Category: Application Development

How To Reduce Web And Mobile App Development Cost?

Posted on by Jay

The best web and mobile app development are more than a concept for every tech entrepreneur to pitch for. It is something that makes everything easy for customers but often comes with a high price tag.

According to industry experts, it is worth spending on quality mobile app development as the return will be too much.

The bitterness of poor quality remains long after low pricing is forgotten! Leon M. Cautillo

But this is how customers react to development companies who prefer to ignore quality to bring down the costs of their web or mobile app.

If you are not ready to lose the quality of mobile or web app development, it is still possible to reduce app development prices. Let’s find out how to bring down the cost of business app development without falling in quality.

Why Does Quality Always Matter?

Quality is never replaceable. It is the only factor, helping products to become popular and grow in market share. To manage Android or iOS app development within the customer’s budget is the main concern for professional developers out there.

But is it possible anyhow?

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It takes a lot of planning, skill, time, focus, and work hours to develop a fully functional web or mobile application.When customers ask to decrease the app development cost, most of the development companies have no option but to cut corners.

Quality is the most common among other factors to get ignored in this process. But this approach can backfire unexpectedly.

Despite the clear demand for app development cost reduction, there are some proven tips which if followed throughout the development process, can make it happen quite easily for developers.

Let’s take a look at the options you have to reduce web or mobile app development costs in real life.

Reduction in Web and Mobile App Development Costs – Tips to Consider

The development cost of an app is due to many factors that are interconnected to each other and it is difficult to miss any of them. To be true, this cost can be reduced with some effective strategies in use.

Mind you, it is a no joke!!

Don’t you all get convinced?

Some important factors are normally forgotten by mobile app developers. But considering them all from the early stage of development can save developers a lot on their app development costs.

It’s time to learn about all of them one-by-one…

1. Plan carefully and effectively

As you all know failing to plan is equal to planning to fail, app development planning is very crucial. It is the top consideration is to prevent random functionalities and features getting added to the app over time, creating a mess that only wastes time and money.

From deep research on the competitors and targeted users to know about their likes and preferences in features, everything needs to be done before the app development starts.

It will help to make the app unique and profitable in the market too. Once the research part is over, you need to plan on what’s and how’s to reach the development goal.

The more effectively you plan a mobile app development plan, the better it will be to lower trial-and-error costs.

The planning of app development will allow you to focus on quality and budget while avoiding unnecessary expenditures. Also, less time will be invested in the development process.

2. Make Interactive App Prototypes

An interactive prototype is like a quick visualization of a finished app. It has great importance in web and mobile app development when it comes to meeting the user as well as the client’s expectations.

Mobile app developers should think of building interactive prototypes as they give a fair idea of the look and feel, navigation, UI/UX design, and more so that neither customers nor users feel disappointed later.

The prototype serves as a blueprint for the customer and the developer to know if they see the same end product! It is easy to review the prototype and suggest any corrections or modifications by the customer, saving both time and money.

The cost of building an interactive prototype is relatively low in comparison to the cost of correcting or modifying the finished app as per customer’s demand later.

By then, a great deal of our resources and time is already spent on the app development process.

With tools like Figma, Atomic, Adobe XD, it has been easier to build real-looking app prototypes. So, think of making a prototype before developing an app!

3. Launch a Basic Version of the App (MVP)

The idea of launching an MVP (a basic version of your app) helps you get the actual market response in real-time without spending hugely on its complicated secondary features.

And, it is possible adding advanced features in regular updates, after launching your MVP app. Since MVP is based on an agile development methodology, it can evolve with necessity or demand!

The decision to launch an MVP can be crucial in saving both the time and cost of app development in its initial stage.

Moreover, it ensures testing the product in the real market setting, so that you can be sure about the release of upgraded versions in the future.

MVP is not just a quality checking technique but also saves significant costs while improving quality after a live test every time. It also guards against poor user response to the developed app.

4. Use the Option of Cross-Platform Development

Developing cross-platform apps can turn out to be cost-saving too. Instead of targeting your users across multiple platforms separately, you can still use the option of cross-platform app development to reduce the development cost.

The best practice to reduce the cost of developing an app while launching it for both Android and iOS is to go for cross-platform development. It takes the proper use of technical knowledge and expertise to build cross-platform apps.

Appcelerator, PhoneGap, Unity3D, Xamarin, and many more popular cross-platform development tools are available to make the job easier for any professional app developer.

5. Outsource the Project

There are more qualified app developers who can be helpful in keeping the mobile app development cost under check. If your company does not have the right resources to handle app development, it’s better to outsource the project to any such developer outside your company.

Outsourcing has cost advantages along with others. It’s too normal for your app development company to face the challenge of not having specialized in-house developers for any upcoming project.

And you can’t even think of wasting time and money training your developers when projects need to be completed fast.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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Outsourcing can make up the skill your developers lack and help achieve what you can’t afford to lose. This enables you to find a technical partner who has both the skill and expertise to develop the web/mobile app on your behalf.

Both off-shore development and outsourcing are cost-effective means widely used in the area of app development.

Conclusion

Cost of Quality (COQ) is the cost of not making the right product. Every time the product is modified or corrected the cost of quality rises. So, by avoiding doing things wrong, you can genuinely increase the chance of developing the right app at reduced cost and yet not losing quality.

All the above considerations will help you keep app development costs under control.

Do you need a professional web or mobile app development company for cost-effective app development solutions? Call or chat with our expert consultants now!

How To Launch Your SaaS Product With a Bang? The Checklist

Posted on by Jay

You have a SaaS idea, and your developers have enough courage to deliver it. But you also have to remember, the market you are willing to enter with your SaaS business is likely to be populated by other SaaS companies. And those are more established and better-funded than yours.

So, standing out in the competition, you have to understand how you can fit your idea and business into the overall picture that makes you different and unique.

I have shared my 8-steps SaaS Development idea that could help even the most desperate entrepreneur.

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If you’ve applied this framework, you can validate your idea and even have some pre-orders in your bank account.

As you are launching your product at the web market, you’re probably not rich enough to run off to the Bahamas directly.

But you have enough fuel to push your product to the next milestone of your startup journey i.e. building and launching the real product.

Here I come with the pre-launch checklist and I am going to discuss:

  • How to create a Go-To Marketing Roadmap
  • Build a successful landing page
  • Start conversations with your pre-launch audiences
  • Get traffic to your landing page

So, let’s get rocking!

1. The Go-To Marketing Roadmap

Here is the Go-To Marketing Roadmap (GTMR) that must be followed before launching the SaaS products.

Go-To Marketing RoadmapThe Go-To Marketing Roadmap which includes the Pre-launch marketing stage
Source: Encharge

The above GTMR can be used for launching the New SaaS products as well as launching new features and releases.

The main purpose of the GTMR is to:

  • To Provide an actionable plan of action that shows the possible ways of SaaS product development and marketing are likely to evolve.
  • To align your product development team and marketing team.
  • It helps to prioritize the marketing activities and provides a general continuity of purpose.

The Out Come of GTMR:

So, what can you produce through this roadmap?

Well, there are both quantitative and qualitative goals that you are in control of. While it is difficult to forecast the outcome but still it will give the outputs or the opportunity to be disciplined and achieve your goals.

2. Build a successful landing page

Actually, it depends.

The landing page depends on “how far are you with your SaaS product development?” On whether you have to show any screens, and whether you’ve to validate your idea or not.

Here I could tell you that letters matter more than pixels.

The main motto is “How” you can communicate the story and the “Why” your product can have a way of a bigger impact for a customer. You must consider your pre-launch success more than the look of your page.

Still, to increase the conversion rates, the landing page design must inspire trust. And forget the quick, unpolished landing pages.

Ideally, by the time you launch your SaaS, you’d have both a raving email list and people that have passed the walled test.

So, the target customer can easily understand what your product is all about.

I’ve worked with the team at AndolaSoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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Clear CTA

A single and clear call-to-action immediately visible above the fold

Yes, you can use only a single call-to-action (CTA) on your SaaS landing page.

Whatever goal you set for the landing page, it’s important to have it mentioned in your Go-To Marketing Roadmap.

Next thing – putting the landing page together.

3. Start a conversation with your pre-launch audience

There is just one last thing you need to do before you start marketing your SaaS product.

And this is to set-up basic Welcome email automation that you got from your pre-launching marketing.

The main goal of this workflow is to start the conversation with your potential audience.

It’s also an opportunity to learn more about your subscribers.

On the conversation, you can use the following terms like:

  • We would love to learn more about you
  • Click “reply” to this email and let us know
  • What you are currently looking more?
  • What is the biggest challenge you are facing in your business?

And finish by setting-up the presumption for the following follow-ups like:

  • I am going to despatch one or two weekly updates with content about SaaS marketing, automation, and marketing news.

However, engaging first communication with the new subscribers or visitors’ expectations is vital. So getting them excited is the key.

4. Focus to get traffic at your landing page

It’s time to put our growth hacking tricks on and get some return with it!

Now you have the product landing page up and running.

Now it’s the part “driving traffic to your landing page and growing your list of sign up, orders whichever is your goal.

Many SaaS businesses have managed to gain hundreds or thousands of valid web traffic, so they must be doing something right.

And why do they generally?

Content Marketing: Start writing on Medium (the content marketing site) by using of “how-to” guides that are specific to the pain points of the targeted audience.

Social Media Promotion: Create audiences on Facebook/LinkedIn that match with your product’s interests. And post/boost articles on the Facebook page to reach these audiences.

Do Webinar: Do few webinars with describing the pain point solving pieces of stuff of the SaaS product and promote the same webinar on different social media platforms.

SEO: An obvious advice to do so. You should cover the basics and optimize the SaaS landing (website) page.

Warping up

There you have it! Now you have everything you need to create a successful pre-launch marketing campaign. Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments.

Hope you enjoyed reading this and already have some tactical tips for your SaaS launching road map!

Planning to launch your SaaS Product? Let’s Discuss!

How to keep your SaaS Startup Revenue on Track

Posted on by Jay

After an unprecedented bull run for 11 years, SaaS businesses are faced with a lot of uncertainty as they overcome the business impact of the global pandemic.

There is no fixed path ahead. The truths of each Monday are re-calibrated by next Friday. In the current scenario, agility is critical. You must look at the right leading indicators to make decisions quickly or risk getting buried under loads of data.

While revenue metrics like LTV, CAC, NRR, and Quick Ratio are solid ways to diagnose long-term trends with respect to how the business is performing, it is important to look at the leading indicators of your revenue health, and act on them before they significantly impact growth and cash flows.

Let’s dig into some metrics you should consider.

Cash Burn

Cash burn, the rate at which companies use up their cash balance or reserves, can be impacted by both revenue (inflows) and expenditure (outflows). It’s always good to conservatively assume a higher burn rate unless your business is accelerating.

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Even though there are multiple variables impacting your revenue, the key lies in being flexible and reacting wisely from an expenditure standpoint. It’s good to plan for all outcomes, and not assume you’re going to have a V-shaped recovery.

Practice conservatism and have one to three months of a runaway. This is impactful if the current situation is going to linger longer.

If your vendors are affected, reach out. You could prepay some of these expenses and probably negotiate a discount as well. A 10 to 20% discount means cash sitting on your balance sheet, which eases your expense burdens in the future

Sales Outstanding

At Andolasoft, we are seeing the DSO ratio increasing across all our clients as end customers are slow to pay in recent months.

Sales outstanding is basically calculating the time it takes for you to collect an invoice. This metric is one of the few things you can control.

If you received payment in 20 days pre-crisis, depending on the business you’re collecting from, it might take 30 to 40 days moving forward.

This could have a huge impact on your working capital. When forecasting for the next three to six months, take a closer look at the day sales outstanding ratio.

Accounts Receivables Aging Report

Given that most customers might be freezing their budgets, you may want to close payments on your receivables sooner than later.

On the other side, we’re also seeing businesses with stronger cashflow positions offering more lenient payment terms up to net-60 and net-90 days to build a stronger rapport with their customers.

A real-time accounts receivable aging report lets you see how much money your customers have paid, any outstanding payments, and current debt.

Aging reports help identify customers who aren’t paying, which makes it easier for you to reach out and negotiate payment terms.

Lifetime Value

The next thing you need to focus on is your growth sustainability. Growth should never come at the cost of profitability.

If you acquire a customer with a higher customer acquisition cost (CAC) and low lifetime value (LTV), it means you’re scaling but not profitably.

One way to balance growth and profitability is by the rule of 40. If your growth rate plus EBITDA equals 40%, it means you’re growing profitably.

In this scenario, you should ensure you’re bringing in the right kind of customers and make sure that your retention is high.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

LEARN MORE

The advantage of an LTV metric is that it gives you an idea of your customers’ quality. It also shows how well you’re able to retain them, which in turn, helps your team prioritize the accounts that are more likely to last longer than a free-trial period.

Total Credit Notes

Finally, you should be closely watching the leakage points in your revenue cycle.

The total credit notes report shows you the impact of credits and refunds you’ve offered to customers. While churn is bad news in itself, full refunds are even worse as they impact cash already in the bank.

I see some businesses restructuring their refund policies to only offer credits at this time, but it might have a significant hit on the brand. An option can be setting up internal policies, to look into the merits of each refund, then process it on a case-by-case basis.

On the other hand, acquisition teams are starting to use more coupons and discounts to close more deals.

While discounts are a great way to retain customers and continue running the sales machine, you need to watch its impact on revenue and ensure you are reporting on monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and leakages correctly.

This way, you wouldn’t be pushed to a scenario where sales continues to close seemingly big numbers, but with all the heavy discounts you don’t even see its impact downstream on total MRR.

Everything you knew about growing a startup or SaaS business has been upended. You’ll be faced with making tough decisions and your commitment will definitely be tested.

But with a clear understanding of your startup’s health and how your finances are changing on a daily basis, you can navigate these choppy waters.

Planning to launch your SaaS startup? Let’s Discuss!

How eCommerce Strategy Can Help For Post-COVID Stage

Posted on by Jay

Almost $2.7 trillion from the global economy has been wiped out due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic lost output.
And there is no exception for eCommerce business as well.

Some experts are saying “the user behavior has dramatically changed within this short period.” And this is causing the fall of eCommerce sales.

For a long time, eCommerce has been on the holy grail of personalisation- it is considered as the cross- channel experience that adapts the needs of customers and achieves goals in real time.

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More than 80% of shoppers are likely to purchase from a company that offers a personalize experience.

So, many eCommerce brands are coming to grips with evolving consumer behavior trends, purchase patterns, and situational habits.

Making Of The New Normal

As per the recent research report by Nielsen, “there are 6 different major consumer behavior thresholds pertaining to the COVID-19-necessitated lockdown across countries”.

These are:

Nielsen Report

If we would go carefully through all behavioral sats we can see most of the developed and emerging economies have already gone through the first three levels.

And Consumer behavior patterns across the next three levels are now on the beginning stage to take shape as sustained global stay-at-home periods are extending regularly with new changing rules.

Levels 4, 5, and 6 are about the new demand signals across demographics and how to respond proactively for each opportunity.

Overall, to keep a firm pulse on your customers’ needs and expectations, you need to personalize the entire customer experiences by delivering the needful values at every stage of an individual session.

In a report by mcKinsey, it has discovered that the consumer sentiments were changing since post-Covid. Consumers have started to put less emphasis on brand loyalty and are opting to focus more on getting value for money.

With the eCommerce personalisation strategies effective in retaining customers, along with increasing sales efforts, the reluctance  to implement personalization can be costly.

To make an effective and successful implementation to combat these unprecedented times, re-imagine the growth on post COVID19 stage and most importantly deliver the customer delight – here I have mentioned the 8 actionable steps that can help you with:

1. Analyze The Customer Data To With New Actionable Insights:

As an e-commerce brand, you need to consider what worked for your business until February 2020. That is unlikely to shape your future customer and revenue growth engine.

So, make a deep-dive on gathering and unifying the right customer data.

Build and gather a 360-degree view of all individual customers based on their demographic, geolocation, behavioral, and device-related data points.

Slice-and-dice each data insights to gather new actionable insights on evolving the current consumer behavior trends.

In a study it was found that 76% of respondents said the real- time behavioral data  is a popular option to grow website personalisation. Real-time behavioral segmentation is generated through in-session behaviors. 

The sessions however refers to the specific user’s action performed in a page during a particular period of time, such as page load or button clicks.

(Source: Linnworks.com)

You may uncover the high engagement and conversion rates for the customer segments which were scored lowly on the ROI parameters or on the value of the purchase.

For Special Instance:

With staying indoors and without access to any physical grocery stores or pharmacies; many people including senior citizens have taken to ordering items of their need over online websites and apps.

This will bring an outlier customer segment into your eCommerce website and you need to put a sharp focus during the current COVID-19 crisis.

These new customer segments open up new engagement to increase ROI and retention in the long-run through.
But, don’t allow these insights to be reported as decision-making.

You have to dig deeper to identify and categorize consumption trends – relevant to your e-commerce platform – into the following buckets:

  • Temporarily postponed: This includes high ticket-value items such as apparel, electronic gadgets, footwear etc.
  • Accelerated: This includes daily grocery items, medicines, etc.
  • Disturbed: This includes face-masks, gloves, hand sanitizers, etc.

Categorizing these trends will enable you to make clearer distinctions between what your customers consider as “essentials” and “indulgences”. Remember that these customer perceptions are likely to evolve during this period and once a greater semblance of normalcy returns.

For instance: When the lockdown came into effect in the USA, only 13% of households were ordering food online in the first week. This percentage jumped to 38% by the third week. This highlights the changing attitude of customers towards food delivery from an “essential” to an “indulgence”.

2. Identify New Buyer Personas:

Fact 1: The COVID-19 crisis has reshaped buyer personas that are going to respond differently when the situation begins to normalize.

Fact 2: Based on the value chain in this current scenario, your customers will travel through the following phases towards retention:

buyer personas

After carefully analyzing millions of customer behavioral data points, we’ve identified five key buyer personas that are going to drive demand now:

  • The Captive Buyer:

This type of buyer is reluctant to substitute one product or e-commerce platform with another due to the high cost – in terms of time, effort, and/or money – involved in switching. He/she doesn’t mind postponing purchase based on product availability, last-mile delivery capability, ease and familiarity of platform usage, etc.

  • The Hoarder Or Panic Buyer:

This buyer’s demand is not dictated by the price but by the more primal emotion of fear. He/she is likely to purchase products in bulk – primarily “essentials” such as groceries, healthcare and hygiene items, etc. He/she is also unlikely to spend too much time and effort searching and browsing for products, which is why you need to offer the most relevant product recommendations ASAP.

  • The Price-Conscious Buyer:

This buyer display’s maximum loyalty to the price of the products he/she might be interested in rather than your platform or overall customer experience. He/she will be more attracted to product bundles, offers, and discounts that appeal to his/her spending propensity.

  • The Hesitant Buyer:

This buyer begins with the intention of making a purchase, but is highly likely to postpone or abandon the transaction completely during checkout. You need to give this persona confidence in your platform, customer experience, and last-mile delivery. An omnichannel marketing approach that allows you to orchestrate customer journeys, nudging them to complete the purchase, will go a long way in increasing conversions.

  • The Impulsive Buyer:

This type of buyer makes snap purchase decisions during checkout and is ripe for targeting with relevant cross-sell and upsell product recommendations. This is going to help you increase your average order value per conversion.

3. Personalize The Navigational Flow Across Your Website Or The Mobile App:

Fact: It doesn’t matter if your e-commerce website has the greatest looking Home Page or the most visually pleasing app UI/UX anymore. You need to do more. Your customers are unique individuals, so showing the same website or mobile app to both first-time visitors and repeat customers won’t work anymore!

Leverage your customer’s browsing behavior and order history to customize how you want them to navigate across your website. The more customized your navigational journey, the higher the chances of you directing them towards a purchase – faster.

You can also experiment with dynamic website elements such as graphics, banner images, and CTAs to optimize the persona-based viewing and navigation experience.

For instance: You can personalize the Home Page viewing and navigation flow across your e-commerce platform depending on whether a new visitor (or an unregistered app user) or a repeat registered customer lands on your website or launches your mobile app.

4. Strategically Leverage AI-driven Live Product Recommendations:

Fact: When your customers are active on your website or mobile app, you need to shorten their paths to conversion by giving them product recommendations that are tailor-made to each one of them. And, if you have a large product catalog, then you need AI to do all the heavy lifting, in real-time.

Our AI engine – Raman – enables you to show the most relevant product recommendations across your Home Page, Product Display Page, and Product Listing Page.

For instance: To better cater to your new buyer personas and customer segments, you need to deploy AI algorithms that learn from their actions and inactions in real-time to deliver contextual product recommendations on your website or mobile app.

The AI engine learns intuitively and can eventually predict with a great degree of accuracy what an individual user is most likely to click on, add-to-cart, and purchase.

5. Curate A Personalized Virtual Storefront:

Fact: Directing your customers to what they want has to be a relentless pursuit, as part of your larger personalization strategy.

You can climb higher up the personalization mountain by creating a virtual storefront for individual customers. Not only should this contain product recommendations with the highest probability of purchase, it would also continue to get dynamically refreshed based on customer eyeball data.

This means that this specially curated list of products would account for those recommendations that work and those that don’t and refresh automatically – based on how many seconds a customer spends hovering over an item. These time-stamped signals loop back into our AI engine, making it smarter, with every interaction that a customer has with your platform.

6. Deliver Predictive Product Recommendations Across Channels:

Fact: Your AI-led personalization strategy has to extend across multiple channels and devices, even when your customer is inactive on your e-commerce website or mobile app. Well-timed 1:1 customer engagement across digital touchpoints increases the probability of conversions – exponentially.

Deliver Predictive Product Recommendations Across Channels(Source: Bloomreach)

With Smartech, you can now trigger laser-focused product recommendations across high-impact channels such as email, app push notifications, and web messages.

Here is the kind of contextual recommendations that you can deliver to pursue conversions beyond just your website or the mobile app:

  • “Suggested for You” Recommendations: These are the best possible recommendations tailored to individual customers based on their general historical behavior; i.e. product/product categories viewed, items added to cart, purchase, etc.
  • “Cart Abandonment Recommendations: These are generated based on the products added to individual customers’ digital shopping carts where the customer may have dropped-off or not completed a purchase
  • Buying Pattern Recommendations: These are generated based on individual customers’ most recent product purchases

For instance: If you identify a customer segment that has repeatedly purchased Instant Noodles within the Dry Grocery category and is out of stock due to a demand surge – you can trigger personalized email recommendations updating this segment when the product is back in stock

  • Viewing Pattern Recommendations: These are triggered based on individual customers’ most recent products or product categories viewed
  • Bestselling Recommendations: These are generated based on the highest selling products on your website or mobile app. These are products that are being purchased the most when compared to other products over a period of time

For instance: In the current scenario, health safety and hygiene products such as facemasks, disinfectants, and hand sanitizers have quickly become best selling products – over the last 2 months – and will see a steady demand even when the lockdown period is relaxed.

  • Trending Recommendations: These are generated based on the most trending products on your website or mobile app. Essentially, these are products whose consumption has shown a percentage increase over a period of time.

For instance: Building on the above example, health safety, and hygiene products like facemasks rapidly became a trending product within its category and very soon emerged as a bestselling product, as the COVID-19 turned into a pandemic.

  • Recently Viewed Recommendations: These are generated based on the most common products that have been recently viewed by individual customers on your platform
  • “New Arrival” Recommendations: These are generated based on the new products that have been added to your product catalog. Our AI engine maps these products to the ones that are most relevant to individual customers and hit upon the ideal recommendations, capable of nudging him/her towards an eventual purchase

Depending upon what channels of customer engagement are working best for which customer segments and buyer personas, you can optimize your multi-channel mix as well as the send-times for these campaigns.

Not only do your recommendations have to be personalized, but they also need to be delivered on the right channel and at the right time. And, our AI engine facilitates all of this.

7. Harness AI-led Product Recommendations To Manage Your Inventory Effectively:

Fact: Your marketing efforts and inventory management have to go hand-in-hand to increase consumption while driving down overhead costs associated with surplus inventory.

The current COVID-19 situation would have fuelled greater demand for certain products while completely eroding demand for other items in your product catalog.

So, don’t just rely on “Bestselling” or “Trending” product recommendations to drive conversions, also account for other products – similar or otherwise – that you can suggest to ease the pressure on your built-up inventory.

Incentivize purchase with attractive discounts, offers, and combo deals. It’s a subtle balancing act and operational trade-off, but an aspect of your marketing strategy that requires urgent attention.

8. Deliver The Best-Possible End-To-End Customer Experience:

Fact: Customer satisfaction is a function of delivering seamless, reliable, and consistent customer experiences over a long period of time.

While AI-led product recommendations will open up relevance-backed conversion opportunities across customer segments and buyer personas, you still need to get other elements of your value chain just right, such as:

  • Seamless website or mobile app UI/UX
  • Fool-proof virtual payment gateways and flexible modes of payment
  • Sturdy packaging
  • Reliable in-time last-mile delivery
  • Provision for new-age package collection; eg: contactless delivery

The new rules of e-commerce marketing are already in play. But, relentless focus on the holistic customer experience – backed by personalization – can go a long way in bending those rules in your favor.

Personalization A Key Tool In The Post-Pandemic Ecommerce Landscape:

As more and more people are facing huge problems due to the pandemic, the one thing shoppers want to feel certain is purchasing.

Shoppers want to ensure they are purchasing the right product from the right brand with the right prices and this is taken into consideration as a person and not as a sales figure.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

LEARN MORE

In this period of time, personalization has become a vital tool in the ecommerce market. As it enables the customers to feel through their needs, wants and fears which are taken into consideration and it is not being recognized on a valued, individual level.

Conclusion:

Omnichannel personalisation helps the ecommerce brand to unlock the growth in the revenue and waves the user.

Customer data and AI enables you to fulfill the demands, new conversion opportunities, and it turns the newly identified focus customers segments into loyalists.

Andolasoft eCommerce Development & Personalization service can help your e-commerce brand unlock new waves of the user and revenue growth for the remainder of 2020 and beyond.

While customer data and AI will enable you to fulfill latent demand, tap into new conversion opportunities, and turn newly identified focus customer segments into loyalists – don’t be a hard-sell!

At such a time, you need to position yourself as a situation-aware, empathetic, and customer-centric brand. And, not come across as a tone-deaf, opportunistic, and ROI-focused brand.

If you want to develop your eCommerce website, you can connect to us. Our dedicated developers hold many experience in developing eCommerce websites.

Key Steps To Developing A Successful SaaS MVP

Posted on by Jay

In times past, you bought something once and it was yours forever.

A few years back, you bought something once and it was yours forever. But today, you pay for the regular access.

Especially, when it comes to the use of software, vehicle, and even clothes.

But this comes with distinct advantages for both the vendor and the customer.

As the demand increases, the software and its platforms are constantly developed and improved. If you turn around you can see several well-equipped solutions that have all the mechanisms to deliver the best solution. But they are still adding more wings on it.

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As a new player, it will be a difficult journey for you to figure out what should be in your Software As A Service MVP (Minimum Viable Product). The questions like;

  • What feature to focus on?
  • What to Include?
  • Is it worth the cost?

may be speculating on your mind.

Let’s have a deep dive into it and build a SaaS MVP that customers will buy, use, and recommend as well.

SaaS Product, What Is It?

Software as a service (also known as subscribeware or rentware) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted by a company.

SaaS applications are also known as Web-based software, on-demand software, and hosted software.

For example;

Orangescrum (The Project Collaboration Tool) is a SaaS product that is hosted on the company servers and customers pay a monthly or yearly fee to access it.

And of course, you can find variations in this model.

Some companies allow their customers to deploy the on-premise model as well but still charge a regular fee.

As per Gartner Forecast; “The saas industry is expected to reach $85.1 billion by the end of 2019. This is only slated to grow as more companies use saas products regularly. An average organization uses 16 saas apps as part of its regular workflow.”Granter Forecast

Tech & Marketing giant Hubspot believes;

“for a successful launch of an MVP for a saas product, it is important to have strong support for media and specialized platforms and confirm demand for your product. The first aspect will give you a stream of constant leads and the second will give you an understanding of what you can invest in media while remaining profitable.”

Yes, it sounds like there is lots of potential in SaaS Development but there is lots of competition as well.

So, there are many factors to consider for developing a SaaS MVP that could springboard you to success.

Let’s have a look at how to confirm the demand for your idea before you start to build a saas MVP.

Get A Deep Understanding Of The Audiences Pain, Wants, And Needs

Many entrepreneurs come with an idea, they do the basic market research, through a website and start developing the features that will go into their SaaS MVP.

But this is complete wrongdoing process, reasons are:

This is a mistake for several reasons such as:

  • There’s no feature prioritization
  • Product demand is uncertain
  • Don’t have a clear customer persona
  • Not addressing a well-defined pain point

And the list goes on.

An efficient route would be talking to the people who you think as your target customer. And you should engage on this before launching your website, before the first lines of code, and even before you solidify your idea.

Why?

Why?

Because practically the market’s demand could be completely different from your imagination. If the market does not want this (your idea) then they are not going to buy it.

Let’s take the example from Buffer – the popular social media scheduling app.

When the founder got his idea, he didn’t start development right away. Instead, he tested demand by creating a landing page and a simple checkout flow that didn’t work. Instead, he collected email addresses and started conversations with the people who tried to sign up.

When the founder got his idea, he didn’t just directly jump to the development. He tested demands by creating a simple and engaging landing page with a checkout flow that did not work (deliberately). Then he collected the email Address and started the conversation with those users who tried to sign up previously.

His objective was to understand the aspect of the product, and what features they needed to make it work for their business.

After engaging with several peoples, the founder had a clear vision of the features for his SaaS product development. Then we started building the product and the rest is history. Buffer is making 10 million dollars in a year.

Another approach could identify your potential customers, reach out to them, and hold interviews. Through the open-ended questions, you could able to understand the problems and their needed solutions.

Prioritize Your Product Roadmap

After finishing the customer interview, you will have a clear view of what solution your market is looking for and how to reach a valuable proposition. It is completely up to you to decide which feature will be the best for fulfilling the market needs.

For example, if your users want to get more leads and uncover insights about their audience, there are many ways to go about it. You could create a survey tool, quiz software, popups that also ask questions, etc.

The interviews would’ve given you insights into how important aspects of the solution were. Maybe people want to generate leads the most and segmenting those leads was secondary. Maybe they need to be able to send those leads to their CRM.

A product roadmap will help you organize the features or aspects of your saas MVP. Some of them will make it into the initial version and others will be pushed back because they’re not as important.

The major benefit of a product roadmap is the clarity it gives you. You and your team know exactly where you are and what’s left to be done at any given point. If something becomes more important based on user feedback or changing priorities, you can update your product roadmap in a few moments.

Build The Single Most Important Core Feature

Feature creep is real.

It robs your product of its simplicity.

It destroys your focus.

Deadlines get shattered.

It turns your elegant solution into a slow unwieldy hulk.

Needless to say, feature creep should be avoided at all costs. The benefits of adding a marginally useful feature are outweighed by the downsides.

There are several simple ways to avoid feature creep in your MVP and the final product.

Consider Each Feature Carefully

Many organizations think up great features and start implementing them. This can work in some cases but most of the time it doesn’t. If there isn’t a demand from existing customers or it’s not part of the original product vision then think long and hard before adding it.

Consider setting up a feature approval process. Every new feature has to meet specific criteria such as:

  • It’s been requested a certain number of times
  • It’s part of the original product vision (use this if the feature hasn’t been requested too often)
  • The feature will have a tangible impact on revenue or product usage

The criteria used to evaluate new features will be peculiar to your business but the most important thing is to have an approval process. You can improve it over time.

Differentiate Between Nice-To-Have & Must-To-Have Features

Every product has essential features that make it what it is. In a list building software, popups are an essential feature.
There are also headline features. These are the features that you can put on a landing page and people will look for but they’re not necessarily used often. In our product, one of the headline features is A/B testing but a small fraction of users take advantage of it.

Nice to have features are what they sound like. They’re interesting and may help with conversions but they’re far from necessary. When you differentiate your features in this way, it makes it easier to understand what you need to focus your energy on.

Keep An Eye On Usability

If people can’t use your software then they won’t. Usability should be at the top of the list for a saas MVP. The more features you add, the more screens, clicks, and buttons you’ll need to add. It reduces usability.

Always consider how difficult or easy a new feature will be to take advantage of. If it has a marked impact on a customer’s ability to get the most out of your software then it may be better to leave it off.

Launch It And Stop Developing

This is where many founders have issues. They launch a product and don’t get a lot of traction. They think it’s because their product isn’t ready yet. It may not be the best in the world but if you’ve built a great core feature, you can sell it.

That is why it’s an MVP.

There’s a temptation to start writing more code because the next feature will turn everything around.
It won’t.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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If you have a stable product, have launched it, and it has gotten at least one customer then stop focusing on development.

Instead, focus on getting more customers through sales or marketing. There are countless ways to go about this and many books, blog posts, and courses have been dedicated to the subject.

Here are a few methods to build awareness and acquire your first customers:

  • Host a podcast or become a guest on a podcast
  • Start blogging to build traffic
  • Focus on a single social media channel to generate leads
  • Reach out to your target customers
  • Tap your immediate network
  • Develop strategic partnerships
  • Use Quora connect with your audience and establish authority
  • Submit to startup aggregators like BetaList or Product hunt

These are just a few ideas and there are countless more. You were creative enough to start a business so I’m confident that you’ll be creative enough to get a few customers.

Conclusion

A SaaS MVP, when done right, can be the first step to building a successful company. When done incorrectly, it’s the beginning of a long road that may not yield much return.

There are multiple steps you can take to increase your odds of success.

  • Talk to your potential customers
  • Prioritize the right features with your product roadmap
  • Build the most important feature first
  • Launch and focus on getting new customers before you continue development

Do you have a SaaS Idea? Let’s Discuss. We will Monetize it!

Best Android Frameworks To Succeed In Mobile App Development

Posted on by Gary B

Mobile application development using web technologies has revolutionized the mobile development market. This is because this type of technology allows you to take advantage of the best features of native development, in addition to all the power and facilities that web technology offers.

Choosing the right IDE to develop an Android application can not only make the difference between obtaining a quality product or an inferior one but also a developer may find that his life is made easier depending on the choice he makes, having a frustrating or fluid and agile experience according to the option he opts for.

Without much ado, let’s take a rundown at some of the recommended Android Frameworks to build enterprise-grade mobile applications.

Best Android Frameworks Succeeding In Developing Robust Mobile Apps

1. PHONEGAP

PhoneGap belongs to Adobe Systems and is an open-source distribution of Cordova and as its entirely open-source, its one of the most trending Android all development frameworks feasible to build hybrid applications.

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The platform facilitates multi-platform applications to be developed using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript web technology and makes use of an API that allows access to system hardware elements such as the camera, storage, accelerometer, etc.

It allows integration with other frameworks such as jQuery Mobile, etc. one of the best parts is that it provides ease to developers while programming as it offers no more complex and tough text commands to understand and interpret.

Unlike other frameworks mentioned below that deal with the interface part, PhoneGap / Apache Cordova is in charge of integrating into the mobile operating system and giving access to its services.

So you’ll probably use it alongside one of these frameworks, which in many cases only offers the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript part of the user interface.

Next, when it comes to alignment and working in sync, the desktop apps built run smooth and parallel likewise PhoneGap’s mobile apps. Undoubtedly, it’s a ‘wrapper and packer’ framework as it incorporates a multiplicity of other distinct frameworks.

[Cordova vs PhoneGap:

The primary difference between these two frameworks is that PhoneGap has access to the Adobe Creative Cloud compilation service allowing the application to be compiled for the desired operating system and independent of the operating system where it is developed.]

2. IONIC

Licensed under MIT, Ionic is one of the most famous frameworks for developing cross-platform applications. In the beginning, Ionic used the AngularJS framework and PhoneGap for the integration part with mobile platforms.

However, in its latest versions, it has been incorporating new Front-End frameworks to develop enterprise-grade mobile applications. Currently, it allows its development with the most famous platforms of Angular, React, Vue.JS.

Ionic integrates a design layer with CSS styles and resources such as icons, etc. These styles can be adapted to the design standards of the Android and iOS platforms. Another of its many advantages is that Ionic has its own development IDE that will facilitate the design and programming of applications.

Using a single codebase, it offers high performance and optimization and is well-liked for its diversity in providing distinct features and functionalities while building Android mobile apps.

[Prefer Reading: “How Business Android Apps are beneficial for Entrepreneurs?”]

3. CORONA SDK

Corona SDK was created at Corona Labs Inc., by Walter Luh. The software helps create applications for devices such as iPhone, iPad, Android, etc.

It is said to be very easy to use software where it consumes comparatively less time and effort. Corona SDK integrates Lua layered over C ++ / OpenGL. The software runs on major operating systems like; Mac OS, Windows, Nook, Kindle Fire and Android.

It empowers quick mobile app development with its dynamic APIs and real-time quality checks/testing and makes it a perfect fit for all-purpose development and gaming.

Let’s check out some of the main features of Corona SDK which make it capable to be added in this list of top frameworks for mobile app development.

  • The patented OpenGL-ES rendering engine enables full acceleration of graphics hardware, including sprites that animate at full GPU speed.
  • The transition library allows the interpolation of the position, rotation, alpha, or any other property of Corona sprites.
  • Compatible with native iPhone and Android user interface. Developers can access iPhone native text features, including all fonts, multi-line fields, and keyboard input.
  • Corona-built applications start smaller than 400 KB.
  • The subscription-based purchase model allows users to have new updates as soon as they are rolled out.

Corona SDK is 100% free to use, simple to set up, and actionable to perform, offering recreation to your customized Android mobile apps.

4. REACT NATIVE

React Native is a framework for creating hybrid applications that are based on JavaScript and a set of components of the ReactJS framework.

Currently, it is also one of the most famous mobile app development frameworks and has a large development community. It is part of very powerful and well-known applications, such as Facebook, Pinterest, Skype, or Instagram.

With the power of code re-usability, React Native enhances the swiftness of app development and saves resource costs where only a team of adept developers can handle a React Native project saving many times efforts of development and maintenance.

Your Android app ventures to develop successful mobile applications seem effortless when done with ReactNative. With rendering to local stage UI, the platform aids your app to use similar local stage APIs without much preparation.

Ignoring a few of its drawbacks, it is one of the robust frameworks adopted by maximum developers as a feasible choice in mobile app development. Its server-side rendering makes it a good fit to be well integrated with other platforms with its view in layers feature.

Indeed, it’s a perfect choice to build a secure, scalable, and performant app that derives customer and user satisfaction both with the virtual DOM that offers great user-experience and productivity along.

[Prefer Reading: “Top 6 Reasons for Native Mobile App for your Business”]

5. XAMARIN

Xamarin as a product is a set of multiplatform development tools that allow the development of native applications with the same language.

It is a tool that allows cross-platform app development to go seamlessly. This is how it solves problems that many developers encounter when developing applications, such as different forms of language depending on the platform to which the application is directed.

With Xamarin this is resolved since it allows you to design for all 3 platforms (iOS, Android, and Universal Windows) using the shared code commonly known as C #. Xamarin allows application logic to be shared between different operating systems, duplicating only the user interface.

Xamarin gives us the possibility to have a shared codebase that contains business entities, business logic, access to services, etc., and simply have different code for the user interface details for the client layer on each platform. Basically, it’s like developing at the same time for all platforms, so we minimize development times.

“Xamarin we can reuse the code by 75-85% according to official sources.”

A notable advantage of Xamarin is that the applications we develop with this tool will be 100% native, which means that we will have all the libraries and features that characterize each of the platforms individually.

One can learn more about Xamarin from XamarinUniversity via updated information and videos that allow you to always be up-to-date, as well as share experiences and learn from colleagues and experts.

6. NATIVESCRIPT

NativeScript enables the development of native applications using JavaScript and TypeScript.

It also allows development through the Angular Framework, and in its latest version the possibility of developing through the Vue.js Framework has also been incorporated.

NativeScript generates truly native applications, using the same APIS that you would have available from Android Studio (native development environment for Android) and XCode (Apple IDE for native development in iOS).

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

LEARN MORE

It even allows access to third-party native libraries, thus providing greater capabilities regarding the performance and capabilities of applications. Its biggest drawback is that the development of user interfaces is more complex (it is XML, not HTML), as well as the necessary abstractions to access the native code independently of the system.

7. JQUERY MOBILE

JQuery mobile has a long experience in the world of creating hybrid applications. It only integrates the jQuery framework based on JavaScript; however, it enables you to concrete and structure a highly responsive and intuitive site or application to take a shot at a tablet or a cellphone.

Your learning curve is very low, especially if you already have knowledge of jQuery and JavaScript. It has been left a little behind in terms of power and design when compared to the rest of the new frameworks introduced in the market, but also jQuery Mobile can be used in parallel with other design frameworks such as Bootstrap, Materialize, etc.

It is always a good option for a hybrid application interface development, but it will surely be necessary to use another series of libraries or plugins to improve its design or functionalities since it does not contain a design thought in the design standards of current mobile platforms.