Author: galaxy-admin

4 Ways A UX Designer Helps You Deliver A Better Product Experience

Posted on by galaxy-admin

“User experience is everything that touches a product …more than just an app it’s the experience of the whole system around it.”

– Don Norman, who coined the term ‘User Experience’

When you enter your destination into a rideshare app or check your social media notifications, you’re interacting with a screen — but also, with user experience designers. 

Better known as UX designers, these technology professionals map out your experience long before you had it, structuring it to feel as natural and intuitive as possible. That’s their job: to craft easily navigable digital interfaces.

UX design roles vary greatly, and there are numerous UX design specializations available, such as information architecture and communication design. Every designer, especially on the smaller UX design teams, does a little bit of everything.

We have broken down UX design roles into roughly four components:

  • Researching
  • Ideating
  • Designing
  • Communicating

With this blog, we hope to make you understand how a UX designer can contribute to your business. Below are the ways UX designers can help your business, and how to spot a real one:

…

#1 Researching

A UX designer’s goal as a researcher is to truly understand a user’s needs, motivations, and empathize with them to improve or create a new product. The research responsibilities included everything from reviewing quantitative and qualitative survey results to conducting user testing.

User testing, also known as usability testing, entails learning about the user experience by simply observing how users complete key tasks within an app or platform. The process can reveal points of confusion in a more granular way than the interview. User testing frequently begins with defining testing objectives, identifying the key interfaces to investigate.


For example, a homepage or a profile page – and the key learning objectives for each interface. They then create the script. This is the standardized monologue that UX designers read before starting a user test to lay out the ground rules and introduce the task.

User interviews can also be used in user research. Aside from asking “What do you like about this product?”, they also ask users about their industry experiences to know what they want, which are not related to the products they’re researching.

How do they help your products with research?

-They make your product better by identifying problems you didn’t think existed by interviewing users and understanding their pain points when using your product, building a loyal user base and better product.

-They assist in visualizing how your product would solve niche problems before it is even launched, allowing you to pitch your story to investors more effectively by using storyboards to demonstrate how it would work and how it would solve core market problems.

#2 Ideating

Scheduling time for ideation is essential to the UX designer’s process — and the creative process in general. This is how the research findings are transformed into design concepts.

There are two stages to brainstorming. The first step is research analysis, during which designers zero in on specific user problems. This can be as simple as data science.

In some cases, UX designers divide a sample of users into categories or types and storyboard the typical user experience for each. Along the way, they identify common “pain points” for each type, such as a final “purchase” button that one type consistently misses.

After a UX designer has decided on a problem to tackle, the second stage of ideation begins – brainstorming. What are all of the possible solutions? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

This isn’t exactly “pulling ideas out of thin air.” To ensure consistency of user encounters, UX designers draw inspiration from wireframes for their brand’s other features. They also integrate UI/UX trends.

How do they help your products with ideating?

-They can suggest new features that generate revenue or solve problems, thereby increasing sales and users.

-They eliminate guesswork by appropriately grouping products or features using card sorting, reducing the need for users to search or believe that you do not offer that service, resulting in sales loss.

#3 Designing

A UX designer creates a rough draft of a concept during this phase. The level of fidelity, or faithfulness, with which they have been tasked determines their current state. A low-fidelity design is known as a wireframe, and a high-fidelity design is called a prototype. The former is more akin to a blueprint or outline of “the site’s structure.” The latter has some interactive features and fleshed-out visuals and is close to completion.

Typically, UX designers concentrate on wireframes. Designers typically employ software such as Axure, Invision, and Sketch. Wireframing is essentially the process of positioning logos, menus, and buttons on high-trafficked pages. In this stage, actual imagery is kept to a minimum.

Designers frequently look into the internal style guide while prototyping. This document specifies a brand’s appearance in terms of colors, spacing, and font, and its specifications can be quite detailed.

How do they help your products with designing?

-They ensure that your customers are not confused and leave your website by ensuring that layouts and interactions are consistent across other market websites or apps, thereby maintaining user familiarity with the product even if they switch from a competitor.

-They help in speed up signups and checkouts, resulting in lower user abandonment, while also making things intuitive, so people don’t have to think about what to do.

#4 Communicating

Wireframes and prototypes are frequently presented to key stakeholders, which can include internal teams and external clients.

Presentations are typically used to demonstrate how a new product will work and to justify changes. UX designers should ideally be able to trace features and formatting back to research and analysis.

Specifically for UX designers, “There is a lot of interaction with developers to ensure that your ideas can be implemented within their timeframe. They have a completely different set of priorities and obligations.”

UX designers sit down with the developers to give each other updates on their development progress and to provide each other feedback. One of the main purposes is also to make sure they’ve exported all their SVG’s properly into Zeplin, which is a tool UI/UX designers use to communicate with developers.

There they can fetch all the assets they need, from spacing to UI components, which makes me accountable for all the design decisions, and forces them to think as a pixel-perfect designer.

During these touchpoints, UX designers communicate their design decisions and the rationale behind it all.  Nothing is arbitrary in design. If your users understand the choices you’ve presented to them, your mapping of elements, and your interactions; then you are successful.

How do they help your products with communication/collaboration?

-They select the best approach by using wire-frames and prototyping to quickly test different decisions, avoiding the need to launch a product only to discover it’s a nightmare for you and your users, saving you a lot of money.

-They validate your product or their own decisions, by having actual data that shows why they did this and why it’s better, thus eliminating guesswork or any preconceived ideas.

Hopefully, you now have a good idea of what a UX designer has to deliver or communicate with stakeholders.

If you’re thinking ‘we do not have enough experience to deal with this or “what if I don’t have enough time”, contact us to get in touch with our UI/UX experts.

About Galaxy Weblinks

We specialize in delivering end-to-end software design & development services. Our UI/UX designers are creative problem-solvers with a decade of experience in all facets of digital and interactive design. We create compelling and human-focused experiences delivered through clean, and minimalist UI.

Native vs Hybrid – How to Choose the Right App Type for Your Business?

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Once you have decided to develop your idea into a mobile application, you need to make a few important decisions. These include-

  • Who will be the right mobile app development partner?
  • What would be the cost of building the app? 
  • How much time will it take to launch your app?
  • Whether to opt for native mobile application development or cross-platform?

Identifying the development approach to choose for building your app – the native or the hybrid route is among the most important considerations. Which approach is better? What are the advantages of each? How do I choose which type of app to develop?

So, if you are wondering whether you should take the native or hybrid approach for creating your mobile app, we will try to help you get answers to these questions in this article. Let’s first understand the meaning of native and hybrid apps. 

What is a native app?

A native mobile application is a smartphone program, written specifically to operate on a specific mobile device and its operating system platforms (mainly Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android). 

It is developed considering the technical and user-related guidelines of the operating system. This type of digital solution offers a higher level of performance and reliability and hence makes it more user-friendly. However, they are developed specifically for each platform, which means that it is expensive and needs more team expertise to launch applications on multiple platforms. Native Android mobile apps are commonly developed using Java or Kotlin, while Native iOS apps are developed using Swift or Objective-C. Facebook, Twitter, Gmail are a few examples of native apps.

What is a hybrid application?

A hybrid mobile application is a software program that combines the elements of both native and website applications. Hybrid applications have been growing in popularity as they can be built and released across multiple different platforms using the same user interface. The development and maintenance of hybrid apps are faster and is cost-effective as it takes less time to develop and needs fewer developers given the need to create only one codebase. Hybrid mobile apps are developed using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which are then condensed in a native application using a wrapper like Xamarin or Apache Cordova, or React Native. Hybrid apps then use third-party plug-ins and APIs to retain complete access to the mobile device’s features. Amazon, Instagram, Uber are a few examples of hybrid apps.

Comparing native and hybrid applications

To help you native and hybrid apps better, we have listed below a few key differences.

  • Codebase

Native mobile apps have different codebases for each operating system. However, hybrid apps are developed using a single codebase and then can be run on all devices regardless of the operating system.  As a result, native app development requires separate development teams with expertise for each platform that leads to higher development costs. 

  • Performance

Native mobile apps are designed specifically for an operating system and device. Native apps use the visual elements, structure, and contents that are already on the device, hence, they are faster for instant loading, more reliable, and thereby providing a seamless user experience. On the other hand, hybrid apps are slower than native apps as they have only a wrapper that is downloaded to the user’s phone (which may or may not contain all the navigational elements) with most of the data being loaded from the server. 

  • User experience (UX)

UX is a crucial component in the success of any app, both app types address this. Native apps however offer the best UX in comparison to hybrid apps. To offer a good UX with a hybrid app, a good user experience architect/developer is needed so that he can integrate the different style guidelines across different platforms. 

  • Development cost and time

A native app takes more cost and time to develop as it requires different codebases to be written for each platform. Additionally, developing native apps requires bigger team sizes with expertise across each platform. On the other hand, developing a hybrid app is less time-consuming and needs less effort. 

  • Security

Enhanced security is one of the key benefits of native mobile apps in comparison to hybrid apps. Native apps enable developers to integrate various functions such as two-factor authentication that help ensure data safety and privacy. On the other hand, hybrid apps always have some Native code (for instance to start a Web container like a WebView), which makes them susceptible to vulnerabilities that affect web browsers. Essentially, there is more work involved in securing your hybrid apps versus native apps.

Native vs Hybrid apps – key differences

ParametersNative appHybrid app
Cross-platform deploymentNoYes
Code reusabilityNoYes
PerformanceHighSlower than native apps
DesignGreat user interfaceGood user interface
DevelopmentNeeds skilled developers with expertise across platformsSkilled developers are still needed but do not require platform-specific expertise
Development timeTime consumingFaster development time
BudgetHigher than hybrid appsLower than native apps
Offline accessYesNo
SecurityEnhancedGood

Factors determining the selection of Native or Hybrid

Having gone through the definitions and comparisons between native and hybrid apps, we have now listed the key factors that should determine which app would be the right selection for your business. Both native and hybrid apps have benefits and limitations, and the right selection will be determined based on answers to these questions.

  • What is the objective of building your app?
  • What are the key features to be included in your app?
  • What is your budget to develop the app?
  • How quickly do you want to develop the app? 
  • Are you more interested in building an MVP across different platforms?
  • Do you want to build it in-house or outsource? 

Conclusion

The debate around hybrid and native apps will continue to exist because there’s a place and need for both. Ultimately, the right app type would depend on your business needs. We know how important it is for you to get things right as your business is in question. If you’ve any doubts related to mobile app development and if you need assistance developing one then feel free to talk to us here.

Optimize your Ecommerce Website for More Conversions

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Like all businesses, Ecommerce stores are also in the race of chasing numbers. They make efforts to increase the website traffic, thereby, to reach a satisfactory conversion rate mark. Website traffic also happens to be essential for your business to thrive. Unlike brick and mortar stores, ecommerce stores can take numerous initiatives to increase their website’s traffic, optimize performance, and boost sales.  

When we talk about boosting the conversion rate, we first need to understand the conversion funnel and how it works. Conversion funnel aka the Buying Cycle consists of three steps – 

  • Awareness:  It is when the customer becomes aware of the product and acknowledges the need for it.
  • Evaluation: It’s the next step, where the customer has recognized the need and is contemplating whether your products match their requirements. 
  • Purchase: This is the final step of the funnel! Here, the potential customer makes up their mind and finally makes a purchase.

Understanding the customer funnel will now help you define goals to meet your customer needs for every step of the cycle. With that in mind, the key focus should now be on evaluating the information and data you have gathered from the conversion funnel. 

  • Do your products match the needs of your customers?
  • Are your competitors providing a better buying experience?
  • How effortless is the customer’s journey from identifying the need to purchasing the product?

We recommend – 

  • Product copy should be concise and informative 
  • Website usability shouldn’t become a bottleneck as it has a major influence on the purchasing decision. 
  • Positioning of the primary action buttons like ‘Buy Now’ should be at the top of the visual hierarchy and not at the bottom. 

Optimizing the conversion rate

Analyzing your store for gaps and using the finding to boost sales is known as optimization. Generally in an analysis, various page elements are put under a lens to look for performance optimization possibilities. Some of those on-page elements that contribute to conversion are: 

  • Headlines
  • Descriptions
  • CTA button placement
  • CTA button color

One of those widely adopted conversion rate optimization techniques is A/B Testing. It lets you simultaneously test and analyzes different executions of the same page elements with live users. It saves time and validates ideas with the intended users. The results from tested variants are then compared to see which one yielded better results as far as conversions are concerned. 

Choosing the elements to optimize for conversion

We have a long list of tried and tested elements that are bound to aid in page performance significantly. Some of them are listed below to get you started. 

Informative Elements

  • High-quality photographs: It’s all about the first impressions. In a digital world where customers don’t get to touch, feel, or try the products they are buying, high-definition photographs come to the rescue. Poor or no pictures are the easiest way to drop-offs. Use multiple angles and provide hover to zoom for details.  
  • Product descriptions: Go into as much detail as possible when describing your product. Accurate and honest descriptions sell more products. Don’t toot your own horn, try to help the customer with your copy instead. 
  • Videos: Does the work of pictures, but better. Videos make you seem like you care about your customers enough to provide every possible detail to help them make an informed decision.  
  • Product reviews: Arguably the easiest and the most effective way to build customer trust. Try to engage and pro-actively ask for reviews but don’t be too intrusive. 
  • Site search: Optimize your search so that it improves your product’s visibility. Visibility can directly impact your conversion just as any other digital asset. 

Usability Elements

These elements are optimized to make the experience as easy and satisfactory as possible. 

  • Hyper personalization: Use customer shopping history to show the products they are interested in. This will filter the noise while also reducing the cognitive load and making the ‘Add to cart’ action instinctive. 
  • Mobile optimization: It’s no secret that most of your users like to shop on mobile. It’s the only reason you need and would want to focus on the mobile experience.  
  • Get Wish Lists: Also known as ‘Save for later’ or ‘Favorites’. This helps people curate a list of products that they want to remember and possibly buy at a later date. If they can easily access products they liked earlier, they are more likely to complete the transaction. 
  • Real time assistance: Integrate an option for people to opt for customer service assistance when needed in real-time. 

The Checkout

Cart abandonment is the real-life equivalent of a customer dropping your product on the shelf and stepping out of the store. Losing out on potential customers is heartbreaking, whether it’s in the real world or online. It’s majorly attributed to a poorly optimized checkout process. Poor or confusing design decisions for shopping carts could also be one of the contributing reasons for incomplete transactions. 

How to ensure guaranteed conversion?

  • Cut down the steps to checkout: Shave off any unnecessary steps to help your customers check out faster.
  • NO hidden prices: You wouldn’t want to shop at a store where the product page price differs from the checkout price. Keep pricing transparent as hidden prices are cited as one of the most common reasons for cart abandonment.  
  • Remind users of incomplete transactions: Even when you’re doing everything right, you will find that carts are still being abandoned. The reason can be as simple as your user being bad at multitasking. Just remind them in emails that the order is incomplete. 

When followed carefully, the results these optimization techniques yield is staggering. It might seem basic at first but consistent efforts compound and contribute to big impressive sales numbers. 

We hope this practical piece curated from our experience in ecommerce will help you drive sales. And if you need someone else to handle these optimizations for you while you cash in the benefits, contact us here.

The Cost of Building a Mobile App in 2021

Posted on by galaxy-admin

What is the ballpark of building a mobile application? There are hundreds of estimates available on the web for this answer. However, they happen to be just that – an estimate. Now we know that developing a mobile application may have numerous variables. 

Your mobile application may end up costing $15,000 to $250,000 based on the features you are looking for. There are a few constants that contribute to the cost. Let’s have a look at them – 

Location of the team

Your team’s/ vendor’s location contributes significantly to your app’s development cost. The primary reason beyond this is the different wages based on the geographical location. Developers and designers have different costs across the US, Europe, and Asia. A developer in the US is paid $40-$100. In Asia, a developer with the same skill set and experience is paid $25-$35 per hour. Here is an approximate rate of Android and iOS developers across regions:

RegioniOS ($/hour)Android ($/hour)
North America150168
Australia110110
UK7070
South America4334
Eastern Europe3535
India3026
Indonesia1112

Your App type

After the location selection, the second factor is the application type. There are three options here – 

Web Applications 

  • They are websites with functionality and interactive elements, such as Gmail, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. 
  • They can be accessed via any browser, and therefore, there is no need to download them from any app store. 
  • Web apps are cost-effective and simple, primarily built using JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. There are no standard SDKs for web apps. 

Native Applications 

  • These applications are created using the language that is native to the operating system of the device in consideration. 
  • Objective C or Swift for iOS devices, Java or Kotlin for Android.
  • Their performance is par excellence. However, they are expensive to develop. 

Hybrid Applications

  • A mix of web apps and native apps. 
  • Helps in reaching out to a larger audience. 
  • Code maintenance is lesser vis-a-vis native apps. 
  • Easy access to the device’s hardware. 
  • Great application performance. 

Platform Selection

If opting for a native application, you can opt to develop your application on Android and iOS simultaneously. Alternatively, you can choose to launch your application on one of the platforms and then develop it for others after some time (e.g. Instagram).

How to make the right choice –  

  • Determine which platform has a greater chunk of your target audience
  • What resources you have if you go for developing apps for iOS vis-a-vis Android – Resource pool, access to development tools, SDKs
  • Will it make more sense to opt for cross-platform development

While there is no major difference in the cost of developing for iOS and Android, the cost will be more if you opt for developing your mobile application on both. 

Features and Functionalities

The basic features social login, push notifications, data encryption, media, messaging, search features. You will also need to decide if your application needs to be connected with the internet, payment gateway, geolocation (if required), third-party integrations, and so on. 

There will always be budget constraints. How to overcome this issue?

  • Prioritize your application’s features and also remember that every new feature will need additional cost and efforts of your team.
  • Determine the complexity of your app as it will have a direct impact on the timeline and cost. 

Design and Development Complexities 

The design and development complexities are a major determining factor in your app cost. Simple layouts, standard color schemes, limited options, icon and logo designs, copywriting; all are vital components of your design. And if these are not developed as you envisioned, it will lead to a lot of back and forth among teams. Make sure your developers and designers are on the same page always. 

What is the cost of building a mobile application in 2021? 

After reading this blog, we hope you know what goes into building a mobile application. You can expect additional costs to come your way as your app grows. This would include the maintenance cost, cost of additional features, storage of data, complex visuals, and so on. 

You may choose to outsource your mobile application development to experts who will help make the design and development journey smoother and swifter. 
Don’t take our word for it, Clutch recognized us as ‘Top development partner’, read all about it here. We are always open to building new relations and working on challenging projects, you can contact us here for an accurate app development estimation.

9 UX trends that are here to stay in 2021

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New trends are emerging in every industry vertical, UX included. To keep business thriving, you have to be quick to recognize, analyze and implement trends on priority. Furthermore, any enhancement in the visual aspects of your product would lead to a higher recall from the users. 

Our experts can not stop themselves from trying new trends. We have listed the ones that will make ripples in 2021.

3D Elements 

There has been a huge surge in three-dimensional designs across the web and mobile interfaces. This not only gives an edge to your flat design but also helps draw users’ attention to the primary features and aspects of your website and app. 

These elements hold user’s attention for a longer period and encourage them to interact with your product. However, all these 3D animations and illustrations need to be optimized so that they don’t increase the page/app’s loading time.  

Engaging Motion Effects 

Animated user stories, parallax scrolling, micro-interactions, etc all are liked by users across demographics. Motions bring life to your design elements like illustrations, animations, etc.

Parallax scrolling is another emerging effect to entice users for further engagement. When users notice the difference in scrolling your webpage, out of curiosity, they will spend a few seconds more. The right mix of effects will make transitions much more delightful for all your users. However, overdoing the same will push back users, thus a few effects on the most vital features and pages should suffice. 

Neumorphism

The mix of flat design and skeuomorphism is Neumorphism. It uses shadows and highlights to give an almost 3D look to the design elements. It layers the elements in a subtle and minimalist way. Designers use similar color pallets, standard shapes, and icons, etc here. This ensures that users don’t get any sudden or unwelcome surprises.  

Asymmetry Arrangements 

The classic layouts have lost their charm among users. Any generic design presented to the users is getting lost in the virtual crowded space. Hence asymmetry and creative approaches are taking the center stage. You will need to brainstorm a lot before you come up with the ‘perfectly asymmetric yet balanced’ structure. Brainstorming is necessary so that you are not compromising on the usability and accessibility aspects of your product at any point. 

Dark Mode 

Dark mode has been implemented successfully by many organizations, but many are yet to follow. Therefore, dark mode makes this list. The benefits of dark mode are now well recognized by users too. It helps in decreasing screen fatigue (something this pandemic brought to light), saves user’s devices batteries, and is worth exploring for your product offering.  

Designers can highlight elements more easily here and use high contrast elements for focusing on the primary functionalities. A win-win situation for all!

Improved Onboarding 

A swift onboarding process will hook users for a longer duration. We saw complex remote collaboration tools and video conferencing options being disliked by users because they were complicated to use and the onboarding process shown was not very helpful. 

A smooth onboarding process with a mix of subtle hints, micro-interactions, and the option to returning to certain learning aspects play a part in creating a lasting impression on users. Storytelling is also being implemented so that a connection with a certain character/avatar can be made by users. 

Color Palettes For Playful Backgrounds 

When the talk is all about standing out from the crowd, bright, neon colors do this for you easily. Designers are willing to play with bold colors like never before. Unconventional color mix, using popping colors on your website, or just highlight the main features are the craze now. 

All this is done so that users are seeing a different and experimental side of your organization. Mixing darker shades with bold colors, following a bold theme throughout your website and app is a great way to stay in your user’s mind. But again ensure that the colors don’t distract users from the primary features and are not bringing on any accessibility issues. 

Typography  

In line with playful color backgrounds, typography is also something that UI/UX designers are testing out lately. Font style, bold text, creative text display are all being played with. And add small animations to your text here and there, users will keep interacting with your app and website. 

Bold text, especially on the hero page screams attention like nothing else (in a good way of course). On one hand, web typography is getting bigger and bold, the apps are leveraging ALL CAPS and creative fonts to fit in varying screen sizes.

Uniqueness Trumps Perfection 

What differentiates you from your competitors? What unique design will create a long-lasting impression on your users? Designers are no longer going after being ‘perfect’ in their design across platforms. In 2021, you will see more creative experiments with design layouts, elements, animations to have a higher recall value. 

Color play, different typography, playing with layouts, and all that we have covered in this blog will all contribute to delivering a unique user experience. These trends have gained a lot of popularity within the designers’ community and will continue to do so until users express some other preferences. 
To know more about our UX services, contact us here. 

Choosing the best Software Architecture for your Enterprise App

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Planning on starting a greenfield software project? Or ever wondered how large enterprise systems are designed? Before major software development starts, we have to choose the right architecture that will offer us the desired functionality and quality attributes. 

Choosing the latest or most popular technology in the market will not always mean that it would bring the best results. However, this does not imply that you opt for legacy technologies.

For example, if there is a project that involves building a regular data capturing form (with less than 15 fields) for a survey, which will be used only once by less than 100 users, then it will be an utter disaster if you will be using highly complex architecture patterns like Microservices. 

Thorough planning must be done when selecting an architecture pattern and the following features must be taken into account:

  • Cost
  • Time to Market
  • Number of users (current and future)
  • Level of isolation (ie: integration with other platforms/systems)
  • Toleration time for system unavailability

What is a Software Architecture Pattern?

Software structures are composed of software elements that function as a blueprint, and design teams depend on these software architectural patterns to a great extent.

“An architectural pattern is a general, reusable approach to commonly appearing problems in software architecture. Whereas, software architecture is the process of converting software characteristics such as flexibility, scalability, etc. into a structured solution that meets the business and the technical expectations.”

For example, when a product owner says they are competing in a rapidly changing market, and they should adapt their business model quickly. The software should be scalable, modular, and maintainable if a business deals with urgent requests that need to be completed successfully in a matter of time. A software architect would then note that the performance and low fault tolerance, reliability, and scalability will be the key characteristics.

What happens with a system without any architecture pattern? 

Whenever you will change the behavior or structure of one class, a ripple effect would follow where multiple other classes would break. Is your software like this? The best way to find out is by using a software design reverse engineering tool like hex-ray that studies your class/component structures. On the other hand, if we are not using a pattern, then we will end up putting in the effort in solving the problems that can be easily solved with one of the patterns.

To help you, we will skim through the fundamentals of a few main software architectural patterns along with the pros and cons of each pattern. Besides, we will explain what architecture pattern would be the best fit for a given scenario.

1. Layered Architecture

One of the most efficient and common models deployed by enterprises is the Layered Architecture. The layers of this model are not interdependent, yet interconnected to each other. This is the conventional approach to designing most software.

For example, if you’d want to switch from an Oracle database to an SQL. This switch may cause you to excel in the database layer but will not have a domino effect on any other layer, hence avoiding any crashes.

What does it solve?


It allows the software to be segmented in such a way that the modules can be evolved and developed separately with little dependencies among the parts, supporting reuse, modifiability, and portability. The layered pattern divides the software into units called layers. Each layer is a grouping of modules that provides a cohesive set of services.

Benefits

  • This architecture helps those enterprises that don’t want to go overboard with experimenting and want to stick to the conventional software architecture design patterns. 
  • Testing components become relatively easier as inter-dependencies are negligible in this format of software development engineering.

Caveats:

  • Larger applications tend to be resource-intensive if based on this format, therefore for such projects, it’s advised to overlook the layered pattern. 
  • The entire version of the software is installed as a single unit irrespective of independent layers. So, you will have to re-install the entire device all over again, even if you update a single layer. 

Best for:

  • New applications that need to be built quickly.
  • General desktop applications.
  • Teams with less experienced developers who don’t understand other architectures yet.
  • Applications needing strict testability and maintainability standards.

2. Event-driven Architecture

The event-driven architecture helps in building a central unit that accepts all data and then assigns it to the separate modules that handle the particular type. This handoff is said to generate an “event,” and is assigned to the code delegated to that type.

Take an example of this pattern from a web page:

When a user clicks a button, the browser interprets the event and surfaces the programmed action, such as video playback, matching the input with the right output. Contrary to the layered architecture where the code must flow top-down and filter through all the layers, event-driven architectures implement modules that are activated only when there is a generation of an event connected to them.

What does it solve?


Sometimes it’s hard for many enterprises to build distributed systems that can service asynchronous arriving messages associated with an event, and that can scale from simple and small to complex and large. This architecture helps in building such systems as it is very adaptable to real-time changes and is suited to asynchronous systems that run on asymmetric data flow. 

Benefits

  • This architecture is suited to applications that tend to scale. It improves the response time of an application, eventually leading to better business outcomes. 
  • It plays a huge role in defining how IoT works. This architecture is widely applicable across networks and applications where devices are part of the IoT and requires exchanging information between even consumers and producers in real-time.

Caveats:

  • If the modules can affect each other then testing can be complex. While individual modules can be tested independently, the interactions between them can only be tested in a fully functioning system. 
  • Sometimes it is harder to understand the architecture due to its high complexity.

Best for:

  • Asynchronous systems with the asynchronous data flow.
  • Building applications with few modules to interact with the individual data blocks.
  • User interfaces.
  • IoT-based applications.

3. Microservices Architecture

Microservices are an independent and self-regulating codebase that can be written and maintained even by a small team of developers. Microservices architecture consists of independent services with each service responsible for the implementation of its related business logic. 

These independent services are separated from each other based on the nature of their domains and belong to a mini-microservice pool. Enterprise mobile app developers leverage the capabilities of this architecture, especially for complex applications. 

What does it solve?

Monolithic applications become too complex and large for efficient support and deployment for a distributed resource utilization such as in cloud environments.

Microservices help in building applications as suites of services. Each service is independently scalable and deployable and has its API layer. Different services can be developed by different teams, manage their database, and written in different programming languages.

Benefits

  • This architecture design pattern makes the system highly fault-tolerant as the services are segmented into pools. In other words, the whole software won’t crash on its end even if some microservices stop functioning. 
  • It allows applications to scale. The independent services lead to scale individually rather than overloading the entire system with the need to expand. 
  • Services can be merged into any application depending upon the work scope. 

Caveats

  • Harder to understand due to its complex logic. Requires deep analysis in service decomposition.

Best For

  • Websites with small components.
  • Corporate data centers with well-defined boundaries.
  • Rapidly developing new businesses, e-commerce, and web applications.

Conclusion

While the above-enlisted architectures signify the most favored design choices for organizational software development, there are plenty of others, equally interesting and perhaps more befitting to your project.

It’s always important to understand the pattern clearly, as applying the wrong pattern can lead to a lot of problems like inappropriate designs and implementations. A development expert would have a sound judgment that would help you understand when a pattern is not appropriate in a particular business scenario. 

Contact us if you need a team of such developers, engineers, technical architects, and PMs who can understand the ramifications of software design and the future growth of the product.

About Galaxy Weblinks

We specialize in delivering end-to-end software design & development services and have hands-on experience with large, medium, and startup business development requirements. Our engineers also help in improving security, reliability, and features to make sure your business application scale and remain secure.

Google: Core Web Vitals For Search Engine Rankings

Posted on by galaxy-admin

The new and improved page experience ranking for Google search is set to roll out in May 2021. This blog covers what the buzz is about. 

Google has introduced a new set of parameters – the ‘Core Web Vitals’ that will measure users’ experience ‘with speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of a webpage.

  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This considers the loading time of the largest graphic element on the screen, i.e. Largest Contentful Paint. Such content can also be the main content of the website, so once the vital information is loaded, smaller elements follow. The ideal  LCP is set at 2.5 seconds 
  • First Input Delay: is the time taken by the page to become interactive, i.e. the response time of the page after the user initiates an action. The ideal FID is said to be less than 100ms. 
  • Cumulative Layout Shift: measures the visual stability of the website. It focuses on the time taken for all the elements of the website to become stable. The ideal CFS is less than 100ms. 

The Core Web Vitals will now be an intrinsic part of measuring the page performance, along with these factors-

  • Mobile responsiveness 
  • Safe browsing 
  • HTTPS security 
  • Intrusive interstitial guidelines

New labels for search results 

Google is contemplating adding labels in the search results, highlighting the pages that offer a better user experience. The current focus is on visual indicators that identify pages that met the predefined page experience criteria. 

However, this is still under the testing phase and the final call will be taken by Google in May 2021 based on the success of the tests. Google is staunchly recommending AMP to optimize the page experience signal.

Top stories courses for non-AMP content 

There was another announcement as well which said that non-AMP will soon be eligible for appearance in the Top Stories. 

The pages fulfilling the Google News content policies will have greater chances for Top stories carousel and greater user experience will be given priority in ranking.  

Our Recommendation

These updates will have an impact on your website’s traffic, therefore, we advise you to begin with the due diligence. You can check your Core Web Vitals stats here:

And in case you wish to talk more about the updates or need experts to handle the optimizations for your website, feel free to contact us here.

Saving Money on Product Development – Tips and Tricks

Posted on by galaxy-admin

When it comes to product development, it’s good to shoot for the stars and be ambitious. Ideas are immense fun on paper; execution, however, is another story altogether. The viability of ideas surfaces only when we try to build on them. Without proper expectations, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s important and over-exhaust your budget. So, how to strike the right balance and build great products, within your budget without compromising quality? 

Planning is crucial

There’s a common mistake that people make while planning a product. They opt for outcome-based planning and not process-based. It doesn’t matter if you know everything at the outset, what matters is how you manage the risks.

Planning instead should be about:

  • Making assumptions about the reality of the product
  • How the production is going to work
  • What are the expected results?

What typical planning includes: 

  • Goals – Goals outline what you want your product to deliver. It could be increased sales, recognition, building a community, or providing a service. They help you determine your offerings – an app or a website, essential functionalities, and what channels will be the most suitable for the distribution of the product. They also assist in aligning the small tasks with the bigger picture.
  • Target group –  Identifying and understanding your customers is the most crucial thing to get right. You can start by filtering your customer base with age, place, lifestyle, and needs.  Focusing on a group will help you separate must-have features from the ones that are only for show.
     
  • Timeline – Developing and testing are just a part of the development cycle. You must also account for internal approvals and marketing activities early on while creating a timeline. The number of stakeholders involved and time taken for feedback can significantly affect the time to deploy. Setting an accurate and realistic schedule will have a direct impact on productivity. 
  • Budget – Needless to say, budget determines the direction and speed of product development. A well-defined budget will help you choose the right solutions and leverage the money at hand efficiently.
     
  • Solution – Deciding on the technologies is just as crucial as determining the budget. It’s always a good idea to consult specialists to choose the right set of technologies for your product. Utilize the discovery phase call with the specialists to pin down technologies best suited for your goals. Then use that information to build a detailed plan of product implementation.  

Simplicity over complexity

‘Keeping it simple’ is not only good for product transparency but it also aids in budget management. Unnecessary complexity is the foe for your product. 

Making the calls on essential features and cutting down on the ones you don’t need is the most effective money-saving advice in product development. While it’s easy to go down the path of excessive development for more features, it costs money. And not to forget, that today’s modular technologies allow us to easily add features in subsequent stages when the demand arises. Try taking the MVP route.

Bad choices are costly

Good products come at a price but cheaper alternatives cost more. A poor product leaves a bad taste on users, needs numerous refactors, and has serious vulnerabilities that require frequent patches. This eventually results in a far costlier, but inferior product. 

Go Agile 

By principle, Agile is doing the same amount of work but in short and iterative cycles that aids in tiny achievable goals with fewer delays and faster feedback implementation. Agile teams leverage instantaneous channels for communication to reduce the need for reworks because real-time communication facilitates active participation in the process and immediate reaction to potential errors. 

Outsource entirely

When you’re working on a complex project, outsourcing is one way to ensure that you have access to a large talent pool based on your project requirements. With outsourcing, you can choose between flexible engagement models and opt for the one which suits your budget and project requirements. You would know what to expect and ensure timely deliveries.

You can also hire resources in-house but this may not be the most cost-effective option. By outsourcing, you’re paying for the expertise that you need for a specific time. It is your instant and efficient access to the manpower that can often save significant time and money. 

Saving money on product development can be as easy as avoiding a few mistakes. We recommend that you use a sensible mixture of the above tips and save a substantial amount while maintaining the product quality. 

Swift 5.4 | New Features and Updates

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Swift is the preferred programming language for the Apple ecosystem. It’s a safe, fast, and interactive option that combines the best in Apple’s engineering culture and the contributions from its open-source community. 

With the Swift 5.4 update, there is a significant improvement in the compilation, result builders entry, better code completion in expressions, and so on. Let’s see all the major updates that this new release has in store for us. 

Result builders

Function builders were unofficially a part of Swift 5.1. With this update, they are now formally here named as result builders. 

New result builders can now be defined with the help of new structs via @resultBuilder. This attribute informs SwiftUI which type to be considered as a result builder. However, all result builders need to define at least one static function.  

Implicit member syntax extension

There is an improved way of using implicit member expressions. There is now support for chains of static functions as opposed to a single static member earlier. The compiler can comprehend multiple chained members and act accordingly. 

Multiple variadic parameters in functions

Before this update, you had just one variadic parameter. To elaborate, there is now the possibility to use multiple variadic parameters in functions, subscripts, initializers, and methods. The only condition here is that all these parameters should have labels.  

For example, now one can create a function that will store which team won a particular football match and followed by a second parameter that will store the names of the players that scored the maximum touchdowns. 

Changes in local functions

Local functions now have overloading support. Meaning, nested functions can be overloaded and Swift can select which one gets to run based upon the types that are in use. 

Support for property wrappers

Introduced in 5.1, property wrappers were implemented to attach extra functionality to properties easily. This is now extended to include support for local variables too. 
All the changes mentioned above are well-received in the developers’ community so far. Do let us know which upgrade are you liking the best and which updates/ features are missing in your opinion.

4 ways to reduce customer churn using analytics

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Customer churn rate is the percentage of your customers or subscribers who cancel or don’t renew their subscriptions during a given time.   

A higher percentage of customer churn could be attributed to bad customer service calls, slow response, or even no response. Even if you do have a great influx of new customers, customer churn is never good news. It is important to retain the existing customer base as they aid and abet sustained growth. 

How can you reduce customer churn? The answer lies in data-driven insights. Read on to know more. 

Laying out a roadmap and implementing it 

You can reduce your customer churn with the help of insights drawn from your raw database. To draw up actionable conclusions, start by defining your primary KPIs (not more than five, three being the ideal number). Take inputs from stakeholders in this discussion to ensure the right selection of KPIs.

Often data is collected and goes to different teams but no action is taken to derive actionable insights from that data or implement them. This can be due to – 

  • Communication gaps among the teams 
  • A miscalculation in the implementation timeline that leave teams frustrated
  • Drawn action plans are not being implemented due to a lack of resources

So you need experts who can pinpoint the right patterns and come up with practical conclusions. 

Mapping your customer journey

When you try to map your user journey and be with them as they go through your website/ app, you will be able to see exactly where they are dropping off. You can then work from there to see what is the obstacle that your users are facing that’s leading to a churn. 

You can retrace their steps, get a complete look at their journey. You can not always blame just one trigger for your long-term customers leaving you. Evaluating the final nail in the coffin is not what you should do, you need to go after the other issue and obstacle that can lead you to identify the problem area. 

You need to quantify the major dropout points and work out ways to undo the harm done. This way you can also predict your user’s next possible actions. And if there is something you can do to win them back, you would know the right interaction point as well. Your ‘moments of truth’ will decide whether your customer trusts you or not. 

When mapping your customer journey, find answers to questions like:

  • Emphasize heavily on the ‘why’ at varying stages – why will the customer need two CTAs here, why will they click on the link that you want them to, why will they be motivated to come back to you or why not, etc. the derived answers will give you insight into your customer’s behavior. 
  • What will keep them engaged with your product or service, and when will different interaction points become a hindrance in their journey? You can go back to previous stages where your customers visited before they dropped off. 
  • Which way is the easiest for your customers to reach their ultimate goal, can that goal be achieved in three steps or ten steps? And what can you do to ensure that users don’t leave in between the process? 
  • How are you different from your competitors? Again ‘why’ will they choose you over others?  

As you try to put a number or a measurement scale at various steps, you will be able to understand what is working in your favor and what is not. 

Focussing on user segmentation

Your resources are limited, be it in terms of time, manpower, or customer incentives. You will have to focus on high-quality leads. You can use customer journey mapping data to predict who is more likely to stay like how well they interacted with offers, did they drop off very early or stayed till last, did they leave any feedback, etc. 

You can also use your buyer personas to match with potential buyers for predicting the right fit for your product and divert your efforts accordingly. You can develop and implement algorithms based on buyer personas, deep dive into their characteristics for an accurate prediction model, and anticipating who is more likely to stay. 

You will have multiple user segments depending on your product/ service offering. But do ensure that your assumptions are precise and use your existing data as well for future models. 

Using predictive analytics and text analysis

At any given point in time, you have access to tons of data. To manually curate it or even factor in different variables is overwhelming. Therefore you will need machine learning and AI for developing predictive and text analytics. 

Your text feedback is a gold mine for you to understand what your customers feel, and what improvements are they expecting. You can combine these insights with your customer churn prediction models to anticipate possible churn and take actions accordingly. 

Also with your user segmentation, you can see which users can be let go and which have a higher lifetime value to your business. Your algorithm once developed, will continually evolve as per customer inputs and their possible future actions. Thus you will be able to prevent the churn from happening, especially for your most valued customers saving you the cost of acquiring new customers. 

All this said and done, the data volume will keep on accumulating each day, it’s highly advised to use it to your advantage and get an edge over your competitors. 
The more personalized you make your users’ experiences, the higher the recall value you get. Furthermore, data-driven insights give you precisely that. If you are still not convinced or are looking for insights to be interpreted for you, get in touch with us here to discuss what we can do for you.