Category: Business

DesignRush Lists Galaxy Among the Top Software Developers in Boston

Posted on by galaxy-admin

We are elated to announce that DesignRush has recognized Galaxy Weblinks Inc as one of ‘The top software development companies in Boston’. A heartfelt thanks to our clients,  employees, and the DesignRush team for this recognition. 

Galaxy is a web and mobile app development firm that’s been in the industry for over two decades. With over 1000 projects under our belt, we have the technical expertise and know-how to help your business achieve its goals. Our clients appreciate us for our dedicated project management style and open communication channels. 

In light of our accomplishments, we’ve been considered one of the top companies for software development in Boston by DesignRush, a B2B market research authority.  DesignRush’s work helps interested buyers find and partner with the ‘right’ vendors. The evaluation is done by industry experts based on quality, attention to deadlines, fairness of cost, and overall ability to drive results. 

“This recognition is the fruit of our labor and of our commitment to providing unmatched Software Design, Development, DevOps and QA Services and dedication to the business objectives of our clients. We attribute our success to the Galaxy team’s creativity, perseverance, and technical skills.” 

Varun Bihani, Partner at Galaxy Weblinks

We’re grateful to DesignRush, our clients, and our team for this recognition. It’s only through the trust of our clients, collective efforts of our partners, and dedication of our teams that we’ve been named among the best in Boston.

At Galaxy Weblinks, we are committed to delivering robust, performant, and easily scalable solutions. Get in touch with us to know how we can help you achieve your business goals through our proven expertise, unmatched skillset, and effortless communication.

10 Design Principles for Exceptional User Interface

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Creative visuals, attractive logo design, or intricate animations! What goes into making an exceptional user interface? A good UI includes a mix of factors that make it clear, consistent, simple, and user-oriented.

Defining the requirements of a good user interface is especially critical if you are considering outsourcing your project. Your design and development partner should understand the key principles that transform a user interface into a powerful tool for attracting new customers and retaining existing ones.

Let us go over the core principles of an effective and appealing user interface.

The 10 Fundamentals of a Good User Interface

Here is what goes into an appealing and intuitive user interface for a web or mobile application.

1. Consistency is the key

Source: Behance

In good user interface design, consistency rules the roost! Everything is affected, from the colors, icons, and fonts to the placement of menus and buttons. If changes are required and the designers who worked on the first version are no longer available, the situation becomes even more critical.

Top digital solutions do not astonish their users with radical changes. Instead, they use brand books and company style guides to maintain a consistent and unified style throughout UI design.

2. Hierarchy in screens

Source: Dribbble

Some inexperienced designers make the mistake of attempting to highlight everything on a single screen. Instead of guiding customers to a purchase or other desirable action, they bombard them with information.

That is why hierarchy is an essential component of a successful user interface.

It should be designed in such a way that users can quickly find the point of focus and understand what you’re trying to convey visually.

3. Flexibility 

Users now enjoy looking for a solution to their problems. That is why a good user interface should be supplemented with tabs, shortcuts, and hover tooltips. Such elements improve the interface’s usability and intuitiveness.

You may also like: 10 Tips to Improve Your Website Accessibility

For example, if an app allows you to upload photos, it should also allow you to crop, resize, rotate, and edit the image right next to it. The designers’ goal is to assist users in determining where such options can be found and whether such features are available at first glance.

4. Clear and intuitive user navigation

Where can I find the main menu? If you’ve ever asked yourself the same question, you’ve most likely encountered a poorly designed user interface. While visible to users, it should be “invisible” in terms of user disruption. A high-quality user interface should be well-structured and contain only the necessary elements.

For instance, a car-rental website should not be cluttered with unnecessary buttons, menus, and visual elements, but rather provide the option to rent a car right on the main screen. As a result, users will spend less time navigating your application and complete the transaction.

5. Target audience is well-defined

A digital product with a clear understanding of its target users has a better chance of retaining and engaging users. The primary goal of any web or mobile app is to alleviate the pain points of users, which is impossible to do without understanding how they interact with an application.

A good user interface is built on preliminary and in-depth market research, engagement of best practices from similar products, and evaluation of the target audience. This enables acting on a user’s needs and desires based on such an analysis and transferring the solution to the app interface’s pain points.

6. Transparency of user actions

When you click a button, you expect to see some sort of response. In UI design practices, leaving users without any feedback is considered bad etiquette. When users click on a menu, it’s a good idea to confirm the action with some sort of indication of successful operation, such as animation, color change, pop-up window, progress bar, and so on.

7. Limited number of gestures

Swiping, tapping, pressing, gesturing, or voice command are all options. All of these actions are used in the user interface to guide customers to the desired outcomes. Although it may appear to be a brilliant idea to use them all within an application, top interfaces such as WhatsApp or Facebook stick to a limited number of gestures.

When using an application, users should have a clear understanding of the actions that must be taken in order to achieve the desired result. If you tap to open a file, you should use the same gesture in all similar situations.

8. Additional tips and tricks

User retention is the primary task and, conversely, the primary challenge of any digital product. Fortunately, an effective user interface can help achieve the goal.

You may also like: 3 UX Gamification Techniques to Boost Engagement

Creating onboarding tips and showing them to customers is a good practice for very complex solutions. The UI carefully guides them through the app and helps them remember what each element is responsible for by placing small tips here and there, such as hover tooltips.

9. Attractiveness

This point is critical, despite being somewhat controversial in the eyes of some. A good user interface is one that is appealing and reflects the brand’s personality. Buttons, colors, fonts, and visual elements all contribute to a distinct brand story.

What appears appealing to one group of users may be repulsive to another. As a result, a successful user interface should be founded on extensive research. Furthermore, the visual aspect of user design should be used to reinforce functionality. Popular and well-known applications do not use colorful visuals that add no real value to the user interface.

10. Compliance with design standards

As previously stated, users must understand what to expect from a user interface.

Following Google’s and Apple’s primary and well-known design standards for Android and iOS is a good idea.

Take, for example, a search bar.

It is not a good idea to move it from the top of a page to the bottom. This way, the user interface will inadvertently make users struggle to perform actions that should be intuitive.

Conclusion

As you can see, good user interface design entails more than simply making an app or website look nice. It considers all of the users’ needs and creates an interface that reinforces consistency and assists users in completing their tasks in the most seamless manner possible. Use these tips as a guide for your next project, and you’ll be sure to deliver not only a functional product, but one that users will want to return to. 

Do you want us to get you or your company started on creating quality design components for your product? Reach out to us to get your project off the ground.

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.

3 Ways Microservices Save you From Drawbacks of Centralized Data

Posted on by galaxy-admin

The microservices approach is made possible in large part by favoring decentralization of software components and data — specifically, by breaking up “monolithic” elements into smaller, easier to change pieces and deploying those pieces on the network.

Their goal, in organizational design terms, is to decentralize decision authority. Instead of having a few people make architectural and software decisions for everyone in the organization, decentralization allows them to distribute decision-making power amongst the people who do the work.

When it comes to data, companies that create individual services for specific business logic frequently feel compelled to consolidate all application data into a single, centralized datastore. Their goal is to make sure that all the data is available for any service that may require it. Managing a single datastore is simple and convenient, and data modeling can be consistent for the entire application to use, regardless of the service that uses it. 

However, we would recommend that you avoid doing this. Here are three reasons why centralizing your data is a bad idea and how microservices help in checking the drawbacks.

1. Centralized data is hard to scale

When the data for your entire application is in a single centralized datastore, then as your application grows you must scale the entire datastore to meet the needs of all the services in your application. This is depicted in the diagram below (Figure 1). If you use a separate data store for each service, only the services that have increased demand need to scale, and the database being scaled is smaller. This is shown on the right side of Figure 1.

Centralized data

It’s a lot easier to scale a small database bigger than it is to scale a large database even larger.

How microservices help in scaling?

Scaling is the process of dividing software into smaller units. Scalability refers to the application’s ability to implement more advanced features. It contributes to the application’s security, durability, and maintainability. In the industries, three types of scaling procedures are used. The microservice scaling methodologies include x-axis, y-axis, and z-axis scaling; below is one of the methods along with the corresponding real-world example.

Scaling on the Y-Axis:

Vertical scaling, which includes any resource level scaling, is also referred to as Y-axis scaling. Any DBaaS or Hadoop system can be thought of as Y-axis scaled. The user’s request is redirected and restricted in this type of scaling by implementing some logic.

As an example, consider Facebook. Facebook must handle 1.79 million users every second, so traffic control is a major responsibility for Facebook network engineers. To avoid any danger, they use Y-axis scaling, which entails running multiple servers with the same application at the same time. To control this massive amount of traffic, Facebook redirects all traffic from one region to a specific server, as shown in the image. In architectural terms, this transferring of traffic based on region is known as load balancing.

2. Centralized data is hard to partition later

A common thought that pops up in the mind of every app developer is, “I don’t need to worry about scaling now; I can worry about it later.” As your application grows in popularity, you must consider rethinking architectural decisions to meet increased traffic. 

Distributing your datastore into smaller datastores is one of the common architectural changes. It is much more convenient to do at the beginning of the application’s life cycle than it is later. When the application has been around for a few years and all parts of the application have access to all parts of the data, determining which parts of the dataset can be split into a separate datastore without requiring a major rewrite of the code that uses the data becomes extremely difficult. Even simple questions become difficult to answer. What services are making use of the Profiles table? Is there a service that requires both the Systems and Projects tables?

The longer a dataset remains in a single datastore, the more difficult it is to later divide that datastore into smaller segments.

How microservices help in data storing and partition?

A microservice may use one, two, or more databases. Some of the data stored by the microservice may fit well in one type of database while others may fit better in another. There are numerous viable database technologies available today, and I will not compare them here. However, there are some broad database categories to consider when making a decision, such as relational databases, key/value stores, document databases, column stores, and graph databases.

By separating data into separate datastores based on functionality, you avoid issues associated with separating data from joined tables later, and you reduce the possibility of unexpected data correlations in your code.

3. Centralized data makes data ownership impossible

The ability to divide application ownership into distinct and separable pieces is one of the major benefits of dividing data into multiple services. Individual development teams owning applications is a core tenet of modern application development that promotes better organizational scaling and faster response to problems when they arise. The Single Team Oriented Service Architecture (STOSA) development model discusses this ownership model.

This model works well when you have a large number of development teams all contributing to a large application, but it also works well for smaller applications with smaller teams.

The issue is that for a team to own service, they must own both the code and the data for the service. This means that one service (Service A) should not have direct access to the data of another service (Service B). If Service A requires something from Service B, it must call a service entry point for Service B rather than directly accessing the data.

ownership

This gives Service B complete control over its data, how it is stored, and how it is maintained.

So, what are your options? Each service in your service-oriented architecture (SOA) should have its data. The data is a component of the service and is incorporated into it.

Designing Microservices: Best Practices

The design of microservices must ensure a weak coupling for services to be modified independently and to operate autonomously. Services that are weakly coupled will benefit fully from the microservice architecture, such as fault tolerance, load adaptation, implementation ease, and so on.

Furthermore, it must be highly cohesive to ensure that exchanges between these services are as coherent as possible via the following rules:

  • Design simple microservices that can be composed or linked to others according to the modularity and composability rule.
  • Engine interfaces must be isolated according to the separability rule. Internal microservices are not structured, whereas interfaces are.
  • Representation rule: design data-controlled microservices that have a simpler operation, are more robust and have better scalability.
  • Generation rule: avoid encoding repetitive and trivial things and encode using programs rather than WSDL files to generate code for the interfaces.
  • Make the necessary technological and methodological decisions based on the problem to be solved, not on a software catalog or a stack certified by a corporate guru.

Here is how Galaxy can help you

When release cycles take months rather than weeks, your company is frequently unable to deliver modern online experiences. Development bottlenecks impede your ability to update applications, preventing you from innovating and iterating. And an out-of-date or clumsy user experience prevents you from retaining and winning over customers.

Galaxy’s experts will assist you in implementing an end-to-end vision by developing a modern development stack for building enterprise applications with the necessary frontend and microservice technologies for your business. We will help your team quickly build, design, and launch applications based on microservices.

Learn about Galaxy’s Microservices, Frontend, Backend, and DevOps capabilities, which can help your organization build better and faster apps, sites, and portals.

About Galaxy Weblinks

We specialize in providing end-to-end software design and development services and have firsthand knowledge of backend and frontend technologies. Our engineers, DevOps experts, and UX/UI specialists work to improve security, reliability, and features to ensure that your business application and IT structure scale and remain secure.

How to Ensure Success in Your Next Software Release?

Posted on by galaxy-admin

The release of a new upgrade is typically a stressful time for software companies. It is all too easy to overlook some of the necessary steps or to fail to communicate something to another department. Developing an effective plan is a critical component of any release.

A successful plan integrates all departments, including engineering, quality assurance, marketing, sales, technical support, and training. Everyone must have a common goal and be moving in the same direction. In addition to developing the next release strategy, you must also plan for backward compatibility, effectively communicating with your customers ahead of time, minimizing and controlling bugs, ensuring users can install your product, and much more.

In our article, you will learn about:

  • Why is it sometimes important to curb your enthusiasm and wait for the right time before your next software release?
  • Our list of 4 major tips for planning a successful next software release.

When the software release rush isn’t in your favor?

Software update for the Nest ‘smart’ thermostat (owned by Google) went wrong in 2016 and left users in the cold. When the software update went wrong, it forced the device’s batteries to drain out, which led to dropping in the temperature. Customers were unable to heat their homes or use any amenities as a result.

Nest claimed that the problem was caused by a firmware update in December 4.0 and other issues such as old air filters or incompatible boilers. Later, it issued a 4.0.1 software release, which resolved the problem for 99.5 percent of the affected customers.

Each new release carries a high risk of failure or detection of serious defects by the end-user. These may cost us the trust of our customers. So, how can you avoid the losses that may result from the poor quality of a new version of your product?

#1 Automate the processes with CI/CD

Continuous Integration (CI) comes in handy here. It is a DevOps tool that starts the compilation process, unit tests, and any static analysis tools used after each commit/merge process. Any other quality-related tests that are automatable are also carried out. Whereas, Continuous Delivery (CD) allows you to automate the entire process from the development environment to the production environment. Learn about the best CI/CD practices here.

But what if you don’t have an experienced person on hand and/or don’t have enough budget or time to implement the entire CI and CD process?

Then you should put your money on people who will look after the quality of our product and will not be afraid to obstruct the next issue.

Working in an agile environment, the Product Owner always makes the final decision on the release of a new version. The individual should have a complete picture of the current situation in terms of work progress and product quality.

#2 Prioritize bug fixing list

As the product manager, go over the outstanding bug list with the testing team regularly. Examine the status of each open (unresolved) bug and comprehend the scenarios that led to their discovery.

If you find high-level bugs that need to be fixed, you can choose to postpone the release date. In the case of low-level/cosmetic bugs, you may wish to address them in a later release.

As an example, suppose you have the following bug list:

  • There are no show-stopping bugs
  • There are no high-level bugs
  • Two moderate-level bugs
  • The user is unable to access the address book without receiving an error message
  • When a user imports an address, the “country” field is filled with unreadable characters
  • 10 cosmetic/low-level bugs

In this case, you may decide that unreadable characters in the country field are an acceptable bug because the user can easily delete them. However, you acknowledge that you do not want to alert the user with an error message when they access the address book.

Place bugs in priority order, just as you did when you prioritize your product requirements, and make trade-offs as needed.

#3 Explain your test strategy

How will you carry out these tests? Go into as much detail as possible.

  • What rules will your tests adhere to?
  • What metrics will you collect and at what level?
  • How many different configurations or environments are you going to put through their paces?
  • Are there any special requirements or procedures that you must put to the test?

You must also be aware of the results of your test. To put it another way, what are the pass/fail criteria for each test? 

Thus, lack of access to the test environment may cause issues with the release infrastructure. It is critical, paradoxically, to be able to roll back our changes and restore the previous version of the system. Sometimes the test environment, in which the system performed flawlessly, differs significantly from the production environment, where undesirable effects may occur, necessitating a rollback to the previous version of the system.

#4 Introduce and test new functionalities

Critical paths are equally important because they serve as the foundation for the entire process that our users will follow, and they should not encounter any gaps or problems along the way. It is also a significant risk to release a new version without thoroughly testing the functionality associated with this path. 

Similarly, failure to provide end-users and the maintenance team with sufficient knowledge about new functionalities. Remember to notify stakeholders about the new functionalities that will be included in the next version so that they are not caught off guard by changes in the processes.

Conclusion

There are numerous reasons why your software should not be released as soon as possible and at any cost. It’s a good idea to weigh the “pros and cons.” Nonetheless, the development team must inform the Product Owner whether it is reasonable to proceed with the most recent software release launch. As a result, if you notice that something isn’t working properly, take the call to block a release. Also, proceed with the release when the Quality Assurance team approves the release as well.

What is design thinking, and how do we apply it?

Posted on by galaxy-admin

While dealing with complex problems that are poorly defined or unknown, design thinking comes to the rescue. By understanding the human needs involved, this design methodology provides a solution-based approach to problem-solving. Understanding the five stages of design thinking will enable anyone to apply these methods to solve complex problems, regardless of the issue’s scale, industry, or context.

Industries are actively adopting the human-centric approach to evolve existing products and generate new ideas to better serve their customers. Let’s look more closely at what design thinking is and how to apply it to your organization.

What is design thinking and why is it important?

Design thinking is an ideology as well as a process for solving complex problems in a user-centric manner. Its emphasis is on achieving practical outcomes and solutions that:

– Are technically feasible and can be developed into functional products or processes

– Are economically viable, the company can afford to develop them

– Meets a genuine human need, thereby making it desirable for the users

According to the design thinking ideology, to come up with innovative solutions, one must adopt a designer’s mindset and approach the problem from the user’s perspective. Simultaneously, design thinking is all about getting your hands dirty; the goal is to turn your ideas into tangible, testable products or processes as soon as possible.

Five actionable steps in the design thinking process

#1 Empathize

What? You will interact with and observe your target audience during the empathize phase.

Why? The goal of this step is to create a clear picture of who your end users are, the challenges they face, and the needs and expectations they have.

How? You will conduct surveys, interviews, and observation sessions to develop user empathy.

For instance, you want to address the issue of employee retention and ask each employee to complete an anonymous survey. You then conduct user interviews with as many employees as possible to learn how they feel about the organization. 

#2 Define

What? The next step is to define a clear problem statement based on what you learned during the empathize phase.

Why? Your problem statement identifies the specific issue you will address. It will guide the entire design process from this point forward, providing you with a fixed goal to focus on and assisting you in keeping the user in mind at all times.

How? While framing your problem statement, you will prioritize the needs of the user over the needs of the business. A good problem statement is human-centered, broad enough to accommodate creativity, while also providing guidance and direction.

For example, “My employees must be able to maintain a healthy lifestyle while working in the office”, is far more user-centric than “I must keep my employees healthy and happy to boost retention.”

#3 Ideate 

What? With a clear problem statement in mind, you should now try to generate as many ideas and potential solutions as possible.

Why? The ideation phase encourages you to think outside the box and investigate new possibilities. By focusing on quantity rather than the quality of ideas, you will be more likely to free your mind and stumble upon innovation!

How? During dedicated ideation sessions, you will employ a variety of ideation techniques such as bodystorming, reverse thinking, and the worst possible idea.

To illustrate – Based on what you discovered during the empathize phase, you hold several ideation sessions with various stakeholders. With your problem statement in hand, you brainstorm as many ideas as you can for how you can make your employees happier and retain them. 

#4 Prototype

What? After you’ve narrowed your ideas down to a few, you’ll create prototypes—or “scaled-down” versions of the product or concept you want to test.

Why? The prototyping stage provides you with something tangible that you can test on real users. This is critical to maintaining a user-centric approach.

How? Prototypes can range from simple paper models to interactive, digital prototypes, depending on what you’re testing. Have a clear goal in mind when creating your prototypes; know exactly what you want your prototype to represent and thus test.

Example – During the ideation phase, one suggestion was to provide free yoga classes. You set up a dedicated yoga room in the office, complete with mats, water bottles, and hand towels, to test this idea.

#5 Test

What? In the fifth step of the design thinking process, you will test your prototypes on real or representative users.

Why? During the testing phase, you can see where your prototype works well and where it needs to be improved. You can make changes and improvements based on user feedback before investing time and money in developing and/or implementing your solution.

How? You will conduct user testing sessions in which you will observe your target users interacting with your prototype. You can also solicit verbal feedback. You’ll make changes to your design or come up with an entirely new idea based on everything you learn during the testing phase!

For example, suppose you decide to put the yoga idea to the test for two months to see how employees react. People enjoy the yoga classes, but they are put off by the fact that they are in the middle of the day and there is no place to shower. You decide to move the yoga classes to the evening based on this feedback.

Success stories in design thinking

The most obvious contexts to benefit from design thinking are product and service design. However, the design thinking framework can be applied to a wide range of problems outside the realm of design!

Design thinking is increasingly being used in business to promote innovation and teamwork. IBM created the Enterprise Design Thinking framework to “help multidisciplinary teams align around the real needs of their users,” claiming that businesses that use the framework are twice as quick to market, 75 percent more efficient in terms of teamwork, and enjoy a 300 percent return on investment.

The insurance company MassMutual used design thinking to solve the problem of getting young adults to buy life insurance. Over two years, they conducted extensive user research in collaboration with IDEO. They then spent another two years prototyping and testing based on what they had learned. The result was the Society of Grownups, a set of digital tools designed to teach young people how to make wise financial decisions.


We hope that our blog has helped you understand the design thinking process. Contact us for a professional consultation on how to put a design thinking approach in action for your product idea to create a trending product.

10 Tips to Improve Your Website Accessibility

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Have you ensured to follow WCAG 2.1 guidelines before building your website? You may be in for a rude awakening if your beautiful, meticulously planned website is inaccessible to people with disabilities.

You can begin by identifying your most pressing and easily remedied accessibility issues. This will reduce your risk of lawsuits and make an immediate difference for your disabled customers. Of course, this is only the first step in the process.

Consider this blog as an accessibility triage.

Why Web Accessibility is Vital

The first web accessibility ADA lawsuit occurred in 2017, and it went all the way to federal court. Everything because a website was incompatible with screen reading software.

Consider how inconvenient it can be for a visually impaired person to be unable to order a product they require from a website. Especially during a pandemic, when online shopping is the only option to shop safely.

Making your website accessible to people with disabilities is important not only for avoiding lawsuits, but also for better serving your customers. Here are a few quick tips for testing and improving the accessibility of your website.

#1 Take Stock of all Digital Experiences 

The first step is to examine your entire digital profile, just as you would an inventory of your store.

  • Take your time and carefully review all websites (including content behind gateways), mobile apps, videos (on all platforms), and PDFs that are available for download. 
  • Make a list of every digital access point your company has for both internal and external customers.

#2 Test Your Website

You should begin by selecting strategic samples of what to test and focus on. This is important to quickly assess the current state of your site’s accessibility. This also helps identify major issues that your customers are likely to encounter, 

This should include your most popular and valuable pages, such as the following:

  • Your website’s home page
  • The header and footer of your page
  • Your desktop and mobile navigation menus (as well as general navigation)
  • The most important user tasks
  • Forms and templates are frequently used
  • Core business functions that customers may require.

The goal here is to quickly test these high-value pages so that you can triage and address high-risk issues.

ProTip – 

A good place to start is with the Google Lighthouse tool, which allows you to run a free website audit. It checks for website accessibility, among many other things. You can also use the WAVE tool or the aCe accessibility tool, which are designed specifically for testing the accessibility of websites.

#3 Initial Accessibility Tests

After you’ve established your sample, you should put it through these three tests.

  • Allow a screen reader user to read through each page. Request that they attempt to complete basic tasks such as logging in, navigating to different features, and filling out forms.
  • Experiment with only keyboard navigation. 
  • Make use of an automated testing tool to identify easily flaggable issues. However, it is critical to continue running manual tests because automated tests can help but do not catch all issues.

#4 Create Alt-Image Text and Video Captions

This is an easy-to-implement, easy-to-overlook step toward accessibility that you should not overlook.

If your images don’t have alt-text and your videos don’t have either transcripts or closed captions (or both), you’re putting yourself at risk of an accessibility lawsuit. These are extremely simple for automated software to locate, and they also prevent major accessibility issues.

#5 Label Forms and Keep Them Readable

Always use the label tag to associate each field description with its field, as this provides more context about each field to screen readers and other accessibility systems.

The use of placeholder text in form fields is another potential accessibility issue in forms. Placeholder text—the text suggestions that appear by default when no text is entered into a field—is frequently useful.

#6 Enable Font Size Adjustments

One disadvantage of allowing the user to zoom in and out to adjust element sizes is that it changes the size of everything on the page. A better solution would be to include plus and minus icons somewhere on the page that allows the user to change the size of the base text on the fly, and to save that setting on the client. This would be as simple as a JavaScript function that changes the size of the base font for the text styles in the document.

#7 Use Descriptive URLs 

A descriptive URL like https://magazino.com/article/ten-best-harrison-ford-films/2125451 tells us quite a bit at a glance about the destination

A descriptive URL reduces the amount of work a visitor must do to figure out what the article is about. As a result, a well-designed website will devote some of the URLs to a brief textual description of the contents, while the article ID is used by the server to determine which article to serve.

#8 Choose Color Blind-Friendly Visuals

It is something you should always keep in mind when selecting visuals for your website design. Everything from the contrast between the background and the content to the colors used in the images should be carefully chosen to make them accessible to people with various types of visual impairments.

Some websites, for example, use color to emphasize the importance of buttons and links. Those buttons will have completely different meanings for someone who is colorblind.

#9 Use a Content Management System

Web accessibility is also affected by the flexibility of your website. It is much easier to make the necessary changes to improve website accessibility with a more flexible website. Using a content management system (CMS) is an excellent way to accomplish this goal.

CMS software, for example, allows you to easily customize your website in any way you want. You can optimize your design for web accessibility with page builder plugins like Elementor without writing a single line of code.

#10 Document The Process

When working on accessibility, it is critical to meticulously document everything. This not only keeps your team focused, but also establishes that you are working to improve accessibility in the event of a lawsuit.

Here are some things to think about documenting:

  • Your accessibility policy and statement
  • An executive summary outlining your website’s and mobile apps’ budgeting and resource allocation.
  • The items that need to be repaired, organized by specific issues and components.
  • A collection of preliminary feedback from user testers on major barriers and accessibility issues, as well as preliminary audit results.

Conclusion

By making your website more accessible to a wider range of audiences, you will not only increase the number of people who can access your product or service, but you will also gain a competitive advantage over your competitors. You’ll also save a lot of time and money by avoiding potential lawsuits.

4 Steps to Take Before Hiring a Mobile App Development Agency

Posted on by galaxy-admin

So you’ve got a great mobile app idea and you’ve done your research to understand the competitive landscape. And you’re probably reading this because you’re well aware of the tech space and the potential it has to offer, but you also understand that you need the right mobile app development agency to unlock that potential. 

But before you go about hiring an agency here are some things you need to do before starting your development journey. Any experienced agency will walk you through these steps. 

In this blog we’ll cover what to do after you’ve finalized an app idea. Let’s see what these next steps are:

  • Understanding of Feasibility and Bottlenecks
  • Having clarity about Funding
  • Preparing Go-to-market and Customer Acquisition strategies
  • Planning a Monetization Model

1. Understanding of Feasibility and Bottlenecks

When you’ve identified your competition, it becomes easier to learn and understand the feasibility and bottlenecks the existing players in the market face.  

Validate your idea against these players. Would it be possible for one person to accomplish all the non-technicals of that model, funding development, and take a competitive share of the market at the same time? And is the general technology capable of executing your vision? 

If you don’t have all the answers it’s alright, because that’s why you have development agencies like Galaxy for. Our experts will help you validate your ideas and suggest possible workarounds for bottlenecks. 

2. Having clarity about Funding

This stage is more about understanding where the money goes and if you’re trying to understand costs you can follow how much it costs to build a mobile app in 2021? 

Let’s see what all you’ll be paying for bringing an app to market to ensure that the budget estimates are on point.

  • The visual identity
  • Product minimum viable product (MVP– the first version of your app)
  • Continuous feature development
  • Support & infrastructure
  • Marketing & customer acquisition

To help you with a rough estimate of costs we’ve covered what it costs to build an app in great detail. We say rough estimates because these costs are variable depending on your skills, your network, your partners (if any), the complexity of your app, and your business model. 

For instance, if you come from a development background, perhaps you can handle some of those mock development responsibilities or your partner from a marketing background could tackle some design and promotion responsibilities. 

All this means that the cost factor can vary from person to person. A simple app could be done with little to no outside help and in contrast, an app could cost millions to bring to the market if it requires rare expertise, innovation, intensive advertising, and is complex to build. 

3. Preparing Go-to-market and Customer Acquisition strategies

You don’t necessarily need a perfectly detailed plan to get your idea to market. You’ll probably be hiring outside help for this because this kind of creative heavy-lifting is better left to people with product or marketing expertise. 

Even though you’re probably going to hire someone else for planning, it’s highly advised that you have at least a rough or high-level idea for bringing your app to market and customer acquisition. 

A common mistake that businesses make is that they think marketing and user acquisition can be dealt with after the production. User acquisition is just as important as your design or development, it requires serious strategy, efforts, and money to bring in users to make your app successful. The earlier you start thinking about it, the greater the chances of success become.  

4. Planning Monetization Model

When building apps people forget to factor in the costs of maintenance and infrastructure. This expense is an ongoing one and you need a good monetization strategy to offset these costs alongside the building costs.

There are plenty of monetization models to choose from. For instance, you could go with one of the most popular ones, the freemium with a subscription fee model. It’s a difficult route but an honorable one for starter apps. Earns you loyal customers.

Here are some parameters to factor in when you’re choosing the freemium monetization model:

  • The App Store cut (15%-30% of in-app transactions)
  • The expected conversion rate from free to paid (2.5% on average)
  • Your recurring subscription fee

This will get the ball rolling for you. You can also explore other monetization strategies that are more relevant for your business and app. Ad-based monetization can be tempting at first, but we highly recommend seeking other options unless ads are necessary. 

Conclusion

You can push boundaries and ship your idea quickly but only if you have the right partners by your side. They’ll walk you through research, funding, and maintenance-like aspects beforehand to ensure that you’re well aware of the risks and benefits of the field. 
Galaxy is here to help you validate your ideas and make your app the next big thing. Get in touch with us here.

Aligning UX Strategy With Business Goals

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Businesses are ruled by customers and what they experience when they use your products or services. UX strategies help create coherent experiences across all the customer’s touchpoints. It comprises the plans and processes that would mold the design and development of your products. 

Here are some tried and tested key steps for aligning your UX design with your business goals and, ultimately, building a strong UX portfolio and a successful company.

Define business goals and objectives

Your design team should be aware of the business goals and a perspective on the various requirements and needs that your product is going to address. By sharing this information with the design team, they would give due diligence to the business goals while developing the product. 

To align UX strategy with the business, you need to understand and make everyone aware that UX is not a single person’s responsibility; everybody involved in product development is responsible. This implies that every team member will have ownership of the product. 

Keeping it simple helps in almost all the scenarios. When you are communicating business objectives to UX designers, try and do the same. Involve everyone from product leaders, stakeholders, designers and possibly, developers.

Start by answering these for clarity:

  • Users – Who are the users? Who do you target?
  • User needs – What are the problems that you want to solve through the product?
  • Product goals – What do we want to achieve? Be specific 

Introducing a framework can streamline your process and improve collaboration. We suggest you go with the User-Centered Business framework. It is very detailed and thorough. It is designed to highlight every important aspect of the product, business, and its users.

Here we have used a Nutrition and Workout app for example to showcase how the framework looks like. You can clearly see traits of users, what are their motivations, fears, and problems. And also how the app aims to solve problems and what is its unique offering.

Aligning

This framework focuses on –

  • Existing solutions – Initial research of what you’re competing against
  • Early adopters – Enthusiasts who test your products and do interviews about it
  • User fears – Addressing user fears with communication before it becomes a major pain point

Creating user personas

While building a product you need to find out what your users need. Once you find out what those needs are, then release features fulfilling that need. 

Personas are based on assumptions. However, you can identify and validate these assumptions with research and ensure that your personas fit the description of your target users.

A UX designer can take the help of these personas while designing for a paying user. They will know what benefits to talk about and what fears to address based on the persona’s fears, motivation, and goals. But everyone in the team must truly understand the product and its users to accomplish this. 

Aligning user needs with business goals

There is often a disconnect between user needs and business goals. And it’s no single person’s fault. Designers are just executing and the Product team is just building what stakeholders need. But in this vicious cycle, user needs remain unaddressed. 

When you start working within a framework–like User-Centered Business Canvas– and according to identified user personas, the business needs to start to follow suit. You just need to ensure that you define the business goal behind it with every stage of the framework. Like if the stage is Onboarding, you would have to define your business goals for onboarding and your expectations from users.

Here are some essentials to align business goals with user needs:

  • Test everything
  • Conduct interviews to validate the assumption 
  • Sort and prioritize features

Conducting design reviews

Feedback is a crucial part of any design process. It’s the only way to know if there’s any room for improvement. Design Review is an exercise to provide meaningful feedback to designers. All the attendees get a role assigned to them so that every individual can observe the design from a different perspective.

Here’s how to get started:

Invite everyone in the team, designers, developers, and stakeholders. Here is what we recommend- 

  • Assign roles
  • Present the designs
  • Work individually and collect remarks
  • Discuss and prioritize

For example – 

Person 1– looks at the facts

Person 2 – looks for problems and potential risks 

Person 3 – looks at what is good in the designs

Person 4 – looks for ways to improve the product

Wrapping up

Knowing your product and its users is essential for striking a balance between a usable product that users desire and a product that meets stakeholders’ business goals.

Our process will help you make beautiful-looking products that users like and stakeholders love.

About Galaxy

We specialize in delivering end-to-end software design & development services and have hands-on experience with app UI/UX design in agile development environments. Our designers, engineers, and developers help improve security, reliability, and features to make sure your business application and IT structure scale and remain secure.

7 Business Benefits of Choosing an Enterprise CMS

Posted on by galaxy-admin

An enterprise content management system is the beating heart of your organization’s digital presence. CMS users can avail themselves of a variety of document types and content on a website, then modify and expand the information posted without the need for a web programmer to set up the site and make updates.

When evaluating a content management system, managers need to contemplate numerous factors, including: 

  • How is what you have now compared to what is available in the market? 
  • What is the longevity of the solution you have chosen?
  • If you decide to invest in something different, how do you know it will be worth your while?

In this guide, we’ll help you learn everything you need to know about modern enterprise CMS, including:

  • Why an enterprise CMS specifically is key
  • What are the benefits of choosing a solution for enterprise CMS
  • Important factors to consider when you’re choosing an enterprise CMS

What is Enterprise CMS?

A content management system (CMS) is a software system that allows businesses to create, manage, and publish content for their websites, apps, and other digital assets.

As a central hub and publishing engine for marketing content, the CMS is critical to the success of any company’s marketing team. This is why it is critical for enterprise marketing leaders to select a specific enterprise CMS.

An enterprise CMS is a content management system that provides enterprise marketing departments with the features and capabilities they require to engage prospects and ultimately drive revenue.

Why go for Modern Enterprise CMS?

A content management system is used by more than 60% of websites. The following advantages demonstrate why choosing the right CMS is important to most businesses with an online presence – and why it should be important to you.

#1 Increase Your Website’s Functionality With Plugins

Most CMS provides a standard set of features and functions that are sufficient for the majority of users to have a basic platform. It is very likely that your requirements are different or that you require additional functionality. A plugin can fill this void and provide features that aren’t included with the standard CMS.

There are thousands of free and paid plugins available for almost any job or feature you can think of. There is an active community that develops software plugins that can extend the functionality of popular CMS platforms. Some are paid, while others are free to use.

#2 Omnichannel Selling Support

Omnichannel selling is another important advantage of using a CMS platform. Organizations frequently need to entice customers to visit their websites by marketing through various channels with different content that provides each user with insight into their brand. Marketing on each channel necessitates entering all of the brand’s information on each channel separately.

#3 Control Over Your Website Design

One of the most significant advantages of CMS over traditional websites is complete control over your website’s design. The main advantage of using CMS platforms is that they make website design and customization very easy and simple.

With a traditional website, you or your web development agency will need to scrap your old website in order to redesign a new one from scratch. The existing content will also need to be manually transferred to the new website design. This is inefficient and complicates and prolongs the website design or redesign process when compared to using a CMS.

#4 Multi-language Capabilities

Personalization is becoming increasingly important for brands that operate in more than one country to engage customers in meaningful ways. Having an enterprise CMS that can handle multi-language content, including translation and localization tools, helps ensure that you can deliver the right content in the right context no matter where it is needed in the world.

#5 Mobile Readiness

Over 90% of websites now report that mobile devices generate more unique visitors than desktop computers. According to Google, mobile visitors are 5X more likely to abandon a website that hasn’t been optimized for mobile use. According to Google, “mobile-friendly sites rank higher in search results.” At this point, an enterprise CMS capable of delivering content to your mobile apps and experiences is required.

#6 Automation Through Integration

As your business expands, so will your content workload, which is a great reason to use automation to do more of the heavy lifting. Through integrations with artificial intelligence-enabled tools, an enterprise CMS can enable content teams to leverage technology to automate routine tasks that would otherwise take humans a long time to complete.

#7 Easy Website Maintenance 

CMS websites make it simple for you to manage your site’s upkeep. If you believe you should have control over your site or if you want an in-house team member to maintain it, CMS makes it simple and quick. A CMS’s template-based structure makes it simple and quick to create pages and posts.

Wrapping Up

If you’re looking for a CMS that can help automate the many manual tasks associated with content management, enable efficient team-wide collaboration, facilitate content delivery that improves customer experience, and make the most of all your content assets and data, look no further. It’s time to implement an enterprise CMS.

If you aren’t quite ready to abandon your current traditional CMS, this in-depth guide will help you learn about 3 Things To Know Before Switching To A New CMS. Want to see what an enterprise CMS looks like in action? Contact our CMS team today.

About Galaxy Weblinks

We are your offshore CMS development partner and have state-of-art infrastructure, and development expertise on the latest CMS technology trends. We have hands-on experience in customizing websites using multiple platforms, be it Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, catering to different business needs. We offer assistance from building custom CMS websites to website migration and maintenance processes.

Why is the Offshore Model better for UX design projects?

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Note: This is an updated version of “Offshore UX | An option or need of the hour?” initially published on May 26, 2020. 

The world of business has changed dramatically since the pandemic. Real-time data and advanced analytics tools allowed the companies to adapt their strategy instantaneously. As witnessed after the outbreak of COVID-19, technology also facilitates instant communication with your team, no matter where they are located. Offshoring UX is now seen as a viable option. 

The consumers of technology expect a simple, intuitive, and visually appealing user experience. This was once considered aspirational and the domain of premium brands, necessitating months of research and large budgets. What was once exceptional is now a standard for all digital touchpoints, regardless of brand or budget. So, how can mid-tier firms with smaller budgets and shorter deadlines meet this expectation?

This challenge existed even 2-decades ago when the small businesses and big enterprises began offshoring software and product development. This approach is well understood and widely accepted and can be adapted to meet the needs of modern user experiences. 

In this post, we’ll talk about why it makes sense for your business to hire offshore contractors to handle your next UX design.

UX design has become a requirement

With the increase of technology in our daily lives comes increasing demands from consumers. Interfaces must be able to compete with the increasing standards. More products will begin to need UX designs. Being a market leader in your space, or even just staying afloat, will require it.

Even if you haven’t needed a UX designer in the past, there’s a good chance you will in the future. With that in mind, let’s talk about why offshore UX is a good business decision for your current or future UX designer needs.

Local talent can be hard to find

Because of the demand for UX designers, it can be hard to find local talent that is also available for full-time work. This is especially true if you want to hire top talent, which will command a higher price and be harder to keep on staff without some other company coming along with a better offer.

Thankfully, some of the same skills you look for in a full-time employee are what you’d look for in a remote employee. For both, you want someone who is a self-starter and will get the work done on time and as per specifications with minimal oversight on your part. As top UX designers realize they can make more work for themselves and takes on multiple jobs at multiple firms throughout the year, it becomes easier to find a qualified person for the job without having to commit to a full year’s salary.

The economics of developing nations

In the countries where the cost of living is low, the highest-paid professions may receive a little more than you would pay a UX designer. This means that UX designers in those nations can price themselves very competitively compared to western nations and still live a very comfortable life relative to their peers.

Of course, you’ll have to put some effort into finding the right candidate when you look outside English-speaking countries. Residents of most countries learn English as a second language, but you want to make sure that they speak it well enough that no language barriers exist. With offshoring, you’ll save money and provide someone with a better income than they could get in their economy alone.

Technology breaks down boundaries

Because it is such a visual art, there was a time in the past when doing UX work remotely would have been extremely difficult. This may be why there is still a reluctance on the part of many to embrace outsourced UX designers.

We now have technology that allows us to video conference and share our screens easily. There are cloud-based solutions, such as Miro and Invision, that allow for collaboration on even the most advanced projects so you’ll be able to give feedback to designers in a professional manner and ensure that nothing gets lost in the translation.

Combine that with the fact that all but the poorest of countries have access to high-speed internet, it is now possible to engage in real-time feedback even for visual projects like UI and UX. The boundaries that once stood in the way of taking UX design off-premise have now been torn down by technological advances.

Offshoring is flexible

If you’re a large business, you already have a design department with competent directors and senior designers. In that case, it will be the additional workers that take the vision of the senior members and help implement it that would make prime candidates for offshore workers.

For small businesses, it is impossible to hire a full-time staff to do your design work. Offshoring makes finding someone for a one-off job even more affordable.

Better Cost Control

Working with an agency allows you to control costs in a way that hiring someone in-house does not. After signing a statement of work (SOW), agencies are required to follow the scope of work outlined in the contract.

This specific type of agreement gives you more control over when work begins and ends, as well as how much money you commit to the project.

Increased Time to Value

Because agency design teams must meet tight deadlines, they typically adhere to strict, time-tested procedures. Whereas an in-house hire may take a week or two to get up and running, a good agency can ramp up and begin delivering within two to three weeks.

Often, agencies can simply do the work faster. For example, our UX team at Galaxy has been able to completely redesign relatively complex SaaS applications in less than three months, whereas an in-house team would typically take at least twice as long.

The bottom line is that agencies can move your project more quickly to the point where your investment begins to pay off.

Conclusion

For most companies, hiring designers locally is the way it’s always been done. With the coronavirus pandemic teaching us that remote work is not only possible but very practical, it may be a good time to consider the more affordable option. Now that we know situations can arise to force us into our homes, it would be a good time to take what we’ve learned from the outbreak and use that to experiment with new, cost-effective, and disaster-resistant forms of business.