What Should You Know about Building an eCommerce App – Explained in Detail?

We have spoken many times about the importance of having an eCommerce app for your business. ECommerce apps boost your business online enabling you to reach your target audience, whom you could not reach through traditional brand promotions. Not every eCommerce app carries the same categories; it varies depending on business to business.

So developing and maintaining eCommerce apps involve various challenges. Today, we will see how to build eCommerce apps in detail and what it takes to develop eCommerce apps.

Technology plays a vital role in deciding the success of eCommerce app development. To build an eCommerce app, as a developer, you require many things that include backend languages, Android, iOS, and access to multiple databases, which finally evolves into a complex technology that is supported by a plethora of programming languages.

A recent survey on app usage shows that an average person has at least 40 apps installed on the mobile and almost 89% of the time is spent between using 18 apps. The rest of the apps remain unused. This happens with most users who have multiple apps on their phones. So apart from technological factors, your app should cover even age and demography as well.

So what are we going to learn in the following sections may give you a glimpse of the contents covered in this blog.

  • Rather know how not to build eCommerce apps
  • Best possible ways to build eCommerce apps
  • Handling performance-based and scalability challenges with eCommerce apps
  • Creating a successful eCommerce mobile application

What should you not mess up while building an eCommerce app?

Do not create an eCommerce app that only conveys a random message because it could spoil your time, money, and credibility. Build your app in such a manner that it does not say no to any small changes you make.

It takes a lot of effort to fine-tune the app by making changes effective if you do not develop it in that way. Sometimes, you might be facing a great struggle to identify why your app is responding poorly.

Messy apps do not support scalability once it reaches a specific number of users. Still, if you try to make things possible, it may cost you ten times more than what you have at present. Developers might find it difficult to write code or implement testing properly with such apps. If one function goes down, the entire app may lose its operation.

If your app does not allow any third-party APIs installation, it could break down the entire app.

You may not have scope to use or try implementing multiple programming languages and choose the best one that suits your eCommerce app development.

Nothing gets automated including servers and you will have to add servers manually which is quite a time consuming and extremely high on capital. Moreover, the search performance becomes poor due to using only a single database and there are high chances of data break as well.

How can you build-out of the box eCommerce apps?

To build a perfect eCommerce app, these are the criteria that you should make a note of and can implement without a second thought. Ideally, an eCommerce app with good architecture allows you to handle several things across.

1. Handling server and loading capabilities

A perfect app allows you to deal with matching the server with your app speed and make it fast enough by increasing/decreasing server capabilities. It also helps you understand and determine the ways to handle the incoming server loads, and add or delete servers depending on the increasing/decreasing traffic and where to add up or cut down cost accordingly.

2. Allows executing multiple programming languages

You can try eCommerce app development using different languages based on the platform that you choose. If you can analyze what kind of performance your eCommerce app brings to you, you need not think of implementing any suitable programming language of your choice, to build your eCommerce app.

3. Store loads of information on multiple databases

If your app idea has a proper framework and follows rules to implement strategies, you can have multiple databases to store any amount of information and pull data from any database anytime. You can easily segregate and store unstructured and structured databases in the relevant folders, through which your app performance goes beyond the line.

4. Mitigates risk of third-party servers

Unlike developing an eCommerce app without any proper guidelines, a perfect eCommerce app provides you separate server space for third-party servers and avoids the risk of clashes between both the servers and the entire app crashing down.

5. Uncompromising and faster search performance

Implementing a faster search performance system in an eCommerce app allows pulling out databases quickly, with high optimized categorization. The search option is something that users may get disappointed if not up to the mark in terms of speed.

6. Cache service

Generally, requesting for an internal cache service in eCommerce app stores in the respective database, whereas in an app that does not have proper architecture, stores even the customer-requested cache inside the database, and with an eCommerce app with proper architecture, sends the customer cache information to an individual database.

How to handle scalability and performance challenges with an app that lacks architecture?

1. No benchmark set for architecture scalability and performance

Though we have all kinds of information about load balancers, server capacity, and storage, still it is unrevealed how an app’s architecture supports the functioning of internal services with each other. So you are pushed to a stage where you do not know whether the item added in the cart appears the next day when a user logs in.

2. No benchmark set for database scalability and performance

There comes a point where one particular database loads with multiple queries and similar other databases remain unloaded. You might get several questions in your mind such as how to know which service to prefer, how to handle millions of problems that may arise in the due course of eCommerce app development, and how the information can be delivered fast, under such fast loads.

3. Unclear resource and cost allocation system

You spend thousands of dollars to build an eCommerce app, but you never know how these apps will perform. So opting for high-cost servers, load balancers, etc. would drench you before getting into the marketplace. If you do not have a suitable and scalable technical infrastructure, there is no point in investing in the capital.

How to build eCommerce mobile applications effectively?

To build your eCommerce app in the right manner, here is what you have to understand and follow.

You should implement a dynamic UI process that keeps changing according to seasons and for better user experience. An effective UI implementation requires bloated app size, app updates over the AIR, reducing your app size even further.

Next comes building your product details screen. Your product screen is developed by many teams and requires high quality. You should optimize every aspect of memory and load times whenever you create one. It should contain the ability to handle critical edge cases, optimized performance, add or remove features at convenience, sophistically use the phone’s memory and reliable cache.

Now developing product image elements that contain three views such as scroll View, collection view, and UI Page view. You should also consider loading spinners, downloaded product images, placeholder images, download failure icon, and feature icons.

More importantly, you should incorporate offline persistence in your app. You should have some features that even work offline so that your users maintain consistency in using your app.

Finally, enabling reusability for your eCommerce apps. You should choose an SDK file that can be utilized across multiple apps if you plan for developing more eCommerce apps.

Conclusion:

Hoping this blog was informative to show how to build eCommerce apps and the dos and don’ts you should follow during an eCommerce app development. You can contact us for any help regarding the eCommerce web app and mobile app development anytime.

Frequently asked questions on building an eCommerce app

1. What is the difference between Bigcommerce and eCommerce?

Bigcommerce comes with all features in-built and creates a wonderful scalable eCommerce platform to get into the marketplace. Bigcommerce is known to be an eCommerce platform, which gets you most features to build a great eCommerce app.

2. How much does it cost me for developing an eCommerce app?

First, you should have clarity of what to develop in your eCommerce app followed by features, software, technology, and manpower working calculation. Your eCommerce app development costs may vary upon complexity involved.

3. Why should I prefer an eCommerce app for my business?

Online presence helps you grow your business to the next level by allowing you to reach even the audience who are not in scope but will definitely help if reached. Also to overcome the current competition, an eCommerce app becomes the mandate based on your business type.

4. Do I get ready-to-use eCommerce apps for my business?

Yes, of course, you do. You can approach any eCommerce app development company for support or contact us for instant advice.



Functional Testing and Its 8 Types – A Definitive Guide

In the software development process, software testing particularly functional testing plays a huge role in improving the performance of the software. Besides, testing operation acts as a communication bridge among the software analyst, software developer, and the software testing specialist. Functional testing has multiple types in it.

Here in this article, we are going to discuss the scope, necessity. Also, here we elaborated when and where to perform various functional testing types? Well, before getting in deep let’s brush up with some basics over the functional testing operations.

What is Functional Testing?

Functional testing is one of the testing types of black-box testing used to ensure the quality of the software/product/application meets as per the requirements. Functional testing done upon the software components by feeding the business process data as the testing requirements and the output of the software to the given business process data determine the quality assurance.

Benefits of Functional Testing

  • Ensures customers are satisfied with the software performance.
  • Ensures software delivered as defect/ bug-free.
  • Ensures all the requirements of the software met in the development process.
  • Make sure all functions of the software/ product/ applications are working properly.
  • Functional testing ensures the software/ product works as per the customer’s requirement and expectation.
  • Make sure the application/ software/ product comes with efficient security and safety features.
  • Functional testing automatically improves product/ software quality.
  • Make sure the risks and loss associated factors of the product/ software/ applications are reduced significantly.

Techniques Used For Functional Testing

The team of testers usually undertakes two techniques (Requirement based and Business Process based) to perform functional testing over the software. Both techniques involve testing on various aspects of the coded program. Both Requirement and Business process testing techniques intend to improve software performance.

Requirement Based Testing: In this technique, the testing team prioritized the presence of risk factors from the given user requirements. Based on the risk factors, the tester performs by executing the important features of the software.

Business Process Based Testing: In this technique, the testing team gathers the complete business process. After gaining the knowledge of the business process thoroughly, the testing team carries the software testing accordingly.

Types of Functional Testing

1. Unit Testing

It is one among the testing types which is mainly used to test the individual components or units of the application/product/software. Meanwhile, a unit can be an individual function, object, method, module, or a procedure of the application/ product/ software.

The ultimate goal of conducting unit testing is to ensure every unit or individual components of the programmed software or application executes as per the given requirement.

Usually, program developers carry this unit testing operation during the development process especially on the coding phase and it is the first level of testing. Unit testing helps developers to fix the bugs or errors of the application/ product/ software in the early stage of the development process.

2. Component Testing

In this type of testing method, all the components of the application/product/software are testing individually and separately. As far as a technical concern, this component testing is referred to as a module and also program testing.

Unlike unit testing, where the developers carry out the testing operation, here testing professionals carry out the component testing operation to check whether all the components are functioning correctly as per the requirements.

Component testing operation carryout by tester’s right after the unit testing. Depending upon the testing levels and requirements, component testing is categorized into two techniques like CTIS (Component Testing in Small) and CTIL (Component Testing in Large).

3. Smoke Testing

Testers usually refer to this smoke testing method as ‘Build Verification Testing’ or as ‘Confidence Testing’ because this smoke testing ensures the stability of the build applications/product/software. Besides, the ultimate goal of conducting smoke testing is to confirm the Quality Assurance team to carry out remaining testing operations.

In simple words, we can define this smoke testing as a testing operation that ensures the build products/ applications/ software is fully ready to do a testing operation. In general, testers carry out smoke testing whenever they develop and integrate new functions/ modules to the application/ software/ product and to ensure all the essential functionalities of the applications are working as per the requirements.

4. Integration Testing

It is a testing method, where individual components of the application/ product/ software are tested by combining those together. The ultimate goal of conducting this integration testing is to check whether all those interactions between the components are carried out without any faults.

Usually, testers refer to these testing methods as ‘I & T Testing’ (Integration and Testing), ‘String Testing’, and even as ‘Thread Testing’.

This Integration testing is a second-level of testing which is done in-between the unit testing and the system testing methods. Both product developers and also the independent testers can carry out this integration testing method. A professional tester conducts this integration testing in two approaches Big Bang Approach or Incremental Approach.

Meanwhile, an Incremental approach further divided into 3 as Top-Down Approach, Bottom-Up Approach, and Sandwich Approach (which is the combination of the other two approaches).

5. Regression Testing

This testing type is used by the professionals to check whether the software/ product/ application witnessed any changes in its functionality after making changes in the programming codes. In this regression testing, professionals ensure the new functionality of the product along with the exciting features of the products works fine without any mess.

Moreover, to check the impact of code changes professionals usually execute the same test case scenarios done before the code change.

In simple words, this regression testing can be referred to as verification testing where the same test cases are executed again and again to cross-check. Owing to that, conducting regression testing is a tedious and time-consuming one.

6. Sanity Testing

In the testing world, sanity testing and smoke testing are mostly confused since they resemble almost similar to each other’s operations.

However, if we look deep you can find out a significant amount of difference among the literature of both testing methods. The professional carries out this sanity testing operation after the product/ application/ software build with small changes in the codes or functionality to check whether the bug spotted before has been rectified correctly and to cross-check whether any new errors occurred after those changes.

Just like smoke testing, the sanity testing method works with the ultimate goal of checking all the functionality works as per the exact requirements.

7. System Testing

System testing is a type where professional tester tests the software/application/product with the end-to-end system specification after integrating all the modules or components. Generally, this system testing operations are performed by the individual testers who haven’t been involved in the coding/development process of the product.

Unlike other testing methods, this system testing consists of a series of tests in order to ensure the product/ application/ software compliance with the client’s requirements. Moreover, system testing plays a vital role in the validation of the entire applications/software/product meets with the technical, functional, and with the business process requirements of the clients. It is the testing process done right before the product/ software/ application is introduced in the market.

8. User Acceptance Testing

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is a testing method that is usually carried out at the final stage. Unlike all other testing methods, this UAT is carried out by the end-users or by the client. After this testing process, the software product/application moves to the production environment for more productivity or moves to the market and reaches end-users.

The ultimate goal of conducting this User Acceptance Testing (UAT) process is to validate the end-to-end business flow without any mess. UAT is usually carried in a separate environment where the product tested by the two or more end-users/clients.

Bottom Line

After analyzing all those functional testing types and their importance, we can conclude that functional testing plays a vital role in the client’s awareness of the consumer’s needs and develops the applications accordingly.

Performing all those above-mentioned functional testing types in software testing at the right time of the software development process will ensure delivering quality products. You can know more about our software testing services here.

Frequently Answered Questions on Functional Testing Types

1. Why do Functional Testing?

Functional testing ensures no glitches on your software. By doing so, functional testing avoids your brand getting viral in the wrong way because of the embarrassing software glitches.

2. Is there any best tool to do functional testing accurately?

In today’s market, you can easily find a wide range of open-source testing tools. However, here we have listed a few best testing tools where you can perform functional testing on your software at easy.

  • Selenium
  • Katalon Studio
  • UFT(Unified Functional Testing )
  • TestComplete
  • Watir
  • Ranorex
  • Robot framework

3. What are all the tests you can do under functional testing?

Though the prime objective of the functional testing is to test the functional ability of the software program, it does carry various testing operations which are listed below.

  • Mainline Functions
  • Basic Usability
  • Accessibility
  • Error conditions, and so.

4. Whether we use manual and automated tools for doing functional testing?

Yes! The tester can use manual or automated tools for doing functional testing according to the specification provided by the client.



How to Outsource App Development – A Must Read Guide

You would have seen in several blogs about mobile app development and suggestions to outsource app development, which is very true. In fact, in many of our blogs, we have also suggested app development outsourcing. But this time, we would likely present you with the end-to-end process of how to outsource app development without any interruption.

There are several reasons, such as cost, on-time delivery, and commitment to work that business owners prefer to outsource mobile app development. From this blog, you get the complete guide for outsourcing mobile app development and its benefits, in an explicit manner.

Why should you outsource app development?

The main purpose of developing a mobile app is to reach your target audience across your preferred demography and beat the existing competition. You may or may not have an established business but with a mobile app, you can sell your products online effortlessly and increase revenue generation accordingly. Therefore to develop a mobile app, you require enough talented resources that can complete the app development within the stipulated timeline.

You have two options for developing a mobile app; one is you can hire developer(s) and can bring your app idea into the limelight; the other one is outsourcing app development to a mobile app development company that has all the requirements ready. Sometimes, these companies may have ready-to-use apps as well, which may suit your business type. It makes your job easy and it is very cost-effective when compared to hiring resources.

These are the benefits that you get on outsourcing your app development—reduced development cost, extreme time-saving, access to multi-skilled and efficient resources, and around-the-clock customer support.

Key factors to remember in app development outsourcing

To make your partnership successful with the app development company, you should consider these following factors before you outsource your app development:

1. App overview

If you are outsourcing your app to a well-established company, apart from the inputs you provide the company, it also performs additional research on your app idea. Therefore, before you approach any such company, have some groundwork details of your app such as purpose, intended audience, project scope, product features, operating platforms, etc.

This application saves time and money for sure. Ask yourself the following questions to have better clarity on your app.

  • What is the motive of developing the app?
  • Does your app provide solutions to any users’ problems?
  • What extreme features does your app provide?
  • On which platform do you wish to operate your app-iOS or Android or both?
  • Do you have any plans for acquiring a cross-platform app?
  • How soon will you need the app?

2. Budget and estimation

Never think about developing your app at the lowest price because you may end up receiving a non-quality app. This will again affect your business down the line. Hence, decide how much money you are going to invest in app development and choose a company that fits your budget constraints.

3. Time zone

This is more important while you decide to outsource app development to an app development partner company. Suppose you have established your company in the USA but wish to outsource to India then the time zone definitely varies among the countries. So you will have only limited time to communicate with your partnering company; hence, if you cannot convey everything over a call, you can send in multiple emails about your requirement. Anyhow balancing and working according to time zones is quite a difficult task but not an impossible one.

4. Exposure

If your app development outsourcing company has enough experience developing multiple apps, it is good to outsource your app development. Even if they are slightly costlier, do not worry about that but think of getting your app with top-notch quality. You need a team that can think out of the box and adds on more spice to your app.

5. Communication

Before you outsource your app development project to a company, first understand the company culture and their mode of communication to clients and internal stakeholders. Just choosing a team that has a great experience is not enough; you should receive proper and timely communication from the team on your app development updates. If they fail to communicate promptly then it becomes difficult for you.

6. Quality against Quantity

You should select a company that has a team with multiple skills, who can provide more than what you expect. Only full-stack developers can really perform better than what you think by handling all those modulations and alternations in perfection.

7. Legal contract

Ensure that you put a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with your app development company for the safer side, about pricing, development, deadline, support, and everything that can be entitled legally and get signatures from both of you.

8. Support after launch

Initially, many companies say that they will provide support post-launch as well, but they end the support after the completion of your app development. But definitely, till your app goes viral among the public, the partnering company should handle bug fixes and other problems that arise with the app.

How To Outsource App Development?

Well, there are a number of ways to outsource app development and let us take a look at what some of the ways have to do with app development.

1. Search for a company

If you have good clarity on your app idea, then the first step would be looking for a well-established company that can satisfy your app development needs. You can start your search from browsing through Clutch, Upwork, PeoplePerHour, Business of Apps, or Good Firms.

2. Perform an intense research

Once you decide which company to go with, do intense research about the company’s culture, accomplished projects, team and skillsets, customer reviews, etc. This will help you tie-up with a company that can fulfill your requirements and keeps you satisfied. While researching, grab details such as niche experience, technical expertise, project management, client management approach, client references, and live samples, IT infrastructure check, workforce skill, etc.

3. Conduct brainstorming

Outsourcing can never be a same-side goal. There must be equal engagement from both the ends. Discuss with the team about the app delivery timeframe, communication frequency, and mode, hidden costs, and clarity of NDA.

4. Select team members

The company by default has packages to offer according to your requirement. Still, you can choose or decide how many developers to work on your app development. Do not forget to ask for a single point of contact through whom you can get the regular updates.

5. Project plan

Along with project requirements, you should also plan for app development milestones. With milestones you can easily track progress and identify the company’s potentiality. In case the company does not meet the deadline in the first phase, you can estimate how fast or slow your work can be done.

6. Agreement

Ensure that you get into a proper legal agreement for your app development outsourcing contract, which should be enlisted with detailed project scope, service level agreement, transfer of assets, project warranty, product ownership, intellectual property cause, payment structure, project completion duration, dispute resolution, subcontracting clause, indemnification clause, and documentation.

Along with the aforementioned factors, you should also include documentation and payment.

Conclusion:

Hoping this blog was informative and now you know how to outsource app development, effortlessly. If you need any help in developing a mobile app, do not hesitate to drop an email to us. Our experts are here to provide you valuable suggestions that help you in mobile app development.

We serve round the clock to address your queries and fulfill your needs. You can reach us by dropping an email to us and get a free one-hour free consultation.

Frequently Asked Questions on How to Outsource App Development

1. How to outsource app development effectively?

Once you frame your app idea, search for outsourcing companies that stay in line with the trending technology. Keep your project short-term and then extend if you wish. Enable NDA strictly and make sure you check everything once.

Verify the end-product has well-defined documentations. Monitor and manage time zone differences if any and finally, get your app within the agreed time delivery.

2. How much will it cost for me to develop a mobile app?

The cost for developing an app depends on the app complexity, the region you outsource, resources, software and other terms included. Hence, you can discuss the same with your app development outsourcing company.

3. What features should an app contain?

These are certain common features such as User Login, Navigation, Media Content, Push Notifications, Geolocation, Chat/Messaging, Ads, Streaming, Offline Base, Customization, Google Maps Integration, and In-app purchases. You can come up with more features depending on your product or service.

4. What kind of app should I go for?

You can try developing a banking/payment app, e-commerce marketplace app, real estate app, a photo-sharing app, networking app, messaging app, dating app, taxi app, city guide app, networking app, food delivery app, groceries delivery app, etc. These types of apps will benefit you all the time in any situation.



All You Need to Know About Progressive Web Apps – A Complete Guide

Recently, progressive web apps (PWAs) seem to be a fast-growing app model and adaptive as well. It enables developers to ensure faster delivery of apps and offline experiences to their users explicitly.

No wonder we could see most website owners switch over to progressive web apps models for quick output. Being more flexible with developing apps with splendid and necessary features for iOS and Mac OS devices, PWAs seem to have a great turn out.

Well, many might think about why progressive web apps, here are those benefits one can achieve through progressive web apps.

Benefits/advantages of Progressive Web Apps:

The following benefits can explain to you clearly why progressive web apps are the talk of the town:

  • You do not require multiple codebases for your app if using a progressive web app model. It helps you maintain everything under one single roof at a cheaper price than that of if you opt for a full suite of mobile apps.
  • You get easy access to user retention features such as offline usage, push notifications, and background syncing, which sometimes may not be available even with native apps in the traditional web.
  • You do not require any license to host an app built using progressive web apps, in an app store. Moreover, you can easily deploy a PWA based app as to how you deploy updates.
  • Compared to traditional web and native apps, progressive web apps offer extraordinary faster load speeds.
  • It gives an excellent user experience rather than just downloading a native app for usage, anymore.
  • Also, transforming your existing website to progressive web apps can happen within a blink of an eye by making very few changes.

How to get your website on a Home screen?

If your website appears on the home screen of your users, it exceptionally increases user retention and engagement. Progressive web apps make it possible within no time. Here is the procedure you should follow to get your website on the home screen of your users.

#1: Configuring the manifest

Your website should be able to show the browser about the progressive web app, and it is possible with presenting a JSON file. This file should include information about how the app should respond, how it defines specific criteria, and what images or icons should be used to make it available. This will help in creating the best app-like experience for your users and meanwhile, you can craft your progressive web app in such a manner.

PWAs leave the choice to you to decide which icon and title to be used when your website appears on the home screen, along with setting the background color and other privileges while launching the app. You can even change or apply a color to the navigation bar of the website to match with the theme color.

#2: Setting up a service worker

A service worker is the backbone of a progressive web app that runs as a script individually from the web page in the background. Also, to make your app work offline effectively it should be used to cache assets and files and the experienced professional service workers capable of doing it easily.

Meanwhile, you can send or receive messages for supporting push notifications or background syncing.

#3: Developing a custom install experience

This is the crucial part that gets success for you. You would have already introduced manifest and service workers to enable your PWA’s working functionality.

Now, your app requires a small trigger that can motivate the users to install it. If the user is technically savvy, they can install the application by themselves. But for those who do not know how to go with it, you can provide simple instructions to install the application.

Remember that the installation prompt can happen either before or after the user creates an account. So set the code accordingly so that you do not lose users.

#4: Analysing performance

After completing the aforementioned procedure, finally, comes here the testing part. Enable automated testing using Google Lighthouse, which has its own PWA tester.

This procedure is simple to access and perform as well. If you are using the Chrome browser then go to the Developer Tools where you can find the Audits tab. Under that audit tabs select the Progressive web app option and click the generate report.

Best progressive web apps [Complete List]

Till now, we saw the benefits of having an app using progressive web apps.

In the following section, we will see the list of progressive web apps and the best progressive web apps you can rely upon to create one such. You might be aware of many of the apps provided in the following list, as most of them are very popular as well.

#1 AliExpress:

Most of you know about AliExpress, the giant e-commerce web, and mobile app; so I believe that an introduction is required here. Ali Express is a PWA model that has been implemented to improve its visitors’ engagement retention rates and conversion rates as well. Apart from faster page loads and smoother animations similar to what you can see on native apps, it contains push notifications, offline working mode, and add to home screen options.

#2 Flipkart Lite:

Flipkart Lite belongs to Flipkart who is again a giant e-commerce retailer in India. To provide native app experience for users while handling the app, Flipkart Lite prefers open APIs that use web browsers. When compared to a native app, the Flipkart Lite’s PWA uses data 3 times less than that of, considering the network as the least option.

#3 Wego:

It is a travel company that builds Progressive web apps with the aid of AMP. Service workers of Wego play an important role in this app providing faster page loading within seconds.

Similar to Wego, we have one more travel app called Trivago, which, with the help of building a progressive web app, has created a seamless interaction among users without any hassle.

Likewise, you have many PWAs such as Washington Post, Forbes, Flipboard, Twitter Lite, OLX, Telegram, etc. Considering these apps as an example you can decide your destiny app to be a progressive web app.

Conclusion:

Hoping you got a clear idea of what and how progressive web apps can create and change your view of looking at your business. If you require help in getting instant but simple coding to get your progressive web app on the home screen of your user, we are here to support you.

Also, we have a skilled team that can transform your existing website to a PWA model in no time and capable of creating a new one quickly. We are available 24/7 to assist you and provide solutions to your problems technically.

You can reach us through our toll-free number or drop an email for any clarifications.

Frequently Answered questions on PWA

1. Is progressive web applications just like a native app?

Many people get confused that a progressive web app is a native app, but it is not a fact. A progressive web app carries a native app appearance but functions and codes are different.

2. Why build progressive web apps?

In general, a progressive web app is a combination of web pages and an app. For example, as we have mentioned previously that AliExpress does not have a dedicated native app, but when you open it in your mobile, it appears like a native app giving you a good user interface design and experience similar to the web app.

People’s way of looking at mobile phones and using them has changed, since the day when the Internet came into usage. A progressive web app is an output of web technologies specifically to provide users a native app-like experience.

There could be many start-ups struggling to invest in developing a native app. PWA could be one of the best solutions giving support to such companies reaching their target audience through developing PWAs.

3. Do progressive web apps work on any platform like native apps?

Progressive web apps are not like native apps and do not require specific platforms for functioning. If you have a website previously, with little tweaks, you can transform your website to a progressive web app , so they work on any device and any platform.

4. Which is best to invest in-PWA or native apps?

This is a good question but again it depends on your industry or business needs. If you have an existing business or you are a start-up and looking forward to a gradual expansion, then instead of investing in creating a native app, you can go for a PWA model.

But you have to make sure that the web version of your PWA is at least popular among users. A native app can cost you more when compared to that of a progressive web app but definitely a wise choice if you think that your business and customers need it badly.

Maybe, you can convert your website into a PWA model, and later when the situation demands, you can develop a native app.



15 Best Android Libraries You Should Know

Having the best Android libraries is one of the greatest assets for developers. Android libraries for developers support until the completion of an app and yield the best android app development as an output. To talk about these Android libraries, they are a set of behavior implementations coded well using simple programs and offer a well-defined interface. They include message templates, pre-written code configuration data, documentation, help data, classes, values, sub-routines, etc.

Benefits of Android libraries

  • Android libraries help you fast track the development process by avoiding unnecessary efforts.
  • They make the developer’s job easy by providing pre-written codes and other important elements for instant use and avoid performing any task from scratch.

In the following section, we will see the top Android libraries that help in android app development and what are third-party libraries in Android to make use of.

Best Android libraries for developers

Here you go with the 15 top Android libraries for making your android app development easy and effective. Before we proceed, let us see what dependency injection is and its role in Android libraries. Dependency injections are like doorways that allow any sort of library to easily access database, app framework models, and perform several other coding activities to achieve an accomplished app model.

#1: Dagger 2

Dragger 2 is one of the greatest Android libraries as it mainly relies on using Java annotation processors that include compiling time in order to calculate and identify dependencies. Besides the advantage, this library has a disadvantage that other Java dependency injection libraries have restrictions such as XML dependency, exposing to performance penalties during initiation, or experiencing issues with validating dependency during run-time.

Apart from those, using Dagger 2 defining fields becomes so simple and easy thanks to the presence of @Inject annotation.

Let us take a look at Retrofit that eases the access to shared instances and makes use of strong tools to establish any sort of network communication within the Android app, in the following section.

#2: Retrofit

Retrofit ensures successful mapping and implementation of API into a client interface by using annotations. It is a type-safe REST client for Android and Java and thus helps in easy integration and adoption of any application into the app. In the existing method, fetching data requires a network request and execution of the Async task class and then use the Https: URL connection, previously. This got a new look by Retrofit and developers need not worry about the data fetching issue anymore.

You can easily manipulate endpoints and headers from any place, including a request body and required query parameters and choose request methods, only with annotations in Retrofit. This could be an advantage and a disadvantage too if user access authorization is not set properly. Retrofit could not resolve multiple image loading issue in Android apps, which is handled by Picasso in the next section.

#3: Picasso

Picasso is a trusted and popular Android library used by many developers, which is managed by Square. It provides a hassle-free image loading facility in one single-line code.

Apart from that, Picasso offers solutions for ImageView recycling, download cancellation, transforming complex images with lesser memory, fully automated memory, and caching functions.

#4: Glide

Glide is a Google-recommended Android library and new to the market as well. It is popular among developers as the best image loader library, which is maintained by Bumptech. Also, users can avail benefits like image fetching, creating GIFs, performing video calls, decoding operations, and so. You can even fetch, resize, or even show a remote image on your app with Glide.

#5: Zxing

If the Android library that you are using currently did not show any hope on integrating scanning features while developing a custom Android app, then you should go for Zxing. Many developers might have had their own turns checking the previous statement and started adapting to Zxing.

The exact meaning of Zxing states Zebra crossing that operates bar code image processing efficiently. Owing to that reason, Google prefers to integrate Android’s Barcode scanning app into its majority of products including Google Book.

#6: CAMView

CAMView is a direct alternative to Zxing and known as an Android camera easy access library that has a QR scanner. The best thing would be viewing a live preview video feed from the device camera, scanning barcodes using the decoding engine available ready, and used in Zxing as well and performing live data processing of your own camera.

#7: ButterKnife

ButterKnife is one of the popular Android libraries that support view binding and assigns identification numbers to views without making any extra effort. ButterKnife and Dagger seem to have similar annotations but the only difference is its annotations are employed to create boilerplate code, whereas Dagger does not.

#8: Android Databinding

This is another view binding library that does not use any annotations. Also it is used to declarative formats to enhance the UI components of the app layouts. If you want to build an attractive application that utilizes this Android Databinding would be the best option.

#9: Stetho

Stetho is a wonderful Android library that acts as a debug bridge for Android applications. Without restricting its functionality to just network inspection, JavaScript console, database inspection, etc. In addition, Stetho helps developers to access various features included under the Developer Tools option of Chrome desktop web browser.

#10: RxJava2

If you have plans to implement Reactive programming in your app, then RxJava2 is the ideal Android library for you. It is the most preferred library by most developers because of its ability to highlight errors quickly than other libraries, and allowing you to take effective decisions on how app development operations should function.

#11: MPAndroid chart

MPAndroid Chart is mainly utilized to create a graphical view of the data. By using this MPAndroid Chart helps developers to showcase the data in radar, candlestick, bar, bubble, and inline charts. Apart from that, it does have the options where you can add animations, scales and so to the chart.

#12: Holo Graph

It is a graphic library popular among developers and android app development companies. This Holo Graph Library helps designers to design graphs and charts impeccably. With the interactive window of your android applications can look amazing.

#13: Gravity View

Developers use Gravity View for tilting images inside the app using sensors. This Gravity view library uses the motion sensors of the Android gadget for its functionality. Owing to that users can do various operations by simply rotating their device after installing this Gravity View.

#14: Espresso

Any Android app would definitely have to undergo a testing phase, and Espresso is a testing framework library that allows you to create and develop user interface tests for Android apps.

#15: Robolectric

Robolectric is again a testing library that deals with inflation of resource loading, views, etc. This library specializes in avoiding the creation of additional mocking frameworks such as Mockito and stimulates the Android SDK files for testing.

Conclusion:

If you are new to app development, you would have got an idea of how these Android libraries help you in working with multiple functionalities. Also, you can choose which libraries best suit your app type and perform accordingly. If you require any support on mobile app development or have any doubts about using Android libraries, you can call our technical support agents to provide instant assistance.

We respond to your queries even through chat and e-mail as well. We have experts who are expertise in handling mobile app development and sharing relevant knowledge. You can call us anytime for a free quote and technical advice as to how to proceed with Android app development.

Frequently asked questions about best android libraries

1. Why do Android apps need libraries?

To implement and improve the app functionality and features, you definitely require a set of code libraries, which we call as Android libraries that require an Android framework API to include in an app. Each type of library has different phases and hence, you should choose the right ones for your app.

2. What is an Android app library?

An Android app library is similar to the Android app module that contains everything related to create and develop an app since its inception till the end. It helps you use the same components, UI layouts, and more when you try to build multiple apps with some common features and design.

3. What are third-party libraries in Android?

There are four types of third-party libraries available in Android such as user interface, android networking, image downloading and caching, and database helper. Every library has different types:

  • User interface libraries: ActionBarSherlock, ActionBar PulltoRefresh, Android PulltoRefresh, View Pager Indicator, Nine Old Android and a Chart Engine
  • Android networking: okHttp, Volley, Android Asynchronous Http Client, Google GSON and Retrofit
  • Image downloading and caching: Picasso and Universal Image Loader
  • Database Helper: Active Android, ORMLite and Green DOA

4. What is an Android service library?

Android service library and Android libraries are both the same and cater to the same purpose as well. Without the Android service library, you cannot get an accomplished output of your Android app.


Top 5 Contact Tracing Apps You Need for Fighting Against COVID-19 in 2023

We all know how the COVID-19 pandemic has hit most of the world’s population since it started. Still medical and civil workers from different parts of the world are putting their greatest efforts to fight against coronavirus. Supporting them, developers of Google and Apple are drawing up contact tracing tools and helping in fighting against this pandemic outbreak. Not only them but recently, most developers have taken the initiative of developing the contact tracing system in the form of a tool. Today, we will see what is contact tracing and how helpful the contact tracing technology is.

This blog also gives you information about best contact tracing apps introduced by several nations and helps recognize COVID-19 positive victims, voluntarily.

Contact Tracing App – Why is it needed?

To know if someone has turned out a positive victim to COVID-19, first you should know the victims. Contact tracing apps help you identify and self-report who are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms and report it to concerned health authorities immediately through the app. As the app traces the victim’s health along with the closest contact they have met recently, it becomes easy for medical health associations to test and confirm whether positive or negative.

We will see the benefits of a contact tracing app and different types of contact tracing apps available and to make use of. To our known knowledge, Google and Apple collaborated and introduced a contact tracing app that functions with the Bluetooth option without using the user’s GPS location. Likewise, many software companies have come forward to introduce such apps and help society to become free from this pandemic.

Let us take a look at how a contact tracing app works, and how it benefits the public and medical health associations.

Contact Tracing App – How It Works?

With contact tracing apps, medical health officials can automatically trace people who might have come in close contact with infected people. This is the way how these apps work in real-time, but users should keep the Bluetooth option and GPS turned on for most of the contact tracing apps introduced.

  • Turn on the Bluetooth option on your mobile and enable GPS for the app to identify your location.
  • After you install a contact tracing app, it calculates the distance between your phone and others’ phones within reach and has the app installed.
  • Now the app saves the key logs of GPS location data and others who have come in contact with each other, for the day.
  • These details are stored anonymously and so, none of your contacts get to know who has been infected or any other sensitive and confidential information.
  • When someone experiences COVID-19 symptoms or tested positive, they should inform it in the app.
  • Now, the app will send an alert to those other users, who came in close contact with the victim frequently, without revealing the identity.
  • Later, users who have received alerts about the affected person will receive notifications on how to take it further from the current situation.
  • Also, many apps show the nearby healthcare facilities for COVID-19 testing and necessary precautions one should follow to handle such terrific conditions.

How contact tracing apps ensure privacy protection?

While installing any app, data privacy and protection becomes the primary concern of every user, and of course, their fear is correct. Especially, when it comes to installing a contact tracing app, users may have concerns about whether their health-related data will be shared with others, or what if a third-party accesses their data.

This is where the government comes into the picture. Every nation set their own restrictions and norms towards not sharing their app information and public health information with any other nation. They keep data anonymous from others, which are technically called data localization.

Best contact tracing apps

1. COVID Safe

The base root of COVID Safe is Australia and developed by the Australian Department of Health, which is available for download in both Google Play Store and App Store. A few features of this app include collecting logs based on location details with using GPS technology, notifies on results if the user turns out to be positive, helps you receive alerts in case you come in close contact with a COVID-19 victim so that you can take necessary precautions or stay away from contacting the person and shares relevant information that you watch or read, on COVID-19.

2. HaMagen

The Ministry of Health, Israel, develops this app and it is almost similar to COVID Safe, HaMagen is also available for both Android and iOS. Most of the contact tracing apps cater to similar functionalities and features but may vary here and there. HaMagen notifies you of information about a contact that you have met in the past few days and gets affected due to COVID-19. Also it logs in location details using the user’s GPS history. The best part with this app is users can accept or reject notifications when popped-up. They can view it later under the Notifications section.

3. TraceTogether

TraceTogether is launched by the Ministry of Health and Government technology agency of Singapore together. This app also serves features such as collecting recent and closely contacted people’s log lists using GPS and Bluetooth technology. It identifies and sends you notifications of results if you are a positive victim of COVID-19. In case you meet someone who is affected by the virus, then you receive notifications with the relevant information. Anyhow, the app shares the information only if you need contacting.

4. Arogya Setu

Arogya Setu is developed by the Indian Government and has been widely used by most of the population. It takes the help of the user’s mobile GPS and logs in location details. It displays results in the app if you confirm positive towards COVID-19 or show any related symptoms. Users will receive alerts if they get in contact with any affected individual.

5. Mysejahtera

To identify and report COVID-19 patients, the Malaysian government launched this app. The app allows you to perform self-analysis of every member of the family and provides the risk status of each individual. It monitors your health condition regularly. Moreover, it provides real-time reports monitored by the Ministry of Health. If you want to know the nearby health centers, you can get it through this app.

Conclusion:

Whoever is reading this blog, hoping that the information provided throughout was useful. Contact tracing apps are useful and effective when you follow the technical requirement to use this app, on your phone. Firstly, you should be a socially responsible person to admit if you encounter such symptoms and ready to beat the COVID race. Otherwise, it may become worse and you might be left in a situation where no one can save you. This contacts tracing system keeps the Bluetooth icon always enabled on your device and makes sure that your GPS works.

If you require any help on app development or want to share your feedback on this blog, reach us through phone, e-mail, or chat without a second thought. We will revert to you immediately.

Frequently asked questions

1. How safe is the contact tracing app?

Although this has been an on-going concern in the minds of users about their data safety, the answer to this question would be yes, your data remains absolutely safe. Government while launching the app has taken necessary measures to safeguard your data; moreover, the app claims only your Bluetooth signal and GPS location. Also, the information passed on to other users always transferred or notified anonymously. So it is safe and good using the contact tracing app.

2. What are all the technologies these apps incorporate?

Contact tracing apps are installed in Smartphones and use only two simple technologies such as Bluetooth and GPS navigation. With Bluetooth, the app calculates the distance between you and every single person you came in contact with. If the signal strength is stronger, then the distance between two people is lesser. Likewise, GPS is used to identify your location if you have the app installed previously.

3. How Google and Apple’s contact tracing app works?

The app introduced by Google and Apple will cater to similar features to other contact tracing apps, but this app does not take your GPS location and uses only Bluetooth. This has been taken upon the feedback of most users having concerns in terms of their data being shared. Google and Apple have been working together to make this effective and introduce a perfect version of their contact tracing app.

4. How much does it cost to create a contact tracing app?

To keep it simple, the cost of a contact tracing app might be similar to the cost of mobile app development. Depending on features and other front-end and back-end applications installed on your app and the number of hours your developer(s) may take for completing the app, the app cost will have to be decided. Once you proceed with the groundwork, you will realize it.

Comparing frameworks NativeScript vs React Native in JavaScript Mobile App Development

In today’s scenario, it is very difficult to find people without using a mobile phone and especially, without using an app. Most developers prefer JavaScript mobile app development because it is a great and understandable platform for app users. To explore what kind of role JavaScript plays in NativeScript Vs React Native platforms, you need to know about key factors that influence them highly. Several statistical reports state that native mobile apps are simple and quick to develop and at the same time, adaptive as well. Let us see what is React Native and NativeScript, and how effective they are individually in detail in the following sections.

Rather than calling NativeScript and React Native as platforms, the correct term would be mobile app development frameworks. You apply either of these frameworks on both Android and iOS platforms according to compatibility, necessity, and audience range.

Mobile App Development in JavaScript

JavaScript is a front-end programming language that developers use to create a mobile app. With JavaScript, you can rewrite the server-side code to backend tasks effortlessly. Moreover, if you expect your app to show better performance, then JavaScript is a convenient and workable language.

Although there are multiple languages available to develop a mobile app, most developers go for JavaScript because of the following reasons:

  • It is one of the easiest languages that offer the best learning curve.
  • You can easily store the bandwidth range while executing on the client-side.
  • You can create and use dynamic animations in your mobile app with JavaScript.
  • It offers fast and systematic development and allows you to run a streamlined mobile app development process.
  • Moreover, JavaScript offers to create a plethora of framework development tools such as Ionic, PhoneGap, jQuery, React Native, NativeScript, and Tabris.js.

Apart from the aforementioned benefits, developers go fond of JavaScript as it is a rich front-end platform that provides offline support in the community. To conclude, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are wrapped together in a native application without having any need to change NativeScript and React Native.

How do we define NativeScript?

In 2014, Progress Software Corporation introduced the open-source framework NativeScript for developing mobile apps. The released framework NativeScript supports JavaScript, Angular, Vue.Js coding for app development.

Using a single codebase, you can develop native mobile apps for both Android and iOS. You can experience a native app–like performance and get direct access to all iOS and Android APIs. Developers find NativeScript to be an easy framework because without putting in much effort for building user interfaces and WebViews, you can develop an app with JavaScript, CSS, and Native UI markup.

Few examples of apps developed using NativeScript are Strudel, a dating app; Bitpoints, the crypto-currency wallet; Daily Nanny, the photo-sharing app for older people, etc.

What is React Native?

React Native, released in the year 2015 by Facebook, is a cross-platform mobile app development framework like NativeScript and supports app development in both Android and iOS platforms. It integrates the best elements of native development with React and provides the top-notch JavaScript library for developing convincing user interfaces. The specialty of React Native is you can use the native components of one platform in another platform without any change and alter the app according to Android or Ios.

Some existing examples of apps created using React Native, which you can find in Google Play Store and Apple Store, are Instagram, Bloomberg, Pinterest, Skype, Tesla, Uber, Walmart, Vogue, Townske, Salesforce, etc.

If you look at the statistics of NativeScript Vs React Native comparison, React Native has proven to be the best and adaptive in mobile app development.

NativeScript Vs React Native

Till now we saw the basic explanation of NativeScript and React Native. Now let us dive deep into the topic and understand which helps you under which conditions.

1. Learning contour

Developers can easily adapt to JavaScript because it is a flexible language that mends with both NativeScript and React Native frameworks. Even if you have minimal experience using JavaScript, you can easily move on working with these frameworks. Moreover, if you have prior experience working with Angular, you definitely will not find it difficult to use NativeScript because of its extensive integration with Angular CLI, code development, router support, etc.

Along with using JavaScript, developers can also code using TypeScript, which is an open-source programming language, on both NativeScript and React Native. You also have Flow, a programming language by Facebook, of course, used when you develop an app with React Native framework.

2. Development tools

NativeScript takes the help of Angular or Vue.js for developing high-engaging user interfaces. It allows you to develop light-weight mobile apps that do not screw up your phone with unwanted or huge space. If you have previously used Vue.js for the web, then NativeScript-Vue.js also act similarly. It is all about using a direct plugin before you begin with the app installation factors and writing codes for your app’s front-end templates with NativeScript modules.

React Native uses Flexbox, which works in the same way as it functions in CSS on the web, giving you a step-by-step picture of your improvements on the app. The distinct difference is with both NativeScript and React Native you can use JavaScript for rewriting is defining objectives and properties of styles; which later retranslates to CSS origin.

Additionally, you can debug both the frameworks using Chrome Developer Tools. The best thing with React Native is users can take benefit of React Native Debugger and Reactotron, whereas sometimes, NativeScript users use the Visual Studio code NativeScript extension.

3. Third-party plugins

As mentioned previously, NativeScript comes with a ready-to-use plugin and so installation becomes easy before you get into framework development. If you do not wish to use the inbuilt plugin, you can choose from a plethora of plugins available in the NativeScript marketplace, as it is available as open-source.

React Native does not have any dedicated marketplace or community for providing plugins. But you can extend the default components by searching for React Native packages in the NPM registry. But often developers prefer real native code for gaining access to the desired platform.

4. Performance

NativeScript uses a single-threaded model whereas React Native uses a multi-threaded architecture. By using React Native’s Multi-threaded architecture, UI of the mobile apps will not get interrupted. Where else, in NativeScript UI may get stuck while executing JS code.

NativeScript supports only in allowing fast access to native APIs and React Native works on individual threads though it is built in multiple. NativeScript uses Google’s V8 on Android whereas React Native uses Hermes on Android and Apple’s JSCore on iOS.

5. Community/Forum

NativeScript, being open-source, has an enlarged community to support developers and clarify their doubts through experts’ opinions. But it lacks in performance when compared with React Native. To support this point, in a statistical report by NPM, React Native has got more user downloads up to 300,000 whereas NativeScript has only 10,000 user downloads.

Just like that, the US-based global software company Github which is well-known for bringing the world’s developer community under one platform has React Native ratings with 80,000 stars and NativeScript framework with 60,000 stars from the developers around the world. Hence, React Native is popular for its performance and flexible usage than NativeScript.

Conclusion:

Hoping the aforementioned points would have given you some clarity on the comparison of NativeScript Vs React Native, which is very important for you, as a developer, to know. This article not only showcases the major differences between both NativeScript and React Native frameworks but also the importance of JavaScript mobile app development, which is followed in the latest trend. If you have any queries or require any technical support on JavaScript mobile app development, feel free to shoot us with your questions to our technical agents.

Frequently asked questions

1. Which one is better–NativeScript or React Native?

If you want your app to be more impressive and provide the best user interface experience, React Native would be your uncompromising choice because it concentrates more on styling the components of each platform (Android and iOS) and providing an exceptional native look and feel to your app.

2. Does NativeScript really provide a native platform?

NativeScript totally depends on how you write a complete cross-platform mobile application with JavaScript, Angular, or TypeScript. It allows fast accessing of native platform APIs on both Android and iOS platforms.

3. Why should I prefer to React Native for developing a mobile application?

Be it technology, usage, performance, features, flexibility, and compatibility, React Native takes the crown when compared with NativeScript. React Native provides the best user interface than you get from NativeScript because NS runs the plugin once and distributes it to multiple features.

4. How much do I need to spend on building a React Native app?

Again, the cost of building a mobile app through React Native, can be a little expensive but not as you think. Be specific as to what you want to bring into the app, whether it is going to be simple or complex, how many resources and timeline required, etc. A mobile app development company can help you out with this.

Why eCommerce Marketers Should Consider Product Information Management?

Do you own an eCommerce business?

If yes, then you must be aware of the emergence of advanced technologies that disrupt the eCommerce domains. The latest technologies help you in developing advanced functionality and delivering better customer experiences to your target audience.

Opting for next-level technologies is, of course, a matter of choice. But, you cannot compromise in selecting the robust Product Information Management for Ecommerce platform as it is the very basic need of any eCommerce store.

Well, there are other ways to manage your product information such as excel, ERP, and other standard eCommerce solutions, but they are not efficient when it comes to effective product data management.

Do you want to learn how a reliable PIM can simplify your eCommerce operations and drive more business opportunities? Go through this post and you will have enough reasons to consider a PIM solution over other product data management methods for your eCommerce portal.

What is Product Information Management (PIM)?

Product Information Management manages all the data, content, and other material that you require to promote and sell the products. It allows you to manage everything related to products such as descriptions, different attributes, photos, videos, documents, content, and more.

It manages all the data in a centralized location so it will be ready for the users to access the required information as per their roles and permissions. Moreover, PIM allows to apply a quick filter, search and update the products from a single dashboard.

The advanced Product Information Management solution consists of

Master Data Management (MDM) – It manages all business information in a centralized location including product and customer data.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) – It manages all the digital properties related to products such as images, documents, videos, and more.

Content Management Systems (CMS) – It manages the content of your eCommerce portal. Add, edit, and update your content to meet the changing market needs and customer interest.

Top 10 Reasons to Consider Product Information Management for Ecommerce Business

1. Share consistent data across the marketplaces

Do you share your product information on your website only? Of course, you don’t.

To reach out to a large target audience, you need to consider all the different sales channels such as marketplaces. Every platform has its own rule and requirements for product data formatting.

A Product Information Management solution can seamlessly map your product data with the different marketplaces by considering their specific standards and publish it with a click. As you pull the product data from a single source, you can have an accurate and consistent product across all your preferred marketplaces.

2. Improve data quality

The PIM system becomes centralized storage of all your product data. You track all the changes you made in the product data and roll back the data in case of an error.

When you manage the data in spreadsheets, you need to update the data in all the respective sheets. Instead, if you use a PIM solution, you need to update the data once.

PIM allows you to optimize the product data for the different marketplace from a single location. It also ensures your products are shared everywhere along with accurate and consistent information.

The modern PIM systems also notify in advance when you have links, images, or data missing in the system. Thus, you can fix the issues before exporting the product data.

3. Deliver better customer experience

In this era of multichannel commerce, it has been very hard to maintain customer loyalty and trust. Well, by providing hassle-free return and free shipping, you can boost their experience up to some extent. But, obviously, it increases your overhead cost some or another way.

PIM helps you to provide the customers rich, complete, and accurate product data and enhance their experience with your brand. Using attractive and high-resolution product images, you can reduce the number of returns. Leveraging granular content for your eCommerce platform, you can deliver a personalized experience to the customers.

Along with that, Product Information Management improves relevancy by maintaining each product attribute in a single location, eliminating inconsistencies between different touchpoints and marketing channels, and allowing to create demographic-specific and channel-specific descriptions.

As we discussed previously, PIM notifies you about the data errors in advance so you can make the required correction in the data ad push the changes immediately to all the channels. Providing accurate data in real-time, you can drive customer engagement and boost their experience.

4. Simplify complex product catalog

The major benefit of digital space to the businesses is they can have infinite space to display their product information. But, please remember your customers do not have plenty of time to go through the multiple pages to find the product information they are looking for.

The smart entrepreneurs utilize intelligent product categorization to simplify the product navigation that leads to more purchases.
PIM allows wholesalers and distributors to define important product attributes by eliminating duplicate product pages and simplifying complex catalogs. It becomes easy for customers to search for the intended products.

Product Information Management also allows you to synchronize product data from the ERP system to maintain consistency and accuracy while you publish the data on different platforms. The system also has the capability to publish the data back to ERP.

Thus, distributors can use both platforms and make their life easier. But, you need to invest in support and maintenance of the ERP system. So it is a suggestion to manage your product data in PIM only.

5. Shorter product lead times

This is one of the biggest benefits of considering a reliable Product Information Management for your eCommerce platform. The PIM system allows your markets to edit and manage all the product information once and push the data on different sales channels in a faster and more streamlined way.

When you have a faster time to market for your products, you can decrease the product lead time. Moreover, you can save time and money by preserving the resources associated with your company.

6. Reduced data management cost

Data management is a nightmare if your data are available in different locations, incomplete, and outdated. When you have massive data in a cluttered way, it is not suggested to waste time and resources to track down the right data. In fact, you should ignore to optimize the product data for your upcoming marketing campaign or different marketplaces.

It will create the worst situation when your different team members work on the same product data available in the different sheets or tools. It becomes challenging to sync the changes fast and identify who has made which changes.

As PIM manages all your product data in a centralized place, it becomes easy for your team to work on the same data simultaneously. It improves team collaboration, reduces organizational cost, and improves productivity.

7. Gain a competitive edge through data enrichment

The eCommerce world is getting more and more competitive. And, to stay ahead in this competition, companies consider the simple way that is providing more product data and information.

The Product Information Management system can help you with data enhancement and data enrichment. It allows you to deliver more values to the customers and win over our competition. Thus, PIM helps you to grow your business and enjoy upward mobility.

8. Fewer product returns

Thanks to PIM, you can provide a comprehensive product description and detailed information about the products. It helps buyers to know what they are purchasing. Thus, it reduces the chances of the product return.

As the number of product returns reduces, you can cut down the time and money that you are investing in restocking the material. You can invest your saved times and money in designing new strategies that improve business opportunities for you.

Along with cutting down the difficulties and stress of restocking the products, reduced product returns also improve the customer experience as they can make a well-informed buying decision.

9. More opportunities for up-sale and cross-sale

If you are looking for up-sale and cross-sale opportunities, PIM can help you in executing these strategies seamlessly. The system saves the time that you spend on collecting, managing, and distributing the product data and help you invest your energy in defining the product sales strategies.

Once you are done with defining the products you want to sell and promote, the PIM system allows you to determine the ways to orchestrate cross-sale. Additionally, it helps you grow your business by linking the products and creating up-sales opportunities.

10. Increase traffic and conversions

To drive the organic leads, it is very essential that you get organic traffic on your website. More than half of your audience is looking for the products through a simple Google search. If you keep optimizing your product data and imaginary, there are higher chances that you get spare the top position in Google on relevant searches.

The Product Information Management solution simplifies this process for you by providing important SEO fields. If any of the product data is missing, then the system sends you alerts so you can provide the complete information about your product.

Accurate and complete data to boost your website ranking on search engines and allow more searchers to find your products.

How Credencys can build the best PIM solution for your eCommerce business?

Credencys can develop a robust PIM solution using the Pimcore. The platform also allows us to utilize its MDM, DAM, and CMS capabilities at a zero licensing cost. Thus, we ensure our clients to develop a highly cost-effective eCommerce portal that manages all the product-related data in a centralized location.

Offering end to end Pimcore development services, we develop custom business solutions as per the custom requirements of your eCommerce project. We have proven experience and expertise in deploying successful eCommerce stores.

Would you like to make your online presence by integrating a powerful PIM for your eCommerce store? Get in touch with our experts for a free consultation.

Frequently Asked Questions about Product Information Management

Why do you need a PIM?

A powerful Product Information Management system allows businesses to improve their data quality and data governance and usage dramatically. It allows organizations to expand their product portfolio as their business grows. The robust PIM solution enables you with the flexibility to respond to the ever-changing market needs faster. There are more benefits of the PIM system that convinces you to choose a robust one for your business.

What does PIM stand for in eCommerce?

PIM starts for Product Information Management. The PIM solutions are designed to manage your complex and massive product data such as product descriptions, attributes, photos, videos, documents, etc. It acts as a centralized master repository for product information and support to pass the data into different systems.

How does PIM work?

Product Information Management is a process to manage all the data, content and other product specific material that businesses need to promote and sell the items. PIM system also makes sure that quality data is created for multichannel distribution and internal use.

What is a PIM tool?

Product Information Management is an extension that you can integrate into your eCommerce platforms such as WooCommerce, Shopify, and Magento. You can also integrate the software with data sources, software systems, and other channels. There a so many PIM tools that are available in the market. You need to select the best suit for your organization. PIM solution also works as a multichannel marketing tool that enables businesses with complete control over your eCommerce strategy.

MDM vs. PIM: How to Select the Right One for Your Business?

Are you confused between MDM and PIM? Are you not able to judge which will be the right choice for your business?

Master Data Management (MDM) and Product Information Management (PIM) are not an option of each other. Actually, they complement each other. You need to choose one of them based on your requirements. To make the right choice, you need to get a profound understanding of both the platforms.

I would like to help you in getting better clarity about the differences between both of these platforms. So you can pick the best fit your business either choosing any of the one of selecting both of them.

Let’s get started with each platform.

Master Data Management

What is Master Data Management?

MDM is a set of tools or processes that provides the harmonized data to streamline the business operations across the various applications and systems. Using the advanced MDM solution, companies can collect, manage, match, clean, aggregate, and distribute accurate and consistent master data to the different analytical and operational systems.

When we say master data, MDM allows businesses to manage:

  • Customer information
  • Product information
  • Employee information
  • Cross-departmental information

Purpose of Master Data Management

Master Data Management is a crucial platform as it provides information in a uniform and consistent way. It typically handles the data from multiple domains. It manages information about product pricing and categorization, customer segmentation, staff strength, growth trends, customer details, employee payroll, and more.

MDM projects come with broad scopes and require considerable resources to maintain and implement. The use cases of MDM system are created around different functional departments across the organization and multiple business objectives.

Core Capabilities of Master Data Management

  • Data modeling
  • Master data matching and linking
  • Data localization
  • Data enrichment
  • Data governance
  • Data security
  • Workflow management
  • Hierarchy management
  • Multiple implementation style
  • Multiple domains and multidomain
  • Data stewardship, and more…

Benefits of Master Data Management

MDM helps businesses to streamline their business operations by eliminating the data inconsistencies that enable companies with reliable data and make the right business decisions.

To achieve the best results, organizations have to invest considerable efforts with impacts and inputs throughout the company. The major benefits of MDM are:

  • Providing a unified master view
  • Offering cleaner data for analysis
  • Making sure to meet compliance regulations
  • Reducing data inconsistency that creates major impacts on your business operations
  • Providing consistent data across multiple tools and platforms
  • Increasing trust and accountability of your business data
  • Allowing complain to edit the data in one place and ensure that the edits get reflected in all the relevant areas
  • Connecting anything and everything

Product Information Management

What is Product Information Management?

Product Information Management is part of Master Data Management.

Being a product-specific software, PIM allows companies to manage all their products and in a centralized location and enrich it to deliver accurate product images and descriptions across the different marketing and sales channels.

With Product Information Management, it becomes easy to manage images, enrich products and make sure they look compelling on different distribution channels such as website, print catalogs, marketplaces, retail point of sale, and mobile.

Purpose of Product Information Management

PIM simplifies the product data and description enrichment. When you use spreadsheets for product information management, you need to perform many repetitive and tedious tasks. Instead, you can use PIM to reduce the burden of performing repetitive tasks.

It specifically focuses on managing the different data related to your products. The PIM solution allows to add, update, save, manage, and monitor the information related to your offerings.

Apart from that, it manages data about different packages, product sizes, varieties of goods, and services. It also helps in analyzing and controlling the product information. It also helps you in managing data of merchandising and marketing.

It will be easy for you to connect the PIM to your eCommerce platform. PIM is useful to eCommerce and catalog managers, marketers, and data governance drivers and buyers. Compared to MMD, PIM is a small software so it allows for faster deployment with fewer resources to deliver better values in the context of product information management.

Core Capabilities of Product Information Management

Data Collection

Product Information Management solution manages the product data in a centralized location by collecting it from different sources such as ERP, CRM, flat files, databases, supplier portals, and media systems. It allows to prioritize the data source and apply data cleansing so that you can receive clean data that is easy to integrate into your catalogs.

Data Enrichment

Once you are done with collecting the data, eCommerce and marketing teams bring data to the next level by creating customized product descriptions, classifications, specifications, translations, media files, and data usage.

Product Information Management improves the data quality and enables organizations with a clear picture of which products having the data are complete. It provides all the necessary information about the products that are required for publication. Also, PIM helps you to identify which data need to be enriched.

Data Distribution

Using the PIM, you can distribute the enriched product data across all the sales channels such as mobile apps, marketplaces, eCommerce platforms, social networks, and AI-enabled tools like chatbot.

A robust PIM solution allows eCommerce companies to create awesome print catalogs rapidly with just a few clicks.

Benefits of Product Information Management

With the help of a Product Information Management solution, companies can unlock new sales channels, penetrate new markets, deliver a better customer experience, improve customer conversion, and more.

Explore the advanced benefits of PIM that help you in streamlining your operations and getting better business opportunities.
Boost collaboration and eliminate mundane work

  • Decrease time-to-market
  • Improve product catalog and information management processes
  • Increase sales conversions
  • Improve product data quality and accuracy
  • Increase operational efficiency
  • Manage the brand identity across multiple touchpoints
  • Enhanced business efficiency and productivity
  • Cost-saving
  • Easy integration of 3rd party software
  • Superior data management

Closing Lines

I hope the post will help you in making the right choice whether you should go for PIM or MDM or both. If you are still not able to judge, then don’t feel hesitant to consult our experts.

To enable business with all in one solution, Credencys use the Pimcore platform that consists of the capabilities of PIM, MDM, DAM, CMS, and eCommerce. All these components of Pimcore are available at zero licensing cost. So, definitely it is a highly cost-effective platform too.

Leverage our exclusive range of Pimcore development services to build an MDM or PIM or both the solutions that address your specific business goals and bespoke requirements. Let’s boost your presence across multiple customer touchpoints by harnessing the potential of Pimcore.

How to Get Started with Master Data Management? 9 Steps to Consider

Every organization is looking forward to adopting a reliable Master Data Management solution for the centralized storage and management of critical business information.

As the MDM enables stakeholders with a consolidated view of all the data belong from different business entities, they can make the right business decision at the right time. Well, Master Data Management enables brands with several other benefits from a customer point of view and advantages from the operational point of view.

If we consider the current MDM market, then it continues to gain momentum as more and more companies have started understanding the importance of MDM in an increasingly complex and chaotic enterprise information landscape.

Entrepreneurs and IT professionals face many challenges during the adoption and implementation of the MDM solution. But, most of them fail in addressing the issues effectively as they are not able to figure out the right combination of technology and organizational change. Apart from that, you might have other concerns like

  • How to approach MDM?
  • How to select the right tools? (Selection of the MDM tools that address your business requirements and manage your huge enterprise data)
  • Where to start? (Once you select an MDM solution, this is a very obvious question)
  • How you can update you’re your MDM solution? (You need to avail a maintenance process to keep updated your software with the latest features and functionality)

In this post, we will guide you on how you can get started with the Master Data Management by following 9 simple steps.

So, are you ready for the ride? Let’s begin the journey.

9 Steps for Getting Started with Master Data Management

Step 1: Gain Knowledge

Before the implementation of MDM, you need to educate yourself about the basic fundamentals and concepts of the technology. Master Data Management is considered as a relatively new platform, it is one of the rapidly maturing technologies.

By hiring skilled professionals, you can definitely avoid this step. But, if you really want to dig deep into MDM, we suggest you get a better understanding of the following concepts:

Important functionality

Functional Capabilities

  • Data Modeling
  • Data Integration
  • Web services
  • Data quality
  • Business rules
  • Workflow
  • Matching
  • Survivorship
  • Stewardship

Non-functional capabilities

  • High-availability
  • Scalability

Implementing Master Data Management styles

  • Centralized
  • Registry
  • Consolidated
  • Co-existence

MDM domain categories

  • Organizations (customers, vendors, partners, etc.)
  • People (customers, employees, patients, etc.)
  • Things (products, parts, locations, assets, etc.)

Domain-specific needs of master data

All domains do not require MDM solutions that have the same features and functionality. Based on the industry type the configurations of the software get changed. For example; industrial manufactures have different needs than the companies that distribute finished products.

Step 2: Analyze your current data management approach

Every business has more or less data to manage. They manage the data using different systems, applications, or software. The most common data management approaches are:

Data Management in Excel

This is the most common and widely used approach for data management. Most of the small companies prefer to manage their business data in excel sheets. There a few excel based MDM solutions that allow for data management too.

This approach fails when it comes to meeting the increasingly complex business needs. But, it helps define a better solution by providing valuable insights about better master data management.

Managing data in ERP and CRM systems

Large scale organizations to mid sized businesses are using the ERP and CRM system to manage the massive data of vendors, products, customers, etc. These applications are really good for the organization but they cannot match the capabilities of the Master Data Management solution.

Considering an affordable MDM solution

The feature-rich MDM solutions are expensive and they fit into the big budget of large scale organizations. But there are a few platforms like Pimcore that allow small to mid-scale businesses to implement a custom MDM solution as per their specific business needs.

Thus, you need not invest in the features and functionality that are not useful to you. It directly reduces overhead costs for you and makes the solution affordable for your business.

Understand your existing data management efforts to identify the deficiencies in the process and get insights about business problems. Analysis of the gaps and problems helps you in revealing the opportunities for improvement in your existing MDM approach.

Step 3: Define your scopes

Integration of multiple enterprise systems

Organizations manage huge business data of different departments in various applications for every region and each domain. Your data could be available in structures or unstructured form across the multiple systems. To get a consolidated and reliable view of data, you need to define what master data you need to manage.

Consider your business strategy

Master Data Management helps organizations make data-driven strategic business decisions.

There are companies where the management of the organization makes a decision about the critical components of the MDM solution that support their core business strategy. They understand this initiative is very essential to keep everyone in line. Usually, these are large scale organizations that are ready to pay a good volume if they get a robust solution.

Another scenario is, you are an individual or small scale business owner who has a very specific usage of MDM and limited budget.

Surprisingly, most of the organizations fall into anywhere between these two extreme scenarios based on their strategy and budget.

Create an outline about MDM support

As your business grows, you need to scale your MDM solution. You need to invest in the technical support to stay updated with the latest MDM trends and business needs.

Thus, along with investing in a solution, it is very essential for you to invest in building support for it, developing advanced data governance functionality, and organizing the number of complex business process changes.

Step 4: Define a business case for MDM

Most of the organizations take the initiative of Implementing Master Data Management but later on after a year or two they stop investing in it. The reason for this abandonment is budgetary constraints.

Here you want to be pretty clear that Master Data Management is not a project that you can complete in a couple of years. To get the positive results from your initiatives, you need to make sure ongoing and long term investment in MDM.

Instead of focusing on expenses, you need to consider the business benefits you can get from MDM. It helps you with the different business cases such as improve consistency and quality of product data, create a single view of customers, or facilitate the consolidation of different legacy systems into a new ERP application.

When you connect MDM with our business cases you can get better clarity on how it delivers value to your business and helps in cost-saving, revenue generation, and achieving the business objectives.

Step 5: Determine stakeholders of Master Data Management

Identify the people

Once you identify your business case for Implementing Master Data Management, you need to make your investment worth by defining the people across your organization who can take the benefit of MDM.

Operation Department

In most organizations, the operation department is highly affected by the MDM solution as it manages the maximum data related to products and customers. Communicate the benefits of Master Data Management to other stakeholders belong to different departments who will be investing their time and efforts in adopting the MDM.

Sales and Marketing Departments

MDM helps your sales and marketing team by providing them profound insight into customer information, their buying journey, high valued products, and more. It helps them to understand the market trends and accordingly sell and promote the products or services. This directly impacts your conversion rate due to more specific efforts.

Train your staff

Educate your users about the concept of MDM and convey the benefits of the platform to them. The more users you have to use the solution, the more work you need to do to establish seamless communication and coordination between all stakeholders.

Step 6: Execute strong data governance policies

Data governance is all about defining what needs to be done. If you start practicing MDM without determining what needs to be done, there are higher probabilities you will be working on the wrong things. Even if, you are working in the right direction, there are higher chances that the stakeholders will reject your efforts and also deny participating in MDM practices.

How to start with data governance?

When you conduct your first governance council meeting, make sure you are not going to define what a customer or product is and design a process. During this meeting, you need to focus on defining the roles, responsibilities, governance standards, and broad policies.

Later on, the council needs to manage priorities, identify topics, and allocate the highest priority topics to working groups or virtual teams for execution.

During the initial phase of the MDM, the virtual team focuses on data model definition, data process design, and source system analysis. Once the MDM program grows across your organization, you need to pay attention to other topics such as metrics, KPIs, and data quality rules.

Flexible data governance model

There is no one-size-fit-for-all model when it comes to the governance model. Organizations can design and implement the custom model as per their specific needs.

If you own a small business with a team of few people, you need to scale your governance function accordingly. In such a case, you need to go with a multifaceted governance council having various virtual teams. If you have a single stakeholder for MDM, then you can define a governance council consequently.

Step 7: Design a Master Data Management charter

How to start with a charter with MDM deliverables?

If you are conducting the first governance council meeting, you might be unsure how to do it. You need to start by defining the goals for the first MDM charter. You can set expectations by creating a draft about the goals you want to achieve through the MDM program. You need to define and communicate the deliverables to set the tone of the meeting.

How to execute the charter?

If your governance council meeting has multiple members who are performing different operations, then you need to define a more formal and detailed charter. If you only one stakeholder in the meeting, then the charter will be relatively less formal and short.

What are the key elements of an MDM charter?

Background:

Getting an overview of MDM and data governance that involves the scale and scope of the stakeholders’ efforts as per the industry and business domains.

Data governance vision/mission/goals/purposes/principles:

Defining the goals that you aim to achieve by determining data governance policies.

Governance membership/structure/roles/responsibilities:

Creating a structure of your governance organization, define roles within the structure, identify the participating members, and map roles of the respective participants with data access.

Meeting Logistics:

Defining meeting locations, attendance, frequency, and other general logistics.

Communication:

Deciding the platforms (website, email, Wikipedia, etc.) that communicate the governance outcomes to the members and other interested stakeholders.

Processes:

Creating an outline of the process to collect, prioritize, assigned, and resolve topics in the data governance backlog.

Glossary:

Creating the list of common terms used in the context of data governance and MDM.

Step 8: Select & implement your Master Data Management Platform

You might have a question, why I am considering this step so later. Well, you can choose the MDM tools earlier in this process but there are chances you end up by purchasing and implementing a premature platform that allows you to get started with shortcut planning. Here you might fail in getting the expected results.

When you spend significant time on the above-listed steps and get clarity about them, adoption and implementation of the technology platform to ensure ultimate success. You get a better understanding of your business-specific goals and needs. Eventually, it helps you in selecting the best MDM solution that effectively manages your massive business information.

Step 9: Keep measuring your success on an ongoing basis

This is the last step where you have almost everything in place including business case, funding, the right stakeholders, MDM solution, as well as a growing and active data stewardship community. Once the stakeholders start using the solution, you need to analyze the performance of the MDM solution, employee productivity, and business results.

Once the first phase of the solution is over, you need to measure how the results support the actual business case that you have defined earlier during this process. Make sure it delivers value that you have anticipated while defining the process and implementing the solution.

MDM requires ongoing funding and you need to justify your decision about investing in MDM. If you fail in doing so and the investors will not see any value, you may lose your MDM setup. Thus, it is very essential to measure and communicate MDM performance against its KPIs proactively.

This not only secures your funding but also allows you to shift your enterprise information to a complex and chaotic world of digital data.

Closing Lines

Credencys utilizes Pimcore MDM capabilities to develop and implement the robust custom Master Data Management solution that addresses your specific business needs. We offer a complete range of Pimcore development services start from consultation to design to development to deployment to support & maintenance.

We follow the latest MDM practices to enable businesses with trending MDM solutions. Out experienced Pimcore developers have built MDM solutions for different industry and business types by understanding their objectives and challenges.

Would you like to have a mature MDM solution to manage massive information of your different departments and stakeholders in a well structured and logical way? Talk to our experts for consultation.

Frequently Asked Questions about Master Data Management

What are Master Data Management benefits?

Master Data Management enables a business with a complete, consolidated, and structured view of its massive business data. The key MDM benefits to business are

  • Provides seamless information across all channels
  • Provides a unified master view
  • Helps to better understand the customers
  • Increase trust and accountability of your business data
  • Connects anything and everything

How to create the best Master Data Management strategy?

To create an intelligent master data management strategy for your business, you need to follow five steps as listed below:

  • Assess your business goals
  • Evaluate MDM enabling technologies
  • Maintain architectural consistency
  • Bring the right stakeholders on board
  • Use what worked in the past

What are the latest Master Data Management trends?

You need to consider top MDM trends to create potential and game-changing opportunities for your organizations. The latest MDM trends are:

  • MDM integration with workflows and business processes
  • More industries will adopt master data management
  • AI and Machine Learning in MDM
  • Customized data security solutions to overcome data quality issues
  • Cloud-based MDM deployment will rise

Does Master Data Management help in managing multi-domain data?

Yes, all the MDM platforms allow you to manage your multi-domains data. As we have extensively worked with Pimcore MDM, we utilized its scalable architecture and advanced features like Data quality/semantic, hierarchy management, rich content integration, audit trial, superior connectivity, and workflow management for multi-domain data management.