Forem: Sergey V.

Top 7 benefits of progressive web apps for your business

Sergey V. — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 14:28:14 +0000

Today having a website is a must-have for any business, whether it operates online or offline. Many organizations also develop a separate mobile app or mobile site version to attract customers, reach the audience via smartphones, improve client service, and boost sales.

However, it may be too expensive to build two software projects, especially when there are cost-efficient options that allow you to not only reduce the price but also increase user engagement.

Helping companies achieve these objectives, progressive web apps (PWAs) have gained high popularity recently. AliExpress, Forbes, Twitter, Ele.me, the Washington Post, and many other famous market players have already created a PWA.

What is a progressive web app?

A PWA is a web application that looks and behaves like a native mobile solution but is developed with web technologies such as JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

Providing in-app like experience, a PWA serves as a mobile-friendly website that can be downloaded on your smartphone’s home screen.

Therefore, you don’t have to install it directly from the App Store or Google Play—just click on “Add to the home screen” button—which is much more convenient.

Thanks to a PWA, you will have access to the site functionality even when there is no Internet connection.

Here you can explore the main features of progressive web apps.

Why should you create a progressive web app?

According to the report by Statista, mobile users consume approximately 50% of web traffic globally. In the first quarter of 2020, smartphones generated almost 52% of the worldwide website traffic, continuously hovering around 50% since 2017.

At the moment, mobile devices can not be ignored since most customers use them for making purchases, browsing goods, looking through services, searching for information, and reading news.

Brands need to understand the current technology trends in order to better approach customers and increase revenue.

"One of the reasons we built a progressive web app was to be able to invest in the web experience across all browsers.

Not only did we see huge benefits on browsers that support the latest features, but we also got to see a bump across the board.

That is the sign of a great investment, and one that will keep paying for itself as browsers evolve." —said Lijun Chen, director of AliExpress Mobile Team.

Top 7 benefits of progressive web apps

A PWA offers in-app like experience, enables a more secure way of interacting with a product, and doesn’t oblige users to go to the App Store and Google Play. Combining mobile and web, progressive web apps provide companies with a variety of benefits.

1. Improved customer experience

As we mentioned above, users don’t need to search for a certain app in stores. When interacting with the website, they can just click on the “Add to home screen” button and the app icon will appear on a smartphone.

Therefore, customers won’t have to search for a web platform in Google or save a page in the tab. What’s more, they can allow the site to send them push notifications and automatically receive the desired information.

In our web app development company from Belarus, we increased user engagement, raised the number of daily visits, and reduced the bounce rate by creating our own PWA.

2. Offline access

With a Service Worker under the hood, progressive web apps allow people to use the product offline. Thanks to this feature, a PWA enables background synchronization and content updating.

Having access to the application 24/7 regardless of Internet connectivity, customers will spend more time with your content and digital services. As a result, the conversion rate will increase.

3. Faster page load speed

Reduced page load time is another advantage of PWAs that improves customer engagement and brings companies more users.

Even when there is a slow Internet connection, the content is quickly loaded. Additionally, mobile native applications occupy more space and memory.

4. Increased security

By employing HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure), a PWA increases the security of the transmitted data.

The use of HTTPS helps companies protect from various threats such as eavesdropping, content tampering, and man-in-the-middle attacks. As a consequence, progressive web apps provide improved safety compared with other digital solutions.

5. SEO-friendly

Progressive web apps are accessible by search engines as their URLs are similar to URLs of their websites. This allows a company to analyze user data and monitor their behavior.

6. Lower software development costs

Making a PWA is much faster and easier than building a native app for iOS and Android. As this option is cost-efficient while also providing a better user experience and an offline mode, both SMEs and large corporations are investing in PWAs.

7. Responsiveness

With a progressive web app, it is much easier to create a responsive design. This means that the product looks great on all screens, although different devices have different sizes.

The uniform customer experience is an important standard of software quality. Using a PWA, you can provide it for various operating systems.

How does a PWA help resolve business challenges?

Let’s take a look at how different companies resolved their business-specific challenges by creating a progressive web app.

1. Housing.com, a real estate search platform

Housing.com is a Mumbai-based real estate platform that enables customers to search for housing using numerous filters such as price, location, number of rooms, etc.

Founded in 2012, now the organization employs 6,000 brokers and operates in 40 Indian cities.

Aiming to increase customer engagement and generate revenue, Housing.com created a native application to make mobile users able to work offline.

However, many consumers were unlikely to use sensitive data or space to install a smartphone solution. Poor connectivity, costly Internet access, and a high number of low-end devices also impeded the company’s growth.

Understanding that slow content load times negatively affect the conversion rate, Housing.com revealed that even a 1-second enhancement would provide a better outcome.

To address these challenges, it decided to launch a progressive web app, called Housing Go. With the view of reducing the load time, developers added Service Workers and improved the website to allow visitors to quickly find the required information.

Thanks to a PWA, the company achieved the following results:

the conversion rate raised by 38%
bounce rate dropped by over 40%
page-load performance improved by over 30%
an average session length increased by 10% across all browsers.

Enjoying an amazing user experience and faster load times, customers retain to Housing.com more often. Now, they can use the platform even when there is no Internet connection.

2. George.com, a leading clothing brand in the UK

Being a part of Asda Walmart, George.com is one of the most popular clothing brands in the United Kingdom. Established in 1989, today the company delivers goods to 580 retail stores with more than 2 million weekly transactions.

When George.com decided to develop a PWA, it had an outdated mobile application that was not able to provide a seamless user experience.

As the market was too competitive, the organization needed to increase customer satisfaction and boost sales. To improve digital offerings, it leveraged a mobile-first approach, focusing on intuitive design and page load speed.

With a progressive web app, George.com accomplished the following results:

the load time was reduced by 3.8 times
the conversion rate jumped by 31%
the number of page views per session raised by 20% -bounce rate dropped by 2 times.

Furthermore, software engineers incorporated an “Add to home screen” button, which allowed the company to increase the average time on site by 28%.

Employing HTTPS and modern browser capabilities, George.com provided customers with a more safe shopping experience.

3. Nikkei, a media company in Japan

Nikkei is a famous Japan-based media company with a publishing history of over 140 years. The organization has more than 450 million users per month, including a web platform and print newspaper.

As Nikkei had an outdated website, it was difficult to handle high loads arising due to an increasing number of smartphone users.

Employing Lighthouse to audit web pages, the team at Nikkei found they needed to optimize the website by improving the mobile experience and reducing the load time.

At that moment, it was on average 10 seconds and 20 — for the site to become fully and consistently interactive.

To increase customer engagement and streamline digital services, the firm built a multi-page PWA using JavaScript and creating a responsive user-friendly design.

With Cache Storage and modern APIs, web developers enabled a faster content load speed. Providing offline support and placing an “Add to home screen” prompt, the company significantly enhanced UX (user experience).

The use of a PWA allowed Nikkei to achieve great results:

the website organic traffic jumped by 2.3 times
currently, there are 58% more conversions (user subscriptions)
the load time of interactive content was reduced from 20 to 6 seconds
the overall speed index improved by 2 times
now the website has 49% more daily users, who visit more pages per session

“The value of speed is indisputable, especially for financial news. We made speed one of our core metrics, and our customers have appreciated the change.” —Taihei Shigemori, a general manager of digital business development at Nikkei America, Inc.

Summing it up

Progressive web apps have gained huge popularity among businesses of all types. Allowing companies to improve customer satisfaction, boost loyalty, and increase the conversion rate, PWAs help them take competitive advantage and generate profit.

Furthermore, a PWA offers a more secure way to interact with the product and exchange data. You also get the ability to re-engage consumers by sending them push notifications.

Being responsive, PWAs fit any device, whether it is a smartphone, laptop, PC, or tablet.

If you have questions about this topic or want to share your thoughts, you are welcome to leave your comments or contact me via chat.

Top 4 cross-platform app development tools for 2020-2021

Sergey V. — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 13:46:49 +0000

In most cases, native software technologies are incompatible with each other. Java cannot be used for developing iOS applications. You can’t employ Swift to create smartphone solutions for Android.

As a consequence, engineers have to build the same algorithms, features, and business logic for different operating systems and using different tools.

Although the end software product has high quality, writing two codebases—which means that you need to hire both iOS and Android developers—is likely to be too costly.

Additionally, this increases the working time for debugging and post-launch project maintenance.

Cross-platform frameworks emerged to address these challenges. Although native apps usually provide enhanced user experience (UX) and performance, now cross-platform technologies allow development teams to make great modern applications much faster.

The key advantages of cross-platform development are:

cost reduction
reduced time-to-market
facilitated project maintenance after release
hiring only one team to build an application for two or more operating systems
the ability to reuse the code across different platforms

As today’s market is very competitive, vendors constantly improve their technologies, making enhancements and releasing updates. In this article, I will consider React Native, Flutter, Apache Cordova (formerly PhoneGap), and Xamarin. Let’s get started!

Top 4 cross-platform frameworks for 2020-2021

1. React Native

React Native is one of the most well-known cross-platform technologies that we mainly employ in our custom software development company.

When React Native was initially released 5 years ago, it quickly gained huge popularity. Software engineers finally got the ability to write mobile solutions that look and perform like native apps.

React Native is an open-source framework that was invented by Facebook on the base of React, a JavaScript library for making UIs (user interfaces).

When working with React Native, changes to the code can be easily reloaded without rebuilding the whole product. The idea behind React Native is that you compose the UI from JavaScript cubes, which significantly simplifies the development process.

Using this technology, you can create apps for both mobile and web devices. React Native supports the “Learn once, write anywhere” paradigm, allowing the customer to reduce costs and time-to-market. It is especially suited for making scalable and performant applications.

At the moment, thousands of digital products are built with this framework, from Fortune 500 companies to high potential startups.

Facebook, Instagram, Tesla, Oculus, Walmart, Skype, Pinterest, SoundCloud Pulse, and many others employ React Native in their projects.

React Native takes the 3rd place on the list of the “Most wanted frameworks, libraries, and tools” on StackOverflow Developer Survey 2019.

In 2018, this cross-platform technology had the 2nd highest number of open-source contributors. including programmers from Microsoft, Expo, Infinite Red, etc.

Explore the main benefits of React Native for cross-platform development.

2. Flutter

Invented by Google, Flutter is a user interface development kit that enables programmers to create modern and high-performance solutions for mobile and web devices. Flutter is an open-source tool that you can access for free.

Although it was released just 3,5 years ago, it quickly won the hearts of developers.

Many world-famous companies chose this technology to build their projects, for instance, Alibaba Group, Baidu, Grab, Nubank, and eBay. Check out more examples on the official Flutter’s website.

Allowing teams to reuse Java, Swift, and Objective-C code, the framework has rich functionality: APIs for 2D, third-party SDKs, animation, and other cool features to write beautiful apps.

Flutter provides Stateful Hot Reload, which lets software engineers easily make changes and see the result without losing the product state.

With numerous fully-customizable widgets, it helps create native user interfaces much faster. These widgets incorporate OS differences that include fonts, icons, navigation, etc.

This enables programmers to ensure high product speed and native look across all platforms. Flutter contains detailed documentation with multiple samples, text and video tutorials.

According to StackOverflow Developer Survey 2019, Flutter takes the third place in the list of the most loved tools, libraries, and frameworks globally.

3. Apache Cordova (formerly PhoneGap)

Apache Cordova is another popular cross-platform technology for mobile app development.

Invented by Adobe Systems, it allows programmers to make digital products for each operating system—iOS, Android, Windows, etc.—by leveraging standards-based web tools to bridge the gap between mobile devices and web applications.

Built with HTML5, this open-source framework employs HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Apache Cordova doesn’t require the use of SDKs, hardware, and compilers to create smartphone solutions.

The tool also provides engineers with a wide range of plugins that facilitate the development process.

Apache Cordova is especially suited for building simple projects that are intended to have 5-18 screens.

If your objective is to launch a smartphone application to address internal business challenges while having a small audience, this framework will be a great choice.

4. Xamarin

Xamarin is a cross-platform framework, which can be accessed and used for free. Extending the .NET platform, it provides developers with tools to build software for multiple devices and operating systems, including, iOS, Android, Windows, and tvOS.

Programmers employ Xamarin, .NET, and a C# to write performant mobile solutions that ensure a consistent user experience across all platforms. Furthermore, it contains a variety of libraries to access native APIs, animation, and 2D graphics.

It also offers various tools and features, for instance, AI-Assisted IntelliSense that allows using artificial intelligence in the software development process to write and audit code faster.

Enabling real-time collaboration, Visual Studio Live Share lets teams edit the codebase and fix bugs simultaneously. Xamarin is a perfect choice if you want to launch a high-performance cross-platform solution.

As of April 2017, about 1.5 million software engineers used Xamarin and its products in 120 countries globally. Xamarin is supported by the community of over 60,000 open-source contributors from all over the world.

Summing it up

React Native, Flutter, Apache Cordova, and Xamarin are one of the best cross-platform technologies for 2020. React Native is a great choice if the primary goal is to launch a beautiful performant application that offers a seamless user experience.

Flutter is rather a new technology that enables software engineers to create quality modern products while reducing time-to-market. Flutter provides a variety of highly customizable widgets to facilitate and automate the development process.

The main advantage of Apache Cordova is that it bridges web and mobile by using standards-based tools. You should employ it in case you aim to release a simple application with up to 18 screens.

Xamarin offers many useful features to launch digital products for a number of operating systems, including iOS, Android, watchOS, and others. If your programmers have experience in working with Xamarin, .NET, and C#, this is excellent news.

Certainly, there are other cool cross-platform frameworks. I described 4 technologies that we enjoy in our mobile app development team the most.

Furthermore, many world-known organizations use React Native, Flutter, PhoneGap, and Xamarin to address technical challenges. If you want to share your thoughts about the topic, feel free to leave comments below.

How to solve real estate challenges with RPA technology

Sergey V. — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 12:01:19 +0000

Being a part of digital transformation, robotic process automation (RPA) software enables companies to streamline workflows and relieve employees from performing manual routine activities. Since RPA solutions help organizations address various business issues, it has gained high popularity recently.

The worldwide RPA market is anticipated to reach nearly $11.6 billion by 2026, growing from $1.609 billion in 2019, with the CAGR of 32.58% over the indicated period (Market Insight Reports 2020).

Analysts at Deloitte Global Survey revealed that RPA technology brings plenty of benefits, allowing to improve compliance (92%), increase data accuracy (90%), boost staff productivity (86%), and lower costs (59%). Business owners report they received a payback at less than a year, with an average 20% of full-time equivalent (FTE) capacity provided by RPA software bots.

Real estate is one of those sectors that can take competitive advantage of RPA integration. In this article, we will describe the main use cases of robotic process automation in real estate. Learn how you can resolve your industry-specific challenges with RPA.

What is robotic process automation?

Robotic process automation is software that accelerates mundane, repetitive, and rule-based operations within an organization. Connected with end-user software such as ERP solutions, CRM applications, Microsoft Excel, internet pages, etc., RPA technology replaces people in various tasks, for example, data validation, price comparison, data search or entry.

With instructions being written into the code, RPA programs automatically replicate human activities interacting with software systems. To meet your business-specific needs, you can configure an RPA tool to support the required processes. It is worth noting that even a non-technical person is able to prepare algorithms for an RPA software bot.

RPA is applicable across all sectors that have manual workflows. Find out how the use of RPA helps manufacturing and logistics industries automate multiple tasks and boost efficiency.

The key benefits of RPA solutions for real estate

To see RPA advantages for real estate in practice, let’s consider the following example. An employee in a real estate company, let’s name her Laura, has to fill out a spreadsheet every month. She has to open an invoice for each given record and enter the information in rows, save the invoice, then open another, save it, repeating this process until hundreds of rows are completed.

Once this is done, Laura makes sure that all invoices are accurate and sends them to customers. Although this task is not so difficult, it takes a lot of time, often requiring more than a couple of days (15-20 hours) per month.

And now imagine how many repetitive and routine activities your agents face every day. Integrating an RPA solution, you can carry out such operations much faster, reducing the time from hours to minutes. Furthermore, specialists will be able to devote themselves to more important and creative tasks, which will increase their job satisfaction.

With robotic process automation tools, you can receive the following advantages:

lower costs
generate higher revenue
boost staff productivity
improve job satisfaction
increase data quality
remove human errors
enhance customer service

In real estate, robotic process automation tools are applicable in different spheres, from accounting and data analysis to customer service. Since RPA technology provides no risks associated with human errors, it offers a higher level of quality. Let’s see how your real estate company can benefit from using RPA software solutions.

The main use cases of RPA solutions in real estate

1) RPA software solutions in accounting

Robotic process automation solutions are used in back-office operations, for example, accounting. This department has many routine, rule-based, and repetitive tasks such as tracking numerous invoices, documents, online payments, cash transactions, credits, records, and renewals.

RPA software bots can do it much faster without getting tired. Specialists often have to create heavy reports where 80% of work is copying and pasting. Although this is rather simple, it consumes a lot of time. Data comparison and validation are those activities that are also streamlined with the help of RPA technology.

What’s more, you can employ an RPA program to extract information from various sources that can include CRM applications, ERP systems, files, reports, online archives, etc., and then structure, format, and share this data. Robotic process automation tools can calculate prices, discounts, commissions, as well as verify transactions.

2) RPA technology for CDD and KYC

Customer due diligence (CDD) and know your customer (KYC) are essential tasks for real estate companies that you can streamline with RPA solutions. Verifying client data and identity, you prevent fraud, money laundering, and other risks. This information can include user contacts, payment data, credit scores and histories, etc.

What’s more, you need to regularly update this data while maintaining high accuracy and meeting security standards. Employing RPA technology, you will automate this manual and time-consuming process from hours to seconds.

3) RPA software for data search and vetting

Every real estate company has to work with various documents such as deeds, forms, reports, contracts, requests, etc. Employees need to review all of them and verify that information is correct and accurate.

Data-based operations involve search, validation as well as comparison with other information if necessary. With an RPA solution, you can not only automate these processes but also prevent any errors and discrepancies.

4) RPA solutions for human resource management

Robotic process automation solutions can help real estate companies to improve human resource management (HRM). Here you can integrate RPA software bots to process payroll, validate applicant information, onboard new employees, and streamline recruitment.

To improve onboarding, you can use RPA technology to:

verify candidate data
minimize human errors
increase data accuracy
fill out and review new hire forms
transmit the collected information into the organization’s database
automatically send notifications to new employees

Medium-sized and large real estate companies often have a lot of work associated with interviewing and segmenting applicants, verifying their information, creating reports. As specialists have to manually input, copy, and past data, the number of errors increases.

Operations with data generally take at least 40 minutes per one employee, involving the time to review data and correct discrepancies. With an RPA solution, you can reduce this time to 2-4 minutes. This way, you improve the speed by up to 10 times.

You can also use RPA software bots for processing thousands of payroll changes per month. This task may consume 60 hours and more depending on the number of requests and changes in salaries. By leveraging RPA technology, you will be able to lower the processing time by 85% and labor costs by 60%.

5) RPA technology in customer service

RPA software solutions can help you improve customer service and boost staff productivity. Here you can streamline a variety of tasks such as:

Reviewing incoming requests — an RPA software bot will send them to the required customer service representative or department.

Updating client information — when customer data is changed in one file or system, an RPA bot will automatically update it across all real estate company’s systems.

Sending notifications — an RPA program can remind customers about appointments, inform them about potential properties and new opportunities in real estate, etc.

Scheduling appointments — an RPA bot will send submitted service requests—received via emails, chatbots, phone calls, etc.—to a calendar, mobile or web application, CRM system, accounting platform, or other software systems.

Robotic process automation solutions won't necessarily lower headcount but they enable real estate companies to reduce labor costs. The key objective of RPA technology is to optimize the load on agents, allowing them to focus on more value-added tasks like business strategy development, decision-making, risk and portfolio management.

Wrapping it up

RPA solutions can speed up a wide range of tasks in the real estate industry, including data entry, information validation, customer identity verification, invoice management, payment tracking, request processing, appointment scheduling, and a lot more.

Remember that you can streamline any activities besides those that are described above if they are manual, rule-based, repetitive, and/or prone to errors. With RPA technology, you will relieve employees from performing them.

As a result, you will not only increase the overall efficiency but will also reduce costs. A great advantage of RPA software bots is that they are not so expensive to create as, say, a native mobile application.

If you have questions about RPA use cases or want to receive a consultation, you are welcome to contact our custom software development company. We will get back to you within 1 working day and help resolve your issues.

An ultimate guide to successful cloud migration

Sergey V. — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 10:36:11 +0000

Today many organizations are transferring their projects to the cloud with the view of raising scalability and reducing infrastructure costs. This will be especially useful if your app is built on top of the legacy technology stack or you need to develop a platform that will process thousands of requests per second. Although moving to the cloud introduces some challenges, there are many benefits it provides customers with.

First and foremost, it allows organizations to optimize budgets as having a local server requires ongoing maintenance. According to the survey by Rackspace, 88% of clients managed to reduce costs thanks to running services in the cloud. Improved system resilience to high loads, faster disaster recovery, higher flexibility, and scalable data storage are other important advantages of cloud migration.

Take a look at interesting facts and predictions about the transition to the cloud collected and published by Hosting Tribunal:

By 2023, the worldwide cloud computing market is anticipated to grow to $623.3 billion increasing from $272 billion (Report Linker).
Spending on cloud infrastructure exceeded $80 billion in 2018, growing from $55 billion in 2017 (Canalys).
Data access from any place in the world is the primary reason for cloud migration (Sysgroup).
47% of the surveyed organizations said that cost reduction was the main reason to transfer to the cloud (Opsramp, Skyhighnetworks, Directive).

However, when migrating to the cloud, you will have to resolve some challenges. In order to help you successfully transfer, we’ve prepared a step-by-step guide that consists of 6 steps. Take a look!

6 steps for successful cloud migration

1. Define how much cloud capacity you will need

Traditional internet infrastructure vendors sell computational resources, not computational power. To be more specific, they provide servers that run 24/7 while companies pay per hour even if they aren’t employing these resources at some moment. Unfortunately, this may result in extra expenses as you are charging for the server downtime.

Therefore, if your web application doesn’t have night-time operations, say, when serving numerous users in different time zones, it will have 12 hours of idle time. This means that 50% of expenditures will be wasted.

As sometimes even famous news and social media services face a few hours of slow traffic, they can also take advantage of reducing cloud computing costs.

However, buying a large server or many servers based only on abstract workload projections is not a way out. The purchase of one small server can be insufficient to ensure product resilience and availability during peak loads. In the worst case, the system can even crash under high pressure. If you choose to have lots of servers, you risk losing money.

That’s why it is so important to define how much capacity you really need. For example, you can use the pay-as-you-go model for the cloud that enables auto-scaling. Or you can build a serverless architecture using AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, or another cloud computing platform.

The key feature of these services is automatic on-demand scaling: when the load increases, the system provides more computational power, when the traffic is slow, you pay less. As a consequence, you take advantage of either pay-as-you-use and pay-as-you-go payment models.

Serverless is a cloud architecture that allows software engineers to delegate various tasks such as server management and resource allocation to the vendor. Hence, developers have more time on making and deploying applications while you optimize expenses.

To increase app performance and improve the response, consider remaining with a local data center or using advanced tools and approaches, for instance, creating a serverless or microservices architecture. For instance, Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading media company, built serverless with AWS for its usage analytics service that processes 4,000 requests per second.

If there are some doubts, you should turn to a software development company that has extensive experience in cloud migration to receive a project consultation.

2. Choose the right architecture

Although the cloud is often considered as a great way to save money, there are some issues that you should take into account. First and foremost, companies often mistakenly perceive cloud transition as cloning of the existing infrastructure. The second point is the cost of the cloud provider that you pay for infrastructure management and maintenance.

If you decide to transfer the system as is, the price of cloud migration will be higher compared to local storage. With the view of reducing expenses, you should adjust the architecture before moving to the cloud. You should also pick the right technologies and find a reliable cloud service vendor to simplify this process.

One of the best ways to address these challenges is to define what product components can be left on-premises and what should be migrated. By optimizing your architecture, you will make this transition a cost-efficient option.

Another approach is to develop a microservices architecture, for instance, using AWS or Microsoft Azure cloud computing platforms. As of today, AWS and Azure are the providers of choice for 93% of cloud newbies, with 52% and 41% of early-stage cloud users respectively.

3. Optimize service utilization

The next step of your cloud migration strategy is to balance service utilization. Analyze the load on services before making a transition to define which of them are overloaded and which are underused.

To optimize the load, we recommend you to do the following things:

Employ infrastructure components that include message queues, load balancers, caching services, etc.
Transfer all static resources to CDN (content delivery network) to reduce the load on the system servers.
Replace simple backend services with those that cope with a sporadic load and ensure better response time.
Define routines and services that are rarely utilized. Then, replace them with serverless handlers, for example, AWS Lambda. As a consequence, your company will be charged for only the consumed computational resources, which will also allow you to save money.

Thanks to load balancing, you will be able to increase the system resilience, availability, and infrastructure maintenance. Providing fast response time, you will improve customer experience.

4. Estimate the cost of cloud infrastructure

In order to estimate the budget that you will need for infrastructure monitoring and maintenance, you should consider the cost of servers, resources, and equipment deterioration. There are various tools that help calculate the final cost, for instance, AWS Monthly Calculator provided by Amazon Web Services. However, you can significantly cut the price by following our recommendations described in the previous steps.

Let’s consider an example. Say, you have a complex software system that runs on-premises. This web application has to store over 10 TB of data, analyze large amounts of information, and process about 10 million user requests daily. In this case, you should prepare a 2-phase cloud migration strategy.

Firstly, software engineers need to rebuild infrastructure components and replace some of them with serverless handlers. Secondly, the team should use cloud services available out-of-the-box. This way, you will optimize software infrastructure, provide on-demand scaling, and successfully transfer to the cloud.

5. Provide data security

Many companies operate with large amounts of sensitive data including payment, customer, enterprise, personal, and financial information. If you’ve decided to migrate to the cloud, you should ensure data protection against hacker attacks, malware, unauthorized access, and other threats. In case your budget doesn’t let you hire qualified security specialists, you can turn to a trusted cloud vendor for providing data safety and privacy.

According to “2019 Global Cloud Security Study” by Gemalto:

48% of all enterprise information is stored in the cloud in comparison with 35% in 2016.
49% of companies encrypt sensitive data in the cloud to protect it against various threats.
44% of companies are careful about sharing sensitive information with other organizations.
53% of organizations plan to increase data security stored in the cloud employing advanced techniques such as multi-factor identification.

Today businesses are especially concerned about providing data privacy. Surely, cloud migration presents more technical challenges to the healthcare, government, financial, and banking sectors.

Companies generally have to not just protect information but also ensure compliance with various standards and regulations. However, despite security concerns, this transfer is still possible if to make everything right.

What you should do:

Turn to a reliable cloud vendor (e.g., AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, etc.) based on the company’s security acknowledgements.
Prepare a service-level agreement that takes into account not only vendor-customer relationships but covers all third parties involved.
Create and follow a security management plan to ensure a quick response to various threats as they arise.
Don’t migrate the whole system to the cloud. Instead, you can employ hybrid approaches when enterprise software solutions with personal customer information are stored and secured on-premises.

What a cloud vendor should do:

Analyze the existing system for possible risks.
Continuously monitor the system to instantly detect security vulnerabilities and prevent any data leaks.
Prepare a detailed threat management plan that clearly explains what to do in each particular case.
Manage security risks that may be caused by the Internet of Things or BYOD employing virtual machines, containers, or other tools for access control.

6. Prevent vendor lock-in

When migrating to the cloud, a common challenge that organizations should prevent is vendor lock-in, which means that you won’t be able to change a cloud vendor. This also includes the issue of apps’ interoperability when partnering with another cloud provider. Resolving this problem can lead to spending extra time and expenses.

If you decide to commit to only one vendor despite these points, you should carefully plan a cloud migration strategy considering all possible risks.

However, if your goal is to avoid vendor lock-in, you should research the vendor’s documentation and negotiate an agreement or consult an expert. Employ cloud-managed services created with open-source components. As a result, you will get the ability to easily switch cloud vendors.

In order to address issues associated with lock-in and interoperability, you can apply AWS services such as Amazon Aurora (if fully compatible with MySQL database) and AWS ElastiCache (employs both Redis and Memcached on the backend).

Another way is to employ cloud services that use both standard or open protocols. Consider if the cloud vendor offers its own proprietary protocols together with open ones. Here we recommend to always choose open protocols as they offer higher flexibility in terms of changing the provider or deploying custom service instances.

Summing it up

Transition to the cloud is rather a challenging process that requires preparing an effective migration strategy and cooperating with a trustworthy cloud or IT service company. If implemented properly, you will take advantage of:

Reduced costs
Raised scalability
High resilience to peak loads
Improved infrastructure maintenance

Choose a reliable vendor, prepare a detailed SLA, consider using a hybrid model, prevent vendor lock-in, ensure data security, and employ open protocols. In case you need to update your system, say, migrate from the outdated technology stack, you should contact a reliable provider of app modernization services.

Following recommendations described in this guide, you will successfully transfer your system to the cloud. Good luck!

Native or Hybrid app: What do you need to solve your business challenges?

Sergey V. — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 11:18:15 +0000

Today the majority of companies are increasingly using digital products to address industry-specific challenges, for instance, to boost sales, automate reporting, enhance customer loyalty, or improve document management. However, before creating a mobile solution, you should decide what to make: a native or a hybrid one.

Having been providing application development services for about 10 years, we’ve decided to compare these two options to help you understand what will be the best one for your project. Let’s get started!

What is a native app?

A native mobile application is a smartphone program, which is coded in a specific programming language like Java and Kotlin for Android or Swift and Objective-C for iOS. Native means that there is only one code base for one operating system (OS). So, the same app (design, functionality) available on iOS and Android has two different codebases for each platform.

This type of digital solution offers a higher level of performance and reliability. Installed directly from stores (Google Play, App Store), native apps generally have access to the camera, a list of contacts, microphone, GPS, and other things on your device. Furthermore, some of them successfully work offline allowing people to use them without an Internet connection.

What is a hybrid application?

A hybrid app is a software program that uses elements of both website and native application. It looks almost like a native solution that runs in a web view. Developed using HTML5, CSS, and Javascript programming languages, hybrid apps can also access the device’s embedded features such as camera, microphone, GPS, and others. However, they require the deployment of various plugins.

What should you choose: Native or hybrid apps?

Native and hybrid applications have either advantages or disadvantages. To make the right choice, you should know them to see what you actually need to resolve business-specific challenges. Therefore, you should determine the goals and requirements of your future product. So, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of native and hybrid app development.

Comparing native and hybrid applications

* Codebase

The most important characteristic of a native mobile application is that it has different codebases for each platform. Generally, there are two of them—iOS and Android, the most popular operating systems.

Created using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (like websites, hybrid solutions enable developers to write a single codebase. On top of that, the app can be run on all devices regardless of OS.

Native: a separate codebase for each OS
Hybrid: a single codebase

* Mobile application development cost and time

As long as there are different codebases that have to be written for each platform, making a native product takes more time. This also implies the team extension, which means the involvement of iOS and Android engineers.

Hence, native development is usually more expensive. But if your programmers are fluent in several languages, libraries, and frameworks, this will reduce the time and price of building a project. In addition, you can release only an Android or iOS application.

Making a hybrid app is less time-consuming and needs less effort, which is a great advantage. However, further customization may be a bit challenging if the task is to implement rich functionality and outstanding user experience that can involve, for example, the creation of handcrafted design elements.

Native: Higher cost, less time
Hybrid: Easier to develop

* User experience (UX)

Native applications offer the best UX compared to all other types of apps. This also means the consistent user experience across all screens and devices. Since customer engagement and loyalty become higher, a business has more retaining users.

One should note that the quality of UX (and the delivered product as well) is also verified by app stores. In order to publish a mobile solution in Google Play or App Store, it has to comply with specific requirements and standards.

Native: Great
Hybrid: Good

* Maintenance

The more complex the app development, the more difficult the post-project support. Thus, the maintenance of a hybrid solution is more simple. However, native applications can be easier to test due to plenty of tools for quality assurance (QA) engineers.

Hybrid: Easier compared to native apps

Security

Enhanced security is one of the key benefits of native mobile apps over others. They enable software developers to integrate various functions such as two-factor authentication that help ensure data safety and privacy. In addition, native solutions allow getting access to security features that are already installed on the smartphone, for example, TouchID.

Native: Enhanced
Hybrid: Good

* Performance

Though native application development is more time-consuming, the performance of the end product is far superior than of a hybrid one. This characteristic is crucial when it comes to apps that have to ensure instant response to user actions, handle peak loads, and provide high availability even with a slow Internet connection. Online booking platforms, virtual stores, games, online delivery solutions, taxi services, etc. are examples of mobile applications that need to have the highest performance.

Native: High
Hybrid: Lower

As both native and hybrid applications have their advantages and disadvantages, the most important thing to do is to analyze project objectives and requirements. Here is a list of factors that you should consider when deciding between native and hybrid app development:

1. Budget and product launch time—native applications are more costly and generally take more time to build.

2. The quality of user experience—if factors like customer loyalty and user engagement will directly affect the level of income, take care of providing the audience with the seamless user experience.

3. Long-time perspective—in most cases, native solutions are easier to scale.

4. The level of customization—if the task is to create a branded design with a lot of customized elements, choose native application development.

5. The complexity of features and performance—in case you aim to develop a complex mobile service with high performance (handling high loads, enabling improved speed, etc.), make a native application.

Let’s consider an example. Say, you’re going to make a secure payment app to prove the value of your idea and pitch it for investment. In this case, it will be reasonable to build an MVP (minimum viable product) to test the concept on a small audience, collect feedback, and see what should be enhanced to raise funds/attract numerous users.

If a software solution shows great results, for example, you’ve managed to attract investors and receive a positive user reaction, turn it into a native application. This approach will allow you to reduce development costs and achieve a better outcome. Check out how companies achieved success with the help of an MVP.

Conclusion
Here at Smartym Pro, we have solid experience in creating both native and hybrid applications, which helps us offer meaningful recommendations and consultations. A hybrid app will perfectly meet your goals if you want to create a simple product within a limited budget or/and strict deadlines. If a technical specification is unclear or you need to receive a working service as soon as possible, hybrid development will also become the best way to go.

This is also a great choice for software projects that don’t require a high level of performance or customization. However, if the main requirements are to enable improved security and implement rich functionality, you should choose a native mobile solution. Furthermore, it is a perfect match for enabling the highest performance and amazing user experience.

How to reduce cost on the maintenance of a legacy system

Sergey V. — Mon, 18 May 2020 16:09:18 +0000

The number of enterprises using legacy software is still inexcusably large, one of the recent surveys proved that about 86% of enterprises are still utilizing at least one outdated tool. For some it may seem not big of a problem - just replace the legacy system with a modern one. However, this is a very costly solution - companies will have to spend tons of money just to transfer data accurately without losing anything in the process.

Are there any other less risky options? Maintaining a legacy system might appear as a more attractive alternative, however, it also costs almost no less than replacing the system with a new one.

Let’s find out why is it so expensive to support legacy software.

- Scarcity of specialists

Technologies don’t stand still, they are constantly evolving. Some technologies of the past, the names of which are probably familiar to retired engineers only, are not in demand anymore since there are 10 times more progressive modern technologies these days. It’s almost impossible to find a person available specializing on a decent level in technologies like C, Cobol, Assembly, Perl or Delphi today. And if you find one, it will cost you a lot, and you’ll have to spend tons of time while searching for them.

- Giant amounts of data

Enterprises that exist for more than 10 years on the market have accumulated dozens and hundreds of terabytes of data using the legacy systems. Just imagine how much do these amounts of data cost? The more outdated the used technologies are, the higher the risk level will become and the more expensive it will be to ensure data safety.

- Hard to customize

There is always a need for new features and while it is easy to implement them when the software application is modern and progressive, it will be a burden to do so with a legacy system. The thing is that outdated technologies are somewhat limited and therefore you can’t really do anything you want with them. Customizations will be extremely exhausting to implement, time-consuming, pricey and risky - a new feature might break some others.

How to minimize costs and risks when supporting a legacy system?

Smartym Pro has always been opting for modernizing legacy systems and software maintenance cost reduction step-by-step. One of the best solutions we always offer to our clients is code refactoring. Code refactoring is about optimizing the legacy code piece by piece in order to make the whole system more effective, make it work faster and make the solution progressive and future-proof in general.

It is a long-term process that requires scrupulous work, however, the result of such accurate work will make a reliable base for further system modernization works. Regular code refactoring reduces the probability for the system to become legacy, eliminates interoperability issues and cuts down on the number of bugs and errors. As a bonus, code refactoring makes the system process the operations faster and improves user experience.

Another thing that Smartym Pro offers as a part of their app modernization services - servers architecture review and/or total system audit. It helps define the pain spots and bottlenecks of the current solution as well as the opportunities for system modernization. As a result of the review - together with the client we come up with the most preferable solution in the given situation that will guarantee a good price/quality ratio. Application audit and architecture review is one of the most significant steps to creating a stable and reliable system.

Migration to the Cloud is one of the popular options we offer. As a rule, this service includes infrastructure and database migration as well as post-migration support and consulting. Usually, we recommend Cloud migration for the systems that have already been refactored and/or audited. In a nutshell, it is better to migrate to the Cloud when the data of the legacy system is accurately structured, otherwise, you risk treating the symptoms instead of curing the disease. A system with a bad code, especially an outdated one, will still remain the same even after being migrated to Cloud.

Migration to Cloud is not the only cost-saving solution for a legacy system. If you’re using an out-of-box CMS - it can be transferred to JAM Stack, monolith architecture system - changed to microservices, cross-platform mobile applications - changed to native.

If you make the right decision together with a team of professionals that will help you analyze your specific situation and pick the technological solution suitable for your case, you won’t have to worry ever again about high maintenance costs. Moreover, once the system is made future-proof and easy to support, you won’t have to hire a full-time maintenance team anymore which makes a great deal in cutting down on costs.

Conclusion

Hundreds of enterprises suffer from exhausting amounts of money they have to spend in order to keep a legacy 20-year-old system afloat. The more you postpone the decision to ask for an advice of a professional team to help you pick the optimal software modernization solution, the more expensive your legacy system maintenance will be.

Make the first step now, and soon you will see how many opportunities you have been missing. We are sure that your employees using your legacy software now will be very glad after all. High-quality software that demonstrates fast work and great performance is also one of the aspects influencing your employees’ motivation. Think about it.

Why do you need to build a customer loyalty app for your business?

Sergey V. — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 16:15:21 +0000

Customer loyalty is an important success factor for any business that delivers goods or services. Satisfied consumers are willing to spend more time and money with your company, as well as recommend it to their friends, family, and colleagues.

As a result, income is significantly higher. That’s why organizations analyze the audience needs and preferences to discover the best ways of engagement. A mobile loyalty app is one of the most effective tools to raise customer service and boost sales.

How does a mobile application help increase customer loyalty?

A mobile application is a great sales channel. People can make purchases through it, browse goods, and directly communicate with agents. Furthermore, they can be automatically notified about sales, discounts, special offers, and other useful information that motivates to buy.

Take a look at interesting statistics:

Satisfied consumers generally spend 3-4 times more time with your brand purchasing goods or using services. Therefore, important customer loyalty indicators such as retention rate, brand recognition, average check, life-time value are extremely improved.
Mobile application users are willing to spend more often. What’s more, they buy more expensive items, having an average check 3-40% higher compared to customers that don’t have a smartphone app.
When provided with high-quality service, consumers visit retail stores, banks, restaurants, beauty salons, etc. 2 times more often. This service involves a wide range of elements, for instance, well-trained staff, communication with customers (how quickly your managers respond on calls or emails, how quickly and efficiently they process multiple requests, etc.), and a mobile loyalty application.

What benefits does a customer loyalty app provide?

1. Increase revenue

As today people spend several hours on their smartphones per day, a mobile app is a great tool to stay in touch with your audience, delve into their needs and preferences. This is the key to boosting sales and increasing revenue.

Then, users will appreciate the ability to receive notifications about special offers, collect points, and change them for gifts or other cool things.

By integrating a mobile solution into your business, you can engage customers with interesting insightful content, as well as useful information about shares and discounts. This will help you motivate people to make purchases and be happy about that.

2. Improve customer satisfaction

Mobile apps development has already helped many businesses increase customer loyalty and raise sales. Integrate a newsfeed to share the life of your company and engaging content such as articles, news, polls, quizzes.

Publish posts with useful tips tailored to the interests of your audience such as “10 unique and simple recipes from Gordon Ramsay”, “How to make an amazing make-up for anniversary”, etc. Then, set up rewards for inviting friends in the mobile application to attract more clients and improve user satisfaction. As a result, you will manage to significantly raise brand awareness.

3. Collect and process customer data

An important rule: personalization is the key to success. To get to know your customers, you can embed analytical tools (e.g., Localytics, Flurry, Mixpanel, etc.) in the product to send them personalized recommendations and call-to-actions.

An effective way to collect and analyze user data is to employ beacons. These are small Bluetooth-enabled devices that are widely used for navigating people inside large buildings. They can be simply attached to walls, shopping carts, and other types of surface.

What’s more, beacons are applied for detecting customers when they enter a certain zone (in your store or near it) and monitoring their behavior. So, they can allow you to discover user shopping habits, preferences, etc. Set up automatic push messages that will notify consumers about cool offers of your company when they are nearby.

Then, provide users with the possibility to leave reviews and comments on your goods and services. You can also build the feature of likes, dislikes, and post sharing, so that you can easier get an understanding of what customers really enjoy. Make sure that your employees quickly respond to all the comments, especially negative ones.

Top features for your customer loyalty application

1. Push notifications — Working in conjunction with beacons, a mobile app can send automatic push notifications on user smartphones when they are near your company. You can also set up a push notification system without using beacon technology. In this case, your employees will be able to create and send messages setting up the desired date and time.

2. Mobile app analytics — When creating a mobile customer loyalty solution, integrate a tool that will let you collect and analyze user analytics in real time. You will be able to track and visualize numerous things like the number of daily and monthly users, target audience by age, city, country, etc., life-time value, retention rate, session length, and a lot more.

3. Point-collection system — An engaging feature that will increase customer satisfaction and help you boost sales.

4. QA codes — A simple way for users to receive shares and discounts.

5. Administrator panel — This function will allow your specialists to create and publish posts, send messages, respond to customer reviews and comments right from the admin panel.

6. Catalog of goods or services/Menu — It will enable customers to view products and services that you offer with a few clicks.

7. Newsfeed — Publishing useful content, insights, and interacting with the audience, you will significantly increase customer and brand loyalty.

8. GPS-navigation — Clients will appreciate the ability to use the shortest way to your company.

9. Payments — Now many users prefer to make payments via a smartphone app. So, include this feature to provide customers with true value.

Final thoughts

At the moment, businesses are increasingly using customer loyalty solutions to attract more clients and raise income. A mobile application can provide your organization with numerous advantages.

Engaged customers will use your services and buy your goods instead of turning to competitors. Furthermore, they will come back to your brand again and again while also recommending it to all acquaintances. As a consequence, a smartphone app will help you generate a higher profit.

5 Best Practices to Improve Your Mobile App User Experience

Sergey V. — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 14:36:55 +0000

What distinguishes a successful, yet simple mobile application from a multi-functional but failing one? The answer is hiding behind the 2 letters - UX. UX (User Experience) design is an essential thing every custom software development company should focus on.

What’s the difference between UX design and UI design? Imagine that you have a big nice cheeseburger in front of you. What you see, how the burger looks like - this is UI (user interface). However, once you get a bite of it - here comes UX - what you feel about it.

Food can look delicious and inviting but the taste is a complete disaster. The same applies to a mobile application: the interface and the outer look may be attractive (colorful, animated, beautiful), but the way you feel when using the product makes you want to throw the device against the wall.

Therefore, we conclude that a successful smartphone app must have a high-quality User Experience Design. In this article, we’re going to outline some cool tips that will help you ensure an amazing user experience.

1. Don’t let typical UX Myths fool you

Smartym Pro’s UI/UX Lead Designer shares his experience:

_“There are numerous UX myths that have been busted by UX Designers all over the world via User Tests. All these myths are stored on a specific website, I suggest all the UI/UX designers visit it in order not to become prey of stereotypes.

The key thing is not to search for a panacea and perfect pattern but to figure out who your users are. For instance, there is a popular tip for building a mobile app: don’t use too many buttons, be simple. Otherwise, you will lose the majority of your target audience.

But is it so? If people got used to utilizing lots of buttons before and then we suddenly remove all the unnecessary ones (according to our opinion)... what happens then? Everyone will be happy? No. New users - probably yes, but what about saving the current ones?

The thing is that there are hundreds and thousands of posts on the internet being like “10 UX Design tricks that will help your mobile application get on top” or “6 things you should not do when creating UX design” but most of them - are just a compilation of stereotypes that might work in no more than 50% of cases.

The biggest mistake many UI/UX designers make is that they use these recommendations without delving in the topic, without conducting any profound UX research. As a result, the final solution appears just as typical (or worse) as all the other digital products on the market.

2. Making separate features convenient and too obvious, you risk losing important things

_“Another tip for UX software development that is not correct: be obvious, create an intuitive workflow as users shouldn’t waste time trying to guess how to make a certain action, or find the required information, or resolve their issues.

I claim that it’s quite an amateurish thing to say. Everything depends on the context. For example, if it’s a gigantic interface with features that, say, serve such an important role as aircraft control or dealing with medical equipment.

So, you have to be cautious as while chasing the target of BEING OBVIOUS, you have a great risk of losing something more IMPORTANT (e.g., functionality).

At the same time, if you need to launch a basic app for thousands and millions of users, common activities should be implemented in the way that customers could do them without thinking. For example, money transfer or fund withdrawal.

When the key goal is to make everything as obvious and understandable as possible, you risk making it so only for yourself as a developer. Everything you do should be based on User research.”_ - continues our UI/UX expert.

The best advice here - don’t try to focus on the convenience first if you don’t know your audience. Many mobile app development teams mistakenly skip the UX Audit stage and let software engineers (or anyone else rather than a UX specialist) be responsible for the user engagement.

3. Don’t burden users with the unnecessary input fields

While working with a web or desktop application, numerous text fields don’t bother users that much, mobile screens are not made for big amounts of data being entered from a small keyboard.

First and foremost, this is irritating. Secondly, your users might consider your software solution unsafe if they see too many input fields asking for some additional personal details that don’t have anything in common with the goal of a mobile app.

Leave the minimum required number of fields, think about what will be comfortable for your future users to share. And remember about an amazing autocomplete, it’s very important!

4. Any blank screen will lead your app to failure

There are no official statistics on how many people have chosen to delete an application after a couple of times seeing a blank screen when trying to launch a feature. However, it’s quite obvious that when a user wants to do something but sees nothing - he/she stops using it and installs another product.

But the problem is the application might not have bugs at all: it was just the developers' omission and what’s going on behind the blank screen is actually long feature loading.

In our UI/UX design company, we avoid these situations by setting up a close collaboration between designers and engineers. Programmers analyze the functionality that needs time to be launched, designers suggest some graphic solutions that would entertain people while waiting.

In one of our previous posts about UI/UX trends of 2020, we’ve mentioned that animation is one of the main trends for the coming years. So, be creative when decorating your blank screens but don’t exaggerate!

_“Unfortunately, there is still a lot of legacy mobile products on the market, that lack some kind of a loading status. A loader is an indicator for users that the app is working fine.

Employing animations and other funny tricks is a great thing as adds some feelings, unlike another spinning loading circle.

However, be moderate with what you do. In a bank application, for example, you shouldn't demonstrate an animation of banknotes flying away somewhere, while a transaction is processing.”_ - comments Lead Designer at Smartym Pro.

5. Conduct UX research

This is the most important practice that summarizes everything mentioned above. What does UX Research even mean? It means that in the development process you should engage a professional to get close with the future customers, give them prototypes to try, collect and analyze their feedback. Hence, UX Research is all about getting into the users’ shoes.

There are some effective UX design methods that will help you familiarize with your target audience and create excellent UI and UX of your mobile app:

1). Proto-personas. Proto-personas help set the structure and priorities for users. You need to make assumptions in terms of audience perspectives and opportunities.

Based on personas, later assumptions can be validated via qualitative research. Proto-persona is a quasi-fictional character that represents your product user: has a name, face, some backstory, description of preferences;

2). Interviews. Interviews should be conducted both with stakeholders and future users. This will allow you to get valuable insights into their expectations.

One of the key points is to identify problem areas and get a complete list of roles and their tasks;

3). Journey map. A Customer Journey Map is a visual representation of every interaction your user will have with the product.

Maps enable teams to get a complete service picture, clarify the opportunities and get a “sneak peek” of how the current service structure will be transformed under the influence of a digital product;

4). Information architecture. One of the most essential elements of the UX Research process in mobile product development. This is a hierarchical structure of the future app’s screens with description.

Information architecture’s goal is to organize content in a way that is easy for future users to adapt to the functionality of the product and so that they could effortlessly navigate.

These are the methods that we use in Smartym Pro to deliver flawless usability, as well as eye-pleasing Visual Design and User Experience.

For over 5 years of work our team has proven the high-quality of our products’ UI and UX, and recently our efforts have been rewarded with a top mobile software development company position according to GoodFirms.

We are glad to share our UI/UX Design skills and expertise with you!

Conclusion

Therefore, it is very important to dedicate enough time to User Experience Research and Design. Fortunately, there are multiple useful recommendations to follow when building a great smartphone application.

Take into account that UX is the responsibility of not only designers but developers, project manager, business analysts, marketers, and quality assurance engineers. So, establish close team cooperation to achieve a perfect result.

Good luck with reaching the top 5 mobile apps in the App Store and Google Play markets! Using the tips mentioned in the article, you will surely get there sooner. If you need some creativity boost or have questions to ask, welcome to our friendly specialists that will help you!

How to increase Website Page Speed and improve Google Search Rank

Sergey V. — Thu, 06 Feb 2020 14:22:04 +0000

Users want to receive answers to their questions and find the desired content as quickly as possible. They enjoy when websites load very fast and may get irritated when waiting. Actually, if the page loads for more than 3 seconds, it’s considered as too long to ensure the seamless user experience. That’s why the higher the speed is, the higher the position in Google search will be, and the more visitors will come to your site.

However, if before to optimize the loading time was necessary for desktop searches, now it’s the key ranking indicator for mobile search, too. On July 9, 2018, Google released the “Speed Update”, a new ranking algorithm, focusing on mobile page speed.

Since a major part of Internet users don’t wait for long seconds while the content becomes available, many companies pay a lot of attention to this metric. Otherwise, they lose either the current or new audience coming from organic search.

The “Speed Update” introduced the following main changes:

Mobile page speed is more important for achieving high Google search rankings than the desktop page speed.
If the website page speed is low, an “ad quality score” indicator is also lower. The lower this score is, the more you’ll have to pay for launching a Google advertising campaign.

Therefore, to reach the desirable top Google search position, you need to create a top-notch website or update the existing one. In our web app development company, we’d like to highlight the following steps that you should follow:

Develop a nice design of your web pages. The design should be intuitive, which means that users are able to use it even without thinking.
Create relevant content. Remember it must be useful, which means that it should answer questions of your target audience.
Make sure the website content is totally unique: you can check this metric on platforms like Advego, 1Text.com, or Copywritely.
Produce and publish content on a regular basis, for instance, in your company’s blog. Prepare and follow a SEO (search engine optimization) strategy.
Create an adequate backlink profile. This will help you increase search rankings and attract traffic from relevant sources.

If your website fails to take top positions on Google, you need to investigate root causes using specific online services. This analysis will let you understand the problem and see how to fix it.

Here at Smartym Pro, we recommend employing the following tools:

Google PageSpeed Insights — analyzes the content, evaluates optimization quality, and enables you to receive reports on the page loading speed on mobile devices and desktops. Furthermore, this tool offers recommendations on how to enhance the overall situation.
Lighthouse — a free open-source tool allowing to improve the quality of web pages. You can use it for any website (if it is publicly available and doesn’t require user authorization) by putting URL into it. Lighthouse enables site owners to analyze SEO, speed, accessibility, and other important metrics. After running a series of audits, it generates a report that gives you a full picture of the website performance and some tips on how to make it better.
Chrome User Experience Report — creates a report that includes user experience metrics for how real-world site visitors experience popular Internet destinations.

Although all of these tools provide truly useful information and tips on website performance, quality, and optimization, sometimes this is not enough for achieving top search engine positions. Even after following personalized advice, rankings may not change (or increase but just a bit). As our practice shows, there are some technical activities that you might need to do in order to obtain great results.

Take a look at several recommendations from our own experience:

Make sure that the web development team has configured resource compression when creating a web solution on the client-server. Check if there is an additional gzip compression on the server.
Optimize all images — apply various formats, for example, WebP or Progressive JPEG. Compress or crop images with the help of specific tools such as TinyPNG. Mobile browsers don’t like having to load too large pictures with a 2000 pixels’ width while having a maximum width of 450-500 pixels. We also recommend getting rid of complex sliders as they slow down the page speed. Put icons in SVG format.
Employ lazy content loading, a technique that defers loading of non-critical resources at website load time. Instead, they are loaded when needed.
Cash server requests to increase the speed of web pages. We also employ service-workers to cash resources on users’ devices.
Only the necessary styles and scripts must be loaded as a result of the website visitor’s interaction with the web content.
Employ Content Delivery Network (CDN) as web page data warehousing to increase the speed of TTI and FCP indicators.

Now our team at Smartym Pro continues experimenting with different tools and approaches to enhance our page load speed. Recently, for example, our specialists have transferred the company’s website from WordPress to JAM Stack.

Previously, the server was functioning (generating web pages) each time during request execution. With JAM Stack, our engineers have already managed to generate static pages and put them into the Content Delivery Network “folder”.

When users enter the site, they receive instant access to these static pages. So, instead of generating the same page 100 times, we have just one page per the same 100 requests. As a consequence, we save time and resources.

Although the migration to JAM Stack is in progress, our team has already reached search rankings improvement, and we are waiting for more visible results.

If you have questions about improving the web page speed and reaching top search positions, feel free to ask. Our web developers will help you resolve your issues and provide meaningful recommendations. Good luck!

Why do you need to use Progressive Web Apps

Sergey V. — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 08:36:35 +0000

The creation of progressive web apps is one of the key programming trends for today and years to come. Acting as native mobile applications, PWAs offer both customers and product owners many advantages that involve engaging user experience, faster loading time, improved performance, and cost-efficiency.

Using this technology, many world-famous companies—AliExpress, Pinterest, Flipboard, Forbes, PureFormulas, Washington Post—significantly increased customer service and boosted sales. However, what is a progressive web app? How can it help you solve business-specific challenges?

Having been delivering software development services since 2012, we’ve answered all of these questions in this article. Let’s get started!

What is a PWA

A progressive web application works as a regular web page or website and offers in-app like user experience. Combining the functionality of most modern browsers and mobile apps, it contains plenty of features that involve push messages, offline access, and device hardware access.

Deployed to servers, PWAs are available through URLs and indexed by web search engines. Living on the smartphone’s home screen, they can be downloaded directly from the site. Therefore, users save time as they don’t have to open the App Store or Google Play to find and install the desired product. Just imagine what steps you pass to start using a mobile solution.

To start using the product, you need to:

Go to the app store
Search by name or keyword
Press “Install” and accept permissions
Wait until it’s installed
Open it
Register (in most cases)
Start using

When installing a progressive web app, you pass the following steps:

Visit a web page/website
Click “Add to home screen”
Go to the smartphone’s home screen, open the app
Start using it

As you can see, the second way is more simple and convenient. Combine it with the faster loading speed, less data usage, offline access, improved web experience and feel the difference. No wonder that AliExpress increased the conversion rate by 104% after adopting a PWA for its e-commerce service.

“One of the reasons we built a Progressive Web App was to be able to invest in the web experience across all browsers. Not only did we see huge benefits on browsers that support the latest features, but we also got to see a bump across the board. That is the sign of a great investment, and one that will keep paying for itself as browsers evolve.” —Lijun Chen, Director of AliExpress Mobile Team.

There is a number of things that distinguish this software technology and explain its growing popularity. Take a look at them below.

Progressive web apps are characterized as:

Reliable — they instantly load and ensure independence on Internet connectivity: due to service workers, users will still have access to the functionality despite uncertain network conditions/lack of the internet.
Responsive — PWAs allow companies and software engineers to increase user engagement regardless of the device as they look natural on desktop, tablet, smartphone, etc.
Progressive — progressive enhancement as a core tenet enables apps to work equally well despite the user’s browser and location.
Fast — DoubleClick by Google study revealed that 53% of mobile site visits were abandoned if a page load took more than 3 seconds. High speed is one of the most important PWAs’ benefits: they quickly respond to user interactions without janky scrolling and slow interfaces.
Safe — Served via HTTPS, PWAs help prevent snooping. Furthermore, your content can’t be tampered with.
Engaging — Removing the need to go to app stores, they ensure an immersive full-screen experience. By sending push notifications to consumers’ smartphones, product owners keep them informed about shares, discounts, interesting offers, etc. As a result, they improve customer satisfaction and motivate users to make purchases.
App-like — With an app-shell model under the hood, PWAs feel like natural applications including app-style navigation.

Explaining the functionality of progressive web apps

A PWA is qualified under the following criteria:

Runs under HTTPS
Supports a service worker
Involves a Web App Manifest

Servers workers

A server worker, the technology behind a PWA, is a code script which is triggered by events like network requests, push notifications, etc. Representing event-driven workers, they run in the product background and operate as a proxy between product and network. By intercepting requests and caching data, they enable features such as content loading, content updating, and offline accessibility.

Web App Manifest

Simply put, the Web App Manifest is a JSON file which has meta-information associated with a web application. Thanks to it, software engineers are able to manage the product’s appearance: icon, background and theme colors, and much more.

Application Shell

With application shell architecture, you can create a quality PWA that instantaneously loads on smartphones’ screens. In fact, it is the minimal HTML, CSS and JavaScript which is necessary to power the interface. Since data is cached and app shell isn’t loaded from the network every time the user visits your website, its load speed is truly fast for returning customers compared with other sites.

Push notifications

Having two APIs under the hood — Notification API and Push API, push notifications in PWAs are triggered locally or sent from the server. The first API is responsible for displaying alerts, while the second allows service workers to push them from the server. What’s important, they are always successfully delivered to the customer regardless of the network connectivity.

Final thoughts

To conclude, there are multiple benefits of a progressive web application. Employing this solution, a business can dramatically improve user engagement, customer loyalty, and boost sales. What’s more, this software doesn’t require building native products while combining web and mobile features together. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

In speaking about our company , we delivered many PWA projects for startups, medium-sized, and large companies. By integrating it into their services, they either raised the conversion rate by 20-45% and reduced costs on software development.

Top 5 principles of software distributed systems that you need to know

Sergey V. — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 15:28:59 +0000

High scalability is crucial when it comes to adding new features to your product and handling thousands and millions of requests per second. Software engineers and architects are always striving to find the best way to develop applications that can be elastically scaled depending on the customer’s needs. Furthermore, it’s important to give access to it in case of some trouble, for instance, lack of internet.

Distributed architecture has been invented to help companies easily withstand high loads, extend their projects, and make the service available even if there are some failures. Unlike centralized software systems, solutions that are built on top of distributed architecture, provide a high level of scalability, accessibility, and consistency.

Although their creation is more difficult and may take a bit more time, the end result is worth it, especially if you’re designing a product such as an Uber-like app, online booking platform, e-commerce store, or an international e-learning platform. There are several alternatives to the distributed architecture—broker and SOA (service-oriented architecture).

Distributed software applications can be showcased by the client-server architecture that created the base for so-called multi-tier architectures. The latter is characterized by the separation of the service features, for example, app processing, data management, presentation, and more.

Middleware is an essential element of any distributed architecture that serves as an infrastructure that supports the development and execution of software solutions. Representing a buffer between the network and application, it is set in the middle of the system to ensure efficient support and management of its components.

Engineers can employ a wide range of tools and frameworks for developing distributed software systems: NET, .NET Web services, AXIS Java Web services, J2EE, CORBA, and others.

As functions in the distributed architecture are separated from each other, it’s much easier to maintain it and extend when needed. As a consequence, such a system is able to handle high loads and enable the product availability even if some its part fails.

The main principles of distributed systems

1. Availability

Service availability is about the time your product is accessible for use—despite high loads, lack of internet, system failures, data synchronization, and other factors. It’s rather challenging to ensure a constant 100% availability: even world-famous brand solutions like Gmail, Visa, Mastercard, and others can’t offer it.

If your software system is built on top of the legacy technology stack, you should migrate to new technologies and new, scalable architecture. This will help you increase the accessibility and flexibility of your application.

Another thing that you can do is to include additional nodes/machines into the cluster. Thanks to this, an efficient app functioning will be provided even if some part of the system underperforms. So, when creating a software product, take care of having a high accessibility level.

2. Consistency

Consistency implies that all the system nodes simultaneously see, have, and communicate the same data. To provide their correct functioning, they need to work in synchronization involving successful message delivery and request processing. If the system is implemented properly, you will avoid message losses and delivery delays, thus improving the quality of customer service.

As a rule, the weaker the consistency level is, the quicker the product functioning. Hence, during app development, you need to define what level you need. If you’re building the project that requires data (payment initiation, financial transactional, or other information) storage in a consistent way, you should provide make this functionality part consistent.

3. Idempotency

Idempotency is another important characteristic of the distributed system that allows preventing dropped connections and other errors. In an idempotent system, the event is executed only one time irrespective of the number of request execution times.

If the user attempts to make a payment but it doesn’t work, it is likely to try again. When the application has a high level of idempotency, the payment will be charged only one time so that customers can be sure they won’t lose their money.

At the same time, non-idempotent systems don’t guarantee the lack of double charges which may result in money losses and just unpleasant situations associated with trying to return it back. Therefore, it’s very important to provide successful message/payment/data delivery and correct service functioning.

Here at Smartym Pro, we recommend to add versioning and optimistic locking and integrate a consistent data storage to achieve high idempotency level.

4. Data durability

Once some information appears in the data storage, you will always be able to access it even if some functionality component will fail or some nodes will be offline. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Data durability is actually about turning it into reality and building truly reliable software systems that keep a lot of sensitive data.

Banks, insurance companies, healthcare providers, logistics companies, government entities, and other organizations that deal with personal and business data are those that just can’t afford its losses. This is the key reason why engineers have to ensure the highest level of data durability.

Fortunately, today most distributed data storage services that include MongoDB, DynamoDB, and Cassandra enable durability support at different levels (at the node level, cluster level, etc.). What’s more, you can easily configure them to make the end system durable at the cluster level.

5. Message persistence

Having been providing web application development services for many years, we believe that this is one of the most crucial elements of any quality software product. When there is a lack of internet and data synchronization, the message sent can be lost. With message persistence, it will be saved and instantly delivered once the internet appears.

However, to provide this feature is quite challenging if you need to build (or have already had and want to improve) an app with millions and billions of users that has to be able to process thousands of requests per second. The use of the best technologies and innovative practices is required.

When building the project, integrate a lossless cluster and use a reliable messaging service such as RabbitMQ or Kafka. In our work, we generally employ RabbitMQ and can say that it’s a great tool to enable message persistence.

Architecture scaling issues

When building or improving your software system, you should prepare to situations like an influx of users, unexpected load increase, or the necessity to add new agents to the system.

Otherwise, the product won’t be able to cope with high loads and will fail, leading to poor customer experience and client losses. Therefore, you should take care of high scalability and easy maintenance before the actual development.

There are two principal ways to scale the system that you should consider—vertical and horizontal. While vertical scaling strategy implies purchasing a stronger machine with improved parameters (more cores, better processing power, improved memory, etc.), horizontal is about adding new machines to the cluster and increasing the overall capacity. Since horizontal scaling is generally a more cost-effective option, it’s more popular than vertical.

Sharding

Distributed applications are intended to store large data amounts but it’s difficult to do using a single node. Here comes sharding—one of the most popular and efficient ways to store various data sets on a number of nodes.

Simply put, a shard means a horizontal data partition in a database engine with the help of some sort of hash to assign to the partition. Each shard is held on a separate database server instance and acts as a single source for the data subset.

Due to this method, the load is evenly distributed across multiple nodes and becomes lower, which dramatically improves the overall product performance.

Closing thoughts

To sum up, the development of scalable applications is crucial for project success. Well, a perfect way to achieve this is to integrate a distributed architecture. With high scalability, ease of maintenance, and great availability, you will avoid technical crashes, ensure quality customer service, and boost sales. If you’re interested in providing high performance of the system, we also recommend to read the article about building a high-performance architecture.

React Native as the main mobile trend of the future

Sergey V. — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 10:05:27 +0000

Needless to say, the software development industry is full of challenges, every mobile OS has its peculiarities and whenever teams try to provide application development services for both Android and iOS, these peculiarities and challenges come all together and create even bigger problems with compatibility, UI/UX issues, etc. I guess it is the ultimate dream for all the software developers - to be able to write code, that would be interoperable and reusable everywhere.

Today, we have different cross-platform tools and technologies on the market: Xamarin, Flutter, Apache Cordova, Ionic - but all of them have the same problem - products made using these technologies look weird, work slow and still have interoperability complications. It seemed like there was no hope for a decent mobile cross-platform technology, that would enable the creation of products, that would be indistinguishable from native, and be just as feature-rich. But then React Native burst in and became the silver lining in cross-platform development.

Our team, being a React Native development company, wants to share some technical experience with you and tell, whether this mobile trend is convenient to use, or not worth paying attention to.

React Native was created on the base of Facebook’s React library for creating user interfaces, which, in its turn, is based on JavaScript. Compared to grand software development languages, that are used in the mobile industry (Java, for example), ReactNative is a very young technology, and yet, React Native development services have gained huge popularity over the last 2 years.

React Native works like a Lego Constructor - it gives you a numerous amount of “bricks” - components and, using the ones you need plus adding some native coding, if necessary (i.e. using ProgressBarAndroid and ProgressViewIOS), you get an adaptive product. The greatest thing is that web developers can use React Native, write the same code they are used to, but get a mobile instead of a web application.

What do you get, when you choose React Native as your leading mobile application development services technology?

Adequate performance level compared to other cross-platform-based applications;
Less headache in the mobile development process;
Reusable code - the same tools work both for iOS and Android;
A great solution for mobile MVP’s, especially when you already have a web version, that you need to convert quickly to mobile operating systems;
Hot reloading - this React Native’s feature enables to build only the modified modules, which is significantly faster (compared to Native development);
Debugging and testing processes become faster and easier as well due to fact, that you see the situation on both devices at the same time.

Nevertheless, React Native is not flawless. To say the least, it still has an insufficient amount of mobile native components. Without Native developers nearby it is possible to develop only primitive mobile products without platform-specific features, since, unfortunately, React Native doesn’t support all the APIs. Moreover, JavaScript, being called an “untyped” language, implies the developers to be very careful due to the absence of strict programming rules.

The second major flaw is the React Native’s poor documentation. All the available information at the moment is scarce. Not enough data on how to set up a testing environment. However, React Native is evolving pretty fast, the community and the developers are constantly solving the most disturbing issues, that’s we here at Smartym Pro are not afraid to use this technology in our mobile development expertise. Furthermore, we actively participate in the GitHub React Native community ourselves, as a professional mobile app development company.

One way or another, we personally believe, that React Native is going to make a revolution in mobile application development services due to many reasons. Using React Native can save lots of time, and time is the most precious resource in this world. A single codebase instead of two, efficient human resource usage and staff allocation.

There is also one more thing we would like to mention. You won’t be able to deny the influence level of React Native on the modern development industry when you find out how many companies are already taking advantage of this technology - Tesla, Walmart, Skype, Instagram, and, obviously, Facebook and Facebook ads.

The only thing we are most nervous about is the probability of React Native being shut down by Facebook. These fears are not groundless. There was a platform called Parse, also made by Facebook, it was a very promising Backend-as-a-Service project, that was used in 500K projects. Parse has been existing for 4 years when Facebook suddenly announced, that they are stopping the support of the platform. The decision was pretty sudden, and still, nobody really realizes why it ever happened, so there is a small likelihood, that something like this will happen with React Native in the next couple of years.

In conclusion, we would like to admit, that we are looking forward to React Native becoming the next top mobile development language. We are convinced, that quality, speed, and efficiency - are the traits that will help React Native become accepted by software development companies all over the world.