Forem: Codica

Healthcare App Development: Features, Approach, Tips

Codica — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 08:37:24 +0000

The article was initially published in the Codica blog.

Today, medical services have become even more available thanks to healthcare apps. With their help, you can schedule an appointment with a doctor, immediately access your healthcare records and give an invoice to a patient. They also help in educating patients and physicians. So, creating a healthcare app is a profitable idea.

In this article, we will discuss the technical and legal aspects that will help you in building your healthcare application.

What is a healthcare app?

It is a software tool that helps receive, store, and transmit medical data and monitor health. Healthcare apps are used to conduct consultations, give prescriptions, bill patients, and monitor health conditions.

Healthcare app market overview and stats

In 2021, the mHealth app market was estimated at $38.2 billion. The market is projected to rise at a compound annual growth rate of 11.8% from 2022 to 2030.

Source: statista.com

The main factors that drive the healthcare app market are the following:

Facilitating the implementation of health applications by private and governmental organizations;
Enhancements in health apps created by developers;
Shift to telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Types of healthcare apps

There are two basic types of healthcare apps. They are intended for doctors and for patients.

Professional healthcare apps for doctors are divided into the following types:

Medical record apps (Celerity);
Medical prescription apps (RxEasy);
Billing apps (Jane);
Electronic history/medical records (CureMD);
Telehealth apps (Amwell);
Medical networking (UpToDate).

Healthcare apps for patients help with the following actions:

Health monitoring (Ada);
Medication tracking Dosecast);
Mental health balancing (Calm);
Wellness and nutrition maintaining (Calorie Counter App: Fooducate);
Medical educating (Medscape).

Compliances for healthcare apps: local and international guidelines

Healthcare apps process a great amount of sensitive data, comprising protected healthcare information. Therefore, these apps must comply with international and local standards for protecting personal data. The prominent medical app standards include the following:

HIPAA. The standard protects transmitting, recording, and keeping PHI. The standard is mandatory for apps operating in the United States.
HiTECH. It supports HIPAA and advances healthcare services and care coordination.
CCPA. Being a United States standard, it regulates the collecting, processing, and deleting of personal information.
PIPEDA. This standard was adopted in Canada, securing users’ data stored in healthcare apps.
GDPR. These rules protect personal data in the European Union.
DPA. This act of the United Kingdom supplements GDPR and protects personal data.

Healthcare app features

Let’s look at functions that make such apps helpful for users.
Core health app features

There are some basic functions for your app.

Doctor profile lookup. With this feature, patients can look through the physician's credentials.

Notifications and reminders. They help users take medicine on time, and remind patients about appointments.

Appointment booking. This feature enables doctors and patients to pick, modify, or cancel appointments. It saves time for the scheduling process.

Video conferencing. This function helps doctors see patients and offer them remote treatment.

Symptom checker. It enables patients to verify typical symptoms with the app and receive possible diagnosis.

Chatbots. Regarding disease conditions, chatbots with AI can determine the treatment actions for a patient.

Integration with electronic health records (EHR/EMR). Access to health history data with an app allows physicians and patients to see their data immediately.

Integration with medical devices. Data gathered by medical devices help doctors to define the treatment. Also, when people see the data on their devices, they better understand their health condition.

Prescriptions and pharmacy lookup. The electronic prescription feature enables doctors to make and send prescriptions to patients using the app. These prescriptions show the needed dosage and medicine clearly.

Payments and billing. These functions enable patients to pay for consultations, visits and services provided by doctors.

Health education. With this feature, patients can access broad information on health, and as well as doctors, get an education.

Next-generation features

By implementing the next-generation features to your app, you can significantly improve user experiences.

Let’s consider the trends for health apps.

Interoperability. It means that a healt app can work on diverse devices. So this means that patients will be able to get medical care remotely if they need it.

Remote control of patients’ health. Present-day technologies improve the process of treatment through remote interaction. Thus, people receive medical help without leaving their apartments.

Telemedicine. The telemedicine market is forecasted to reach about $460 billion by 2030.

Source: Statista.com

Due to the online sharing of information, individuals do not have to visit a hospital physically. This saves doctors' and patients’ time. Also, critical patients get consultations faster.

Medical equipment integration. Thanks to these integrations, doctors can access the latest patient health data.

Gamification. Gamification is an approach to using game techniques in non-gaming apps. This approach assists users in achieving the set goals. So they keep more involved with the app.

Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI assists doctors in diagnosing patients. It gives health advice to patients and offers virtual nurse assistance. Apps with AI comprise engaging games and events. AI is also applied in chatbots that assist in coping with interpersonal issues.

Virtual Reality (VR). VR technology is a technology used for occupational and psychological treatment. By applying this technology, people navigate through digital environments and do specific tasks that aim to treat different diagnoses. For instance, VR in the Floreo app helps to educate patients with autism spectrum disorder on typical social interactions.

Virtual waiting rooms. This virtual waiting room for patients can be accessed via the health app installed on mobile devices. Such waiting rooms help minimize the risk of spreading diseases.

Internet of Things (IoT). Wearable devices are the best examples of implementing IoT. They collect physical data from people, for example, from patients with dangerous to lives diseases. Wearables also assist in counting calories, water intake, heart rate, and so on.

Blockchain for EHR. EHRs have been a priority in healthcare since they hold valuable patient data. Blockchain technology helps track health records and prevent mistakes. It is crucial to select the appropriate treatment.

Revenue models for health apps

Mobile health apps have a few revenue sources. Here, we have gathered the most popular monetization models, but you can have a full understanding of them in this article: 10 Best Marketplace Monetization Strategies to Succeed.

Also, keep in mind, that you can combine the revenue models described below.

Freemium model

The freemium model is great for engaging users as you offer your health app for free. Still, you need to provide advanced paid features to generate revenue. Payment can be one-time or subscription-based.

The prominent health apps applying the freemium model are Lifesum and MyFitnessPal.

Advertising

This monetization approach is a popular choice as it takes the least effort to include it. But keep in mind user experience should be a priority. So, you should offer personalized ads and make them as useful for visitors as possible.

The prominent health apps using in-app advertising comprise MyTherapy and K Health.

Subscription model

Applying this model, you can charge a monthly, quarterly, or yearly fee for using your app. To keep users engaged with your application, offer updates with new functions.

Doxy.me and Teladoc are successful apps that apply a subscription model.

Pay-per-download

The model of charging for app downloads is less used today. However, some of the popular healthcare applications still use such a model. They are Freya and FlashRX.

Aspects to consider in healthcare mobile app development

When creating a healthcare application, consider some aspects to make it reliable and credible for users.

Security. To secure your app, add strong encryption, multi-factor authentication, and store health data in backups. Also, ensure your app is compliant with international and local regulations such as HIPAA.

Interoperability. Interoperability means that an application can exchange data with other systems. You can use a modern data exchange protocol SMART on FHIR, an API for healthcare. By applying it, you can synchronize an app with the EHR systems.

Integration with third-party applications through API. Integration with third-party services in a health application lowers development costs because you don’t need to create services from scratch. The top APIs for health apps include HealthTap, Google Cloud Healthcare, CharmHealth, and ChangeHealthcare.

User interface design. Health apps must support efficient work for doctors and easy use for patients. So, the app interface should be clear and easy to use. The design should be convenient for people with different physical and psychological characteristics.

Local and international regulations. Each country has a standard that controls the processing, collecting, and storing of users’ data in health applications. So, verify the relevant regulations in the location where the mobile app will work.

Cost for health app development

The approximate cost of health app development is $70,000 if you apply to a healthcare app development company in Eastern Europe. If you apply to an agency from Western Europe or the US, the development costs will be higher.

Conclusion

Creating a health app is a multi-faceted development process that requires a thorough approach. The main issue in developing a health app is data security. The health app stores the personal data of users and their health information. So, using the best security practices to protect users’ health information is vital. For this, choose a reliable development partner and follow data protection regulations.

An Ultimate Guide to Web Application Security

Codica — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 13:10:26 +0000

The article was initially published in the Codica blog.

Web applications are diverse in functionality today. So, are threats against them. Therefore, you need to be ready to detect and prevent them from the start of development through testing and support.

This article gives an overview of the security tools and techniques that will help you develop and maintain a secure web application.

What is web application security?

Web app security means maintaining safe work by applying relevant methods and techniques. A secure web app works as expected despite attacks against it and keeps data safe.

Why is security important in web applications?

Nowadays, web apps perform complex operations involving the transmission of sensitive data. Personal data, credit card details, and patients’ medical data are a few examples of such data. If attackers try to steal them, it may cause reputation damage.

On the technical side, a broken app will lead to a shutdown and loss of time and money. Users will be concerned with the broken app and be prone to shift to a more reliable one.

The most common web application security risks

At Codica, the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a source we use in security matters. Among other issues, it shows the most common risks that web apps face. Below is a relevant diagram created in OWASP showing how the security risks have changed over time:

Source: OWASP.org

AWS sustainability tools

Our team works primarily with Amazon Web Services (AWS). So, below is a list of services created to secure your web apps. It includes the following:

AWS VPC;
AWS Security Hub;
AWS IAM;
AWS Route 53;
AWS Web Application Firewall;
AWS Shield;
AWS Cloudfront.

Web application security requirements

A security requirement for a web app comes from industry standards, laws, or previous experience. For example, OWASP’s Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS) defines three levels of security depending on the app’s industry. For example, military web apps must comply with security requirements for the third level.

Source: OWASP Application Security Verification Standard 4.0.3

Web application security best practices in 2022

Below we discuss the best security practices you can apply for web app development.

Step 1. Take the most of security frameworks and libraries

Today, many programming languages also have frameworks and libraries. We recommend choosing those which are secure and reliable. Also, keep a list of them. Moreover, if you keep them up to date, it reduces attack surface.

Step 2. Secure access to a database

The connection between an application and a database should be encrypted. Access to a database should include two-factor authentication. Also, a strong password ensures secure data transmission from the database to the app.

Step 3. Encode and escape data

This approach helps to avoid cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. These attacks happen if an app sends untrusted data to a database without a checking process. Also, the XSS detrimental code can use a session cookie.

To protect the code against an XSS attack, you can use an encoding token, such as a Cross-Site Request Forgery token. It makes the code secure and not dangerous to the target interpreter.

Step 4. Validate all inputs

Validating input ensures that only properly formed data enter the information system workflow. Preventing malformed inputs to a database ensures its integrity. Therefore, data from untrusted sources must undergo validation checks.

Step 5. Implement digital identity

Digital identity means verifying the user before authorization. The multi-factor authentication (MFA) and cryptographic-based authentication (CBA) are two reliable techniques ensuring the secure identification of a user. They help to reduce the risk of hacking, according to Microsoft.

Step 6. Enforce access controls

The advice here is to configure access controls beforehand. Your requests should undergo access control. In this case, using “deny” status along with the least privileged is recommended. Also, do not hardcode credentials.

Logging each authentication and authorization case to control unauthorized access attempts is advisable. Secret managers, such as AWS Secrets Manager and Hashicorp Vault, can help you to secure access to the web app.

Step 7. Protect data

The sensitive data of your web app need protection. Define them and create secure mechanisms that help keep them safe. For this, such data must be encrypted in transit and at rest.

We advise selecting the most important data in your web app. Otherwise, encryption will overload the app and slow down data transmission.

Step 8. Implement secure logging

Keeping logs is a relatively simple task, thanks to cloud solutions. For example, AWS’s CloudTrail helps track API activity. Sensitive data and credentials must be securely stored when you configure logging.

Logs must be kept integral. For this, you should store them in one place (e.g., in CloudWatch or S3) and make them read-only. Thus, you centralize the logs’ filtering.

Step 9. Handle errors and exceptions

Modern web apps can show various error messages, for example, responding to a lost connection. Showing the relevant error messages should be concise and clear for users. Also, remember that a leak of basic error handling can lead to the system shutdown.

Recommendations by Codica

At Codica, we keep an eye on security best practices and implement them in digital solutions. So, we would like to share with you what tools and techniques you can use to secure your web application.

Helpful tools for web app security

As we prefer AWS, we use its WAF and Shield. Also, we recommend using AWS’s Security Hub. It will help you collect data and metrics from many AWS security services.

We advise our clients to include feature-rich secrets. They are diverse. But make sure that they are maintained.

Our team also recommends using a container image security scanner. Containers comprise the necessary elements that help your app run in any environment. They enable you to identify web app vulnerabilities. Containers show you an attack, error, or new bug.

There are also useful instruments for web app testing. Generally, we use the three main approaches to testing, static (SAST), dynamic (DAST), and SCA (Software Composition Analysis). They help secure and scan web apps for errors and vulnerabilities.

Source: snyk.io

DevSecOps approach and philosophy

DevSecOps (development, security, and operations) approach defines techniques necessary for secure software development.

One of the critical approaches is “shifting left” the security operations. It means that a DevOps engineer ensures secure web app development from the front.

Conclusion

Web application needs security from the start of development to testing and support. Thus we recommend using the tools and techniques that we have discussed in this article. For example, we recommend using AWS monitoring and security services. Also, you need to balance the software and infrastructure parts by prioritizing the security needs of your web app.

SaaS Marketing Strategy: Tips to Promote your SaaS Startup

Codica — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 13:43:47 +0000

The article was initially published in Codica blog.

Startups spend quite a lot of time and money creating quality SaaS products. And it is a pity when it remains unnoticed or underestimated by users.

But what to do to make your cloud product popular and successful?

Digital marketing is a reliable way to promote your SaaS startup. We thoroughly analyzed SaaS marketing strategies directed at lead generation and lead nurturing. So, in this article, you will find out methods that help you successfully market your SaaS.

Specifics of the SaaS market

The cloud solutions market is only growing. Statista projects that the SaaS market will grow at an annual growth rate of 9.80%.

So, building a SaaS startup seems like a profitable idea. Still, you should keep in mind some nuances concerning the cloud business.

In contrast to other fields, SaaS marketing aims to establish long-term relationships with users. So, your marketing approach should be based on the exclusive functions that your solution comprises. Furthermore, your SaaS marketing strategy should consider new markets and groups you want to reach.

5 key steps to bear in mind when creating a SaaS strategy

Now, let’s consider the top steps to take for your SaaS startup to succeed.

1. Use knowledge of the target group

A buyer persona is a representation of a typical user that may purchase your SaaS. Such a research-based profile shows a buyer’s background and personal traits. Here is an example of a buyer persona.

Source: powerslides.com

Making a buyer persona is a stage that usually comes at product discovery.

Thanks to the discovery outcomes, you can develop useful content for your target group, optimize your platform and personalize the ads and emails.

2. Monitor your competitors

Analyze what your competitors are doing. Thus, you can get insights into enhancing your SaaS marketing strategy.

The following practices will assist you in finding out more about your competition:

Study their content on blogs, websites, and socials;
Learn from case studies of other businesses and how they succeeded;
Review the materials on your field trends;
See how your competitors appear in public.

3. Create USP

USP, or unique selling proposition, is a distinctive method or feature that differentiates you from similar products. USP will help you find the focus of your marketing strategy.

The basic USP elements that need to be highlighted in your SaaS marketing strategy are the following:

Highlighting your product’s value. Your users must be sure that the product is helpful for them.

Delicate offer.The manner of presenting your USP should be soft and delightful.

Avant-garde solution. Implementing a new feature that other solutions don’t offer attracts your potential audience.

4. Develop an effective customer journey

SaaS customer journey differs from other industries. The cycles of building awareness and trust in your solution take more effort and time. Customers need to evaluate the features, support, and price you provide.

Below are possible touchpoints that a user may pass using your cloud solution.

Source: talkwalker.com

After the company has tried your solution, you can suggest to them flexible plans and features that suit their needs.

5. Build the sales funnel

The sales funnel is a multi-stage process of making your leads aware of your solution. The sales funnel is based on the AIDA principle. It stands for the following:

Awareness;
Interest;
Decision;
Action.

Awareness is the step when an individual first discovers your project. Then, a potential customer will show interest in your startup and compare your solution with others. So, you lead your potential buyer to become a customer and then a user of your solution.

There is also a flywheel. Unlike the sales funnel, it reflects how your existing users recommend your solution to people they know.

Source: hubspot.com

SaaS marketing strategies to generate leads

Let’s see which methods you can use to generate leads.

Using social media

Our experience shows that social media are a powerful tool for SaaS marketing. Below we share working social media methods.

Prioritize the social media platforms that your customers use most;
Use social media ads;
Create engaging content;
Partner with influencers in your field.

Content marketing

When developing a SaaS marketing strategy, consider the content types you can deliver to your users.

Content types for SaaS marketing strategy

There are 4 best content types you can use to promote your SaaS project.

1.Comparison posts

In your comparison posts, you can highlight your solution's exclusive features or benefits compared to existing products.

Surely, your comparison posts should show your professionalism and be neutral about your competitors.

2.Demo videos

Making demo videos assists in highlighting your product’s features. Firstly, introduce basic information relevant to the viewers that don't know about your solution. After that, you can add more specific information to your video.

3.Case studies

To promote your startup, you can develop case studies highlighting the functions you added to your solution. Case studies show the value you bring to customers and your expertise.

For example, at the beginning of their case study, Asana, a work management platform, presents how Autodesk benefited from using Asana’s solution.

4.Webinars

Webinars are a perfect content marketing approach to promote your SaaS.

For example, ConvertKit combined their webinar strategy with an affiliate program to bring more customers. This strategy resulted in $625 thousand of monthly recurring revenue.

Useful content tactics

Making content for the promotion of your startup involves tactics that will help you differentiate from your competitors. The main methods are the following:

Developing a content moat,
Repurposing your content.

Let’s consider them.

1.Making a content moat

This is a content marketing method when you make content on the terminology in a specific field. If you give answers to the questions on certain terms, your pieces will stand out in the search.

As traffic to your website rises, you will also see growth in backlinks. For instance, if you type “What is DevOps?” the first answer will be from AWS.

2.Content repurposing

Once you make some content, you can adapt it to various SaaS marketing channels. For instance, you can turn a podcast into a piece, and so on.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

The correct SEO strategy generates organic traffic. This is how site visitors will come to know your solution without advertisements. That is why SaaS stratups focus on SEO.

The core aspects to consider for SEO optimization of web solutions are the following:

What questions do your users ask;
Challenges and pain points they have;
Related topics that the target group is interested in.

Keywords reveal the search intent behind them. So, you will know what led your users to select your SaaS.

Also, create quality links and referrals to your landing page or website. Useful links can be built by creating helpful content that people will share on socials. Also, you can partner with well-known web solutions.

By the way, it is advisable to accompany SEO with PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns.

Enhance calls to action (CTA)

CTA is a graphic element in the form of an image, hyperlink, or button that motivates site visitors to take action, for example, buy, download, etc.

A CTA demonstrates to your prospects what they can do to buy and work with your solution.

Email marketing

Emailing is a vital part of SaaS marketing strategy.

Typical emails that SaaS businesses send their audience comprise the following information:

Announcements of webinars and blog posts;
Description of a solution and its features;
Updates on new features;
Company events and news.

A good example of a useful email is a notification from Squarespace.

A lot of providers offer email templates (MailChimp, Omnisend). With them, you can contact subscribers with push notifications and SMS.

Moreover, it is productive to use AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) emails. These emails comprise interactive elements that do not require users to open a new tab. So, you can add rich experiences, like purchase buttons, carousels, and more.

Building partnerships

Partnerships with well-known companies enable expanding audiences.

For instance, a huge partnership program organized by Hubspot brought it $100 million in annual revenue.

SaaS marketing strategies for user engagement

When you have attracted people to use your SaaS product, you should engage them so that they stay with it. This process is called lead nurturing. It means improving customer relationships at every part of the sales funnel.

To make your nurturing program profitable, listen to users' needs and offer them the required information.

You can use some channels to deliver personalized content to your customers. Let’s see what they are.

Referrals program

This program rewards users for sharing information on your SaaS. Users who recommend your solution to friends are referrers. New customers are referees.

Referral is a good way to bring new customers without spending many resources.

Free trial period

A business model with a free period raises the probability that your potential users will convert.

There are a few variants for offering free trials for your SaaS users. They are as follows:

Free trial with/without a credit card (Adobe). Offering free trials with a credit card enables you to save money on prospects that are not likely to convert. At the same time, free trials without a credit card are used to promote SaaS solutions.

Free trial after a demo (Userpilot). This means explaining your product to users. The demo presents the value of your product in a brief time and assists users in better understanding your solution’s features.

Free trial within a freemium model (Hubspot). This means offering free trials with limited or key functionality. After using your product for free, customers can upgrade to a full-featured plan.

Free trial with gamification (ProdPad). This option means including rewards for actions.

Reviews

Reviews are a vital information source that impacts the users’ decision to buy the solution. As the survey by BrightLocal states, almost half of respondents trust user reviews.

Let’s see approaches to customer reviews that will assist in keeping the users engaged with your product. These practices comprise the following:

Talk to your customers to understand their needs and thoughts on the SaaS use;
Collect analytics and usage metrics;
Verify that the feedback gathering tools are time-proven and scalable;
Collect in-app usage feedback;
Ask feedback from a user if they refuse from your solution; Nurture the culture of listening to user feedback in your SaaS firm.

Convenient sign-up process

Make the process of the sign-up simple. Ask people just for critical information before signing up. Individuals are more likely to complete the sign-up process if it is easy for them.

Summary

When developing a SaaS marketing strategy, it is very important to work on lead generation and customer acquisition correctly. You can share info on your SaaS over socials and collaborate with content businesses.

When your prospects become your qualified leads, you should assist them in using your product. Attentively listen to user feedback. So, customer support and their reactions to your startup’s features will assist you in growing your SaaS.

How to Create a Successful Custom Web Product Step by Step: Codica's Practice

Codica — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 11:29:41 +0000

The article was initially published in Codica blog.

When creating a winning web product, the team must follow the best practices and certain steps for development. This is how Codica ensures building top-quality websites.

This article is a complete guide that shows the approach at Codica to creating web products that users enjoy.

What methodologies are commonly used for project development at Codica?

Today, custom software product development mainly relies on two methodologies, waterfall and agile. Both of them are useful and have their peculiarities.

The waterfall methodology implies that the next stage of software development starts after finishing the previous one. So, the design of the web product starts only after the product discovery step is finished.

Meanwhile, agile methodology means moving in small steps and applying changes whenever they are needed. This iterative approach offers more flexibility and mitigates risks early.

At Codica, we rely on the agile methodology appreciating iteration as its main advantage. We hold daily, and weekly meetings to discuss the results achieved, further goals, and expected deliverables.

What is the Codica team involved in the development process?

The development process requires several careful steps, from assessing the business idea through development and finishing with quality assurance and support. These steps require certain professional roles. They are as follows:

Project managers (PMs);
UX/UI designers;
Frontend and backend developers;
DevOps engineers;
Quality assurance specialists (QAs).

Working together, they follow the main steps to create functional and secure solutions. Let’s discover what these steps are.

What are the 5 main steps that Codica follows in software development?

Step 1. Product discovery sessions

Product discovery is a preliminary step when we discuss the business and technical aspects of the client’s idea. This process involves stakeholders on the client’s side, a UI/UX designer, a tech lead, and a project manager.

The result of the product discovery process is the specification document and project estimate that a designer, tech lead, and project manager create together. Also, they create prototypes, a roadmap, and a process diagram and show all these documents to the client for discussion. Below is an image illustration of the main tasks we complete during the project discovery phase.

After the discussion and approval of the project documents from the client, our team proceeds to design and develop the project.

Step 2. Skillful designing

At Codica, we create designs for each product regarding the outcome and deliverables from the discovery session. Our designers consider the style of a web product and the appearance of UI elements and font hierarchy. For example, below is a design that our team created for a kids' activities marketplace.

Also, designers create a guide on the website design that is used by developers and quality assurance engineers.

By the way, you can see attractive and user-friendly designs we created on our Behance profile.

Step 3. Web product development

After all preparations, our team starts the development process. Typically, we recommend our clients create their product as a minimum viable product (MVP). It is a primary workable version of the product that includes basic features and can be launched to the market. It is useful because you can see how users try and accept your product with the least effort for development.

The development at Codica includes several phases. Let’s discover what they are.

Preparations for the development

Starting with the inception phase. The inception phase means planning and allocating roles for the development. An entire team takes part in this stage. It involves discussions of the specifications and prototypes created in previous stages. Also, the stage includes assessing the risks and difficulties of product release.

Creating the product backlog. A project manager creates a backlog in Jira, a collaboration tool. The backlog includes epics, which are milestones for each set of features to be developed. The epics constitute the roadmap that helps developers move through the development process.

Building a staging environment. Creating a code takes small steps as we follow agile methodology. Every part of the code that we create undergoes testing with Gitlab CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery), a tool that automates development processes.

Both staging and prod environments are created and managed by our DevOps engineers. Also, DevOps help to host a product properly. We prefer Amazon Web Services (AWS) for this. It is flexible and has a rich set of features that ensure the secure and stable work of a website.

Our iterative software development process

While building a web product, developers and quality assurance engineers check the code logic and the code compliance with syntactic norms. We also check the code for vulnerabilities, and stylistic errors, run tests and deploy our code to test servers. Then a tech lead verifies the completed code. These operations are conducted in the staging environment and are a must before deploying the product on the prod.

Step 4. Testing

In parallel with designing and developing, we perform testing. So, quality assurance engineers (QAs) start testing the code from the moment when they receive specifications from a project manager after the discovery sessions. QAs clarify the details of how the product must look and function and write these nuances in the Acceptance Criteria document.

Also, QAs use the following documents:

Checklists that present the compliance criteria for the code;
Test cases that are a complete description of test scenarios with steps and prerequisites.

After all necessary checks of the code on stage as part of development, QAs perform regression tests. Such tests clarify that changes made to the code during development do not break the code structure. So, regression testing is an initial check of the product as a whole.

After the checks are completed, the project goes to the prod environment. Thus, QAs check the code on the prod once more.

For example, as a result of development and thorough testing, we created an online travel marketplace that helped our client to double their expected sales.

Step 5. Maintenance and support

As new features appear and technologies evolve, we help our clients keep their websites up-to-date. So, our designers, developers, DevOps, and QAs make the relevant changes to keep web solutions running.

The maintenance and support involve the following services that we offer at Codica:

Ongoing support, system maintenance, bug fixes, backup, and monitoring;
Improvement and updating of applications/systems, integration of new functions;
Redesigning software solutions to meet business requirements and conditions;
Product technical support.

We have a stack of tools that help us monitor the solutions and receive the metrics and alerts. They are as follows:

Prometheus;
PagerDuty;
Grafana.

Conclusion

When creating web products, we rely on the best software development practices. Following the five crucial steps, our web projects help our clients grow their businesses. If you need a website or want to test your business idea, contact us. Our experts are eager to help you.

Where to Host Your New Product?

Codica — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 07:29:20 +0000

The article was initially published in Codica blog.

Hosting services vary among providers. They suggest diverse hosting plans. But how to select a web hosting provider that will be aligned with your business aims?

This article is a complete guide on the points you should take into account when looking for a hosting provider.

Web hosting: definition

Web hosting implies placing your website on a server. Provider maintains robust and secure storage space, updates, network, and other services on servers.

In such a way, a hosting provider builds an environment with software and hardware for sharing sites over the web. For its services, a web hosting provider charges a recurring fee.

This diagram shows the elements hosting comprises to bring websites to users.

Types of hosting

Depending on the server type, providers offer diverse hardware and features. We will consider the hosting models below. To simplify the understanding, we compared the hosting models with real estate types.

Shared hosting. Shared hosting means that one server stores a few isolated websites. The costs are shared. In general, shared hosting is a good variant for small startups.

Dedicated hosting. It is a single server where one site is dedicated. It ensures the stable performance of your site and handles high traffic loads.

Virtual private server (VPS) hosting. It is space on a server managed by a cloud or web hosting provider. So, users obtain more storage and customization possibilities.

Cloud hosting. This hosting means that many sites are stored within one or more clouds. Cloud hosting offers high flexibility and scalability.

The image shows the data transferring process between the digital devices and a virtual server in cloud hosting.

Who handles the hosting environment?

When selecting the web host, decide who will maintain your software and equipment. There are managed hosting and colocation.

Colocation hosting means renting server space in a colocation center. Meanwhile, managed hosting implies that a provider assures the correct functioning of the hosting infrastructure.

Consider that the server should handle the loads needed for your platform's seamless performance.

Best players in web hosting

Codica’s choice

AWS that stands for Amazon Web Services (the Codica team works mainly with this provider),
Microsoft Azure,
DigitalOcean,
Linode,
GCP (Google Cloud Platform).

Well-known web hosting providers

GoDaddy,
Bluehost,
Hetzner,
Namecheap.

How to pick a web host?

Let’s consider the core aspects you need to take into account when selecting a web hosting provider.

Performance

Users prefer fast-loading sites. The data center's location, the host's hardware, and the server type you choose (dedicated or shared type) affect a web host's performance capability.

Let's discuss the aspects that are crucial for good server performance.

Server resources

The four server elements you need for your solution hosting are the following:

RAM (random-access memory),
CPU (central processing unit),
Storage,
Bandwidth.

Bandwidth implies how much data move through your solution at a certain time.

Storage implies the data volume you need to process through your platform consistently.

Choose the hosting providers with high read and write IOPS (input/output operations per second) and that use the SSD (Solid State Drives).

CDN

CDN (content delivery network) is a group of interrelated servers located worldwide. As the data need to move through the web, users will get the content of your web solution at a varying speed. The closer the server, the quicker it will access the data.

Select credible web hosts if you aim to use CDN for your solution. For instance, they are Imperva, Cloudflare, and KeyCDN.

Caching

Caching is vital to speed up your solution's loading and enhance user experience. There are two variants of caching: with a plugin or at a server level.

When a web host comprises caching at a server level, do not install anything. Your hosting provider has optimized caching for your website. But if your web host does not comprise caching, you should install a plugin.

Uptime

This aspect means the time when your web solution runs. The higher the uptime, the longer your platform will be accessible to users.

An unlimited service does not occur in reality. But you can discuss with a provider 99.99% uptime.

Scalability

Some enterprises have swinging activities on their platforms. So, they need servers that adjust to great demand and scale down when demand disappears.

If you need server scalability for your startup, pick the cloud or hosting solutions that will adapt to shifts in traffic.

Security

Ensure your hosting provider has all the needed patches and updates. The host has to follow the GDPR standards and protect your platform against DDoS attacks.

Let’s consider what hosting security means.

Malware scanning and removal

Ensure your web host provides a service to scan your web solution for malicious software and remove it. If your web host does not suggest such services, you should apply additional tools like Sucuri.

Backups

Backups ensure that your solution will be restored in case of some issues or failures.

The vital questions about backing up your website are the following:

Does the host make backups of the web solution?
How much time does your host keep the backups?
How often does the host make backups?

SSL/TLS certificates

Google recommends that a website should have an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate. Nowadays, web solutions also use TSL (Transport Layer Security) certificates.

An SLL or TLS certificate protects the site’s sensitive data, such as personal information or passwords. For example, popular security certificate providers comprise GeoTrust, DigiCert, Comodo CA, and Rapid SSL.

Accordance to the GDPR and similar regulations

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is the European Union’s document. It governs the data privacy of people in the EU. It is advisable to make your website comply with GDPR.

Support

The top-quality support means that your solution’s running time issues are solved as fast as possible. Take into account the following points when you pick the hosting provider’s support service.

Support level and issues that the host solves

Hosts engage experts who will support you via chat or phone. They will also provide you with the knowledge that will assist you in solving minor issues.

Resolution and response time

Response duration must be short. It is vital for restoring your solution’s work. Resolution time also plays a role.

There is a common practice to pass severe tech problems to the 2nd and 3rd levels of support. But some web hosts deal with all levels of hosting issues.

Hours of operation

If a web host provides support twenty-four hours, verify this is about support. When looking for all-hours assistance, make sure the web host offers their service by this schedule.

Support level

Consider your resources when estimating the support you need for your web solution. Hosting providers have various plans depending on how much help you need.

Ensure that a web host provides easy migration if you shift to another hosting plan.

Proactive support

A good host will provide you support in the following aspects:

Technologies that assist in autostarting your website;
Keeping up the database optimization;
Employing and scheduling daily backups:
Using the most modern security practices.

Proactive support implies your host prevents or removes issues before you spot them.

Contact methods

The best web hosts provide a range of contact means to connect with them. The most widespread methods include email, live chat, and phone.

Moreover, providers use an online support ticket system (Jira Service Desk, ZenDesk). It assists experts in queueing the issues to be resolved.

Pricing

Pricing is one of the essential aspects to consider when selecting a web host. Paid hosting plans vary according to the provider.

Verify if the provider has no hidden charges in their conditions and examine the refund policy.

Extras

Domain name

Looking for a domain name that efficiently presents your web solution is a complex task. We recommend receiving hosting and domain name from the same provider.

Email hosting

Providers may suggest email capability to their clients (even free). Email hosting is beneficial for enterprises with many emails to send every day.

Also, if your email name is branded, it increases the trust in your letters from users.

Content management system hosting

A CMS (content management system) enables you to change, update, and delete your solution’s data. CMS is a good tool to manage your website if you don’t need a platform with complicated business logic. Examples of CMS are Wix and WordPress.

If you use a CMS for your website, pick a web host offering relevant services.

Mobile capability for a website

The number of mobile Internet users reached 4.32 billion and will only grow. Thus, you need a mobile version of your platform that runs smoothly to attract more users.

If your solution is modern and your hosting plan meets your needs, your platform will perform great on all devices.

Transfer of current platforms

You can transfer the solution because of your business demands or the need to change a web host. Depending on the platform's complexity, it may require time and tech knowledge. The complex web hosting service allows you to switch from one host to another as quickly as possible.

Usability of hosting control panel

You can access most web hosting functions with the Internet browser. You can manage your website by changing content and watching users' activity through this interface.

Also, you can add specific scripts or code according to your solution's demands.

Summary

The choice of a web hosting service is based on your business demands. If you have a small startup, shared hosting is sufficient. But if you have wavering traffic load on your platform, consider a cloud solution.

Whatever hosting services you select, the host must ensure your solution's security and stable performance.

Online Marketplace Marketing Strategy for 2022

Codica — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 11:42:49 +0000

The article was initially published in Codica blog.

Promoting an online marketplace means planning and making a strategy. The right marketing strategy will help you attract vendors and shoppers to your platform.

There are various tools for promoting your web solution. This article will consider the best marketing strategies for 2022 and how to apply them in the best way.

A marketing strategy: definition

A marketplace marketing strategy is a plan that comprises a description of market research and selecting the promotion tactics. Picking the marketing strategy before developing your marketplace is recommended if you want to keep up with market changes.

You should explore the following aspects when building a marketing plan for your marketplace:

Conduct competitors' research

Analyze online marketplaces that run in the same field as yours. It helps to highlight your perks compared to competitors’ platforms.

Make the profile of your potential customers

Reveal what, when, and where your potential customers buy. These patterns will assist you in keeping your marketing strategy relevant. If the target audience is wide, segment the audience to decide how you can impact each group.

Define your USP (unique selling proposition)

You need to show your customers why it is worth using your online marketplace and how it differs from competitors’ solutions.

To understand the USP of your website, rely on these aspects relating to your customers:

Explore your customers’ needs;
Find out your users’ purchasing patterns;
Identify why users would like your platform over the competitors’.
Create a customer journey map

A user journey is a visual presentation of how a user will interact with your website. This diagram helps you personalize and optimize customers’ experiences with your web store.

Source: delighted.com

Develop a sales funnel

The sales funnel is a diagram depicting where users stand in their buying journey.

It shows which actions you can take to move your leads down the funnel.

8 top ways to promote your marketplace solution

Now, let’s see what promotion approaches you can apply to your online marketplace.

SEO strategy

If your website ranks higher in search engines, this assists in driving traffic to your platform.

The Keyword Tool can help you to find out the words people commonly search for on the Internet. Your potential customers will find your solution relevant to their needs, thanks to keywords.

Title tags that outline your platform’s content need to be unique. Make the meta description (a short story of what the site is about) and title tags as informative as possible.

Another vital method for promoting your website is building links that lead to your platform from other resources.

These are some SEO aspects that will assist you in making your marketplace visible on the web:

Adapting the platform for better Core Web Vitals ranking;

Customer ratings and reviews;
SEO-friendly URLs that are easy to read and simple.
Sitemaps (essential for big websites).

Marketing on social media

Social media can connect you to the big target audience and engage your potential customers. Below there are some of the most-used social media as of July 2022.

Source: datareportal.com

Increase the frequency of creating posts. Make appealing and short videos. The content you make for your social media should be captivating and helpful.

To promote your social media profile, keep your feed informative and eye-catching for users.

Collaboration with influencers

Influencers are those people that have many followers and can form their audience’s opinions. Influencer marketing is a perfect method of promoting your marketplace. Enterprises obtain a $5.78 return on investment for every $1 spent on influencer marketing.

For instance, Amazon uses this marketing approach and has an Influencer Program for promoting their web business.

Marketing via emails

Emails are helpful tools to distribute information about your marketplace. There are many integrations and tools that help automate email marketing processes. For example, these are Drip, MailChimp, and Emailsmart.io.

Email communication should be engaging and steady. Use pop-up boxes that draw users’ attention. Offer discounts or free services for the first purchase and so on.

Social media and Google ads

Google Ads is an excellent tool to promote your marketplace. This tool works with keywords that users often search on the web. Your goal is to get higher on the search engine result page. If you pay for an ad that comprises the keyword, your ad will hit the first places in the results.

Still, the ads' ranking also is affected by the quality of your page. The Ad Rank system of Google Ads judges which ad is more relevant.

Moreover, you can promote your website through Google apps like Google Search, Google Play, and Google Display Network.

By the way, people spend much time scrolling on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. So, using ads on social media platforms is another powerful marketing tool.

Source: statista.com

Content marketing strategy

Your website content is excellent for staying connected with your users. Make different types of content that improve your target audience' lives by solving their pain points.

By the way, the information you have made can be valuable for thematic websites and communities in forums, such as Quora or Medium. Post articles or answer questions related to your marketplace. Thus, you will cover a larger audience.

Partnerships with complementary brands

Building partnerships with complementary businesses also assist you in promoting your marketplace. Thus, you can get a customer base with potential interest in your solution, yet it will be new.

If you want to engage more users, you can share one blog post or a podcast. Also, you can suggest a shared gift with another brand.

For instance, a flower shop, UrbanStems, partnered with a business selling beauty products, BeautyBio. Together they raffled cosmetics between the UrbanStems subscribers. One of the terms was following BeautyBio and UrbanStems on Instagram. This idea helped both shops to expand their customer base.

Traditional promotion

Traditional advertising aims at people that spend time away from their computers or mobile devices.

Several means will help you to promote your marketplace:

Handouts (flyers or brochures).
Billboards and banners (typically found along highways or roads).
Broadcasting (commercials for radio and TV).
Print ads (posted in newspapers and magazines).
Vehicle billboards (placed, for example, on buses or trailers).

Traditional advertising is a valuable part of your marketplace marketing plan. It enables you to attract new users and make your website trustworthy.

The right marketing strategy helps your business develop

Choosing the right marketing strategy means a better appeal to your users. So, it helps your business to develop.

Also, the marketplace marketing strategy is grounded on understanding the needs of your target audience and your solution's unique value. Based on these aspects, you can pick tools to promote your online business.

Horizontal vs vertical marketplace: which idea is better?

Codica — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 09:56:02 +0000

The article was initially published in Codica blog.

Nowadays, the concept of the marketplace is commonly known. Various success stories of AliExpress, Amazon, Etsy and other marketplaces inspire startuppers to build their own e-commerce platform.

This article will help you to find out what marketplace type suits you the best - vertical vs horizontal, and how they differ.

Online marketplaces gain momentum

Marketplaces are online platforms for selling and buying services or products. These platforms support interaction between shoppers and vendors.

Using marketplaces, consumers can quickly find the necessary product or service and compare prices. In turn, vendors save on driving traffic to their trading platform. The online marketplace owner gets a profit from the web solution through different revenue strategies, including their combinations.

But to define the revenue model that will bring you money, you should choose a marketplace type. Except for general B2B, B2C, and C2C classification, marketplaces are divided into two main types: horizontal and vertical. Let’s consider them to decide which one is better.

Horizontal marketplace

The horizontal marketplace is a model that allows consumers to buy everything they need in the same place.

Pros of horizontal marketplaces

The horizontal marketplace has such perks:

Large market share
It is the most evident advantage of the horizontal model. These marketplaces can attract more merchants from multiple industries.
Wide customer base
The horizontal marketplace is attractive to a wide audience with a big range of products under a single name. A huge number of customers leads to raising profit.
Smaller risk of demand shortage
Products and services in a horizontal platform are manifold. Indeed, it affects user involvement. Thus, there is a smaller risk of the lack of demand in the marketplace.

However, a horizontal model has its cons. When you offer a wide range of products on the platform, your marketplace can’t dominate in a certain industry.

Example of the horizontal marketplace

Amazon is a wonderful example of a horizontal platform. It offers nearly all, from books to web cloud services.

This platform is very money-making. Here is a diagram that shows Amazon’s annual revenue from 2006 to 2021.

Source: Statista.com

Vertical marketplace

The vertical marketplace focuses on offering the best services in one certain category. It is easier for the vertical model due to the target group limitation.

Pros of vertical marketplaces

This vertical marketplace model has the following pros:

Possibility to focus on one certain industry
This business model means your marketplace competes for a specific market segment. Therefore, you can dominate in your domain.
More personalized approach
Surely, it is easier to provide a limited number of customers with a personalized experience than a mixed and vast audience.
Quicker sales
A decreased competition can lead to faster sales on the website.

Still, despite all its pluses, the vertical model has its flaws: a platform created vertically has no impact on other domains.

Example of the vertical marketplace

For example, such a lucrative handicraft platform as Etsy is a vertical platform.

Etsy is a two-sided e-commerce marketplace that aims to trade handmade or vintage items from individuals. Currently, this website has more than 5 million users and over 60 million goods.

It is worth emphasizing that it is the vertical model that has brought Etsy such success.

Which marketplace type is a winner?

Let's consider the main differences between horizontal and vertical marketplace models.

Horizontal marketplaces have much more services or products in range than vertical ones.
Horizontal marketplaces help businesses enter to market to a large audience.
Vertical marketplaces are focused on a specific user category that is found in the vertical website.
Vertical marketplaces offer narrowly specialized products and services. In turn, horizontal platforms offer plenty of services and goods.

But the question is, which model is better? In short, both vertical and horizontal marketplaces are effective when implemented correctly.

Conclusion

There is no clear answer to whether a horizontal or vertical marketplace is better for your future web solution. The choice depends on your requirements and possibilities.

If you have sufficient knowledge of a certain market segment and are sure of your idea's profitability, build your marketplace vertically. If you want to cover a larger audience and know how to beat the competition, choose the horizontal model.

DevOps Security Practices at Codica: How We Create Secure Web Products

Codica — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 11:54:48 +0000

This article was originally published on Codica blog.

Computers and networks have transformed many aspects of our everyday routines. The evolution resulted in new learning and communications techniques as well as security requirements for virtual systems.

This article explores the crucial concepts necessary for robust security. Also, we share Codica’s experience in using them to ensure safety in custom web solutions.

What is security, and why is it important?

Security is the protection of your systems against outer threats. It relies on different layers and procedures. When your solution is protected, it helps avoid the relevant business risks and instability of your solution’s work.

It is worth noting that security is not a limited set of tools. It is rather a set of both tools and guidelines that help protect your solution. As threats constantly change, so do the security guidelines.

The most common model that represents typical threats is STRIDE, developed by Microsoft. The acronym denotes different security leaks, such as unauthorized modification or distribution of data.

The most important security tools include the following:

Firewalls,
Intrusion Detection System (IDS),
Antivirus,
Encryption tools,
Packet sniffers,
Penetration Testing.

The instruments constantly evolve. For example, firewalls changed, as presented in the image below.

Security concepts are standardized under CIA and AAA models, which help us in our practice.
CIA stands for confidentiality, integrity, and availability. It states the importance of protecting data against unauthorized access and changes.

The AAA term means authentication, authorization, and accounting. It means verifying the user’s identity through a step-by-step verification process. You can see the whole process in the picture below.

The security concepts and models help streamline an efficient approach to protecting solutions. We discuss Codica’s practices below as an example of the successful implementation of the security principles.

Security pillars in product development: Codica’s experience

At Codica, we use AWS cloud services for managing infrastructure security. We manage our infrastructure with code. The Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach allows for scaling and cost saving. Also, it enables you to move the vast security processes to the primary cloud provider.

That is why we use Terraform for our web projects. It allows creating and updating of the AWS infrastructure. Through Terraform, you can ensure an accurate result “as expected”. Furthermore, you can create more infrastructures if you need better fault tolerance and higher availability.

For monitoring API activity, we use CloudTrail. This is a service for a continuous record of events in an AWS account. You can read more in AWS Documentation.

With that said, we will discuss with examples how you can improve security with AWS tools and services.

Infrastructure security

As we work with the AWS infrastructure as a service, we care that this environment is protected from our side.

For example, when creating any resource, you can run the code through a tfsec security scanner and see what improvements and security-related fixes you can make. These may include adding descriptions for better auditing, as well as reworking security groups' ingress rules. Also, usually, it is essential to allow only inside-VPC traffic, which helps make ingress rules more efficient.

Besides, we recommend using this security group rule resource. Thus you will be able to modify security groups without recreation.

Inventory and configuration management

These operations are necessary to monitor the architecture’s state. For example, thanks to configuration recording, we can see that our server configuration or security groups changed and take some actions in response.

To see the current state of architecture, we use tfsec, terrascan, and dritfctl for security scans and config recording (with Terraform states). Below is a typical layout of Terraform infrastructure.

Cloudwatch metrics filters against the CloudTrail log group help us in work as well by notifying us about changes or unauthorized API activity. We also follow GitOps practices, which enables us to keep updates on the infrastructure configuration in the repository.

Cost control and cost optimization are also vital when building solutions. To optimize the costs, we use Infracost.

Data encryption

Encryption means turning data into a secret code. It conceals the data that you send or store.

In our practice, we do not encrypt all data as it is inefficient. But it is necessary to understand what data need to be encrypted. For example, we encrypt confidential data. We use KMS for that. This is the Amazon service that helps create and control keys for data encryption kept in AWS.

Also, we encrypt a database and place it in private subnets within our subnet group. This is done in combination with a well-made ingress rule and choosing a long username and password (or using IAM authentification). These methods will help you keep your database secure and save you from a lot of problems in the future.

Identity and access

Access control is vital for protecting the environment against unauthorized and harmful actions. So, we use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). This instrument helps us create users and assign them certain policies.

So, we can control which AWS resources and services they access. In our practice, we also always use multi-factor authentication (MFA) for console users.

When we need to provide developers or applications with access to AWS, we apply strict policies. For application credentials, we use per-service policies and create separate users and roles.

Monitoring and logging

In simple words, logging means recording information about processes in an application or environment. To do this, we write to them to cloudwatch log streams. You need to set up tools for that.

If monitoring is tuned right, we get notified about downtime in just a few seconds as they appear. Thanks to monitoring, we see if the application stopped working for some reason and understand why there is an issue in performance.

Based on our DevOps security practice, we’ve chosen the Prometheus stack as the best set of tools for our needs. It includes Alertmanager for notifications, Grafana for visualization, and a list of different exporters.

Also, we use Pagerduty to see if there are any alerts. This tool also sends us notifications to a few different endpoints, including Slack and email.

Container security

It means the protection and securing of the containerized environment OS and host OS as well as applications.

In our practice, we use multi-stage Dockerfiles, custom users, and we do not add any sensitive data to Dockerfiles. Other recommendations that come from our experience include packing minimum data to images.

Also, we create images that will not install or pull any updates or similar processes at the start. In our practice, we use docker’s BuildKit and Kaniko image-building engines.

Conclusion

Security is one of the vital aspects of a solution. At Codica, we ensure it with proven tools and by applying best practices. If we get a request from our client on scaling a solution, we are eager to revise the security aspects of the solution architecture.

How Much Does It Cost to Develop an MVP?

Codica — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 13:27:47 +0000

This article was originally published on Codica blog.

Discovering the precise cost of MVP creation is not a simple deal. The price will vary according to the many aspects, including the MVP features and your chosen agency.

But how do you know what the right MVP creation price is? Read this article to know the cost range that enables the development of a functional web product.

What is an MVP?

An MVP or a minimum viable product is the first workable version of the web solution that has a key value and can be rolled out to the market.

Before launching a web product with many features, it is preferable to build an MVP.

Pros of testing your business idea with an MVP

Check your assumptions. You can launch an MVP to market and test it with real users.
Faster market launch. With the help of MVP, you can launch your product as quickly as possible.
Receive user feedback. The user feedback helps you understand what features your solution needs.
Optimize the resource use. The MVP includes only core features, so the development takes less money and time.
Fundraising. You can present an MVP to investors and get funds to build a fully functional product.

Famous examples of MVPs

Amazon

Jeff Bezos, the marketplace founder, started by testing his suggestions. He focused on a few categories: books, videos, and others.

You can apply his experience when creating your MVP. Growing the audience in one field is suitable for a startup. Thus, you can expand your business later by adding more categories.

Source: versionmuseum.com

Airbnb

Airbnb started in 2008. At that time, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia offered their apartment to the participants of the design conference in San Francisco. So, they verified the idea of renting out an apartment in a bed and breakfast format. Having checked the idea, they were able to demonstrate it to investors.

Source: quora.com

The proof of concept vs prototype vs MVP

MVP is often mistaken for a prototype or proof of concept. Let’s distinguish what the three approaches are.

Proof of concept is a preliminary outline and trial of a web product idea.

A prototype is a clickable draft that shows how the solution will work.

An MVP is an earlier version of a product with key functionality. The main difference between the above approaches and MVP is that only MVP can be launched to the market.

What are the components that form the MVP price?

Project’s scope

The features you include in the product determine how long it will take to create it and which resources will be needed for development.

You create an MVP to demonstrate your solution's main value. So, prioritize the features to be included.

Partner in development

In-house development team

The in-house team is located in your company. Indeed, you can make modifications to your project as needed very fast. Still, this option requires extra costs. Furthermore, you need to manage and adjust the product creation.

Freelance specialists

Freelance experts typically charge less than specialized agencies. Still, this benefit involves picking thoroughly as you want to hire a reliable professional.

If you hire a freelancer, be ready that the MVP creation price will vary depending on the expert’s hourly rate.

Specialized development agency

If your MVP requires high confidentiality, contact a specialized firm. These agencies have profound expertise in the specifics of the MVP development process.

To discover the expertise of a development firm, check testimonials on such review platforms as GoodFirms or Clutch. Furthermore, you can contact their previous clients.

Tech stack

The tech stack should help create a stable, lightweight, and secure solution that works across platforms and browsers.

Only the development partner will give the final MVP cost based on the technologies selected.

The hourly wage of a development partner

Location and expertise are the key factors that impact the hourly rate of a development partner.

Location

So, the cost of services given by the developers from various regions will differ. For instance, earning $50 per hour in Eastern Europe will be the same as making $250 per hour in the USA.

Expertise

Depending on years of working experience, developers are divided into three groups:

Senior,
Middle,
Junior.

A middle expert is an optimal selection regarding quality and expenditure ratio.

Another aspect is the developer’s specialization. Developers with specialization in a certain domain may take a higher hourly rate. This means extra spending.

Contract type

There are two most widespread options for signing the project terms with a web development partner. Let’s consider their pluses and minuses.

Fixed price contract

A fixed price contract is an agreement between the client and service provider for a specific amount.

The pros of such an agreement are clear payment sum flow and management transparency. Still, the client may overpay because such contracts comprise a 15% - 40% margin.

Time and material contract

This type of contract means paying for work according to the developer’s hourly rates. This model enables you and the team to make more changes during the development process than a fixed-price contract.

Stages of MVP development

There are development stages that ensure efficient work on the minimum viable product. These phases are the following:

Product discovery;
Prototyping and design;
Development;
QA (quality assurance);
Maintenance and support;
Scaling.

We follow them at Codica. Let’s see what these steps mean and what is the price range for each of them.

Product discovery stage: $1,800 - $3,600

The product discovery process is the preliminary check of your idea. This stage enables you to validate that your web solution will be in demand.

The development team researches the market background and an idea of the project.

After this stage is finished, the client gets documents of the project requirements, budget, and time.

Prototyping and design: $2,400 - $4,800

At this stage, a designer makes preparatory sketches of the MVP structure. These are wireframes.

When the development team and client agree on wireframes, the designer makes clickable presentations of the structure and flow of the minimum viable product. These are prototypes. They show how the product will work.

The designer shows prototypes to the client to agree on the positioning of buttons, fields, and menus.

MVP creation: $24,000 - $96,000

This phase suggests that all development team works on your MVP. Your development partner must use effective and up-to-date technologies.

The product development process should be open to the client.

QA and optimization: $4,800 - $19,200

To win users’ interest and attention, you should provide a product of the highest quality.

Quality assurance lets you test that your MVP works correctly and is convenient in use. This step also comprises code review.

Maintenance and support: $400 - $1,000

After the MVP has been created, maintain its good work. By the way, along with maintenance expenses, there are costs for third-party integrations and server costs.

Scaling (optional)

As more people use your solution, it will be necessary to add more functions.

The MVP needs to be scalable to make those modifications. Of course, your tech partner will tell you the precise cost regarding the functions you would like to add to your MVP.

Promotion (optional)

Well-considered MVP promotion will assist you in winning users’ attention. There are two most common types of marketing: inbound and outbound.

Inbound marketing comprises making and sharing exclusive content about your solution through blogs. In contrast, outbound marketing reaches goals through social media and advertising.

The costs for inbound marketing vary from $4,000 to 15,000 in a month. Notably, the survey states that inbound marketing requires less expensive than outbound marketing.

How much does it cost to develop an MVP?

Based on each stage of MVP creation, we defined the time and budget you needed. Creating a profitable minimum viable product will cost you from $33,400 to $124,600 and take from 850 to 3145 hours.

Summary

The price of creating an MVP varies between around $30,000 and $120,000. The cost depends on the scope of work, development phases, the type of contract, the type of the team, and their hourly rates.

How to Develop a Fitness App

Codica — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 12:37:23 +0000

This article was originally published on Codica blog.

The fitness apps’ downloads reach millions globally. People like using these apps to track activity, sleep quality, heart rate, or amount of calories consumed.

In this article, we consider challenges when making a fitness app, what features are needed to add to it and share Codica’s experience in successfully developing one.

Fitness app market

As Statista’s report demonstrates, the fitness app segment modifies as follows:

The fitness app sector revenue is predicted to gain $16.60 bn in 2022;
The average income per user is forecasted to be $24.41.
It is projected that the annual growth rate in 2022-2026 will be 16.18%, with market size of $30.24bn by 2026.

Best fitness apps
Over 70,000 fitness apps were started on App Store and Google Play Store by 2022. Let’s see what the most popular apps on these resources are.

Google Fit: Activity Tracking (100+ million downloads),
MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter (100+ million downloads),
FitBit (50+ million downloads),
Strava (50+ million downloads),
WW (formerly Weight Watchers) (10+ million downloads),
Muscle Booster (25+ million downloads),
Home Workout - No Equipment (100+ million downloads),
Zepp Life (formerly MiFit) (100+ million downloads).

How you can get income with a fitness app

Fitness apps can make a profit millions. For example, in 2022, MyFitPal brought almost $9,000,000 in profit.

So, how can you make money from your app?

Paid apps. Before gaining access to the app, users need to pay for it.

In-app purchases. This model means that you provide your app partly for free. After gaining a certain audience, you can offer premium experiences as in-app purchases.

In-app advertisements. If you distribute your app freely, you can assume users purchase items with your app. For example, it can be a personal nutrition plan.

Ads. Your app may generate profit if you cooperate with other fitness-related businesses. Usually, the fitness app comprises a cost-per-mille or cost-per-click commission.

Sponsored content. Also, you can collaborate with fitness experts and share their content in your application for a certain charge.

5 steps when building a fitness app: Codica’s practice

Let’s see what development stages we follow at Codica and how they assist in delivering a fitness app of great quality.

Stage 1. Product discovery

The product discovery phase is a stage when you describe the main idea of your app to the development team and discuss it. Based on the outcomes of the discovery phase, the team plans your app’s architecture, features, and design.

Stage 2. Prototyping and UX design

Drafts and prototypes represent the structure and flow of the app. They are needed to demonstrate the arrangement of the app’s fields, menus, and buttons.

Stage 3. Workout app creation

We recommend starting the development process by creating a minimum viable product (MVP). MVP is a workable product version with basic features. Using MVP, you can see how people respond to your product and what they want to see enhanced.

Our team uses Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, and their frameworks to cover the back-end and front-end. Also, we add third-party integrations to make the app secure and robust.

We apply the Agile methodology in our development process. When creating a web project, we move in iterations. So, the customer and development team can see that the app creation is moving in the right direction.

Stage 4. Quality assurance (QA) and optimization

After creating the product, we test and refine it to deliver the top result.

Stage 5. Maintenance and support

After the fitness app development, the team provides tech support for the product, updates and improves the app, and integrates new functionality.

Key features in fitness apps

User profile

Usually, a user profile comprises the factors that assist in personalizing training (activity level, age, and so on). The user profile should enable users to enter the following data:

Workout goal;
Weight goal;
Progress dashboards;
Nutrition preferences.

Workout catalog

This catalog is the core of any workout app. Try to create an app with the following points for this feature:

Simple switching between exercises;
Equipment, time, and description for each exercise;
Text-to-speech tool for voice tips;
Workouts calendar.

Here, you can see an example of exercises demonstrated by the VGFIT app.

Source: vgfit.com

Maps with routes

This feature is needed when you develop an app for tracking the users’ activities. Add the following aspects to the routes:

Highlighting the points of the route that the user passed;
Providing data on the movement and calories burned speed;
Weather forecast integrations;
Point to the efficiency of the workout.

Notifications

Take into account the following aspects for notifications:

Notifications should be concise;
Enable users to manage and personalize notifications;
Add a log of notifications enabling users to monitor their activities.

Calorie counting and nutrition plans

We recommend including the following options:

Bar code and food scanning that allow an instant count of calories;
Tracking water intake;
Dynamic adjustment of recommended meals.

Source: MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter

Integration with music services

When you add integration with the audio streaming service, include the following:

Let users pick the pieces that fit their workout tempo;
Provide users with an opportunity to create playlists;
Bring up the tracks that assisted users in achieving better results.

Integration with educational materials

Сonsider the following aspects:

Offer concise video, audio, or blog pieces;
The content must relate to your users’ interests;
Customize the offered content to the users’ workout results.

Integration with wearable devices

Fitness app development also comprises integration with smart devices, such as smartwatches, fitness trackers, and heart rate monitors. By the way, in 2021, the activity tracking wrist-wear market had about 206.4 million users globally.

Social media sharing and leaderboards

Sharing results on social media and leaderboards motivates people to do more. So, include these features when creating a fitness app.

Overview of Impact Fitness App by Codica

How it started

Impact Personal Training is a fitness gym based in the United Kingdom. The facility gathered experts who create nutrition and personal exercise programs for clients.

During the COVID-19 outbreak, Impact’s clients could not attend the gym. So, Impact has provided an opportunity to stay fit while being at home.

Functionality for clients

Exercises for personal fitness programs

We added an easy-to-use menu with exercises in the Impact app. Each exercise comprises a full description and video of how to do them right.

Training management

We added a convenient dashboard demonstrating the training scale, workout plan, and the client’s progress.

Nutrition programs

Impact comprises features that allow clients to point out the food eaten on their plan. Furthermore, this nutrition program reflects the nutrition components.

Functionality for trainers

Training management

We developed a helpful dashboard for trainers. The dashboard enables selecting clients from the list and picking the most relevant exercises for them.

Management of nutrition programs

The app management system enables trainers to set and change client nutrition plans. The system comprises features that assist trainers in monitoring the progress of clients.

Tech stack used at Codica to develop a fitness app

Impact Personal Training comprises the following technologies:

React,
Ruby on Rails,
PostgreSQL,
Sidekiq,
Amazon Web Services.

We also used the following integrations:

Gitlab,
Dropbox,
Sentry.

How much does it cost to make a fitness app?

The exact time-frames and price of the app creation depend on the features and rates of your development partner. An approximate time and cost for the app development process will take 1328 hours and cost $66,400.

Conclusion

Developing a fitness app is complex regarding the variety in this market sector. However, it is worth the effort.

Now, you are armed enough with our tips that will help you to create a fitness app that meets people’s needs.

14 Integrations That Every Online Marketplace Needs

Codica — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 11:56:34 +0000

This article was originally published on Codica blog.

How make the customers stay with your web store? Statistics show that users leave the site if its download speed exceeds 3 seconds. So, the work of online marketplaces should be convenient and fast.

With the help of integrations, you automate operations and meet your users' demands. In this article, we will consider the main integrations for marketplaces that make your customers happy.

Overview of the marketplace integrations

A marketplace integration: what is it?

A marketplace integration is software that assists in adding additional functionality to the marketplace website.

How do integrations work?

Integrations are built on the application programming interface (API). It enables you to transfer data between two platforms or apps. So, the data from various marketplace websites are added to one platform.

The basic steps that integration enables are the following:

Connection;
Data transmission;
Data synchronization.

What are the core features that marketplace integrations comprise?

Usually, the key features that marketplace integrations offer are the following:

Keeping inventory;
Order tracking and shipment;
Product management;
Analytics;
Payments;
Notifications.

Benefits of marketplace integrations

The key benefits of adding integrations to your marketplace are as follows:

Managing many supply chains;
Handling inventory with expeditious procurements;
Shipping adapted to the needs of a marketplace;
Checking vendors’ and purchasers’ behavior when they use a marketplace;
Easy and fast processing of payment transactions;

Let’s find out what integrations are effective and widely used.

Stock management

Skuvault

Skuvault provides a reporting and analytical system in real-time. It enables vendors to track inventory needs. So, sellers can foresee the needed inventory according to the sales history.

This tool allows for reviewing item history, inventory levels, and locations. Moreover, Skuvault comprises many marketplace integration services, such as shipping solutions and accounting.

Zoho Inventory

This cloud-based solution for stock management enables tracking each good in the sales cycle. Users may apply a Zoho batch tracking system or a serial number.

The Zoho Inventory tool has an easy-to-use system for doing warehouse reports. By the way, you may integrate Zoho with Etsy, Amazon, Shopify, and eBay accounts. In such a way, you will expand your sales.

Fulfil.IO

Fulfil.IO is the only tool created specifically for digital commerce and wholesale. It enables real-time tracking of inventory flow and operations. Furthermore, Fulfil.IO comprises weight conversion and relieves from carrying out additional calculations.

You can integrate Fulfil.IO with the following services:

Payment gateways.
Shipping carriers.
Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketplaces.

Orders management

QuickBooks Commerce

QuickBooks Commerce helps automatically control many warehouses, sales paths, and commerce operations. It serves firms that handle complex supply chains and sell physical goods.

This solution enables merchants to generate invoices, send sales quotes, and mark orders according to their fulfillment.

SAP Commerce Cloud

SAP is a B2C and B2B web commerce platform that offers services to big enterprises for complex operations.

This tool helps enterprises to manage their inventory. SAP Commerce Cloud handles orders from any location and simplifies refunds and returns.

Source: help.sap.com

The image below demonstrates how SAP enables managing orders.

Bigcommerce Orders

This solution helps optimize orders. Using it, sellers can track the order statuses. Also, the solution assists sellers in making invoices, shipments, and compensations.

The tool sorts orders by different parameters. For example, it divides items by date range, coupon code, payment type, and shipping method.

Delivery

Shippo

This tool carriers to platforms and marketplace websites, including e-commerce. Shippo enables vendors to do the following:

Create and handle sellers’ accounts;
Provide instant connection with broadly used carrier platforms;
Customize shipping operations;
Streamline refund and invoicing processes.

Tracktry

The platform has integrations with about 700 couriers. It enables users to track a package. To do this, they pick a carrier and enter the tracking number. The enhanced UX design helps to discover their order status within moments.

Source: tracktry.com

Processing of payments

Stripe

Stripe is one of the most used payment gateways in the world. It enables users to access the following types of payments:

Via electronic wallets;
Via credit cards;
Via bank directs.

Braintree

The system covers many types of services and payments needed for marketplace operations. This integration uses address and card verification tools. So, buyers don’t need to send payment details to each vendor.

Notably, Uber and Airbnb integrated this gateway.

PayPal

This tool is a popular payment system. It offers integrations for various platforms and marketplace websites.

This API enables using card payments, local payment methods, and PayPal transactions. The system provides for paying through bank accounts and split or multi-seller payments. Thanks to its versatility, PayPal is suitable for different types of marketplaces.

Data analytics

Google Analytics

This marketplace tool demonstrates the weak and strong aspects of your store. It identifies site and content issues and compiles relevant reports. Due to these reports, you can discover sources of traffic and actions that happen when customers stay on your platform.

This integration enables you to do the following:

Forecast potential revenue from a particular group of customers;
Calculate churn probability;
Integrate with Google Ads to deliver ads relevant to your customers’ needs.

Kissmetrics

Usually, data analytics solutions demonstrate how often a web page has been accessed or events performed. However, Kissmetrics links the customer’s activity before signing up for your online store.

This enables you to discover the need that led users to your website and what they did to become your shoppers. In brief, this integration provides an easy system for making reports that comprise diverse data on your consumers.

Mixpanel

It is a great data analytics tool for custom marketplace development. It helps analyze the prerequisites of churn and identify the customers’ behavior.

Mixpanel allows to perform the following analysis:

Audience segmentation;
A/B testing;
Real-time user behavior tracking.

Integrations assist your business in achieving success

Integrations are great tools that enhance the work of your marketplace. Using API integrations, you can improve the market reach for your selling portal and control your inventory.

5 Most Common Pitfalls When Starting a New Marketplace and How to Avoid Them

Codica — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 10:57:48 +0000

This article was originally published on Codica blog.

Nowadays, online marketplaces are becoming more and more popular. Still, building a lucrative marketplace platform requires attention to many nuances.

In this article, we will consider what problems can occur when developing an e-commerce marketplace and how to escape them.

What is an online marketplace?

A marketplace is a platform that enables multiple suppliers to sell their services or products on it. For this, vendors pay a certain fee to the platform's owner.

Here, you can see the statistics of the most well-known e-commerce websites in the world.

Source: Statista.com

Now, let’s learn more about the common mistakes when building a marketplace.

Pitfall 1. Poor market research

The CB Insights research shows that the main reason for the startups' failure is no market need.

To avoid this problem, we recommend you conduct market research before developing an online marketplace.

Disregarding market research may lead to the breakdown of your web project. So, we recommend always starting your development process with the Product Discovery Phase.

Still, what is Product Discovery? It is the process of figuring out what features need to be created. It provides a better understanding of user needs and gives answers to questions that emerge throughout the development process.

We advise you to conduct the Product Discovery before building a minimum viable product (MVP).

Pitfall 2. Entering the market without an MVP

To discover how users will accept your web solution, present a minimum viable product. It is the first version of your marketplace with basic features.

Developing an MVP enables business owners to do the following:

Check the hypothesis based on actual data,
Lower costs of marketplace development by eliminating unnecessary functions,
Reduce the chance of financial losses when starting a marketplace with errors,
Identify unaccounted consumers' needs,
Collect an initial customer base,
Launch the market earlier;
Attract investors.

Pitfall 3. Disregarding the chicken-and-egg situation

The first days of the online store functioning are the most challenging. An entrepreneur has neither sellers nor purchasers. This issue is called the chicken-and-egg problem.

Sometimes it is difficult to decide whether to attract more suppliers or focus on the consumers.

But how can you attract the first users?

One of the variants is to concentrate on a particular niche. For example, the Etsy marketplace attracted artisans from fairs and exhibitions. Thus, the handicraft startup transferred potential vendors and shoppers from offline to online.

So, describe your potential offline lead's advantages from being online. Each offline player can bring some of their customer audience with them.

In most instances, you should concentrate on attracting suppliers, artisans, or performers.

Source: Knowband.com

Pitfall 4. Low-quality UX/UI design

Another error when starting a marketplace is low-quality UX and UI design.

What does UX/UI design signify? User experience (UX) design determines how the interface operates. User interface (UI) design determines what the interface looks like.

Quality UX/UI design makes your platform more appealing than others on the market.

When developing a marketplace design, developers aim to place the goods conveniently. The interface must look clear, regardless of the number of elements and pages.

Below you can see an example of how our experts developed a design for the marketplace website.

Source: Caravan marketplace case study

Pitfall 5. Picking the inappropriate development approach

One more problem when starting an online marketplace is selecting an unsuitable creation method. You can choose to build custom software or use a template-based solution with the help of such platforms as Adobe Commerce, Shopify, and others.

Each of these development approaches has its pluses and minuses.

Ready-made platform

Pluses:

Fast launch,
Moderate pricing.

Minuses:

Scaling your project will be challenging,
Slow adaptation to the market,
Low customization opportunities.

Custom web development

Pluses:

Competitive edge and uniqueness,
Realization of custom requests,
A higher level of security.

Minuses:

Larger price,
More time required to launch the platform.

It is recommended to create an MVP of the marketplace with the help of a ready solution.

However, once you have tested your idea and want to build a fully-fledged platform, it’s better to further develop your website with a custom creation approach. To achieve this goal, turn to a reliable custom development company.

Conclusion

Often, startuppers get caught in pitfalls when they are just launching the platform. These mistakes lead to wasting resources.

Undoubtedly, creating a high-quality online marketplace is not an easy challenge. However, by hiring a professional web development team, you will receive a product to help you succeed.