connected devices for time tracking have emerged on the market, that aim to minimise unnecessary digital distractions. Instead, they helps building a time tracking habit with your muscle memory. Your goal should be to automate various menial processes so that you can focus on the complex, mission-critical tasks, but also to implement productivity tools that will help you improve your remote team’s productivity.

As you assign IT equipment and peripherals to your remote workforce, it is also important to ensure their devices are always functional so operations can keep running seamlessly. Investing in an IT asset management solution will enable you to keep complete track of all your IT equipment and resolve any hardware breakdown issues instantly, should they occur.

For example, a staple software solution for a decentralized workforce is a project management tool, which should be a comprehensive tool that allows you to retain control of every project from inception to completion. The right cloud-based project management tool should provide you and your team with:

Comprehensive visual boards
Time tracking features
File management
Messaging features
Performance reports
Project timeline features visualize the progress of work

With such a comprehensive tool, you will be able to collaborate easily with your remote team and keep every project on track.

Fast and reliable internet across the board

It should go without saying that every virtual office needs to have a fast, reliable, and stable internet connection. The modern business world runs on the web and various digital technologies that directly rely on a stable internet connection, so it’s important to keep all of those services running when you’re working in a virtual environment.

Having 4G internet available at all times is one of the best ways to secure fast internet speeds, and installing a 4G flybox is a great way to get fast mobile internet along with a reliable Wi-Fi network that will keep you running throughout the day. You want to make sure you have a good mobile network when you’re on the move, but also a strong Wi-Fi connection that doesn’t dip at any point during the day when you’re working from home.

Opt for stable and feature-rich virtual meeting software

Virtual meetings have become ubiquitous in the modern business environment and when it comes to remote work, they are essential for productivity, efficiency, and ultimately, success. You and your teams need to meet on a regular basis to keep things moving along, set clear expectations, brainstorm effectively, and bring amazing ideas to life.

To do all of this, you need a reliable, feature-rich virtual meeting software. The software you’re using should provide a stable, quality listening and viewing experience, and it should allow you to share your screen, chat with team members in the sidebar, enter presentation mode, and much more.

Use cloud storage for easy access, security, and collaboration

Finally, make sure that you’re using the right cloud storage solution to quickly and easily share your work with team members, but also keep your files in a safe and secure digital environment. There are many cloud storage options out there that are reliable and offer numerous perks to free and paid users, and providers like Google offer excellent support, features, and storage for free to business users as well.

Over to you

Creating a truly productive virtual office is a difficult task, but with the right hardware and software at your side, you can do it with relative ease and minimal financial investment. Be sure to implement these tools into your virtual work environment and watch as productivity and efficiency start to rise across the board.

SaaS

Reasons for your SaaS to speak Spanish

Miley on April 15, 2021

Collaboration with Nementio

The SaaS market is booming, and they are the future. From video games to content and of course business services, they are all moving to the cloud. It is impossible to see the future, but it is true that sometimes it is easy to see the dynamics of the market.

Powerful companies like Amazon are getting a lot of their revenue from their online services. Amazon web Services, the division of this company that deals with cloud services, generated 45.4 billion dollars in 2020.

Undoubtedly, 2020 was the year in which, due to the situations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the SaaS market exploded. Telework was the opportunity for many companies to make the leap to the SaaS market.

What is the SaaS market?

SaaS, or better known as software as a service, offers the possibility for users to connect to applications through cloud hosting over the internet. This means that it is a method of having applications without having to download anything, with better updates and constant improvements.

On the other hand, this type of application allows users to remotely connect to the entire infrastructure of the organisation simply by having an internet connection.

Digital transformation has led to the emergence of different markets and this is one of the ones that have been having the most impact for years.

Most of the companies that opt for this business model to implement it in their everyday tools are those that want to optimise their business. Companies that want to grow, that embrace new changes, that easily adopt technologies and integrate them in a natural way.

The benefits of working in the cloud and having software in the cloud have been visible for many years before the pandemic. But it took a trigger for more people to start optimising their ways of working.

3 advantages of having your SaaS in Spanish

When we talk about a SaaS product, it is assumed that it is a digital product and that it is easier to change its language. In other words, the cost of changing the language of a digital product is lower than if we want to do it with a physical product.

That is why, when we have developed all the software and put it into operation, having it in a language, such as Spanish, will give you many more opportunities for sales. Here are some of the advantages that we believe to be the most important.

1. The potential of the Spanish-speaking market

Spain is a nation remembered for its great historical encounters, for its mix of cultures and for being a great global empire in ancient times. Currently, according to the World Bank, Spain’s economy is the ninth largest.

But when we talk about the Spanish-speaking market, we are not only referring to Spain as a country, but there are many countries that speak Spanish.

If we talk about the Spanish language, we have 405 million native speakers, spread over many countries. There are 30 countries that speak Spanish.

This data is very important, because more than the global number of speakers of a language, it is very important to know the number of native speakers. This is because the first choice of these people will be to use our application in their language.

Imagine for a moment entering an audience of 405,000,000 people with a simple translation/localisation into Spanish.

2. Low investment for high profitability

Selling SaaS services in Spanish-speaking countries is relatively simple compared to other markets. The investment required is minimal if we consider that we only must carry out the following three steps:

Translate your software: You simply need to have the multilingual options activated in your software. From there, you simply need to have someone who speaks both languages to translate it.
Marketing strategy: You will need to define a marketing strategy so that your efforts are not wasted. To do this, choose the platforms on which you want to show your audience that they will now be able to use your tool in Spanish. We recommend that you get a Spanish marketing agency specialised in SaaS in Spain, such as Nementio.
Get support in Spanish: It will be important that apart from having the tool in Spanish, you offer coverage of problems in your own language. To do this, have people within your organisation who speak both languages so that it is easier for them to resolve doubts and your customers are more comfortable.

3. Improve your brand image

If you have taken the above steps by caring about your new customers from another country, you are on the right track. These customers will have noticed that you care about them and give importance to their culture. Approaching them in a caring way and showing them that you want to be part of their culture will make them see that your brand is responsible.

Translation alone is not enough; you must make sure that the target audience has the localised tool. In other words, it must have the cultural nuances of their language.

It is not simply a matter of using an internet tool to put the content in Spanish, but rather it must be a careful translation that shows that it has really been done by a native speaker.

Take care of your translation and generate from the first glance a good feeling in the client.

Finally, if you need more information about taking your SaaS to another level with the translation of the platform, we will leave you some extra content: here you will find more detailed information about the SaaS market in Spain.