Category: Technology

5 Tips to Choose a Low-code Platform for Your Business

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Are you replacing manual coding with a low-code development platform for your app development team? To make an informed decision, you must first understand the common requirements for business apps. Setting the right criteria for selecting a low-code platform to build apps is critical. 

Like every tool, there are free as well as paid versions of low code platforms. Free low code development tools frequently lack the enterprise features and custom code capabilities required to create apps that serve business users. If your new low code software is unable to meet app requirements, you will be forced to hire professional developers. That is why it is critical to establish informed criteria for selecting a low-code application platform.

What are the advantages of using low-code development?

Opening the doors of development to non-technical employees has several benefits. Businesses and organizations can reduce development cycle time by not having to send every new development request to overburdened IT departments. Individuals from all departments and teams can instead take responsibility for developing their applications, freeing up IT for more important tasks.

Low-code application development also aids in the retention of IT teams that are small, agile, and focused on more innovative and complex tasks. Businesses can eliminate the backlog of applications that IT is responsible for by utilizing existing talent from across the organization. Most importantly, low-code application development framework solutions enable IT departments to offload certain development projects to other teams. This makes room to transform customer and employee experiences by dedicating more time to innovation. 

“By leveraging the features available in the platform, an organization can avoid redundancies across solutions, simplify their IT stack, and accelerate time to market by selecting a platform with the broadest feature set.”

– Mike Hughes, Director of product marketing, OutSystems

(OutSystems is one of the top low-code platform vendors as per a Forrester report) 

Below are five key criteria for selecting the right low-code application development framework:

1. Specify who will develop applications

Some low-code platforms are designed for technology professionals and software developers. Others are development platforms that enable business analysts or subject-matter experts to create and maintain applications. A few platforms support both options, but each persona has different tools and capabilities.

The target developers should be eager to learn the platform, build applications, and devote time to ongoing enhancements. Engaging them early in the selection process ensures that they support the tool’s use to support business priorities.

2. Identify and evaluate multiple use cases

Low-code platforms should assist your organization in accelerating application development and making enhancements easier to support. However, this must be balanced against the types of applications desired for end-user experiences, data requirements, workflow capabilities, and other considerations.

When researching and testing low-code platforms, it is critical to consider multiple app development needs and use cases. Most importantly, determine what the platform cannot or cannot easily do, as well as its scope, strengths, and weaknesses. Choosing a low-code approach because it works well for one use case does not imply that it is the best standard for ongoing needs.

3. Define usage requirements and pricing estimates

The business and pricing models of low-code platforms are very different. Some have end-user pricing, which means you pay more for more application users or usage. Other companies price their platforms based on the development scale, which includes metrics such as the number of applications or development seats. Some provide multiple products that must be purchased separately, and the majority use capability-based pricing tiers.

As a result, while many companies provide simple on-ramps to trials and developing proofs of concept, it is critical to understand the end-state development and production requirements.

4. Investigate and prioritize integration needs

APIs, cloud, and data center databases and third-party data sources must all be integrated into applications. If your company is creating IoT data pipelines or machine learning models, chances are you’ll want to integrate them with low-code platforms.

Reviewing IFTTT (If This Then That) platforms to see if they integrate with the low-code platform and the actions and triggers they support is a good place to start. Even if you don’t use these platforms in production, it would prove beneficial to review their capabilities and to implement the integration proofs of concept.

5. Review hosting, and DevOps options

Low code was once synonymous with SaaS and cloud hosting options, with few offering hybrid cloud and data center options. That is no longer true, and low-code platforms are now competing on hosting flexibility.

Another important consideration is to go over your DevOps options. When it comes to DevOps capabilities, not all low-code platforms are created equal, particularly in areas such as:

  • Versioning applications or integrating with a version control system 
  • Assisting with the development life cycle across development, test, and other environments.
  • Enabling an agile development process with links to tools for managing backlogs and road maps.
  • Combining change management processes with continuous integration/continuous deployment, continuous testing, or IT service management.
  • Enabling data snapshots, mirrors, and replications, as well as extract, transform, and load processes, to aid in disaster recovery and data science.

Low-code platforms will not be as adaptable as Java,.NET, or JavaScript DevOps capabilities. Going with a low-code platform has trade-offs because the goal is to simplify all of the scaffolding required to support app development and operations. The question is whether they meet business and technical requirements, not whether they adhere to coding and software development tools and processes.

Conclusion

Low-code platforms are great but they can be time-consuming to set up. You can find the best solution for mobilizing your developers and rapidly delivering apps that meet the needs of both your end-users and your business with a little forethought.

Don’t let code stand in the way of superior app development. Want to consult the development process for your app or web development project? Contact our experts.

Best Practices for Implementing and Maintaining CI/CD Strategy

Posted on by galaxy-admin

The key to moving faster in software design and development is a collection of operating principles and practices known as CI/CD, which combines continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD). CI/CD enables software development teams to deliver code changes more frequently and reliably, allowing them to respond to the needs of the business and its customers more quickly. For many development organizations, CI/CD has become a standard strategy.

In this blog, we are covering some tips for implementing and maintaining a CI/CD strategy. But before that let’s understand the importance of CI/CD for businesses.

How CI/CD Impacts Software Development?

Continuous integration is a coding philosophy and set of practices that encourage development teams to make small changes and check-in code to version control repositories regularly. Given that most applications today require teams to develop code across multiple platforms and tools, teams require a method to integrate and validate these changes. 

Continuous delivery comes after continuous integration and automates application delivery to specific infrastructure environments. Most development teams today work in multiple environments, including testing environments, in addition to production. Continuous delivery ensures that code changes are automatically pushed to these various environments.

According to Kenefick, former vice president, and analyst at Gartner, recent “Agile in the Enterprise” surveys, more teams are doing agile development, and agile teams have significantly higher implementation rates for continuous integration, automated acceptance testing, and DevOps. More and more organizations are implementing CI/CD to improve the design, development, and delivery of software applications for internal or external use.

Implementing and Maintaining a CI/CD Strategy

1.  Understand the business drivers – Planning for future needs

An organization must understand why it needs to implement CI/CD so that the development teams can build the necessary competency to ensure that key objectives are met.

When done correctly, CI/CD can improve developer productivity, delivery framework optimization, operational efficiency, and agile transformation.

How?

Modern CI/CD capabilities use a modular architecture, allowing for ‘plug-and-play’ adoption models and pipeline configurability to support a variety of delivery frameworks. The pipeline implementation needs to be meticulous as the code enables engineering teams to develop advanced functions that meet the current business needs. However, it is also necessary to forecast future requirements.

2. Choosing and implementing the best CI/CD system 

The available CI/CD systems can provide tangible value to organizations. Their use indicates how healthy an engineering/product organization is. However, when looking into software that enables CI/CD processes, businesses must conduct adequate research and choose the best option.

When developing, testing, and deploying new features becomes routine, [an] organization’s ability to respond to change improves dramatically. 

How?

The stakeholders responsible for the product’s technical direction, longevity, or health need to spend time researching the ecosystem and the solutions available. Have them solicit feedback from the product developers. They will be the primary users of the CI/CD system because they will be dealing with it daily.

The majority of these solutions offer free trials and can be integrated with platforms such as GitHub. Set up integration and observe the results while it automates a build, test, or deployment. When people see that these systems add value to their workflow, they will naturally start shifting more tasks to them.

3. Involve key stakeholders in CI/CD early

It’s a good idea to involve all development project stakeholders as early as possible, as close to the project’s inception as possible.

The main advantage is that all stakeholders participate in project development decisions at each stage of the project. IT operations personnel, for example, will have a say in architectural decisions, allowing developers to work on infrastructure that has been approved by IT.

How? 

This should be done for all decisions involving all types of stakeholders so that all major decisions can be made with experts present. This practice significantly reduces the amount of technical debt that accumulates throughout the project life cycle.

4. Combine automated testing with manual approvals

Teams would focus on test-first methodologies that reinforce the creation of automated unit and functional tests. They create sets of automated regression, performance, and security testing. They would also set up automated testing to ensure that environments and orchestration platforms are properly configured.

There is no one set of testing that is more important. We recommend that you combine all the required tests. 

How?

It should be combined with other quality practices such as using static analysis tools, ensuring that peer reviews take place via pull requests, and utilizing continuous integration pipelines. Ensure that manual approval steps are in place at critical points in the deployment process. Manual approval procedures keep untested or unapproved code out of production and higher testing environments. This also gives you control over when the code runs in key environments.

5. Track metrics to ensure CI/CD success

By implementing CI/CD, organizations can achieve measurable improvements in development and engineering, and these improvements should be measured and compared over time.

How?

Understand the time and flakiness of your build/test/deploy cycles. Identify potential areas for optimization and improvement. Fast is preferable to slow, but dependability and correctness take precedence over speed. CI/CD processes and tools should be viewed as force multipliers, with benefits such as reduced engineering, testing, and feature time to market.

Conclusion

Software development is extremely complex, and getting it right is difficult. Use the right tools to keep you on track and to meaningfully support your development process. CI/CD is much more than simply automating tasks to eliminate human error. It enables us to get new solutions to users as quickly, efficiently, and affordably as possible.

Are you ready to set up CI/CD processes for your project? Contact our experts.

5 Key Mobile Metrics to Make Your App Profitable

Posted on by galaxy-admin

When you get an app idea, it’s natural to want to get started on it as soon as possible. While the idea could be the most unique and exciting, developing a mobile application is not cheap—and the harsh reality is that the majority of apps fail. So, before diving in and developing an app, it’s critical to plan out how to make it profitable.

If you have an app idea, or if you’ve already released your product to the App Store, this blog will help you learn how you can use a few metrics to help you build something that makes more money than it costs to build.

1. Acquisition

Downloads: The number of new downloads in a given period (daily, weekly, or monthly)

Download Attribution: The sources of your new users. Utilize this information to optimize marketing spend and increase ROI/customer LTV.

Where do your visitors come from? This is especially important if you are running advertisements or spending money to acquire new users.

You should track downloads daily to gain a better understanding of the impact of your marketing campaigns. Knowing where your users are coming from allows you to direct your marketing resources to increase new user growth.

2. Activations

Activation Rate: The percentage of downloads that resulted in the app being launched.

  • Metric Range: You’re doing well if your activation rate is 85 percent or higher. Anything less necessitates a more in-depth investigation to understand and resolve the problem.
  • Metric Range: For most rapidly growing mobile apps, the ratio of the first-time app launches to total app launches over a rolling 30-day period ranges between 5% and 15%.

You might be surprised at how many people download your app but never use it.

Many seemingly insignificant factors can trigger this decline – from UI typos to lengthy user registrations, but this is the first aspect that you should explore.

3. Retention

The longer you retain users, the more valuable they become to your company. In a nutshell, retention equals revenue. The issue is that the average person has between 60 and 90 apps installed on their phone, but only 10% of them are used daily. With so many other apps vying for your users’ time and attention, how do you break into the top 10%?

By tracking user retention metrics and determining where people are leaving the user journey. Calculating retention based on first logins will reflect the effectiveness of your app’s messaging, onboarding, and UX in keeping people around. 

For example – Day 3 and Day 7 retention after first app launch:

Metric Range: 24% of apps are uninstalled (or not used again) after just one launch.*

Weekly (and monthly) retention cohorts:

Use first-time app launches to create acquisition cohorts. You can then track how long each cohort stays active in your app and find out which in-app behaviors have a positive or negative effect on retention.

4. Engagement

Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU): The number of app users who are active on a given day or month.

Average Session Length & Frequency: The frequency with which users launch your app, as well as the length of an average session.

How often do users return to your app, and how much time do they spend on it? It is an important factor because not all apps are intended to be used daily. You’ll need to define what an “active user” means for your app. Does this imply launching the app, logging in, or performing a specific action?

These metrics can help you understand the effectiveness of your engagement campaigns, as well as the overall quality of your user experience.

5. Uninstalls

Number of Uninstalls: How many people uninstall your app on a daily or weekly basis?

Churn Rate: Users at the beginning of the period – Users at the end of the period – Users at the beginning of the period / Users at the beginning of the period.

To calculate the net result of your mobile app growth, compare the number of daily uninstalls to the number of daily downloads and daily activations.

If you discover that you have a significant churn problem, examine the performance of your app to rule out bugs, crashes, or latency issues. After only a few uses, 80 percent of users abandon slow-loading apps.

Conclusion

Now that you’ve got these metrics, you’ll want to keep measuring and testing to improve these numbers. One of the most important things you can do is keep these numbers in front of you and your team at all times. See how many different tests you can run in a single month and track that as you would any other metric.

About Galaxy Weblinks
We specialize in delivering end-to-end software design & development services. Our analytics team and 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. Click here for a free consultation!

Top New Plugins of Popular CMS in 2021

Posted on by galaxy-admin

With over 50,000 plugins in a single CMS plugin directory, it can be difficult for business owners like you to find the right plugins from your favorite CMS platform. Plugins greatly enhance your website and there are several thousand plugins available on your chosen CMS platform and third-party websites.

Choosing the right plugins is critical for your website’s speed, security, and usability. Fortunately, some clear winners will benefit almost any type of CMS site.

In this blog, we’ve compiled a list of the best plugins for popular CMS. We’ll go over plugins designed to improve WordPress, Shopify, Craft CMS, and Joomla.

WordPress

Simple Responsive WP Slider

Simple Responsive WP Slider is a lightweight WordPress slider plugin. You can use the plugin to create and customize an unlimited number of sliders for your website. To add the slider to a webpage, you can use a shortcode or place it within Gutenberg blocks. The plugin’s features include unlimited sliders and multiple sliders on each page. Custom configuration options are available for each slide, including the navigation and slider. Adding dots or arrows to the slides is one of the basic configuration options for individual sliders.

Quick Audio Player

Quick Audio Player is a customizable WordPress audio player. The plugin is mobile-friendly and compatible with any WordPress theme. It works flawlessly on all devices and web browsers. The plugin includes an HTML5 audio player, live player editing, a player poster image, rich control settings, a player shortcode, player width and color customization, and a player color picker. The player supports a variety of audio formats, including.mp3,.wav, and.ogg.

Tutor LMS Elementor Add-ons

Tutor LMS Elementor Add-ons is a useful plugin that adds 25+ Elementor page builder add-ons. Users can use the plugin to create custom styling and layouts for Tutor LMS courses. You must install both Tutor LMS and the Elementor Plugin for this plugin to function properly. After you’ve activated all three plugins, you’ll be able to use Elementor to create single course pages. Course rating, course title, course author, course level, course duration, course thumbnail, course price, and many more are among the Elementor Add-ons. The plugin can also be used to change the appearance of your existing courses.

Job App Manager

Job App Manager is a simple WordPress plugin that allows you to display a job application form on your website for candidates to fill out and submit their information. To display the form on any webpage on your site, a shortcode is used. After completing a form, the user will receive a confirmation email. Go to the admin page and navigate to ‘All Submissions’ to find the submissions in the form. You can also search, filter, and delete forms from the admin page. There is also a dashboard widget that displays the most recent five form submissions.

Wall Pricing table

WordPress users can use the Wall Pricing Table plugin to create pricing tables for their websites. You can include the features of the various pricing plans as well as display the price table anywhere on your website. The pricing table includes the following fields: title, subtitle, price, button, and features (you can add as many as you want). Each plan can be distinguished by color. The plugin is available for free.

…

Craft CMS

Marketplace for Craft Commerce

Craft users can use Marketplace for Craft Commerce to turn their Ecommerce sites into a marketplace. Users can charge fees for your platform as well as add payees to products. You have the option of charging a flat or percentage fee. Stripe Connect is used to process payments.

Presence 

Presence is a Craft plugin that shows who is currently editing an entry. While editing any entry, the users are displayed in the right sidebar settings. For users who do not have a profile image, a default logo is set. Admins can review and approve the entries made.

…

Joomla

AA Tiny Audio Player

AA Tiny Audio Player is a Joomla extension that adds an HTML5 audio player to your website. The extension includes a responsive layout and animation support. It supports the video formats.mp3,.ogg, and.wav. It is also compatible with all templates.

MyRealPin

MyRealPin gives your website a Pinterest-like appearance. You can make your pinboards, and collaborate with your friends on them. You can modify the Joomla extension to meet your specific requirements.

AA Youtube Subscription Button

AA Youtube Subscribe Button is a Joomla module that displays a YouTube subscribe button along with the subscriber number of your site. It is simple to use and fully responsive. It is cross-browser compatible and can be used with any template.

…

Shopify

Advoz 

Advoz is a Shopify plugin that allows professionals to create high-quality Google, Facebook, and Instagram ads to promote your company. Once you’ve decided on a weekly budget, you’ll receive a custom graphic or video detailing how the ads will appear. The plugin will generate advertisements that will drive high-quality leads to your store.

Products Stories Convert Sale

Products Stories Convert Sale is a cool plugin that transforms your website into a trendy social network. Customers can view products in your store in a fun and easy way thanks to the plugin. Like Instagram feed stories, all of your catalogue will appear in carousel stories. Coupons will also appear in the stories to aid in sales. You will also receive real-time reports to assist you in determining what your customers are interested in.

ConvertOut Ambassadors

ConvertOut Ambassadors is a Shopify plugin that allows users to quickly set up an ambassador program. To get started, you don’t need any technical knowledge. The plugin begins working immediately after installation. ConvertOut will track the commission that must be paid to the ambassador for each sale. Payments are made to the ambassador’s PayPal account.

Wrapping Up

It is nearly impossible to run a CMS website without using plugins to add functionality. There is a plugin for almost anything you can think of on your website, whether you want to engage users through email opt-in forms, add social sharing buttons, compress images to improve website speed or optimize your content to rank in search engines.

Furthermore, plugins greatly improve and optimize the user experience, resulting in higher engagement and a better chance of reaching a larger audience.

If you’re not sure which plugins to install first, these well-known and trusted plugins will get you started.

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, Craft, WordPress, Joomla, catering to different business needs. We offer assistance from building custom CMS websites to website migration and maintenance processes.

Apple WWDC 7 June 2021 Keynote Highlights

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Apple knows how to make an entrance and the opening keynote of the WWDC 2021 that took place on 7th June was no different. It had everything for Apple’s line of devices from watchOS to macOS.

Although there were no new product announcements in this opening keynote, there are a few products that are awaiting upgrade like Macs with Apple M1X or M2 processors, which we can expect later this year. 

Highlights From Apple’s June WWDC 

The clear focus of this keynote was shared experiences and privacy. Here are some of the software updates planned for the autumn event that Craig along with the team showcased. 

iOS 15

The phones are getting bigger and more powerful so the software should follow suit. The next-gen iOS 15 brings powerful sharing and interoperability-rich features. As usual, it will also feature some tweaks to the interface and crucial security fixes.

Here are some of the iOS 15 features that were previewed ahead of the Autumn event: 

  • FaceTime Links
  • Interactive Memories within Photos
  • Keys & ID cards in Wallet
  • New night mode for Apple Maps
  • Notifications Summary
  • Live text
  • Focus
  • Enhanced offline Siri support

While a pre-release beta was made available for developers as the keynote came to a close, public beta is promised in July.  

iPadOS 15

iPad offers a different utility than that of iPhones and considering its significant user base it made sense that it had its OS and so it got it not long back in 2019. Both the platforms have similarities but the announcements made were hinting towards a more refined aesthetic and UX for iPadOS. 

Here are some of the iPadOS 15 features that were previewed ahead of the Autumn event: 

  • Larger Widget size for a bigger screen
  • App Library
  • Multitasking control menu
  • System-wide Quick notes
  • Swift Playgrounds is a fun way to learn to code on an iPad

iPadOS 15 is also intended to solve the stability issues of iPadOS 14.

macOS Monterey

The macOS 12 is now called Monterey. Craig showcased a host of new features along with the futuristic Universal Control and its crazy ability to utilize a single trackpad or mouse to move across mac and other Apple devices for interoperability. 

Here are some of the ‘Monterey’ features that were previewed ahead of the Autumn event: 

  • Shortcuts on macOS
  • AirPlay to mac
  • Spatial Audio
  • Redesigned Safari
  • Universal Control

watchOS 8

This update for watchOS 8 is about health and primarily mindfulness. It features a new Mindfulness app that integrates the existing Breathe app with a refreshed UI alongside a new Reflect experience which suggests mindful concepts to practice. 

Here are some of the watchOS 8 features that were previewed ahead of the Autumn event: 

  • Dynamic portrait photo face
  • Mindfulness app
  • Memories on Photos
  • Directly share photos with messages

tvOS 15

Although there were no updates that were geared towards tvOS, there are a few to accompany other devices like new multi-window security camera views for HomeKit-enabled cameras, Spatial Audio for compatible AirPods, and Watch Together support for iOS 15’s Share Play.

Other Updates

AirPods – AirPods were showcased with a new feature called Conversation boost that helps reduce ambient noise and provides boosted vocals for the hearing impaired. Also, AirPods are now a part of Find My network. 

iCloud+ –  This is more of an iCloud rebrand than an update but there are some new benefits like Encrypted online browsing and Hide my Email with unlimited temporary emails.

Conclusion

With this update Apple stands to change sharing, communication, and privacy for the Apple ecosystem, making it even more fluid, consistent, and tight-knit. All that was showcased in the keynotes was exciting but Universal Control stood out for us. We can’t wait to see it in action and catch that Minority Report feels. 

P.S.

We are pretty well-skilled with Apple iOS development. Get in touch with us here if you need a partner to help build, migrate, or scale your Apple projects.

Angular v12 Update – All you Need to Know

Posted on by galaxy-admin

The latest update of Angular was released on May 12. It’s got a bunch of major changes that are essentially facilitating the Angular ecosystem’s transition to Ivy. They are calling it “Ivy Everywhere”. Deprecation of IE11 support along with other changes were also announced. 

Let’s check out all these changes-

What is “Ivy Everywhere” 

It means that the ‘View Engine’ will now be excluded in future releases. Existing libraries on View Engine will however still work with Ivy apps. It is supported for now but it’s only a matter of time, so it is advised that library authors start working on the transition to Ivy. 

New Canonical message ID format

According to Angular’s official blog, the team is ditching the legacy message ID formats for a new canonical message ID. A conical message Id is more resilient and intuitive as compared to multiple IDs in the i18n system. 

According to Angular.io

“These legacy message-ids are fragile as problems can arise based on whitespace and the formatting templates and ICU expressions. To solve this problem we’re migrating away from them. This format will reduce the unnecessary translation invalidation and associated retranslation cost in applications where translations do not match due to whitespace changes for example.”

Protractor Pushed Further

The community-driven end-to-end testing framework was given a pass for this release. The angular team is currently working with Cypress, WebdriverIO, and TestCafe to help users adopt alternative testing frameworks until the protractor becomes a part of a future release. 

Nullish Coalescing in Angular 12 

The Nullish coalescing operator is great for clean coding in Typescript classes. It has also made its way to Angular 12 templates to simplify complex conditionals. 

For example:

{{age !== null && age !== undefined ? age : calculateAge() }}

Becomes:

{{ age ?? calculateAge() }}

Stylish Enhancements

  • Angular components now support inline Sass in the styles field of the component decorator. 
  • You can add inlineStyleLanguage”: “scss” to angular.json to enable this feature, otherwise it’s available by default for new projects using SCSS.
  • Angular CDK and Angular Material now use Sass’s new module system. node-sass is no longer maintained, hence ensure that you’ve switched from node-sass to the sass npm package. 

Other Notable Features

  • Angular now supports Webpack 5
  • ng build now defaults to production
  • By default Strict mode is now enabled in the CLI.
  • Language service is also included as a default in the new update
  • Typescript version support updated to 4.2
  • Angular v12 will now show a deprecation warning for IE11 and it plans to end support with Angular v13

Conclusion

It’ll be exciting to see how all these new changes unfold and what Ivy has in store for the Angular v12 platform. With the focus converging towards more modern solutions and an evolving ecosystem, Angular v12 is doing away with certain features while adopting new ones. It’ll only help them better focus on what matters and provide better support to developers and users in the process.


Our Angular team here at Galaxy is also looking forward to testing how migrations and new projects on Angular 13 will turn out. If you’re in the market for Angular development partners then get in touch with us here and let’s discuss your project.

3 UX Gamification Techniques to Boost Engagement

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Retaining your users is just as important as getting them on board for the first time. While curiosity could drive the initial engagements, sustaining those leads is another picture. Here’s where UX practices come into play. Gamification is one of the popular UX techniques that engage users within a challenge and reward cycle. It is primarily used in computer games but is also gaining popularity in the app development world as well. 

In this blog, we’ll cover the top 3 gamification techniques to keep your user engaged. 

1. Challenges

Sometimes people get lost in work when it’s challenging and fun. Most of us like to call this state, the “zone”. Hungarian-American psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, dubbed this mental state as “flow”. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment. 

Solving challenges can be a rewarding experience and hence keep your users engaged. 

You should opt for gamification in your design if you are looking to improve user engagement and make your product fun to use in the process. Learning and fitness apps are great use-cases for this UX engagement technique. If you look closely you can find several products that use gamification to motivate behaviors, Activity Monitor on Apple Watch for example encourages you to close all the rings. 

How to do it right

  • Define and state clear goals in a way that the user understands what and how to do to achieve the goal. 
  • Validate your assumptions for the user’s understanding of the complexity of challenges. Both novice and experienced users should be able to go through the challenges with ease. 
  • There should be a system of levels to provide a sense of progress to the user. You can fine-tune complexity based on the levels, difficulty increases as the user proceeds through the levels.  
  • Alleviate user anxiety by providing immediate feedback for user actions. 
  • Introduce tooltips if the user is having a hard time. Keep a check of user skill and fine-tune challenge complexity based on their responses. Too easy or too hard challenges can result in drop-offs.

2. Unlockable Features/Content

This Gamification technique is most popular among the freemium apps, where the whole experience is free with some content/features restricted to a certain profile level or is only accessible to premium members.

Users don’t shy away from spending time and money on features/content that is of great value to them. Besides, having worked to unlock a feature/content gives users a sense of ownership and as a result, makes them value your product more than before they signed up.

The pursuit to unlock features will encourage users to explore your app, improving engagement and retention in the process. 

How to do it right

  • Unlockable features/content shouldn’t be used exclusively to motivate users to use your product.
  • The path to unlocking the features should be clear and concise. 
  • Only restrict things that are unique and have value.  

3. Achievements

Achievements are the rewards users earn for completing tasks or challenges. It can be in the form of badges, trophies, or in-app currency.  Rewards motivate users to complete their journey and keep moving forward. You can use it in your app to direct users towards a particular goal, like subscribing to a service. LinkedIn for example sets clear expectations on how the profile strength works, and hence encourages you to complete your profile.

How to do it right

  • You need to have an end goal. What you want your user to do at the end of their journey.
  • Map out expectations and communicate progress. Also ensure that user is aware of remaining steps to complete for rewards, at all times.
  • Carefully define the gap between two milestones, as to where to reward your users to keep them invested in the app.

Conclusion

Getting users to stick to your app can be a great challenge. Most of them drop off from the onboarding if they find it cumbersome or uninteresting. Gamification techniques mentioned in this blog solve the retention problem with age-old lessons from games.

 

uvm-we

People find games engaging because it’s progressively challenging and rewards for completing certain tasks and journeys. You can also boost your app engagements from a cycle of challenge and rewards. We have done gamification for an excellent fitness/wellness app for our client at University of Vermont. You can also get in touch with us if you’re looking for design and development assistance for your project.

5 WordPress Trends For Business Growth in 2021

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Regardless of the stiff competition, WordPress has been growing steadily since its inception. It is constantly evolving with new trends and technologies. 

Our blog uncovers the most significant WordPress trends that will help future-proof your business. As a business owner, adopting these practices can give you an edge over your competitors.  

1. AI in CMS

Our lives are faster than ever. Chatbots, voice search, and other AI-powered utilities have become essential for our need for speed. 

Modern CMS platforms are now equipped with AI-powered functionalities that seamlessly integrate backend to a website’s front-end. Wix for example utilizes AI to help web developers and designers to create custom web templates based on their preferences. 

These CMS platforms are so advanced that a headless CMS can deliver content using chatbot interfaces on mobile devices just through API integration.

2.  Hybrid CMS

To make up for the lack of a visual interface to design and preview content in a Headless platform, businesses are adopting the hybrid way.  

The hybrid approach comes with the scalability of a headless CMS architecture and at the same time keeps things traditional with a content control perspective. WordPress paired with REST APIs is a great example of this hybrid approach. 

A hybrid approach offers the best of both worlds with a structured presentation while giving the essential content control to marketers to manipulate content for customers.

3. Focus on Accessibility

Smart speakers with voice capabilities have dramatically improved access to online content, as has captioned media, simplified navigation, and increasingly accurate voice search technology. With increased dependency on IoT for work, school, entertainment, commerce, and social connections, the importance of maintaining and improving accessibility for people with disabilities is more profound than ever. 

WordPress offers integrations for accessibility and encourages development for the same in the community. There are millions of accessibility themes and plugins like WP accessibility that highlight accessibility issues within your website. 

4. Motion UI

According to a rough estimate by Siteefy, 547200 websites are registered daily. With these many websites being released every day, the competition for user’s attention is a great challenge. You cannot rely on the traditional ways of gaining user’s attention. 

Users need visual stimulation, and we recommend Motion UI to do just that. You can offer a unique experience in a motion user interface by adding movement, animated elements, and transitions to your design.

Motion UI is not just for the aesthetic and edginess, you can also use it to direct visitor’s focus on important things. 

For instance, this website of a music band does a great job of grabbing one’s attention. It is interactive, keeps you engaged, and ticks the right boxes, helping them achieve their business goals. 

5. Voice Interface

Voice-based experiences are no longer just some novelty feature that companies use to sell their products. It facilitates web accessibility, thereby making the web more inclusive than it was 10 years ago. And besides everyone just loves interacting with their phones and other mobile devices via voice interfaces. Google reports that 27% of the online global population is using voice search on mobile.

Summing Up

These trends are reshaping the web and the way we use it. Your WordPress website can also take advantage of these trends to change your content management strategy for the better and drive your business. 

You can get in touch with us if you’re looking to partner with WordPress experts. Our team will understand your requirements and provide you with a robust and cutting-edge solution that puts your business on a fast track to success. 

About Galaxy

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 end-to-end WordPress CMS development solutions catering to different business needs. We offer assistance from building custom CMS websites to website migration and maintenance processes.

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.

Top 7 User Frustrations on the Web and How To Fix Them

Posted on by galaxy-admin

What were the most challenging aspects of the website’s user interface that you encountered today? Users are often dissatisfied with minor details that go unnoticed. Vitaly Friedman, the famous author of Smashing Magazine, summarized the key areas that may exasperate your users. If you do not fix these issues on your website, it may harm your user experience. 

In this article, we’ll go over the top 7 most common user frustrations and how to address them. 

#1 Scroll hijacking

Scroll hijacking is when a website’s scrollbar is manipulated to behave differently. Scroll hijacking is commonly used to display specific animated effects. Crisp illustrations and fine animations, on the other hand, do not always make for a great web experience.

How to fix the issue?

So, how do we apply this incredibly cool effect practically and rationally? 

First, you must evaluate the user group and the type of experience you are attempting to create.

  • Is the group accessible to everyone?
  • How high is the visitor’s traffic?
  • Does it use multiple devices? 
  • Is the website ADA compliant?

Are you planning to create a website for a niche group, such as a med-advanced tech user, an early adopter, or device-specific? If you are contemplating adding parallax scrolling effects, you can consider this example –

Source: Valaire

This page scroll design is fantastic! You don’t get the impression that a robot has taken over your ability to navigate the content. You have complete control over the scroll speed and your position on the page. It’s a fun experience that makes me want to go out and explore more! The location indicator is useful, and the sticky menu items provide a sense of stability to an otherwise erratic design.

#2 Tiny click targets

The smaller the interactive elements (links, buttons, and other user interface controls), the more errors the user will make when interacting with your website.

How to fix the issue?

  • Touch targets should be easy to use with your fingers. The touch target should be 9mm x 9mm in size on average. According to Material Design, touch targets should be at least 48 x 48 px in size.
  • Padding should be added around touch targets. Microsoft recommends padding between touch targets of 10mm.

#3 Not working “Back” button

One of Jakob Nielsen’s ten usability heuristics for user interface design is user control and freedom. It states that users require a marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted action without having to go through a lengthy process.

How to fix the issue?

The Back button in a browser is the equivalent of an emergency exit. If you are concerned that users will lose their data by clicking the Back button, it is best to warn them by displaying the message “Your work will be lost” when they click the Back button.

#4 Small-sized text

Despite the recent popularity of video formats, the majority of information on the internet is still written. As a result, good readability and legibility are critical for a positive user experience.

How to fix the issue?

  • The font size should be at least 16px. 16px for body text is a good starting point, but keep in mind that the larger the screen size, the larger the text.
  • Line height should be 1.5em or 1.6em for best readability.
  • Always test your designs on a real-world device.

#5 Unexpected content shifts

You’re about to press the link. You move your cursor over the link and click it, only to realize you’ve made a mistake. Instead of the intended link, you click on the ad. Isn’t that the case?

Typically, the content shift occurs as a result of dynamically loading content. Because this operation is asynchronous, dynamic content is inserted into the page and replaces existing content.

How to fix the issue?

To work around this issue, measure the height of the dynamic content and hardcode it as a (min-height) for the container in CSS as done in this verge webapp.

Frustrations
Source: Verge

#6 Sign up walls

Sign-up walls are a requirement to create an account to use a service. Sign-up barriers keep users from exploring the service.

All software, including websites, should be built with this principle in mind: You should always try before you buy.

How to fix the issue?

Users usually try something new, form an opinion, and then decide whether or not to use a service. In the context of news websites, for example, it is possible to provide a limited number of articles that users can read without creating an account and then ask them to create an account only when they engage.

#7 Confusing forms

Forms are an important part of the user journey; they are used to log in, sign up, check out, and so on. As a result, it is critical to provide clear instructions both before and after submitting the form.

How to fix the issue?

  • Avoid relying solely on color to denote an error. Always provide actionable feedback to facilitate a correct entry.
  • If the form is too long, consider dividing it into logical sections and displaying a progress bar to show the user where they are in the process.

Wrapping Up

One of the most important aspects of creating a great web design is keeping up with industry trends and implementing the ones that will work best for your web product. Contact our UI/UX design experts if you want to create custom software with a pleasant and unique user interface.