Category: Platforms

UX Writing and UX Design: How to do it right?

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Understanding the relationship between UX Writing and UX Design

User experience drives the interaction of the users with your products. UX writing and UX design both play a pivotal role in establishing the branding, design, usability, and function that make up the entire experience. UX designers contribute to visual design, programming, psychology, and interaction design. On the other hand, UX writers create user-friendly microcopy that helps guide users through a digital product, such as a website or mobile app. 

Product managers often lose the opportunity to interact with UX writers and UX designers to find options that could drastically improve functionality, usability, and accessibility, regardless of their chosen strategy. In this blog, we have listed various ways in which you can bring UX Copy and UX Design together to create impeccable experiences.

Break Down Silos

A product manager is responsible for breaking down the barriers that prevent UX copywriters and designers from working together. Numerous aspects go into generating a pleasant user experience. Here are the tips that we recommend- 

  • Write microcopy that improves the usability
  • User research demonstrates how the target audience reacts to various messages and designs.
  • User-friendly designs and language that guides users through the sales funnel.

UX designs and copy are interdependent. When your content and designs work together to establish a distinct brand identity, you obtain greater results. 

Bring UX writing into your design process

Of course, putting product managers in charge of bringing teams together without providing them with collaboration tools isn’t fair. Expectations alone will not be enough to break through silos. Real tools and methods that produce outcomes are required.

Brainstorm with your teams

Brainstorming meetings should not be held behind closed doors where team members are unable to provide ideas. While you may not want the cacophony of 25 individuals sharing ideas at once, you do want the variety of ideas that come from gathering representatives from all departments. If you have engaged with freelancers, be sure to invite a few of them to your event. They may have valuable insight regarding how other businesses deal with similar issues.

If you invite members from each team, you’ll need inputs from Copywriters, designers, and developers. Encouraging individuals to work together during brainstorming sessions can go a long way. If you have staff working remotely, make sure you use video conferencing and collaboration software that make it easy for them to contribute.

You can boost the effectiveness of your brainstorming session with these tips – 

  • Communicate your goals in advance so that everyone comes prepared.
  • Keeping the time limit short (30-60 minutes).
  • Encourage everyone to explore their ideas without fear.
  • Making it possible for participants to submit ideas anonymously will help ensure that shy people contribute.
  • Understand that some brainstorming sessions do not produce good results and that you may need to regroup later.

Encourage teams to understand each other’s work

Your design team members need to understand that excellent UX writing necessitates a thorough understanding of behavioral and cognitive psychology. It’s not just about adhering to grammatical rules and using fancy words. Good writers frequently have to break the rules they know to reach their target audiences. It’s a skill that needs to be honed with practice and conscious thought.

Similarly, the writers need to understand the importance of designers in increasing conversion rates. Their images, fonts, white spaces, and other design elements have a significant impact on how people respond to CTAs. Writers and designers both should follow best practices and adhere to accessibility rules. 

Conclusion

Designers know what keeps a user on a page or an app, and writers know how to evoke an emotional response with a powerful copy. Their creative minds work together to create a cohesive product. Working together is the only way to understand the symbiotic nature of the relationship between these two teams that, when put together can create flawless products.

In the Galaxy UX Studio, we foster an environment of collaboration where UX Designers and UX Writers understand each other’s needs and navigate complex challenges quite easily as a unit. If you’re looking for a team like that, we can help you. Contact us 

How to Ensure Your SaaS Application’s Performance as Designed

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Internet users expect web content and apps to load within seconds. They want a fast and seamless digital experience on all their devices. The need for speed and seamless performance is a given now (for both users and business owners).

Consumers abandon slow-loading websites, without completing the desired action. High performance is important and a reliable user experience is important for SaaS businesses. There are SaaS products for customer support, communication, payment, project management, automation, and for every process that is or can go digital. 

SaaS will continue to grow as organizations of all sizes rely on it to deliver apps and IT services. With SaaS services becoming popular, demand for high availability and performance also grows. 

Meeting rising consumer demand is great for business. But it can be a logistical nightmare for SaaS providers. Growing load on the SaaS infrastructure increases latency and performance issues.

Before the release, SaaS applications must go through thorough performance testing. 

SaaS testing ensures that the product functions as designed and serves the end needs. Adequate testing enhances performance, leading to higher customer satisfaction. This in turn means more revenue through user adoption and subscription fees.

Applications built as SaaS are subject to rigorous testing to ensure that the application is performing as per expectations. 

Here are the tips that will help you in the SaaS development process and SaaS testing.

Tip 1. Skilled team

SaaS applications live on a remote server and are delivered over the internet. Existing in a digital space, SaaS applications rely on three aspects: storage, networking, and computing capacity. Testing SaaS products means you have to ensure coexistence between these three technologies.

Tip 2. Performance Testing (Onboarding/Staging vs Production)

There are many ways to deliver and run performance tests with varying levels of quality. One approach is not necessarily better than another. It all depends on your business needs and what you are trying to achieve with testing. In general, there are two different approaches:

  1. Running performance tests against staging or development environments.
  2. Running performance tests against production or live environments.

Tip 3. Adhering to the prerequisites for Performance Tests 

  • Before testing begins, system requirements must be validated. 
  • It is not possible to automate everything. 
  • In agile environments, it can be difficult to develop a test plan that matches development sprints and iterations. 
  • Risk management is an essential prerequisite for any significant development project in both an agile and non-agile environment.  

Tip 4. Sprint Planning

Communicate risk priorities with the QA and development teams during sprint planning. That will help keep them focused on real risks instead of wasting time on hypothetical ones. You will have better software, with faster delivery. A key part of effective SaaS performance testing is understanding these fundamentals. 

All said and done, there are still challenges SaaS businesses need to overcome. Four key elements affect the SaaS digital experience:

1: Global SaaS User Growth

SaaS has seen extensive end-users growth on a global scale. And, this is one of the reasons for heightening performance challenges. You may wonder how? Application performance deteriorates when the app is far from the data center.

End-users far from the original data center means variables like networks, IPS, and browsers come into the picture, causing poor performance. Location of your data center matters. 

2: Infrastructure Add-Ons

Expanding into new geographies, SaaS providers add more infrastructure and divide existing systems to reduce the load. With added infrastructure build-outs, complexities increases. This is bad for both infrastructure health and end-user application performance.

3: The Internet is Capricious 

Complete SaaS outages are rare; but not completely off the table. SaaS outage can have a disastrous effect on the end-user. Recently we have seen a major SaaS outage with the Amazon S3 (AWS) in February 2021. 100% availability is unrealistic even when your web services depend on Amazon’s cloud.

4: From APM to DEM

SaaS providers must shift from traditional application performance management (APM) to digital experience management (DEM). In DEM, the end-user experience is the ultimate metric. It identifies how all underlying services, systems, and components influence the end-user experience.

You should put a process and the right tooling in place for SaaS applications monitoring.

The list of variables impacting the performance is long and ever-increasing. SaaS providers need insights into advanced analytics to understand data and identify problems.

Right deduction of data resolves issues that are both within infrastructure, like a data center needing more capacity, and outside it, like a slow internet service provider (ISP).

***

Businesses are depending on SaaS applications more than ever. As users shift more towards the cloud, SaaS providers will continue to see growing demand for their services. The demand for a higher level of performance and productivity will also increase. SaaS providers cannot disappoint with poor performance.

As a SaaS provider, you should deal with the rise in expectations for availability and performance through new approaches. Like evolving from APM to DEM. This is just one example. There are many ways to go about insuring SaaS performance.

If you need immediate assistance or have questions about how Saas Testing may affect your organization or client, we would love to talk with you. Galaxy weblinks intend to help software companies transform their businesses into SaaS successes.

How a Top-Rated Team’s UX Design Skills Define Them

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Are you on the lookout for a skilled UX design team? We don’t need to devolve into the importance of User Experience. However, finding the right team is a massive undertaking. Despite the multi-star reviews, testimonials, and exceptional sales pitches, finding the right design team for specific business needs remains tricky. Well, we are here to make this task easy for you.

UX design skills aren’t just an important part of being a top-rated team; they’re what defines one. Prototyping, wireframing, user flows, mockups and usability testing are the tools of the trade for UX designers. These skills are high in demand among the teams with the highest ratings on Upwork and other business development sites. 

UX skills that you need in your team

We will explain what we believe are the most important skills that your UX team should have expertise in. This would help you partner with the best offshore UX development team. 

Applied Skills of UX Designers

  • User Research

From conception to development, user research is crucial for every step of product design. It is the ability to plan, conduct, and analyze findings from a variety of research methods — user interviews, usability tests, and surveys. These findings will drive informed decisions when and if new challenges arise. The goal of user research is to learn who will use the product, what they want from it, and how they like to interact with technology. This may look like extra effort, but it is not. The more the team knows about users and problems you’re trying to solve, the better off you’ll be later when you try to create an experience that suits them.

  • Prototyping

Prototypes show how real people will interact with your product. Tools like InVision can build basic clickable prototypes that allow you to test and tweak your ideas before moving forward. It’s never too early or too late. If you want a successful project, involve designers and get prototyping as early as possible.

  • Wireframing

Making sense of your site begins with wireframing.

Wireframing is an important UX skill. It helps you map out a website or app’s structure and layout before investing effort, time, and money. It helps refine your idea by visualizing it. You can make changes along the way if needed. Many web designers still find value in wireframing to conceptualize their ideas. Page layouts, wireframes, or mockups, or whatever you choose to call them. These tools enable you to focus on getting your details right from day one. A wireframe is a blueprint of an interface. It shows how something works, as opposed to how it looks. 

  • Mockups

Mockups can be used during usability testing. Testing is an important part of UX design, as it provides data on how users interact with sites and apps. For instance, you can test your homepage with users and then see if users navigate to other parts of your site or try to fill out forms. 

A good mockup can remove any confusion before investing time and money into making a fully functional website/app. Mockups do not take a lot of time and effort. 

  • Usability Testing

The best UX designers constantly test their products. There are several methods for UX design, including card sorting, competitive analysis, focus groups/interviews, information architecture (IA) mapping, surveys, contextual inquiry, and more. Testing helps us identify how your product will be loved by its users. UX is critical when designing interfaces because a UI doesn’t mean anything if people can’t figure out how to use it. 

We believe design thinking starts with empathy. We understand users’ motivations and goals so that we are in a better position to design products that fit them like a glove.

  • Visual Design/Visual Communication

Great design is more than pretty visuals. It’s important to know how to set visual expectations and guide your product along in its life cycle. Visual design is just as much of an art as any other part of UX design. We should know what looks good but also why it looks good. When every pixel counts, every little detail matters; you need to be able to weigh in on everything from wireframes through to the final design.

UX designers need competence in visual language. Proficiency in visual communication would mean understanding concepts like:

  • Layout
  • Color
  • Typography
  • Icons
  • Images
  • Design theory

The UX designer skill goes beyond applied skills. Successful UX professionals also need soft skills or aptitudes applied to multiple work settings. This includes curiosity, empathy, communication, and collaboration. 

Great UX design comes from great teams. But creating a great team takes a lot of effort. Let us introduce the Galaxy UX Studio where we offer amazing design capabilities and exceptional UX skills.

Glassmorphism – How to Leverage This New UI Trend in Your Website

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Another year, another UI design trend making waves – Glassmorphism  

Each trend or practice brings different perks and challenges alike. While we all like to be adopt different and newest design trends, we also need to ensure that our design is future-proof and will not go out of style after a few months. 

Glassmorphism is the latest UI design trend everyone trying to emulate. We prefer to be at the forefront of new UX trends and here are our learnings after experimenting with this eye-catching and vibrant design trend – Glassmorphism.

Glassmorphism
Image by Galaxy Weblinks

Glassmorphism is largely about highlighting light or dark objects by placing them on vividly colored backgrounds. The design has elements of transparency, frostiness, or glossiness. Glassmorphing is that “airy” interface where you see objects floating within space. Eye-catching and colorful, this trend favors multi-layered approaches. Resembling milky glass surfaces, the interface is grabbing a lot of attention.

Designers have been playing with this style of the interface in a major way. Glasmorphism is there in a larger number of published website designs. For instance, Apple used this effect on the latest update of macOS Big Sur. Microsoft also used this new interface on the app surfaces of Windows Vista and named it “The Acrylic”

The likes of Apple and Microsoft are using this interface. This trend is being followed by all those who want to make a lasting impression on their visitors. It is safe to say that Glassmorphism is here to stay. It is a promising design that has a lot to offer.

Glassmorphism in Apple Big Sur
Image by Galaxy Weblinks

All brands regardless of the nature of the work can incorporate this sort of interface. It is an all-weather solution.

User experience lays the foundation for happy, satisfied customers. Here is how UX makes a lasting impact – 

A product’s ability to woo the audience rests on how strong, seamless, and speedy the interface is. As a conscious effort, the designers strive to create simple and minimalist designs and avoid using unnecessary information or low-resolution photos. The intriguing and minimal design keeps visitors engaged for longer. Glassmorphism UI complements modern design needs and user behavior. 

Here is what constitutes Glassmorphism Aesthetics 

Glassmorphism components
Image by Galaxy Weblinks

Here are some insightful tips on how we make this design work for our client’s website, for your website:

  • Not applying the blurring and transparent effect in areas that require active interactions.
  • Not using this design aesthetics in buttons, toggles, navigation menu, and similar elements.
  • Use transparency and blurring for boosting the overall look and feel, not only for decoration.
  • Applying fitting contrast with the cards in the interfaces for ease of accessibility.
  • Right spacing between the cards. Grouping together all the objects related to one another.
  • Choosing the right contrast and intuitive grouping of cards in the design layout
Glassmorphism
Image by Galaxy Weblinks

Glassmorphism usage is based on the designer’s discretion and they must use it judiciously. It is beautiful and minimalistic but falls short in the accessibility standards. Our design experts are exploring new trends and creative ways of making web products. At the same time, we try to overcome the shortcomings if there are any. Therefore, we are ensuring a higher level of accessibility in our web designs where we are leveraging Glassmorphism. 

Design is subjective, not bound by any rules. Websites are user-friendly and beautiful when the designers push their boundaries and experiment with the design trends. Glassmorphism is the latest trend and like the other trends, this will be replaced by something new soon. However, it does make a statement and if you wish to leverage this trend, we can help you while ensuring that the design is sustainable, future-proof, and accessible.  

Get in touch with our design team here and have a one on one about Glassmorphism. Contact us here!

Why Is the Discovery Phase Important Before Ecommerce Website Development?

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Setting up an Ecommerce shop online isn’t easy and comes with its own set of complications. The insane level of competition aside, your problems begin even before you’ve begun to build your website. There are numerous Ecommerce website platforms, a lot of plugins for various features and functionalities, and several design elements to consider tailored to your business needs for driving internet traffic and high conversions. There are a lot of moving parts to analyze, design, plan, and setup. These have to be done while making sure that your visitors have a good user experience 

It is important to conceptualize before spending a lot of time and money towards Ecommerce website development costs. Your website should address several factors such as understanding your user requirements, conducting competitive research, identifying the key functionalities/features of your product that you want to address, and designing according to your company’s brand. Without an understanding of these, you are bound to make frequent changes in your scope resulting in the development project exceeding the budget, missing its deadline and failing to meet the end objective. 

So it’s very important to carry out a Discovery phase before starting any development work to better understand the overall objectives and to eliminate the risks in order to make the website successful. In this article we will explain the meaning of a Discovery phase along with its importance. 

What is the Discovery Phase?

Discovery phase is a crucial stage in the Ecommerce website development project life cycle that involves collecting and analyzing information about the project including its targeted market, intended users and their needs/preferences, competitor analysis, carrying out design UX/UI, identifying the correct technology stack, and selecting the features/functionalities for your Ecommerce website ahead of the development work. 

The key objective of the Discovery phase is to get an in-depth understanding of the goals, scope, and limitation of the project. It helps get a reasonable and accurate estimate of the costs and the time it would take to execute the project. 

A Discovery phase could take one week to 2 months for completion, and is dependent on the project scope and its complexity. In addition to the time, the cost during the phase would also depend upon the hourly rate of the company carrying out the Discovery phase. Typically, Discovery phase could be up to 10% of the total project costs. 

What are the key benefits of a Discovery Phase?

The Discovery phase helps – 

  • Reduce risks as the phase focuses on getting a clear understanding of your goals and requirements. This helps the development team create reasonable and accurate estimates of time and budget. The overall cost savings from carrying out a Discovery phase can make-or-break a project’s success. 
  • Formulate a roadmap as the Discovery phase helps build a full timeline of the project with interim goals, deliverables and milestones. 
  • Build confidence in your development partner as the Discovery phase would highlight the approach that your development partner will take during execution of the project. A poor Discovery phase would help you re-evaluate your partner options before spending the entire budget with a wrong partner.

What are the key deliverables from the Discovery Phase?

Given the focus of the Discovery phase is to define the overall project, the key deliverables/outcomes from this phase are – 

  • User Personas and User Flows: These are outcomes from the business and user base understanding process that is carried out to understand the business/user better. 

    – User Personas represent your ideal customers and cover aspects such as demographics, behaviors, needs, pain points, etc. 
    – User Flows are flowcharts or diagrams that display the complete path a user takes when using a product. The flowchart starts with the user’s entry point on the product, like a registration/login, and ends with the final action or outcome, like purchasing a product. User Flows allow creations of a better user experience and helps focus development efforts keeping the same in mind.
  • Competitor analysis: This includes researching competitors and identifying competitor’s key uniqueness and limitations. Analysis of competitor’s designs and features/functionalities helps evaluate existing solutions and help you determine the niche of your future product.
  • Tech stack requirements specification: This deliverable fully describes the project, its features, suggested technology stack (custom development, Shopify, Magento, etc.), and architecture overview. This allows for course correction, if needed, before the start of the development spend.
  • UX/UI design: The visual representation of the software flow including wireframes, screens, etc. allows further clarity on the overall product. This also helps developers have a clear understanding of what is required to be coded and developed. 
  • Development plan and estimates: The end objective of the Discovery phase is to get an accurate estimate of the development timeline and budget.

Conclusion 

A Discovery phase is an important part of the Ecommerce website development. Without a clear understanding, a lot of time and money is spent into a project that has frequent scope revisions, cost overruns, time delays, and a website completely different from your original vision / objective. 

Running a successful Shopify Ecommerce website in today’s highly competitive online environment requires a good development partner who understands your business requirements and provides a helping hand in realizing your company’s vision, achieving your growth plans and having a great user experience. If you’ve any doubts related to Ecommerce platforms and if you need assistance developing one, then feel free to talk to us here.

Why Is Accessible Design Important to Maximize Your App Reach?

Posted on by galaxy-admin

You’ve created the next big mobile app… excellent work! The next step is to ensure that you get maximum users for your world-class application. Ensuring accessibility compliance in your mobile application is a way to ensure that you reach a substantial number of American audiences who suffer from disabilities. 

Inclusivity is not only the right thing to do but also offers lots of business benefits. Accessibility-enabled native apps will help you drive engagement, give you a loyal customer base and provide a personalized experience to your users. Governmental institutions are beginning to implement laws and regulations that require equal access for all users.

Here’s what you should know to make sure your app is inclusively designed.

1. New customer acquisition

More than 80% of people with disabilities have decided not to trust a service provider due to barriers, wherein poor web accessibility is the most common. Users with disabilities are willing to spend more money with companies that provide them with a well-thought-out user experience, although they are frequently ignored by most brands. This particular market has enormous purchasing power.

Accessibility enhancements will not turn away current customers but will attract new customers and increase conversions. By recognizing users with disabilities, you are letting them know that their rights are important and that their business is valued.

2. Enhanced reputation

Companies that welcome people with disabilities only benefit from it. Efforts to make a website or app completely accessible improve a company’s reputation and foster an image of social responsibility and concern for all users.

Silicon Valley giants do not shy away from bringing innovation to the game when it comes to adding accessibility features. They have invested millions in cutting-edge technology and ground-breaking new features. For example, this year, Facebook started using artificial intelligence to provide automatic alternative text to its blind users via object recognition technology. This feature now allows them to fully enjoy the 2 billion photos shared on Facebook each day.

3. Legal Compliance

The number of lawsuits filed in the United States alleging that websites, apps, and digital videos were inaccessible to people with disabilities increased by 64% year on year in the first half of 2021. 

For example, a visually-impaired person, Guillermo Robles sued Domino’s Pizza in 2019 for violations of ADA Title III. Similar lawsuits were against Nike and Beyonce’s company. According to the complaint, despite using screen-reading software, he was unable to order food from Domino’s website or app. Robles won the lawsuit and established a strong precedent for businesses. The threat of litigation is real!

Conclusion

Developing a mobile application with accessibility in mind will ensure a fabulous user experience for your mobile application. Accessibility compliance comes with numerous financial, moral, and legal advantages. Both the Android and iOS platforms provide a variety of tools for incorporating accessibility solutions into your app. There are virtually no valid reasons to disregard the concept of accessibility.

Achieving quality output well within your budget and timeline can be difficult for you. We can help you find the best approach based on your testing situation to reach your goal. Contact our experts today.

What Is Functional Testing and Why Is It Important?

Posted on by galaxy-admin

In this blog, we will answer every question you have regarding Functional Testing. What are its types, why is it important, when should you opt for Functional Testing, and the role of automation in functional testing? 

What is Functional Testing?

When software is tested against functional requirements or specifications to discover any bugs or defects, it is by definition Functional Testing. It is in contrast to System Testing which validates a program against the published user or system requirement. Functional testing verifies a program by checking it against the design document.

Types Of Functional Testing

The following are the types of Functional testing:

  • Smoke Testing
  • Integration Testing
  • Regression Testing
  • User Acceptance Testing
  • Smoke Testing

It is the initial phase of testing and hence ensures the stability of a build. Smoke testing also determines if the build is in a testing condition or not.

  • Integration Testing

As the name suggests, integration testing ensures if the software modules or component integrations as a whole are working as expected. 

  • Regression Testing

If during the testing, any modifications are made to the software, Regression tests are conducted. It ensures that the new additions to the software are not causing any issues and in the future will cause the software to break. 

  • User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

This is a real-world test where the people testing the software are the ones who intended to use that software. This test ensures that the system performs as per the given requirements. 

If the software quality takes the top spot on your list, then Functional Testing is imperative and unavoidable. However, to ensure proper unbiased testing, you need to find experienced software testers to help you deliver uncompromised quality.

Importance of Functional Testing

Functional testing meets the client’s requirements while fulfilling the functional requirements of the software. The testers assigned take into account different aspects of how a system functions in the context of the system as a whole, knowing where to look for weaknesses and to ensure the system functions logically from a user perspective. This test is guided by human intuition and training, which makes it predominantly a manual process. 

6 Steps to Conduct Functional Testing

Functional Testing is a linear process that includes:

  • Identify the expected functions and test parameters
  • Determine expected outcomes based on the functionality
  • Executing test cases based on client requirements and typical system functions
  • Compare the actual data with expected outcomes
  • Determine if the software works as expected
  • Rectify issues if any or declare tests as a success

When Should You Opt for Functional Testing?

Functional testing works best in tandem with Test Automation, Exploratory Testing, and Performance Testing, which is a part of a broader Testing Strategy. This comprehensive testing strategy ensures that every aspect and part of the system works as intended on the front-end, back-end, and through various unexpected conditions as well. 

Unlike other automated forms of testing, Functional Testing doesn’t require coding expertise but it can be conducted on par with industry standards via tools like Selenium, which is also used for automation testing.

Role of Test Automation in Functional Testing

End-to-end comprehensive functional tests can be a daunting task, Test automation makes it easier. Here are a few important aspects to consider for adopting test automation in Functional Testing:

Get the right expertise onboard: 

You need to get the right set of people onboard to be successful when you’re trying to adopt Test Automation for Functional Testing. Right from the stakeholders who will drive strategy to align and meet organizational goals to testing experts, to product experts.

Choosing the right tools: 

The right strategy can ensure your project’s success and this will be facilitated also need a great tool to help you in the process and achieve your testing goals more efficiently. 

You can base your selection on these parameters: 

  • Ease of use – It should be easy to create test scripts, test data, and reusable components
  • Automation Speed – The tool should enable rapid test script development
  • Technology Support – The tool should support all the technologies/practices you work with including database, web-based UI and services, mobile or thick client apps, file handling, etc. 
  • DevOps Support – The tool must support and manage continuous integration tools and infrastructure
  • Reusability and Maintainability –  It must support easy traceability and modularity of changes ensuring high maintainability of the test suite
  • Collaboration – The tool must be equipped with real-time collaboration capabilities to make distributed working more efficient
  • Powerful Reporting –  The tool must have robust reporting for every execution cycle, suite, and across multiple builds.

Functional testing on a larger scale becomes complex and test automation helps us reduce that complexity. All we need to do is implement the right testing solutions. Continuous upskilling of the testers is also important to adopt and adapt the latest technologies. 

Functional testing not only helps you deliver software that is flawless but also right on the money when matched against the business objectives. You just need the right team and a set of tools that fits like missing puzzle pieces in your existing team. 

Need help with your testing requirements? Reach out to us here.

5 Reasons Why Developers Think Headless CMS Is the Best

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Headless CMS has gained popularity among developers, marketers, QA engineers, and even designers. And there is enough buzz in its favor, especially amongst developers, which shows that it is a promising technology. There are other CMS systems in place that seem to be doing well, but headless CMS is a definitive upgrade from them.

Headless CMS is giving developers more freedom to focus on core user experiences without worrying about how content is being showcased across platforms. They can juggle with frameworks and tools of their choice with no specific vendor lock-in. 

Read on to find out more about why Headless CMS is all in the rage.  

1. Faster to market

Headless CMS allows developers and content creators to work in parallel, thanks to its decoupled mechanism. There is minimum back and forth between teams regarding content placements across different touchpoints. Developers can deliver the content via APIs call to devices and touchpoints. This way teams can concentrate on the overall user experience rather than cross verifying “if the content is placed correctly”, “is it in line with the platform content consumption format” etc. 

2. Easy updates and maintenance

Maintenance is always an ongoing process and the easier it is, the more regular it will be. Developers do not dread updating and maintenance but it is tiring and tedious. There will always be new features, some glitches, small errors that will affect your user experience. Headless CMS ensures that no major red flags occur when making changes to content because there is a separation of frontend and backend.

3. Flexible tech stack for developers

A great thing about headless CMS is that your team of developers is not bound to a set choice of integrations and plugins that come with traditional CMS. While there is no harm in it, sticking to a single choice limits your options and you can not switch to better alternatives that might be there in the industry. 

Headless CMS removes this barrier, any third-party tool can be integrated via APIs, thus giving a maximum selection pool. You can easily switch between tools as well, making it easy to stay on top of new technology. This gives developers immense flexibility, making headless CMS a great choice for them.      

4. Better code reusability 

When you have Headless CMS implemented, the modular approach gives developers the freedom to reuse code from other projects and even from older ones. There will be no need to keep changing your backend to accommodate the new changes that are done from time to time.

5. Focus more on personalized user experiences

Data is what drives personalized experiences. And Headless CMS’s API approach lets you collect data from various platforms and use them simultaneously. You can shape the API call’s responses as per requirements and deliver tailor-made user experiences. Additionally, there are some indirect routes opened for IoT devices as well. 

Wrapping Up

The pointers mentioned above are the reason more and more developers are willing to shift to Headless CMS from traditional CMS and decoupled CMS. IKEA, Burger King, and many other big names have invested in headless CMS architectures, so what’s stopping you from experimenting a bit?

If you feel that there is more to know about headless CMS, drop us your contact information here, and we will be happy to assist you with any questions and migration.

Security in Public Cloud – How to Choose the Right Service Provider

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While considering a public cloud service, you need to keep several important considerations in mind. One of the most important among those is cyber security. The features and capabilities your public cloud service provider employs to keep their networks and services safe and ultimately your data safe.

There are three big players in the game; Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure. All three take their security very seriously because one breach can cause a loss of millions of dollars in penalties, revenue, and reputation.

Here’s what they are offering in terms of cyber security to keep your data safe:

Network and Infrastructure Security

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

  • Network firewalls that allow customers to create private networks and control access to instances or apps
  • Companies also get access to control encryption in transit across AWS services.
  • Connectivity options to enable private or dedicated connections
  • DDoS mitigation
  • Automatic encryption of all traffic between AWS secured facilities

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

  • Has purpose-built hardware for security. Titan, a custom security chip used to establish a hardware root in GCP servers and peripheral devices.
  • Google also makes its network hardware for improving security. 
  • Multiple layers of physical and logical protection
  • A global network infrastructure that is designed to withstand attacks such as DDoS.
  • There are additional network security capabilities like cloud load balancing and Cloud Armor that can be deployed on the customer level.
  • Several security measures are put in place to secure data in transit. Google encrypts and authenticates data in transit at multiple network layers.

Fun fact: In 2017, the infrastructure absorbed a 2.5 Tbps DDoS, the highest-bandwidth attack reported to date.

Microsoft Azure

  • Microsoft has geographically dispersed data centers that comply with industry standards for security and reliability.
  • Experienced Microsoft operations staff manage, monitor, and administer the Azure data centers.
  • Operations personnel are profiled through a series of background verification checks. And based on those checks Microsoft limits access to applications, systems, and network infrastructure. 
  • Azure Virtual Network resources are protected by cloud-based network security called Azure Firewall. It is a firewall-as-a-service that comes with built-in high availability and unrestricted scalability. It can decrypt outbound traffic, perform security checks and then re-encrypt the traffic.

Identity and Access Control

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

  • AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) lets you define individual user accounts with permissions across AWS resources.
  • AWS Multi-Factor Authentication for privileged accounts including software-based and hardware-based authenticators. 
  • You can use partner identity systems like Microsoft Active Directory to grant employees and applications federated access to AWS Management Console and service APIs.
  • AWS single sign-on enables organizations to manage user access and permissions to all of their accounts in AWS.
  • Amazon also offers a directory service which lets organizations integrate and federate with corporate directories to reduce administrative overheads and improve end-user experience. 

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

  • Google Cloud Identity Access Management(IAM) lets administrators authorize people to take action on specific resources, with full control and visibility to manage GCP resources centrally. 
  • Cloud’s IAM provides a unified view into security policy across the entire organization to ease compliance processes for bigger organizations.
  • Google Cloud comes with Cloud Identity, an Identity-as-a-Service(IDaaS) that centrally manages users and groups.
  • Exclusive in its arsenal Google also provides Titan Security Keys that provide cryptographic proof that users are interacting with legitimate services. 
  • There’s also a resource manager, Cloud Resource Manager that provides resource containers like organizations, folders, and projects which let you organize your GCP resources group-wise and hierarchically.

Microsoft Azure

  • For SSO or Single Sign-On, multi-factor authentication, and conditional access to Azure services, corporate networks, on-premise resources, and SaaS applications, Microsoft has Azure Active Directory(AD). 
  • Azure AD comes with secure adaptive access which simplifies access, streamlines control with unified identity management, and ensures compliance with simplified identity governance.

Fun Fact: Microsoft says that with these features, it can help protect users from 99.9% of cyber security attacks.

Data Protection and Encryption

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

  1. Apart from data-in-transit, Amazon also provides a scalable encryption feature for data at rest with its data-at-rest encryption.
  2. Amazon also has flexible key management options including AWS Key Management Service, AWS CloudHSM for hardware-based cryptographic key storage, and encrypted message queues for sensitive data.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

  • Google utilizes Confidential Computing to secure data as it is being used. One of the firsts in the line of products that will benefit from Confidential Computing is Confidential VMs. 
  • Google also offers flexible Key management with its Cloud External Key Manager (Cloud EKM).

Microsoft Azure

  • For the key management, Microsoft has Azure Key Vault which helps keep cryptographic keys safe.  
  • Azure Key Vault streamlines the key management process and also gives control of keys to organizations.
  • Security admins can grant and revoke permission to keys as needed.
  • Organizations can use Microsoft information protection and Microsoft Information Governance within Microsoft 365 to protect and govern data.

The security features and capabilities mentioned above for the respective Cloud Service Providers are a testament to the importance of Cyber security in a public cloud. As an organization, all these cloud security features are at your disposal but you need experts to manage your cloud and implement these security features to be able to secure yourself from attacks like DDoS and data breaches. 
Our Cloud experts at Galaxy are here to help you implement and secure Public Clouds in Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure. Contact us for a free consultation.

The Top 7 Benefits of Building a Website on Umbraco CMS

Posted on by galaxy-admin

A content management system (CMS) is an essential component of your online experience. As the digital landscape expands to include additional channels and touchpoints, a CMS must provide flexibility, robust content production tools, and efficient workflows to fuel customer journey content.

There is an increasing number of solutions available, and this is where Umbraco CMS comes into the picture. Umbraco is an advanced Content Management System (CMS) and has more features and capabilities vis-a-vis its contemporaries. 

What is Umbraco?

Umbraco provides cloud hosting for Ecommerce platforms for customers who do not want to spend time building up and monitoring personal websites. Umbraco is a well-known, robust, extensible, and adaptable content management system. As a result, it is capable of handling anything from simple web pages to sophisticated apps.

The following are some of the advantages of utilizing Umbraco for your content management systems:

1. Complete Customization

Umbraco can meet all of your bespoke branding and design demands. It is open-sourced, therefore the source code of Umbraco is available for modification by your web development team. You are free to develop the content and functionality experience your website requires.

Even if you do not have a team of web developers or designers, Umbraco provides a plethora of themes and skins from which to choose. You can select a template that meets your requirements and go right into the editing.

2. Numerous options for hosting and tools

As a developer, you can select your preferred tool. If you use VSCode, you can use IntelliSense in your Umbraco projects. Visual Studio and Rider are additional popular options that can be fully utilized with Umbraco 9.

When it comes to hosting alternatives, you can use the SaaS platform Umbraco Cloud. It was designed as the ideal location for Umbraco websites and is now more versatile than ever. However, if you require a different sort of hosting, Umbraco 9 and.NET 5 provide a wider selection of options like shared hosting, dedicated hosting, on-premise hosting, etc.

3. Headless CMS

As the newest trend in content management systems, headless CMS allows you to create a highly scalable and modular content distribution system. Umbraco can function as both a monolith and a headless CMS, allowing you to manage multiple websites and platforms with the same simplicity as one – adding or removing any type of data you desire. A headless CMS, on the other hand, does not display pages on its own. Instead, it serves data via a REST API, allowing users to consume, render, and use it to meet even the most bizarre requirements. 

How does Headless CMS help in building future-proof websites, and why are they so popular among developers? Learn here.

4. Future-proof software 

Umbraco is easier to learn and maintain, as well as more flexible and developer-friendly. Working with Umbraco 9 as a developer is a sheer delight. You’ll find enhancements to all of the classic APIs and services, as well as new .NET 5 goodies like MSDI (Microsoft Dependency Injection), Hosted Services, Razor TagHelpers, and.NET CLI.

5. Preferred by Enterprises 

Umbraco is built on Microsoft’s .NET Framework, therefore it’s not surprising that Microsoft utilizes it to administer their websites. Umbraco is used by a variety of large corporations, including Sony, Avon, Warner Brothers, Peugeot, and Vogue, to mention a few. These businesses have made a deliberate decision to use this CMS.

The client base is growing with time, and Umbraco CMS is getting increasingly popular. According to the official Umbraco website, the platform has had over 731,000 active installs since its original release. It may not be as popular as WordPress, but Umbraco is carving its niche as more adaptable, secure, and scalable.

6. Built on Microsoft.NET Framework

Umbraco is an open-source content management system built on the Microsoft ASP.NET foundation. It allows you to create everything from small brochures to massive applications using its fully-featured environment and a host of additional tools. Umbraco is a popular platform for expert programmers that is created with ASP.net. Umbraco is presently used by over 100,000 websites.

Umbraco is a well-documented object-oriented architecture that gives users a high level of comfort when designing and customizing web pages. Umbraco is entirely compatible with Microsoft technologies and can make use of various ready-to-use libraries, allowing it to implement any business requirement in a realistic timescale.

7. It is simple to integrate with various platforms

A modern CMS must be compatible with a wide range of software. Umbraco is adaptable enough to integrate with a wide range of applications and platforms, including:

  • Web analytics and statistics tools — for gathering information about online traffic and website visits (ex. Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics).
  • CRM platforms are used to manage customer relationships (ex. Salesforce, SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics).
  • ERP systems are used to manage internal activities including accounting, invoicing, and payroll (ex. SAP Business One, Oracle E-Business Suite).
  • Payment gateways – used to build secure payment sites and execute transactions (ex. PayPal, PayU).

What project can Umbraco be used for? 

Umbraco CMS may be used to create practically any form of internet application, from simple personal websites to complex company portals or e-commerce stores.

Umbraco is a solid option for:

  • Employees and partners can access an enterprise portal that also functions as an intranet.
  • A corporate website containing information on the company’s portfolio and goods.
  • An online store that sells sporting equipment, clothing, books, and other items.
  • Large websites will have a large number of content pages (articles, news, etc.) and files.
  • A web platform for the local community.
  • A personal website, such as a blog.
  • A data-driven CMS that exposes content to a variety of apps and devices.
  • Any web application with a large number of integrations.

Umbraco is ideal for marketing firms wanting to work with small businesses or organizations in need of a scalable platform to handle their content. Users may directly control their website, which improves the entire client experience and makes it easy to stay up to date on any changes.

Key Takeaway

When it comes to web development and content management, having a reliable CMS that allows you to build whatever you want pays dividends. Most prominent website development companies strongly suggest you consider Umbraco whether you’re building a new website or switching to a new CMS. Assume you want to create a website with a large content database, marketing, and promotion tools, e-commerce, user-generated material, corporate and governmental content, and those with a high volume of transactions and events, such as gaming sites. Umbraco is a good and suggested solution in this circumstance.

Contact us, if you are interested in more details on how we approach website development with Umbraco CMS.

About Galaxy Weblinks:
We are your offshore CMS development partner! We offer expert capabilities in developing feature-rich solutions using the latest CMS technology trends. We have hands-on experience in building popular CMS-based websites using our frontend and backend expertise for different business needs. We offer assistance from building custom CMS websites to website migration and maintenance processes.