A website is essential for small businesses today in the digital era. 92% of people judge a website’s credibility based on its design, according to a study done by Clique. In this view, having a professional and clear website is very important as it only has seconds for capturing the attention of a visitor and therefore communicating brand message and establishing trust.

It All Comes Down to Finding the Right Website Development Company

For small businesses, navigating the world of website design can be overwhelming. More so when developing an internet site that echoes your business values and also appeals to your target market. Herein lies the importance of partnering with a reputable company that develops websites.

Draw Inspiration from Successful The Power of Small Business Website Design

Though creating a website may seem daunting at times, inspiration is everywhere you look. Look up successful companies within your industry for inspiration. There are many examples that exhibit some good work which has been done by web development firms thus allowing one to identify what could be ideal for them.

Invest in Your Online Presence: Reap the Rewards

At least 82% of consumers now research online before buying from any business according to records.Without a professional website, you risk losing potential customers and falling behind competitors who have established a strong online presence.

FinTech Website Design Ideas

1. Lendflow

2. Mi7 Plus

3. UniDex

4. Financial Inbound Marketing

5. UXDA

Fitness Website Design Ideas

1. Personal Trainer Wimbledon

2. Presence

3. Trimester Fit Body

4. CFM UK

5. Train Right Fitness

6. WORKOUT

7. John Reed

8. CrossFit GYM

9. KXU

10. Journey London – CrossFit Box

Crypto Website Design Ideas

1. Cryptocurrency and ICO | Crypterio

2. OpenNode

3. Biquiti

4. NFT Talk – Webflow HTML website template for podcasts

5. Fastest and secure platform to invest in crypto

6. BagHolders

7. Bitpanda Custody

8. Monnos

9. Buy Bitcoin with Credit Card Instantly

Furniture Website Design Ideas

1. The Rattan Company

2. Elio

3. Clarity Arts

4. Henge

5. Modern & Multipurpose

6. Furniture Website

7. JUO Studio

8. Sergio Rodrigues Atelier

9. Mobilitop

10. Intobello

Food Website Design Ideas

1. Block 16 – Omaha

2. Mentelocale – Brescia

3. Shashlikyan

4. Pascual Prestige

5. Vegoshi

6. MT Food Group

7. La Dogana Food

8. Smart Lunch

9. Hans Kissle

Education Website Design Ideas

1. Smart Media Production

2. Edu | Education Webflow

3. ShowUp | Evolve

4. Strathmore

5. Digital Parrot

6. Pierian Training

7. Launceston Church Grammar School

8. Hindi By Reena

9. InspoPad

10. #1 Ranked Collaborative LMS | 360Learning

11. Thinkovery

Home Website Design Ideas

1. Smart Home Improvement

2. E2 Homes

3. Legacy Builders of North Florida

4. Schmidt Custom Homes

5. Buying Homes In London

Travel Website Design Ideas

1. 66° Nord

2. Antilophia

3. ERM Travel

4. Bird Travel PR

5. Journey’s Concierge

Sports Website Design Ideas

1. MAI Sports

2. AFL Players Association

3. Wolves Academy

4. Legacy Golf Apparel

5. Stefanos Tsitsipas

Fashion Website Design Ideas

1. Lobat

2. Berner Kühl

3. Atelier Camille

4. Sophie Dallamore

5. Markarian

Medical and Health Website Design Ideas

1. Gonzaba Medical Group

2. Pain Management

3. AURORA MEDICAL CENTRE

4. SideKick

5. MedCenter

6. DHR Health

Car(Vehical) Website Design Ideas

1. Rolls-Royce

2. Omega Car Rental

3. Advantage – Cars

4. Bilpleje Grøn Services

5. M&D exclusive cardesign

6. Mottiv

Game Website Design Ideas

1. MSI

2. Erdong-Chen

3. Coastal World

4. The Game Awards Microverse

5. AriteliA

Banking Website Design Ideas

1. Winden

2. Insurance Services | Lone Star National Bank

3. Sight Banking

4. DBS

5. Fremont Bank

Entertainment Website Design Ideas

1. Vidiation

2. Browse Movies, TV Shows and People

3. Raters app

4. Disney.com

5. WarnerBros.com | Midnight Special | Movies

E-Commerce Website Design Ideas

1. Punta Carretas Shopping

2. The Cool Hunter

3. ASHE

4. Peserico IT

5. CARANDACHE

IT and Services Website Design Ideas

1. SADOS

2. Application Hosting – Take Full Control of Your App – Kinsta®

3. Techuz

4. SimplyPHP

5. Integrated IT Solutions

Photography Website Design Ideas

1. Poppr

2. Theud

3. Photographe et Vidéaste professionnel

4. 13PHOTO

5. Olivier Guy

Electronic Devices Website Design Ideas

1. Wireless Charging Station & Speaker – Fubiz Media

The post 100+ Website Design Ideas, Examples and References for Small Business appeared first on Techuz Blog.

What are UX Design Patterns?

UX design patterns are the approaches applied to address common design problems. These patterns have successfully worked in solving usability problems and creating a pleasing user experience.  An example of such a pattern is the pull-to-refresh gesture on touch devices; you just pull down anywhere on the screen, and the content on the screen gets refreshed.

This pattern improves usability through familiarity and ease. The gesture is a standard way to refresh content, so it meets the user’s expectations. It is also an easier way of retrieving new content without the need to find and touch the refresh button. Thus, using such UX design patterns in your design makes the tasks easier and the interaction pleasant.

(First introduced in 2008 on a mobile app named Tweetie, pull-to-refresh has become a standard function to refresh the content on the screen. Image source: material.io )

Why UX Design Patterns are Important?

UX design patterns are important from two perspectives. The first one is the very essence of UX design — to create a better user experience. And the second one is from the designer’s perspective — to reduce efforts through reusability. Let’s understand both perspectives.

Users have already established mental models on how to use an app or website based on prior experience. In fact, they are so habituated to certain patterns that their actions are instinctive. And so when they use a new app they expect a similar interface. If you built your app without considering this, the users are more likely to get frustrated and even end up having a bad experience. Technically speaking, UX patterns reduce cognitive strain by creating familiar interfaces that users can interact with intuitively.

While for designers UX designs patterns work as a tried and tested approach to addressing a design problem.  This significantly reduces time and effort on a design. Imagine a designer constantly coming up with new ideas and reinventing the designs for every project. That would be a lot to do. And that would be never-ending. So with design patterns, designers don’t have to invent something new every time and instead just pull out these patterns from their toolbox.

However, using the UX patterns doesn’t mean they are cookie cutters to designing every interface. You still have to think and research to come up with the best designs. These patterns just work as structural and behavioural features that you can adopt and customize where needed. We’ll look into how to use UX design patterns to improve your design in a while.

What are Common UX Design Patterns?

There are numerous design patterns that can be categorized based on purpose and use cases. The most commonly used ones fall into these 4 groups: Input and output, navigation, content and information structuring and social sharing. Let’s take a look at them in more detail.

1. Input and output

(Calendar picker, a popular input design pattern for selecting dates. Source: Airbnb)

Users need to enter the information in several places on the interface. It can be for signing up, choosing a date for booking, entering contact and other personal details, credit card numbers, etc. The input and output patterns are aimed at making the data input easy and at the same time providing them feedback about the entered information. Examples of input and output patterns are as follows:

• Password strength meter: This helps users to create a strong password to prevent malicious password cracking.
• Calendar picker: The calendar picker allows users to choose the date to enter, sort or track data. The calendar graphics within the interface make it easy to choose the date or date range and make quick decisions.
• Good defaults: Good defaults prefills certain user data that are likely to match. It is useful when the system can make the appropriate guesses of the input fields. For example, input fields country or location.
• Captcha: Captcha helps reduce spamming by differentiating human users from automated bots.
• Preview information and updates: Previewing information helps users double-check that the inputs are correct and accurate as they need. It helps them safely explore the interface resulting in better interaction and experience.
• Wizard: Wizard breaks down one big task into small sub-tasks and helps users complete it step by step and one at a time.  It is highly useful when the user has to input complex and large amounts of data and follow specific steps in sequence.

2. Navigation

(Navigation tabs and breadcrumb — patterns that make navigation easy. Source: Adidas.com)

To perform tasks and get the information, the user has to locate features and browse through the product. Navigation patterns are aimed at making this easy by reducing friction and increasing learnability. They help users understand where they are now and how to reach to the point they want. Common examples of navigational UX patterns include:

• Navigation and module tabs: Tabs divide a large amount of data into separated sections, making them more accessible and easy to navigate. It is the most common navigation pattern that you’ll find across all digital products.
• Pull-to-refresh gesture: Pull-to-refresh gesture on certain devices help users load new content with a simple pull-down gesture. It’s the standard pattern to refresh the content in social media, chat, email news and content apps.
• Breadcrumbs: Breadcrumbs works as a visual aid helping users know their location in the site’s hierarchy. This makes it easier for them to go back and forth and thus simplifies the navigation.
• Progressive disclosure: To help users focus and easily navigate, you need to minimize the clutter and cognitive load. Progressive disclosure helps you do that by presenting only the required data and displaying other details upon request.

3. Content and information structure

(Slack’s FAQs page with a search bar and different categories with icons to help users easily understand and access the content. )

Content and information structure is similar to the navigation patterns. A clear content structure makes it easy for users to find and access the information. These UX patterns help you arrange the information in a logical order that improves readability and accessibility. Examples of content UX patterns include:

• Carousel: Carousals enable you to display multiple pieces of content in the same place on your page. This is highly useful when you have to showcase a set of items or explain a process.
• Tagging: Tagging helps to label, organize and categorize items using keywords. You can use it in your product when you want to associate a piece of content with multiple topics or when the content falls into multiple categories.
• Thumbnail: Thumbnails provide an overview and preview of different kinds of content: images, videos or text on the page. You can use this pattern when a large number of images and videos are presented to the users, they have to browse the collection and decide which one to choose.
• FAQs: Frequently asked questions or FAQs section is a place where users get answers to common questions. This provides them with a quick solution for their problems or a better understanding of your product/services which results in a good experience.
• Dashboard: Dashboard gives an overview of important data, functions and control in an easily understandable way.  It helps users monitor critical information at a glance so that they can make a quick decision. A good dashboard has multiple information but doesn’t confuse the users and every element is presented as per the hierarchy of their importance.
• Product page: Product pages in an e-commerce app/website shows details of the product to help users make a purchase decision. A good product page must have the necessary elements like high-quality product images and videos, and social proof like reviews, ratings and badges that reduces friction and induce trusts such as easy return and secure payments.

4. Social

(Reactions that allow users to express how they feel about the content. Source: Discord.)

Social features and components have become an essential part of products for they bring higher engagement and growth. Most successful games and apps in the market have features that help users communicate, share, compete and collaborate with other people online. Here are some of the common social UX patterns:

• Share: Users want to share particular content or interaction on their social media. Features like quick share buttons and auto-share make it easy for them to post updates. 
• Reactions: Reactions help users express sentiments about something in a simple way. It is useful to understand user’s likings and preferences.
• Chat: Personal and group chat helps users to interact and be a part of the community.  
• Invites: Invites allow users to share their enjoyable experiences with others and bring them to your product.  It also provides a way to connect with their friends and have a better experience on the platform.
• Activity feeds: Activity feeds give users an overview of what’s happening and expose them to the content of their interest. This helps them explore new things resulting in higher engagement.
• Collectable achievements: Achievements display the user’s status and reputation in the community. Adding collectable achievements such as badges, awards, points, acknowledgement etc. throughout the user journey increases engagement.

What are dark patterns in UX?

Dark patterns in UX take advantage of users’ biases and intuitive behaviours and lead them to do something that they didn’t intend to do. A popular example of this is ‘forced continuity’, where a user is provided with a free trial of the product and is automatically moved to a paid plan as soon as the trial ends.

Consider dark patterns as the evil twin of UX patterns. These patterns are not focused on improving the experience but rather benefitting the product/website owner by increasing sales, influencing users’ behaviour, or getting their personal information.

While dark patterns are used widely in the industry, and even by huge brands, whether they are unethical or just clever is still questionable. For example, is the limited stock notification on the product page added just to create FOMO or help genuinely interested buyers make a quick decision before the stock is out?

How To Apply UX Design Patterns to Your Design?

1. Identify the problem

The first and foremost thing is to identify the issue you’re trying to solve. Patterns are solutions to problems, and if there’s no problem, applying patterns doesn’t make any sense. There are a couple of research methods you can utilize to discover the problem.

• Conduct surveys.  Surveys can be used as a feedback tool to understand users’ experiences. You may want to ask users questions such as what they liked and disliked the most, how easy was the product/website to use and what features users think should be added.
• Perform usability testing. Usability testing helps you understand how the users interact with the interface. You can perform testing with your existing product, prototypes or even with your competitor’s product. The collected data will help with finding the friction and crucial insights to improve your product.
• Use analytics. Analytics can help you get vital insights about your existing product — what’s working well and what needs to improve. Consider the important metrics such as sign-up rate, bounce rate, cart abandonment rate, etc. to detect the problems for optimizing the design.

2. Analyze the available solutions

Once you have detected the issue with your design, it’s time to look at different approaches to solve it. Search and analyze similar products in the market: How the successful ones have solved the problem? What patterns have they used? Which ones are more liked by users?

Chances are that you may come across more than one pattern as the solution. For example, to display content on your app layout options like cards layout, carousal, split screen, etc. Make a list of all solutions suitable for your design.

3. Apply the patterns and test

Once you have the list of patterns, select the ones that most appropriately address your problem. If more than one patterns are suitable, then you may want to try A/B testing. Essentially, testing will help you understand which pattern works best for you. Perform usability tests and collect analytics data of the new patterns and optimize your designs.

Where To Find UX Design Patterns?

The best way to find the UX patterns is to observe and analyze the popular and successful products. However, there are also some amazing libraries that curate these patterns. Some of these useful libraries are as follows:

• UI Patterns: A comprehensive archive of patterns for almost all design problems — forms, content, menu, shopping, persuasive patterns and more.
• UI Scraps: UI scraps is a blog with a collection of all kinds of good and bad UX design patterns.
• Inspired UI: Pattern library focused on mobile design with patterns for more than 30 categories such as splash screens, sidebars, maps, dashboard, activities feeds and more.
• GoodUI: Huge library of UI patterns for landing pages, content, product, listings, checkout, pricing, cart, signup and more based on experimentation and testing.

The post UX Design Patterns: Solutions For Common Usability Problems appeared first on Techuz Blog.

What Is UX Design?

UX is the quality of experience that a user goes through while interacting with a product — be it a website, a custom web application, or a system. A number of aspects contribute to this which may translate into either good or bad experiences. 

UX design is what ensures that your users get the best possible experience by understanding and keeping their needs at the forefront. It considers every element that can shape the experience — be it onboarding for first-time users, exceptionally easy findability, reducing the number of steps in the customer journey, or extremely simple sign-ups and checkouts. UX design creates an altogether pleasant and efficient experience for the user.

Consider this example. 

(A size chart measurement on the product page to help customers buy the perfect fit.)

Many online buyers are skeptical whether the clothes will fit them well. So to help them buy the perfect size, the e-commerce stores add an option to measure and understand the size chart.  Thus helping customers buy the right fitted clothes online, reducing the friction during the buying journey on the app, and adding value to the overall experience.

But UX is not just about user experience.

It also helps the business achieve its goals.

After all, any product created to carry out business must meet its needs.  An example of this can be an effective signup or checkout process that not only makes things easier for users but also improves the acquisition and sales for the business. 

Mailchimp’s signup screen is a good example. Many times menus can be distracting and the users would click on other options instead of signing up.  So Mailchimp removed the menu and other distractions on the signup screen — letting users focus on what really matters. 

(Mailchimp’s sign up screen — example of the business side of UX)

Why Is UX Design Important?

Focus on the user and all else will follow.

— Rule #1, Google’s “Ten Things” Philosophy

That rule from Google’s “Ten Things” Philosophy alone tells enough about the importance of UX.

UX design helps you create a product that’s user-focused, making it more useful and delightful for them. And this is what increases the user’s engagement and conversion.  Here’re some of the reasons why UX design is important for your product.

• Designs based on facts (not assumptions). When a product goes through the UX design process, it is built based on research and facts — not on assumptions. It enables you to create something based on real data and real observations.

• Increases customer loyalty. By keeping the user needs at the forefront, you’re creating a product that satisfies and delights the users. And satisfied users are more likely to be retained. The positive experience you create through the product will breed loyal customers.

• Make an impact on the users’ life. Going through the process of understanding the users and creating user-centric designs, you’re building a product that actually solves a problem. In doing this, you’re making an impact on the users’ life by making things better.

• Saves time and money. The UX design process helps you test things quickly and frequently in the early stages. This helps you gather feedback and get the real-world validation early on rather than reworking a completed product.

• Achieve business goals. A good UX makes good business. The UX design not only fulfills the users’ needs but also helps achieve business objectives.

• Create a successful product. When the product is designed to fulfill both the users and business requirements, its success rate is obviously higher.

UX is not just a “nice to have”  but a “must-have” for your product. It separates great and successful from average-performing ones.

Just think about the brands like Google, Apple, Amazon, or the immensely successful products — Slack, Uber, Dropbox, Netflix — all of them provide a superior experience. Such companies have invested in designing a better UX, contributing a huge to their growth and success. 

With that said, let’s dive into the UX design process.

The UX Design Process

1. Research

Research is the first and most important stage of the UX design process. It feeds you with the knowledge to make the right decisions, create the right designs, and pretty much everything in the later stages. So it is something that your entire process is based on.

When you do UX research, you are taking out any guesswork and assumptions about what the users want. You’re building an accurate understanding of how users feel,  what motivates them, and what are their desires and interests. 

This way, you can really empathize and understand the users and build the product that fulfills the needs. 

Also, keep in mind that business research is equally essential as user research.  You need to gather enough information and understanding from the business perspective. Here, let’s check the research methods used during this stage.

Interviews

Interviews are one of the best ways to connect with your users personally and gather vital data. 

You sit down with the user from the same target demographic and have an in-depth discussion to discover their needs, requirements, things they struggle with, pain points, things they would like to have in the product, etc.  

The goal during the interview is to get as much information as possible. So it is essential to listen well during the interview. Ensure that the interview is conversational, helping them to open their deep beliefs. Though the personal 1-1 interview helps you understand the verbal and nonverbal reactions, you can always conduct interviews over the phone or video. Here are some of the tools to use for remote interview

• Zoom for video calls
• Temi for calls transcription
• Lookback to record interviews

Surveys

Surveys are effective research tools to understand user’s preferences and attitudes about specific topics.

You create a precise questionnaire and send it to your target audience to understand their preference. This is a great tool to get information on a large scale. You can add a variety of questions, both closed-ended and open-ended — such as yes/no answers, ratings, and opinions & thoughts that gives you a good mixture of qualitative and quantitative data.

While creating the surveys, ensure that the questions are simple, clear, short, and in a flow — making it easy for the users to understand and answer. These tools can be handy to survey the audience:

• Google Forms
• Typeform
• Survey Monkey

Analytics

Analytics provides vital metrics about the products and services about what’s performing well and what needs to be improved. These analytics can be useful for both web-based products like websites and web apps as well as mobile apps.

Some of the important metrics to consider are click-through rates, page views, exit rates, average session time, and bounce rate. These are some of the vital data when it comes to redesigning or optimizing your current product or app.

(An example of website analysis with Google analytics)

Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis involves identifying the competitors in the market and evaluating their products.  This gives you an idea about what’s good about their product and what are the weaknesses,  and how does your target audience feel about it. All vital information can be used to create a better product. In fact, a competitive analysis can be a great way to start your UX design research.

Conduct Workshops

Conducting workshops are a great way to understand the business perspective of the product. These workshops usually involve the business stakeholders, conducting discussions, and exercises to understand their vision. This ensures that the designs you create also fulfill the business requirements. 

Usability Testing

Usability testing is something you do when you have functional prototypes. But you can even perform it during the research stage with your competitor’s products. This will give you crucial insights into how people use it and what they are really looking for beforehand. 

Create Personas

Personas are research-based fictional characters that represent your target users. This represents how your target user looks like including their demographics, interests, behaviors, pain points, and goals. Creating personas helps designers understand the users in a better way. Further, personas are also easier to comprehend than lengthy research reports. 

(An example of persona. Source: Venngage)

2. Design

The design stage in the UX process is when your product starts taking a tangible shape. All the information collected during the research is translated into designs — information architecture, wireframes, mockups, and prototypes. 

Create Information Architecture

(Example of Spotify’s information architecture)

Information architecture is the structure of the product. It links different parts and pages of the website or the app together as per the categories and hierarchy. This makes it easy to find things and create a meaningful user journey. You can consider information architecture as a structure and navigation system that’s functional and appropriately meets the user’s perception.

To create it, start with understanding the task model and user’s journey.

The user’s task model is the series of steps that users go through and the decisions they make to complete the specific tasks. It even includes the tasks that users may perform outside your product. For example, checking reviews or scrounging through the discount coupons on third-party websites.

User journey includes the tasks that the users perform on the product to reach from point A to point B. An example of this is searching the product, adding it to the cart, and proceeding through the checkout.

These will help you understand what the user goes through to perform a task or reach the decision. Once you understand that, you can break down the tasks and create an information architecture. You can divide the information architecture into 3 parts: 

1. Identifying the information necessary to communicate with your audience.
2. Classifying that information into content and pages.
3. Organize and mapping each information and connect it with the next ones.

Create Wireframe, Mockups, and Prototypes

The next step in the UX design process is to create wireframes, mockups, and prototypes. This is where you can start seeing your designs come to life. 

Wireframes: Wireframes are the blueprint of each page or screen. It represents the design of the page, the layout,  visual hierarchy of the elements like the images, button, content, etc. These can be low fidelity or high fidelity. 

(Example of a wireframe)

While creating wireframes, you just need to focus on the functionality without bothering to make it look pretty. You need to create a representation of something that meets the users and business needs and enables getting feedback.

Mockups: With mockups, you go even further in realizing your design. These are the actual graphic and design representation of the pages based on the wireframes.

Prototypes: Prototypes are the final version of the design, a close representation of the final product with navigation, visual elements, and functional interaction. This helps you get the feel of the actual product without any coding. Thus, you can explore, tweak and check the functionality before sending it to the developers. 

(Example of a prototype)

Some tools used during this stage:

• Balsamiq Mockups
• Sketch
• InVision Studio
• Adobe XD

3. Testing

Once you have the fully realized version of your design — the prototypes, it’s time to put it to the test.

You can perform usability testing by putting the design in front of the users to go through it. Start by providing specific tasks that you want them to perform on the platform.

For example, if it’s an e-commerce store ask them to search the product and complete the purchase. Observe how easily they could navigate — what made things easy and is there any friction during the process? Collect the information that you can use to optimize the designs.

It is great if you can perform the usability testing in person as it gives you a better opportunity to analyze and observe the user’s reaction and experience. But if that’s not possible, even remote testing can give you vital information. 

One thing to remember is that testing early and testing frequently throughout the UX design process helps resolve the red flags early on. When you test along at each stage — while creating wireframes, mockups, and prototypes before handing the design to the developers, your final product has already gone through multiple testing. This ensures that the final product is already user-approved and as desired.

4. Implement Changes and Optimize

Once your designs go through testing, you’ll have some red flags and design problems to resolve. This is the stage where you optimize it.

Remember, UX design is an iterative process that may need several back-and-forths of design, testing, and optimizing.  And this is an important aspect of UX, you keep on learning and improving the designs to make them better.

Wrapping Up

UX has now reached the status of science. Following the definite principles, practices, and more importantly — a process can inevitably create a pleasant and fulfilling user experience. Use this process to create a great product for your users and in case you need some expert assistance to level up your UX, feel free to get in touch with us.

The post UX Design Process: A Complete Guide To Design a Better User Experience appeared first on Techuz Blog.

As the internet becomes more accessible, digital innovation grows in importance. As of July 2020, nearly 4.6 billion individuals actively used the internet.

Nearly 1.8 billion websites currently populate the internet. The total number of mobile apps reached 8.9 million this year.

This saturation means businesses face massive competition for consumers’ attention online.  By remaining on the cusp of design trends, businesses may sharpen their competitive edges’.

To help capture consumers’ attention online, businesses should implement the following top UI and UX design trends into their digital products.  But first, let’s understand what exactly is UI and UX.

UI Design Versus UX Design

When discussing product design, it’s common to hear people use UI and UX interchangeably. However, they’re distinct concepts. To optimize your product, it’s important to distinguish between the two.

UI, or User Interface, refers to space where humans and machines interact. Broadly, the goal of UI design is to provide users with an intuitive experience.

UI design attends to all the visual and interactive elements of a product’s interface. This includes buttons, icons, space, fonts, and colors. The design generally promotes a brand’s strengths and visual assets.

Similarly, user experience (UX) designers strive to create straightforward products. However, UX refers to an individual’s experience interacting with a product. UX design is less concerned with visuals and more focused on building a product that meets a target audience’s needs.

Following audience research, journey mapping, and interaction analysis, UX designers create wireframes and prototypes. This guides the development of a product.

There’s a deep connection between UI and UX design. They are, however, distinct practices that involve equally important aspects of a product.

By understanding the nuances between UI and UX design, you may be able to create a better product for consumers.

Top 4 UI/UX Design Trends

1. 3D Graphics and Immersive Features

Businesses should implement 3D and immersive elements into their digital products to provide consumers with a compelling experience.

3D graphics may not be new to UI design. In fact, the earliest forms of 3D graphics for websites date back to 1994 with Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML).

However, the advancement of AR and VR technologies heightens the feature’s impacts. The combination of 3D animations and immersive technologies provides an opportunity to create mesmeric visuals for users.

The popularity of 3D graphics and animations has increased across product segments. Notable brands such as Apple, Sony, and Gucci leveraged 3D animations to launch products.

In 2019, Gucci created an immersive online catalog to present their new handbag collection in 3D.

(Source: Gucci)

Users scroll to access a 360-degree view of the product. The interactive experience encourages users to spend more time on the site and, hopefully, make a purchase.

3D animations such as a 360-degree video establish visual appeal and invite consumers to directly interact with your products directly. A better website earns credibility with consumers, which may generate greater financial returns.

2.    Increased Customer Voice in Copy

Businesses should craft UX writing with the tone and voice of customers to better engage them.

Your website’s copy not only defines your brand voice and tone but also serves as a powerful channel for customer engagement.

You should identify your customer’s voice and then integrate it into your UX writing. To identify your audience’s voice, you could conduct a survey or read customer reviews.

This may reveal specific challenges to which you can directly speak in your copy. You can then tailor the copy to specific points in your customer journey, which may encourage them to travel further down the funnel. It also integrates them into your brand, its history, and its future to deepen a bond.

As this is based on your customers’ voices, this communication style’s less formal and unique. An informal tone presents a familiarity, especially if you create a dialogue.

(Source: Medium.com)

Medium speaks directly to a user’s pain point by acknowledging the distraction through an apology. The website then further speaks to its audience by encouraging readers to continue engaging with the content using casual terms for a relationship: “make it official.”

By speaking their language, you demonstrate that you understand your audience and deepen your relationship with it.

3.     Creative Data Visualizations

Businesses should take advantage of technological advancements to produce innovative data displays that engage consumers.

The increased accessibility of interactive and immersive technologies enables designers to develop data visualization strategies to show rather than tell consumers the value of your solutions.

A combination of WebGL and 3D technology is one way to impactfully display data. Using the solution, you may assess data sources, filter one, and then create a data visualization that surpasses out-of-date graphics such as tables, databases, and lists.

Abstract data visualizations may be particularly useful for tech-driven websites. QR code payment platform, Mogney, demonstrates its product through interactive visuals.

(Source: Mogney.com)

Rather than blocks of text and stagnant images, the website illustrates its product through abstraction visual techniques. This creates depth and offers a unique experience to users to encourage engagement.

4.    Voice Interactions

Businesses that integrate voice user interfaces into their products may sharpen their competitive edges by creating a better experience for users.

More and more devices feature voice UIs, which enables users to interact with them through voice or speech commands. This increased accessibility results in voice search’s ubiquity: about 30% of all searches will be done without a screen this year.

While most commonly associated with smart home speakers, you can also design voice user interfaces a variety of products. As more consumers integrate voice search into their daily lives, it may become an expected product feature.

Voice user interface design is especially important for mobile applications. A majority (85%) of people use voice technology on their smartphones.

Voice commands also make your product more accessible. The design interface increases your product’s convenience, allowing consumers to use it when touch isn’t practical.

It also expands your product to people with disabilities. More than a quarter (26%) of adults in the U.S. have a form of disability. By designing a voice user interface, you enable a larger audience to interact with your product.

Businesses should implement voice user interfaces into their products to remain ahead of the design curve.

Adapt Products to UI and UX Design Trends

UI and UX design trends demonstrate improvements in products’ visual appeal and performance. To maintain a competitive advantage, businesses should implement these trends.

Leverage the advancement of immersive and 3D technologies to create a powerful experience for users.

You should infuse your UX writing with your customers’ voice to not only remain on-trend but also connect with your audiences.

To encourage consumer engagement, you can integrate unique data visualizations into your products.

You may broaden your audience and satisfy users’ expectations by designing voice UIs for your products.

The post UI/UX Trends That You Must Consider For Your Next Design Project appeared first on Techuz Blog.

And then there is another breed of websites where everything is in harmony; your eyes smoothly flow from one piece of information to another, every element in proportion, everything in balance, everything in rhythm. These websites — stunning,  jaw-dropping, a web design masterpiece.

And it’s not just good looks. They are functional and effortlessly serve the purpose.

So what separates the former ones form the latter — the sloppy and clumsy from aesthetic web UIs with clear information architecture, enhanced usability, interaction and experience?

Well, it’s the basics. 

The latter ones get their basics right.

They are built adhering to the primary principles of design. The set of rules accumulated from varied disciplines — mathematics, psychology, behavioural science — that provide the foundation for appealing visuals and a balance of form and function.  And in this article, we’re going to understand that. We’ll discuss the following principles of design.

• Contrast – Shows Relative Importance
• Balance – Ensues Balance in Design
• Emphasis – Makes Key Element Stand Out
• Repetition – Brings Consistency
• Variety – Breaks Monotony
• Visual Hierarchy – Arranges Information
• White Space – Creates Breathing Space
• Rhythm – Guides the User’s Eyes
• Proportion – Scales Different Elements 

By the end of this article, you’ll understand these nine principles. And not only that, you’ll collect enough information to apply it to your next project and make it stand out.
Sounds like a plan? Let’s dive in.

Key Principles of Designs

1. Contrast

“Can we make this thing more…umm…pop up?”

You know what clients mean when they say that? It’s contrast.

Contrast is the difference in visual elements that makes one object over other more distinguishable — the object in the front over the one in background.

Designers use this design principle to make the important element stand out. It’s just like presenting a diamond on a velvet cloth.

Contrast is a great tool to draw user’s attention, communicate a clear message and establish hierarchies of the elements.

Generally while discussing contrast in design, it’s the colour contrast that comes to our mind. For example, black text on a white background is what we call contrast. But it’s not just the colours, there are a number of ways you can implement contrast in your design such as size, space and fonts.  Here take a look.

Colour Contrast

This is the most common way of using contrast —  colours from different segments of the colour wheel. However, make sure the contrasting colours you use really makes the relative visual difference, as not all contrasting colours are good at it.  Workaround with different colours and you can always use a contrast checker tool.

(Good contrast vs bad contrast)

Size Contrast

Bigger elements stand out, they take more space and are discovered by the user first.  By varying the size of the elements you can decide which elements will be highlighted. It’s a very effective and easy way to create a dynamic. Use different size for the element on the page to create contrast and drama in the design.

Space Contrast

Using negative space is another smart way to create contrast. Add some negative space around the important element to make it stand out and draw the user’s attention. Google’s homepage is a classic example of space contrast.

Fonts Contrast

Fonts can be used to emphasize certain text. You can draw the user’s attention to the content that has more significance by using different fonts or typefaces. This is an effective way to draw the reader’s attention to important messages on your website. However, avoid using too many different fonts as this dilutes the main message and its uniqueness.

2. Balance

Just like any physical object, the elements on your web page — shapes, patterns, colours, typefaces, images, etc. have weight.  And by proper distribution of these elements, you can balance the visual weight to create harmony, cohesion and richer user experience.

There are two ways to do this — symmetrical balance and asymmetric balance.

While generally balance and symmetry are related to each other — there’s a misconception that both are the same. They are different. In fact,  symmetric and asymmetric are the tools to achieve balance and equilibrium in the design. Let’s understand these two balances.

Symmetric balance is the equal distribution of weights of an element around a centre or across the axis.

“Equal distribution” is the way to achieve balance here. Humans are bilateral creatures that prefer symmetry. So when our eyes see the elements of equal weights our mind feels complete.

While asymmetry is on the other side of the spectrum.

Asymmetry balance is a composition of elements with unequal weights.

Although there is no symmetry here, there is an equilibrium in design and it breaks the monotony to make things interesting. This also is a great tool to put more emphasis and dominance on certain elements of the screen. When applied in the right way, this design principle can guide the user’s eyes to the focal point you want.

3. Emphasis

Emphasis in design aims to draw the user’s attention to certain information or elements on the page. This could be anything — the product image, a call to action button, a headline of the website or the testimonials. It depends on what you want to accomplish on the web page.

To put it simply, emphasis creates a focal point to grab the user’s attention to certain objects.

Now, to apply emphasis to your design you need to understand the concept of the dominant and subordinate element.

Dominant element is the main message you want to communicate to the user — the main element that the user should draw their attention to. And subordinate elements should guide the user to the dominant element or somewhat capture the attention but not should eclipse the dominant. Once you understand your dominant and subordinate elements you can use colour, shape, size, proximity, similarity, isolation, etc. to create emphasis.

4. Repetition

Repetition is simply using the same or similar design elements throughout the pages of the website. It is used to create consistency, reinforce an idea, create cohesiveness in design and overall better user experience.

The reason why this principle works effectively is that we have a tendency to find expected patterns. The more your users encounter the repeated patterns, the more they internalize it and the more comfortable they get using the interface.

So while designing your web UI consider repeating the following elements in your web design:

• Header
• Footer
• Navigation
• Fonts
• Typography
• Colour
• Shapes
• Textures
• Patterns
• Graphics
• Image style and placement

And remember, if you are looking to mix-up the elements to avoid the monotony of repetition, never alter the basic elements such as website navigation, header footer, call to actions — as it may end up confusing the visitor.

5. Variety

While repetition is one of the principles of design that brings unity, variety, on the other hand, breaks repetition to avoid monotony.

Variety can be used in different ways — through typography, colour, size, images, shapes, etc. It’s essential to understand that the variety created without a goal or to enhance the user experience and aesthetics is pointless. An example of good variety is using different typefaces and weights for headings and text paragraph — however, at the same time, you need to repeat the same variety in different pages and sections across the website.

6. Visual Hierarchy

Hierarchy focuses on how well the content can be processed by the users on the website. You create a flow of content on the page by creating hierarchy in the layout.

Visual hierarchy is often compared to the journalistic way of writing — the inverted pyramid method where you arrange the information as per the importance of the message.

Similarly, when using visual hierarchy in design, you arrange the visual elements in different levels to create a sense of order, prioritization and visual cues — and to distinguish elements of the higher, low or same weight.

These visual cues that help you present the information clearly also allow the users to immediately understand what’s in for them. For example, when a user lands on the page they can immediately recognize with the banner text and image if this is what they were looking for.

The common tools of the trade for creating visual hierarchy are size, fonts, colour and negative space.

7. White Space

A web page stuffed with elements and objects all over the space can make things difficult to understand and read.  It doesn’t give the user’s eye a room to breathe or focus on one element. The worst part — it leaves the users baffled and they may bounce off the page. That’s where white space comes to rescue.

White space — also known as the negative space — is the fundamental building block of good design. To define it simply, it is the empty space between the individual and different design elements. It primarily gives a breathing space between the content which makes the information legible and digestible to the users.

While other principles of the design on the list deal with adding something — this design theory is all about removing the elements. There are two distinct types of white space used in web pages — macro and micro.

Macro White Space

Macro white space is the overall white space in the design layout. This is the white space seen in the left and right side of the layout, between different sections or different design elements. Macro white space is easier to notice and defines the overall bigger picture of the design.

Micro White Space

Micro white space is the empty area between the small and individual elements such as lines, paragraphs, letter spacing, height, etc. Although this white space may seem relatively smaller, it plays an important role in improving content legibility.

Often clients may see white space as a waste of the screen space — and would consider adding more information and elements but that would only hurt the elegance of the design and user experience. Here, check the advantages that white space on the page can bring to the design.

Better content legibility

As discussed, micro white space impacts the readability of the content and thus the user spends more time on the page and has a direct impact on the experience.

Highlights key elements

Key elements on the page where you want users to draw attention are highlighted with negative space. It builds a focal point and the user’s attention can be drawn to a specific element or message on the page.

Clean and minimal look

Less is more — that’s what this design principle deals with. Smart utilization of white space helps you achieve a clean, elegant and minimalist web design.

Separates the elements

White space acts as a separator that divides the distinct elements to improve the visual layout. This helps communicate different ideas and information effectively within the page composition.

8. Rhythm

Just like music, rhythm can be created in design too. You can create a composition of your website where the user will follow along just like musical rhythm. And this can be achieved by repeating the pattern, layout and elements in the design

Rhythm or movement in design results in setting the mood of the web interface and enhancing the look and feel of the web page. There are five basic types of visual rhythm you can create in design: Regular, random, alternating, progressive and flowing rhythm.

Regular rhythm is simply a repetition of elements at a regular interval and at the same spacing in the design. While random is the opposite of it — there is no predictable pattern. An alternating rhythm is similar to the regular rhythm but just with more complexity. Progressive, on the other hand, uses patterns and scales to create change over time — a gradual progressive change in design or size of the element that creates a rhythm.

9. Proportion

Proportion has a long history way back to ancient Greece where sculptors used this principle to chisel masterpiece out of marbles. Even Egyptian artists used canon of proportions to determine the perfect proportion of elements in their art.

Today, proportion is one of the most important principles of designs defining the scale of different design elements for balanced and harmonious web design.  And this harmony and balance are what makes the design visually pleasing. Apart from that, it is a great tool to achieve consistency, rhythm, make certain elements stand out, drive attention, implement visual hierarchy and even evoke emotions.

Wrapping Up

Understanding and implementing these principles of design can notably improve your designs. Practice them, try which works for your project and understand how incorporating them in the design can help enhance the visuals and user experience.

Treat these principles as a set of tools under your belt. The techniques to influence the user’s perspective, grab their attention, communicate a clear message or structure the information — just like grabbing the users by the hand and leading them to the places you want them to go. 

The post Key Principles of Design — The Foundation for Creating Appealing & Functional Web Designs appeared first on Techuz Blog.

The global pandemic cases have crossed a million. Daily life has been affected, businesses have been disrupted — from local coffee shops and restaurants to the hospitality industry, retail to travel and even the technology sector.

COVID 19 is a black swan event. There is no doubt in it. It has derailed the plans, delayed launches, halted hiring and operations and put a hiatus on business.

But fortunately, if your business is software dependent, you can still keep it afloat by outsourcing the development.

In fact, if you have been brushing outsourcing under the rugs, this is the best time to rethink, adjust and implement outsourcing strategy for your business.

So here’s a guide on how to outsource — rent a coder or a team of developers to ensure smooth project development without any interruption.  In this article, we’ll discuss the step by step process for effective software outsourcing and its key benefits.

How to Rent a Coder or Development Team – The Process

1. Do Your Homework 

Do your homework before you initiate the hiring process. Prepare the budget, project requirements, your business goals and expected outcomes from the project. The best way to do this is to create an app requirement document.  It is a document specifying the necessary information about the project which makes it easy for both you and the developers to understand the project and goals. Consider these things to include in the document:

• Synopsis of the project
• Project requirements, features and deliverables
• Target audience and competitors
• Non-functional and technical requirements
• Expected project deadline

Apart from defining the budget and deliverables, prepare a set of questionnaires for the pre-screening process. This will make the hiring process quick and you’ll be able to easily shortlist the ones that meet your requirements.

2. Make a List of Candidates

Most people find their ideal outsourcing partners using one of the four ways — referrals from the personal network, B2B directory listings, online job marketplaces or a simple search on the internet.  

Personal references are the most common and trusted ways of finding vendors. However, these days B2B directories such as Clutch.co and The Manifest and marketplaces like Upwork, Freelancer and TopTal have become a norm to find the best resources.

3. Analyzing the Candidates

Once you have a list of ideal candidates, analyze them to hire the best one for your project. Here are some of the things you must consider while analyzing.

• Check the coder’s or company’s background — their professional profiles, websites, years of experience, etc.
• Check their technical expertise — proficiency with relevant tools and technologies.
• Go through their portfolio — the projects they have delivered in the past, the total number of projects, industry and niche expertise and technology used in those projects. 
• If you are looking to hire a company, check for the number of resources available and ask for individual developer’s resumes and profiles.

• Check the reviews of the candidates on different platforms on the internet — what their clients have to say about their services. For example, platforms like Clutch.co performs independent interviews with companies’ clients for genuine and authentic reviews. These reviews can help you better understand the quality of service these companies provide. 

(Techuz’s profile on independent B2B review platform Clutch)

• Test their capabilities with a practical test or a demo task. 

4. Select the Ideal Coder or Company

Once you have analyzed the candidates based on the above criteria, you’ll be able to select the ideal one for your project. Get a quote, discuss the payment options, set the milestones and sign an NDA. 

5. Define the Communication and Project Management Process

Lastly, define the communication and project management procedure. When you are outsourcing a project, communication and management is one of the prime factors for its success. The good part is there are numerous communication and management tools that enable flawless remote communication and management. 

Consider using the following tools for managing your project remotely:

• Video conferencing: Zoom Meeting, Skype
• Google Suite: Storage, sharing, emailing, file management and other necessary functionality
• Communication: Slack, Skype
• Design Collaboration: InVision
• Project management: Trello, Basecamp, Asana

6. Provide Regular Feedback

Stay in touch with the team or the project manager. It essential to evaluate the work and give your directions after the completion of each milestone. Decide the time and frequency of calls for feedback to ensure you have are regularly staying in touch with the team and project development runs smooth.

And Lastly

7. Enjoy the Benefits of Outsourcing

Here are the 3 key benefits of outsourcing your development work:

Cost Efficiency

Outsourcing your app development is the best way to keep business costs down. In fact, a report by Deloitte reveals that cost efficiency is the major reason why organizations consider outsourcing.

It significantly reduces the overhead costs associated with hiring, managing and controlling the in-house team. Outsourcing to countries in Asia and western Europe helps you to cut down the cost with the lower wage rates. And further, you get a number of payment models that suits your business and project needs.

Skilled Talent and Better Efficiency 

Outsourcing not only helps in cost-cutting but also achieving better results that might not be possible with in-house teams. 

When you choose to rent a coder you have a large pool of talented resources. These resources are skilled with years of experience and technology expertise that might be difficult to find while hiring in-house.

Giants like Alibaba and Skype also outsourced their development to get the benefit of appropriate and skilled talent for their product.

Flexibility & Optimization 

Unlike in-house teams, scaling up and down the outsourced team is quite easy. As the work increases or to make the development faster, you can anytime hire more resources. Similarly scaling down the team can help to free up the unused resources and save costs. Further, if you outsource to a development company resources optimization becomes even easier.

Looking to outsource your project — need a dedicated team of developers or a top-rated app development company? You are at the right place.

Just drop us a line and we’ll get back to you.

The post How to Rent a Coder or a Team to Keep Up App Development During COVID Pandemic appeared first on Techuz Blog.

In this article, will walk through all the ins and outs of software development outsourcing — things you must know, how to make the most out of it and how outsourcing can be a better strategy than the concept of “own, manage and direct control”. 

What is Software Outsourcing?

Software development outsourcing is the strategy to hand over the software development and related work to a third-party — such as a software development agency — instead of an in-house team of programmers. Handing over the development to specialized experts ensures that you get the best results in addition to saving your overhead expenses.

As per the statistics, the IT outsourcing industry was valued at 66.52 billion U.S. dollars in 2019, and the major part of the outsourced services was covered by software development and maintenance. These statistics clearly show that outsourcing software development is the new normal.

(Software development and maintenance are the major IT outsourced services)

How a Business Can Benefit From Software Outsourcing?

1. Cost Efficiency

It’s not rocket science: Your business has to make more than it spends to maximize the profits. One of the ways to do this is to meet the business needs at the lowest cost possible. And outsourcing does the work for you. As per a report by Deloitte, the major reason why companies outsource is cost-cutting.

(Source – Deloitte’s 2016 Global Outsourcing Survey)

An in-house team of software developers undeniably costs more to the business. In addition to their salary, the hiring process, cost of software & tools, employee benefits schemes, etc. make the in-house team way more expensive. These expenses further increase as developers gain more experience and the team expands.

While outsourcing the development drastically reduces the costs. The software development companies offer full-cycle development at reasonable rates to help you maximize the profits. Countries like India and Ukraine are known for delivering high-quality services at attractive rates that means all your business needs are met on the budget without compromising on the proficiency level. 

(Average hourly rates of software development outsourcing by countries. Source – Codementor)

2. Flexibility and Faster Development

Flexibility is another major perk of outsourcing. Launching the software on time can be a challenge — any delays in time to market can affect the business relations with customers and stakeholders. 

That’s when outsourcing makes things easier. It gives you the flexibility to scale-up the team anytime as per the project needs, and without any prolonged hiring process. Software outsourcing companies can easily tackle emergency situations such as allocating new resources to the project instantly to meet the tight deadlines. 

But it’s not just scaling up. Outsourced resources can also be cut down to optimize team and save costs. At times, employing more resources than necessary can affect the bottom line of the business. This generally happens in an in-house team when you hire more resources when scaling up but have to bear the expense of the unutilized resources later on. Here, outsourcing to a software development company makes resources optimization flexible and thus reducing the costs.

3. Focus on Core Business

Software development is a time-consuming process. Focusing on building and managing the tech project can take you away from your core business activities of generating revenue and business growth. Outsourcing the development helps you focus on your business priorities. 

Outsourcing to a trusted software development company works just like extending the department of your organization. You focus on your core business while the outsourced company takes care of your technical needs such as development, managing the resource and maintaining the quality without wasting your time on recruitment, training and payroll of the staff. 

4. Get the Right Expertise and Skills 

Outsourcing software development to a provider offers you the skilled tech talents that have deep expertise in sophisticated technologies. From business analysts to UI/UX designers, front-end developers and back-end architects — you get the complete package of skills for the success of your project all under one roof. Finding such talent and hiring them on a full-time basis can be a tall order — outsourcing does the work here. 

You can choose the outsourcing partner with the right expertise and proven experience that’s aligned with your project needs. At the same time, it’s essential to understand the outsourcing models that fit your project. Here are some of the common software outsourcing models. 

Software Outsourcing Models

Time and Material Model

Time and material is a popular outsourcing model for large projects. In this model, a software development company provides the resources — developers, designers or QAs and charges on hourly basics. This model would work for you if your project requires some significant research and changes during the development. 

Dedicated Development Team

In a dedicated team model, the service provider supplies the client with software developers and other necessary resources for long term basics. These resources are chosen by the clients as per the needs, experience and skills required for the project. The client may manage the resources on their own or even assign a project manager that would communicate to the developers on their behalf. In a dedicated team model, the resources can work remotely or at the client’s office. 

Staff Augmentation

Staff augmentation is an outsourcing model that enables extending your software team as per the project needs. The client hires the resources from a software development company on contract basics as per the requirements. This model is similar to the dedicated team and helps cut down the cost liable for hiring additional full-time resources.

Fixed-Price Model

A fixed-price model is suitable for projects with a definite scope and requirements. A fixed budget and deadline for the development is decided mutually by the service provider and client in advance. This model ensures a fixed budget, regardless of resources utilized for the development.

Examples of Successful Software Outsourcing

Alibaba

 Alibaba, the China-based global marketplace valuing about $420 billion outsourced the development during the initial years. At the time, China didn’t have the skilled talent needed for the development and on the other hand, it had to compete with brands like eBay. This made it essential for them to find the right talent to fuel growth and outsourcing made it possible.

BaseCamp

Basecamp is another great example of how software development outsourcing can help you achieve your desired goals. The popular project management tool was started by a team of 4 and soon it began to grow. Jason Fried, Founder and CEO of Basecamp admitted that they were delivering a great product to the customers but had issues with in-house process and management. As a result, they decided to outsource the development that helped them focus on business priorities. 

Skype

Skype, the company that revolutionized communication by introducing phone, chat and video communication — and in fact, the most used tool for communication by remote workers was also outsourced during the initial years. The company outsourced its back-end to 3 Estonian developers and later they were brought in as partners before being purchased by Microsoft for $8.5 billion. Outsourcing to find the team of developers proved to be an effective strategy for Skype and one of the reasons for its massive success.

Upwork

UpWork, a marketplace for freelancers and contractors that also makes finding quality outsourcing talent easier, outsourced its development and engineering. The company that is a merger of two most popular platforms, Elance and ODesk hired freelancers for development from the ODesk marketplace. 

Tips to Hire Software Outsourcing Company

1. Define Your Requirements

Before you hire an outsourcing partner you must have a clearly defined project requirement. This includes what your project needs and what you expect from the outsourcing company.

You can make a brief outline that includes the features, functionalities, competitors and technical requirements of the software. Defining these requirements will make it easier for you to find the right outsourcing partner with skilled resources and experience. 

You should consider creating an app requirements document. This is a prerequisite for a software project that makes the outsourcing and development process much effective and easier.  You can check our article on how to draft an app requirement document for more details. Here’s what you need to add in the document.

1. Synopsis of the project
2. Target audience
3. Features
4. Navigation pattern
5. Non-functional (Technical requirements)

(An example of client’s software requirement)

2. Make a List of Companies

Make a list of 5-10 software companies that you can partner with.  This initial task of finding the list of companies can be tough but there are few sources that make things easier.

Get referrals from your network

This is one of the most effective ways to find the right outsourcing company as the referred companies prove to be more reliable.  You may ask your friends and colleagues in your industry and make a list of companies with the necessary expertise and credentials.

Check directory listings

You can find some reliable companies on reputed directory listings on the web.  This is another popular method to find outsourcing partners but you need to ensure you are checking the genuine and reliable ones.

Clutch.co is a well-known directory listing to find an outsourcing partner. You can find some of the best software development, web development, mobile app development, design and marketing companies on the platform. The platform also conducts independent interviews and reviews of the listed company’s clients.  This ensures the reviews and ratings submitted are transparent and reliable.

Check online marketplaces

Online marketplaces have been here for a while serving the needs to outsource the work. You can post the job you want to outsource or check the company profiles on the platform. These marketplace platforms also work as directories with reviews and ratings, information about the company, past projects and rates.

3. Technical  Skills and Capabilities of the Company

You need to ensure that the outsourcing partner has the right technical skills and is capable to meet the needs for the successful execution of the project.  Here are some of the important things you need to consider while choosing the outsourcing team.

Technical expertise

Check the technical skills of the team, their experience in using the tools and technologies required for the project. One of the ways to evaluate their technical expertise is with a sample task. This is an effective way of evaluating the team’s technical deft along with their communication skills and adherence to deadline.

(Technologies we are use at Techuz)

Industry and niche experience

Experience in developing software for the same or similar industry as yours would make the development process faster and easier. Consider the team with similar experience that would make it easy for you to explain the concepts and project requirement.

Development process

The software development process is the way your project will be executed. If your project requires to follow certain SDLC methodologies, you must ensure in advance if the team is well-versed with it.

(Software development process example- Scrum)

Communication and collaboration

Even though the team is not in-house, you need to have effective communication and collaboration. This is quite critical as sharing updates and feedback should be quick and sound. So you need to understand the communication and collaboration process of the team, availability as per your timezone and even the communication skills in your preferred language.

Security and confidentiality

For any software outsourcing project, you need to ensure that the project information and business details outsourced are in safe hands. Understand the company’s security policies, source-code management and NDA documentation process.

4. Check the Portfolio

When choosing the outsourcing company, it’s essential to check their portfolio. It ensures you are going with the company that has delivered successfully in past and can do it for you too.

While going through the portfolio dig will into their work about the specific technologies used, experience in developing software in a niche, country of their clients and more.

Most of the outsourcing companies showcase their work on their website or would share a corporate deck. While discussing your project you can check their past work and understand what and how have the team delivered. Here’s a list of things you should consider:

1. Has the company delivered projects similar to yours?
2. Do they have experience in your industry?
3. What size of projects have they delivered — small, medium or large?
4. Check what the clients have to say about their work or the impact of their service for the client.
5. What was the scope of the work they delivered in the related projects?

(An example of a company’s portfolio)

5. Meet Them in Person

Although remote hiring and management work like a breeze these days — thanks to advanced tools and technologies — it’s great to meet the outsourced team in person if possible. If you are investing heavily for a long term project, it is advisable to visit the outsourcing company personally. This gives you an opportunity to understand the company’s culture, working process, infrastructure and connect with the team in a better way. 

Wrapping Up

Any business, be it a start-up or a huge enterprise, outsourcing software development can provide huge advantages that businesses are looking for. Companies that have become household names like Skype and Alibaba utilized outsourcing for cost-efficiency, finding better talent and productivity that has driven great results. So there is no reason for you not to adopt software outsourcing for your business.

We here at Techuz provide high-quality software development services with proven methodologies to ensure the best result for your project. If you are looking to streamline your software development with quality outsourcing, we can be your trusted partner. Just fill out the form and we’ll get back to you.

The post A Complete Guide to Software Outsourcing appeared first on Techuz Blog.

Sounds familiar?

Well, that’s how we feel while playing a game.

At some point in life, we all have played games — virtual or real. And the experience is delightful — motivating us to play more, score points, complete the challenges and achieve feats. Reports show that there are 3.2 billion gamers worldwide making video games an enormous giant in the world economy. Some reports have also forecasted that it is expected to grow to $300 Billion in 2025. And looking at these trends — there seems no sign of slowing down.

But it’s not just the game industry that’s proliferating, a theory stemmed from gaming is showing a promising trajectory. And this theory is known by the name “gamification”.

What is Gamification?

Gamification is the process of incorporating game elements into non-gaming activities to trigger certain user behaviors. The game elements may include a range of gaming mechanics and dynamics such as badges, levels, leaderboards, points and XPs that motivates the user to take actions to achieve them.

At its heart, the prime goal of gamification is to drive more engagement and inspire the user to participate more often in a process, activity or content.

Though the concept of gamification is here for a while now, in recent times, its use has been proliferated across all domains and industries. According to a report, the gamification market in 2016 was estimated at $4.91 billion which is expected to grow to nearly 12 billion in 2021. In fact, many web and mobile applications we use on a daily basis underpin gamification principles to engage the audience and make their applications and portals more interactive.

Gamification market is expected to grow to nearly 12 billion in 2021. 

(Source – Statista)

Here, check these examples of gamification. Probably you might have come across them.

(Google Doodle – Here’s an amazing example of gamification by Google. On the 44th anniversary of Hip Hop, Google introduced an interactive gamified doodle that lets the user drop the beats! As the user completes different tasks on the turntable, they unlock achievements. This doodle was a massive success with a large number of impressions and engagement all over the world.)

(Myntra Insider Program – Online fashion e-commerce company Myntra came up with a gamified loyalty program named “Myntra Insider”. The program aimed to acquire new users and improve engagement, rewards the members for purchases and provides different badges and levels for exclusive perks and privileges. )

Alright, you know what gamification is — and you also know that it can turn dull things more compelling, so now let’s understand how gamification work.

The Why and How of Gamification

The why and how of gamification can be summarized in three words: Brain, motivation and dopamine.

How? I’ll explain.

Whenever we are excited or experience pleasure, a neurotransmitter called dopamine is activated in our brain. To put it simply — dopamine is a chemical that makes you feel good. And all the games are designed to release this chemical in our brain.

You defeat an opponent, dopamine is activated. Unlock a new level, dopamine is released. You see your name on the leaderboard — again, dopamine.

So whatever process or activity that is gamified by applying the game elements have the same effects as a game does. You earn points, receive rewards, overcome challenges, unlock new levels or see your name on the leaderboard — your brain releases dopamine that makes you feel good and motivates you to chase after more rewards.

(Gamification and our brain – How gamification works)

Gamification in Education

Without a doubt, gamification is a smart strategy to influence and motivate people whether they are customers, employees, patients or (of course) students. In fact, triggering the basic human desires with gamification to engage the learner, motivated and enhance the overall learning experience has rejuvenated the learning process.

Consider this scenario: Kids hate reading or doing their homework. Staying awake late at night to study might not sound something exciting to them.

But when it comes to playing games — they are ready to sacrifice their sleep just to boost the XPs and unlocking new levels. They experience a sense of accomplishment when they progress in the game. So when gaming elements are combined with education, it facilitates both fun and learning at the same time.

This eventually results in learner spending more time on learning willfully as they engage themselves in collecting rewards and completing the game challenges. Let’s understand the gamification elements and how they are applied to education and learning.

Elements of Gamification & How to Use them in Education

The rewards, badges, leaderboards or any similar elements that motivate the user or satisfy the desire are game elements. These elements can be divided into two categories — game mechanics and game dynamics.

Game Mechanics

Game mechanics are used to gamifying any process or content. They drive and encourage user behavior through rewards, points, feedbacks and other kinds of incentives. The game mechanics are the foundation for gamification of a non-gamified entity.

List of Game Mechanics:

• Score
• Ranks, Levels
• Badges, Trophies
• Team, Individual Tasks
• Unlocks
• Visualized dashboard or progress bar
• Virtual Currency
• Avatars, Individual Profile
• Leaderboards

Game Dynamics

Game mechanics can drive the user motivation for a while; however, when things get repetitive — the user gets bored with the game. That’s when game dynamics comes in. These game dynamics combines the user’s behavior with the game mechanics and evolves them over time to avoid making the game monotonous.

List of Game Dynamics

• Achievements
• Progress
• Collaboration
• Surprise
• Collection
• Competition

How to Use These Game Elements in Learning

Score, Points and XPs

Collecting scores, points or XPs make the learner feel rewarded and these are among the prime motivator. The scores and points collected unlocks new levels for the user and can also be used to unlock more content on the platform.

How to use it?

The grading system can be based on these rewards where the learner is rewarded for every effort made. There’s no punishment for underperformance but just rewards for the efforts. This way of cumulative rather than reductive grading proves to be efficient as each evaluation and tests feel rewarding and not discouraging.

Even the students are motivated to demonstrate their competence by progressing and scoring more just like one does in games.

For instance, based on the lesson, students are given a quiz to evaluate their understanding. When they give the right answers, a small reward such as XP is provided for the efforts.

A great example of this reward based grading is incorporated by professor Lee Sheldon of Indiana University. Instead of assigning grades to his students, he gives “experience points” at the end of the course. Each student starts with zero and earns experience points for tests and projects. Sheldon says that this system of grading motivated by game theory makes the learning fun activity rather than boring education.

Levels and Challenges

Levels are the common mechanics in the games. You complete the challenges, progress to a certain threshold and a new level is automatically unlocked. A high number of unlocked levels in the game also determines the expertise as it requires the user to spend more time, complete challenges, tasks and milestones.

How to use it?

Levels can be a great way to define the learner’s journey. Starting from the basics of the subject with simple tasks and gradually increasing the level of difficulty as the student progress in the module. This gradual increase in difficulty and complexity while progressing to new levels gives the user a sense of development and they improve their competence.

DuoLingo is one such language learning platform that uses levels. As the learner progresses and masters each level of the language, his XP increases and he unlocks new levels. The app provides 25 levels for each language and the user can achieve it by accumulating the necessary language skills.

(DuoLingo – Language learning platform)

Yousicisian, an interactive music learning application to learn guitar, piano, bass, ukulele and even singing provides the user with missions and levels. The user starts with level 0, i.e. a complete beginner and progresses based on his mastery on chords and melodies. By the time the user reaches level 15, he is able to play the instrument virtuously.

(Yousician – A platform to learn music instrument)

Badges and Trophies

Badges and trophies in gamification work the same way as in the real world. Just like the soldiers are awarded badges for their bravery or different colors and tags of credit cards represent the credit limits, these badges and trophies are a symbol of status in gamification. And users can exhibit these badges on their profile to show off their feats.

How to use it?

Badges and trophies can be awarded to the students for their achievements and feats. On completion of different challenges, assignments or tasks, the student can be awarded a badge and trophy that is visible on their profile. One of our clients, Getlitt, has incorporated the same badge system.

Getlitt is an online book reading platform with a motto to develop reading habit among children. Kids earn badges as they complete reading the books and perform related tasks such as quizzes or vocabulary and grammar mastery. Kids even earn trophies as they finish the number of books in the challenge.

Another great instance of this is Khan Academy where students can earn badges on completing the courses. They have an entire page where students can watch the videos and answer the questions or solve the problems and win badges for the course. Even Codeacademy an online platform to learn coding languages provides a badge on completion of each course. However, one thing that you must keep in mind while incorporating badges is that the badges awarded should be something meaningful on the platform or community.

(Khan Academy- Free online courses and lessons)

Leaderboards and Competition

Competition is one of the motivations that push us to move forward and perform better. Leaderboards are one such game mechanism that inspires the users to perform to see their name at the top of the list. Most of the addictive games whether it be the all-time classic Pacman or Candy Crush Saga — all have leaderboards.

How to use it?

Learners with the best performance whether it be earning XPs, badges or trophies can be incentivized by featuring their name on the leaderboard. The learner puts extra efforts in the learning activity just to see the name on the top position or maintaining it.

Getlitt has also incorporated the leaderboards of the students based on the knowledge points (XPs) earned. The leaderboards are categories at micro levels such as friends and class and macro levels such as school, city, state and national level. Play.Typeracer, a gamified platform for increasing the typing speed also uses leaderboards to motivate the users. The platform provides the list of the latest high score, individual’s best score and a list of players with an all-time high score.

(GetLitt- Online book reading app for kids)

Some of the Popular Gamified Education Platform

Byju’s

Byju is one of the leading Edtech startups offering a vast range of online materials for K12 and competitive exams such as CAT, IAS, GRE, JEE, NEET and GMAT. The company has a huge user base of 33 million users including 2.2 million annual paid users and 10+ million downloads on Play Store. As of 2019, Byju’s has secured funding of $785 million making it the most valuable EdTech startup in the world with a valuation of $5 billion.

The platform has incorporated game design and gamification elements with rich interactive videos to create learning more engaging and fun.

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is another educational platform providing personalized learning to the students. They are a non-profit organization providing a range of courses for varied subjects starting from math, science, grammar, economics to music and world history, and is available in more than 36 languages. This gamified learning platform uses reward-based grading system where students are given XPs for completing the course modules. It also provides immediate feedback that helps the students to improve. Khan Academy has received a notable amount of donations from top-tier companies, organizations and philanthropists including Google, Comcast, Oracle, Bank of America, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and more.

DuoLingo

Duolingo is simple and effective language learning platform where with a massive database of languages courses including — Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Duch, Irish Swedish, Ukrainian, Esperanto, Polish, Greek, Hungarian, Norwegian, Hebrew, Welsh, Turkish and English.

With a user base of 300 million learners, Duolingo is the world’s largest language learning platform. The entire platform is gamified where the learner progresses through different levels on completing quizzes and challenges while getting instant feedbacks for improvements. Each lesson of the courses in Duolingo consists of a range of activities to make language learning a delightful experience. The pedagogy of this gamified platform is so effective that multiple studies show 34 hours spent on learning on Duolingo is equivalent to a full semester of language education in a University.

Yousician

Yousician is a music learning app that has revolutionized music education. The user can choose to learn — guitar, ukulele, piano, bass and even learn singing. Here’s how it works:

This gamified music learning app is divided into different modes — mission, songs, daily goals and challenges. The learner gets daily exercise where he can practice the instrument and receive feedback in real time. As the user improves his proficiency and skills, he is able to unlock new levels and content in the learning journey. It also provides weekly challenges where the learner can compete with their friends and other app users worldwide.

Currently, Yousician has 10 million+ download on Play Store with over 257k positive reviews and is widely used by beginners and advanced musicians, music teacher as well as professional musicians.

Knudge.me

Knudge.me is another learning platform made for those looking to improve their English and Math. The app comes with small snackable lessons or as they describe “Bite-sized lessons” on English vocabulary, grammar, idioms, phrasal verbs, math tips and tricks and more.

The platform comes with almost a dozen of games such as — Space Pursuit (a game to improve writing skills), Jelly Fizz (to improve speaking skills), Word Race (to improve reading speed), Panda’s Trail (to improve grammar) and more fun games.

Knudge.me has been editor’s choice app on play store with 3+ million downloads and more than 43k positive (4.8/5) rating.

Wrapping Up

Now you know what is gamification, how it works and how this theory is bringing a paradigm shift in the age-old learning methods. Leveraging the game mechanics and dynamics into dull learning process motivates the learner intrinsically as well as extrinsically — resulting in better learning outcomes and experience.

Hope this article has given you good insights on gamification. And if you are looking forward to implementing it, we can help you out.

Techuz has deep expertise in developing EdTech and e-learning solutions and has delivered successful gamified learning platform.

Our team of designers and developers are proficient in web application development and developing learning platforms that ensure your content and courses deliver the best results to the learners.

Looking forward to developing your own gamified learning portal? Feel free to contact us!

The post What is Gamification? A Detailed Guide to Gamification in Education & Gamified Learning Apps appeared first on Techuz Blog.

It is one of the major factors that can sway the customer to either “Woohoo! Let’s close the deal.” or “Argh! It’s going to cost me an arm and a leg.” And this is applicable to most of the commodities and amenity we need or desire, whether it be for personal or business.

Similarly, when it comes to website development the universal question that pops up in the mind is – “How much does a website cost?”

However, things are a little obscure here – websites don’t come with a price tag attached. And the question about the pricing is often followed by the notorious reply – “Well… it depends.”

So in this article, we decided to solve the conundrum by providing estimated prices of different types of websites. We’ll be providing prices of not only websites but also different web applications along with their minimum basic features.

Sounds like a plan? Perfect. So let’s dive into it.

But first, let’s understand what are the basic factors that affect the website cost.

What Influences Website Cost?

It is quite elusive to determine the cost of a website without understanding the project needs. There are numerous factors that affect the price of a website and that’s the reason there is no standard amount.

It’s just like asking the cost of a house without specifying the needs. There are various factors determining its cost – such as the interiors, space, locality and myriad other factors. The price of a condo in downtown would be far different from that of a vacation home for the recreational purpose.

Similar you need to consider many factors while determining the cost of your website. Here are the few ones that affect the pricing.

1. Design

The looks and functions play a major role in any website’s success. Not only the design must be pleasing to the eyes but also cater good functionality. The following are the three things that make your website design a total package.

i. Graphics Design

Graphics design refers to designing the visuals of your website. This includes images, color scheme, typography, call to action buttons and other visual elements.

ii. User Interface Design

User Interface design decides the journey of users from point A to Point B and how they interact with the website, its functionality and usability.

iii. User Experience Design

User experience design refers to the experience of the user on the website. UX ensures that the experience of using your web product pleasing and intuitive.

When you are designing your web product, you can either buy or get a free theme – or design it from scratch as per your custom needs. There are thousands of resources out on the internet that provides you themes and templates and they even work great for generic small scale websites. But for bigger projects, you need a custom design that resonates with your brand and audience as well as provides great usability. However, custom design adds more hours and cost to the project.

2. Technical Features and Complexity

Features and complexity of your web solution is one of the factors that influence the overall costs. It’s not rocket science – more the features, the more time it takes to develop. More the complexity, the better the technical expertise you need. Features such as backend, admin panel or third-party integration can soar the website cost.

i. Backend Development

Any web solution is divided into two parts, i.e. frontend and backend. A frontend is a part that the user interacts with – the design and user interface while the backend is the part of the application remains unseen such as database, rules and business logic.

Most of the small static websites just have a frontend. For example, single page websites or landing pages for informational purposes. On the flipside, huge web applications need a backend to fetch the information from the data and perform the business logic. Usually, programming languages and technologies such as PHP, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Java, etc. are used to develop it.

ii. Admin Panel Development

Admin panel is the tool that helps the owner to manage the application. He can manage users, content, view and analyze the statistics, get user insights and more. This is a highly useful tool for huge multi-page websites and web applications.

iii. Third Party Integration

Many web applications require third-party integration for functionalities and services. For example, payment integration (Paypal, Stripe, Braintree, etc.) and integration of accounting and CRM software (QuickBooks, Infusionsoft, Salesforce and ZOHO). These third-party software not only require integration but also customization as per the business needs.

3. Pricing Model

You can find varied pricing models in the web development market. However, the most prevalent ones are – time and material and fixed price model. The pricing model selected for your project affects the overall cost.

Time and Material

With time and material model, you are billed on numbers of hours spent on your project. This is an effective pricing model for huge projects whose scope is not defined or is liable to change – as well as when the project demands Agile development methodology.

Fixed Price

In the fixed price model you pay a predetermined amount for the project. Payments are made from time to time on accomplishing the milestones and deliverables. It is an ideal payment system for projects with a clear and finite scope.

4. Wage Rate and Location

You have a plethora of options in front of you when you hire web developers. You can opt for freelancers from sites like UpWork or Freelancer or even hire a web development company providing complete end to end solution. Each of them has its pros and cons and different wage rates. Further, the country or region you are hiring from also affects the price. Just to give a break down of the prices here are the average hourly rates for web design and development in different countries.

How Much Does a Website Cost? A Detailed Guide for Website and Web App Pricing

Still with me? Great. Because now we are going to dig down to the cost of developing a website. We have bifurcated web solutions in three different categories:

1. Basic Websites – Small business websites (less than 20 pages), landing pages for informational purposes.

2. Intermediate Websites – Medium and large business websites with a high number of pages and advanced features.

3. Web applications – E-commerce portals, SaaS-based Tools and Marketplace.

1. Basic Website (50-100 Hours)

Basic websites are generally small business websites or landing pages for general informational purposes. These websites are built with the intent to make a digital presence for showcasing products/services.

This kind of websites can be a single page landing page promoting something or motivating visitors to take some action (such as signup) or even small business website containing some general pages such as homepage, services, about the company or contact us page. There is no hard and fast rule but basic websites generally contain pages anywhere between 1-20. Here are its two basic features.

Simple Design

In most cases, these websites work fine with simple and minimalistic designs that require less of the efforts. Many a time, people also prefer to buy a theme (or get a free one). There are millions of stunning themes available for varied industries and use cases. Buying themes can even help to reduce cost if you are not looking for a custom design.

Basic Technologies

When it comes to development, basic technologies such as HTML, CSS and PHP are used in basic websites. Also, the backend mostly comprises of simple functions such as content update or user registration.

**Note: Rates are calculated at minimum charges per hour.

2. Intermediate Websites (100 – 500 Hours)

Intermediate websites are generally built for mid to large business and corporations. They have a high number of pages, huge audience base and are packed with some advanced features for the users as well as admin.

This type of websites are built with a broader perspective of marketing and branding. They are intended to promote the brand’s name and boost brand loyalty. Many huge corporate websites come with integration with web applications like a basic e-commerce store or product configurators.

(The above is an example of an intermediate website)

(A car configurator by Techuz integrated to an intermediate website)

Although the features of the intermediate websites might be different for different business and use case, most of them have more or less the following features.

Custom UI/UX

UX and UI define the journey of the users on the website and ensures it is enjoyable. For example, if your goal is to encourage the user to buy a product from the website, a right UI/UX design will make sure it makes the buying process swift and easy from the moment they land on the homepage.

Another major reason huge websites need custom design is from the branding point of view. Designs must encapsulate the brand identity and resonate the company’s philosophy. Every element from the images to graphics and CTA button should be aligned with the company’s brand and image. Check the following example.

Technologies

Big websites have big needs, not only in terms of UI and UX but also in performance. They need to cater to a large number of audience and have unique business needs, and to fulfill this – they need some sophisticated technologies.

Most of the modern day large websites are made using the new generation of technologies that provide high performance and speedy development. In addition to the basic HTML, CSS and PHP, there are various JavaScript-based tools and technologies that are being prominently used on both clients as well as server side.

Blog

Blogs are one of the essential parts of any company’s content marketing strategy. It enables the business to create a brand, goodwill and generates leads through content. Most of the huge corporations or medium-sized businesses employ content marketing in their marketing strategies.

Suggested Read – Web Application vs Website – What’s the Difference?

3. Web Applications

Web applications we use today are the hybrid form of traditional software and websites. These web solutions are comparatively more complex to build than websites. They need sophisticated features ranging from creating simple login, managing database to executing complex business logic. Few of the examples of the web applications that we use in our day to day lives are communication platforms like Skype, Slack and Gmail; job marketplace like Upwork, Freelancer and Fiverr and the broadcasting and streaming services like YouTube and Vimeo.

Further, there are numerous categories of web applications, each with some particular set of features and functionalities which makes it different from one another. So instead of determining the generalized cost of the web application, we have categorized them into three different types:

-E-commerce Portals
-SaaS-based Applications
-Market Place

E-commerce Portals (250 – 1000 Hours)

Every brand wants its e-commerce store ever since the consumers have adapted online shopping as their primary source of buying. The cost of developing an e-commerce portal is highly disparate since there is a range of features defining the costs – from mere allowing the customers to buy the product to complex functionalities like product configurator, visual try-on, AI-based personal recommendation and more. Here are some of the common features of e-commerce portals.

Shopping Cart

The shopping cart is the primary feature of an e-commerce portal. It allows the customer to store products they want to buy before moving to check out.

Payment Gateway Integrations

Payment gateways are responsible for processing the money transaction in an e-commerce store. A good e-commerce portal provides multiple options for payment and makes the payment process swift and easy.

Order Management

Another feature that is an integral part of any e-commerce store is the order management system. It is a type of control panel that makes it easier to look after and manage the orders.

Security

Security is the feature that goes without saying for any web solution. But in e-commerce where customers share their confidential data such as credit card, CVV numbers or bank account details, it becomes imperative to be highly vigilant.

Inventory and Logistics Management

E-commerce store just like any other physical store must have a proper inventory and logistics management. Integrating such systems ensures that the right number of products remain in stock and there is a seamless shipment of the same.

Mobile Compatibility

Consumers tend to buy not only on big screens but also on mobile devices and tablets. So an e-commerce portal that works seamlessly across all devices is a must.

Content Management System

Content Management System is another basic feature for any e-commerce store. It enables the merchant to manage and edit pages, add content, edit images, manage the homepage banner and more.

Scalable Infrastructure

E-commerce stores are ought to be highly scalable when there is a surge in traffic during offers and festive season. Using a CDN (content delivery network) is what helps to improve the store’s performance and reduce the latency even during high traffic.

**Note: Rates are calculated at minimum charges per hour.

SaaS-based Applications (1000 – 2000 Hours)

(Sidenote – The minimum hours of SaaS applications are based on developing the minimum viable product while the maximum hours are on advanced scalable features)

SaaS-based applications are getting traction these days. Most of the software and applications we use are catered over the cloud. You name it – Gmail, Salesforce, Slack, Trello and Jira – all are the SaaS-based web applications. And to build one of those types you need the following primary features.

Subscription Model

Since the software are catered over cloud instead of installing on the computer, it needs a recurring subscription/licensing model. There are a number of such subscription software ranging from off the shelf solutions to the highly customizable ones.

Core Features of Application (MVP)

Whatever your SaaS-based product is – you need to develop the core features of the application that solves the user problem. This is also known as MVP or Minimum Viable Product. Once you develop the MVP and launched it in the market, you can then update it with the additional features in the next phase of the project.

Reporting and Analysis Feature

Reporting and Analysis is an important feature for SaaS-based applications. This feature can be developed for both customers (app users) and app owners. From the customer point of view, it helps them to analyze how effective your web application is for their purpose and from an app owner’s point of view you get all the stats and reports to improve the application and cater the user in a better way.

User Dashboard

User dashboard is the interface that the user sees once they log in. It provides the user with their information, activity in the application and tools to use the application.

Admin Dashboard

Admin Dashboard, also known as Admin Panel is the interface that grants the administrator of the application with privileges to make changes to the web app.

**Note: Rates are calculated at minimum charges per hour.

Online Marketplace

An online marketplace is a platform where buyers and sellers meet. It is quite similar to e-commerce, but over here, there are multiple third-party sellers instead of one brand. To explain market place in simplest form – sellers register to sell the products/services – buyers buy and the marketplace owner facilitates the transactions. Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Upwork, Freelancer, Craigslist, Zillow, etc. are some examples of an online marketplace. Let’s understand the pricing and features of different types of marketplaces.

**Note: Rates are calculated at minimum charges per hour.

**Note: Rates are calculated at minimum charges per hour.

Supplementary Expenses

There are some additional expenses that are generally not part of the development process but are necessary. These expenses are the domain name, hosting, copywriting, maintenance & update, etc.

Domain Name

A domain name is your website’s name that the user types in the address bar of the browser. For a unique and original domain name of your website/web app, you can expect it anywhere from $5 to $20 per year.

Hosting

You need to buy a web hosting service from a provider in order to put your web solution on the internet. There are numerous hosting providers you can opt for depending on your website needs.

Maintenance and Support

Work doesn’t end once the website is developed and deployed. Websites are just like any physical shop that needs some maintenance and updates.

At Techuz, we provide free support and maintenance to our clients for 3 months post-deployment. Under this, we fix bugs, make some updates and changes as per the clients needs that were the part of the project scope.

Copywriting

Your web solutions need content- whether it be for web pages or blogs. Good content fulfills various purposes – it entices the visitors and fulfills SEO purpose as well. Good copywriters generally charge anywhere from between $50 to $100 for a web page or blog.

Wrap Up

Now you know there are myriad factors that really affect the cost of the website – the scope of the project, design, development, features, complexity and more. But the thing is – the mystery of web development cost will no longer nibble you because you have a ballpark quote of different web solutions. If you are still wondering how much your web solution will cost – don’t worry. Just drop us a query and we’ll be more than happy to help you.

The post How Much Does a Website Cost? A Detailed Guide for Website and Web App Pricing appeared first on Techuz Blog.

Almost six decades later, employing the reach of the internet, modern devices and highly sophisticated software, its purview of possibility is nothing less than unfathomable. Here in this blog, we’ll discuss what exactly is EdTech and what it holds for the education, society and business.

What is EdTech?

Defining EdTech can be elusive because of its vast use case and constant evolution of technology from time to time. However, it’s not the technology but the aim that defines the true essence of EdTech – utilizing technological resources to improve the education system, pedagogy and ultimately enhancing the learners’ performance.

Or as Investopedia defines:

“EdTech refers to software designed to enhance teacher-led learning in classrooms and improve students’ education outcomes. EdTech is in the early stages of development but it shows promise as a method of customizing the curriculum for a student’s ability level by introducing and reinforcing new content at a pace the student can handle. EdTech is a portmanteau of “education” and “technology.”

Let me give you some examples to make things more clear.

Some Good Examples of EdTech

AI and Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence has already made its mark to boost efficiency and productivity in different industries. Even education is one of them.

One of the issues that teachers and educators have been facing for years is providing individual attention to the students in a class of many.

Every student in the class has different learning patterns and even a different pace of grasping things. But since we have been following the traditional model of one-size-fits-all education, individual learning is neglected. Here, artificial intelligence and machine learning have solved the problem. AI enables teachers to understand the learning pattern of each student and tailor the learning experience for maximum efficiency.

In one of the articles, Zishaan Hayath, founder and CEO of Toppr explains – “By leveraging evolved multimedia formats, platforms are allowing students to grasp academic concepts better. The use of machine learning and artificial intelligence gives them the ability to adopt a personalized approach that considers individual unique learning patterns to further enhance a student’s learning experience.”

Thus, Artificial Intelligence has made it possible to understand the learning and thinking skills of the students in a better way and provide a customized learning approach rather than imposing a general one.

AR/VR

Remember the days when students used to understand human anatomy or botany diagrams with 2D pictures? I bet many teachers had put their best efforts to explain these by drawing it on the blackboard.

Well, guess what? Learning these complex things is becoming easier with AR and VR, making things better for both students and as well as teachers.

Although AR/VR are are still in its infancy, its applications and impact on different industries including education is momentous. When talking about the EdTech, we generally use the cliched phrase – “EdTech is talking education beyond classrooms and blackboard”. Virtual reality is manifesting the statement in literal terms.

History classes would no longer be limited to just reading the textbooks, instead, with VR, students can immerse themselves and live the history itself. Even medical students can now practice complex surgery with VR stimulators and the same goes with engineering and dangerous onsite tours.

Many firms are working on it,  EON Reality is one of them. Check their website to know how students can explore the tomb of Tutankhamun or simulate ophthalmic training and more.

(Application to train medical students for a thyroid biopsy procedure – EON Reality)

Gamification

Gamification refers to incorporating gaming principles, elements and experience in a non-gaming activity or domain to improve the user engagement and productivity. Researches have shown that gamification has a positive impact on users. And the same can be applied in educational activities that students find boring and stressful.

Gamified visuals along with gaming principles like reward systems, levels, earning experience points and social collaboration can improve the engagement and retention of the students.

There are numerous applications and platforms using the same principle.  For example, a platform named CueMath is helping children learn math concepts, aptitude and reasoning fluidly with gamified visual of the problems.

Another great example of gamification is one our client – GetLitt, a  gamified book reading platform to encourage reading habits among children. Our designers and developers have incorporated the game-like features that motivate the children to read books and makes the learning fun. We have incorporated features such as:

– Rewards on accomplishment – badges and points

– Connect with compeer readers

– Unlocking levels with each achievement

– Quirky characters and adventure stories to pique interests

(GetLitt – Gamified book reading platform)

Cloud Technology

If you are a Rocky series fan just like me, you would obviously relate to the cloud scene from the movie Creed. It shows cloud technology is pretty widespread these days.

We all use it for storing files, streaming music, videos and more.  It has also revolutionized many industries – from bringing down IT costs and providing scalability to companies and startups to changing the way music was consumed and dispensed. It has even changed education.

Cloud provides several perks to learners as wells as educators such as better accessibility, affordable and flexibility.

Talking about flexibility, students are experiencing flexibility in education at a whole new level. Need lecture notes from the desktop in class? It’s available on multiple devices. Need some literature and resources from the college library? No need to visit there, it’s all there on the cloud.

Even for educational institutions such as schools, colleges and universities, cloud technology provides easy management of data and saves a large amount of time and money.

Mobile Learning

The mobile shipment has crossed the two billion mark and will continue to grow in the years to come. What else we see growing along with it are the mobile learning platforms.

And it makes sense because employing the device that is ubiquitous and almost always used can serve as a mobile tutor or an archive of resources.

The list of mobile learning apps in app stores is never-ending. From language tutor apps like ELSA that helps you develop your English speaking skills to apps like Socratic assisting kids to solve the assignments.

And then there is another sphere of apps such as Udemy, Coursera, Udacity and more that caters metric tons of certified courses ranging from programming, designing, cooking, photography, literature to philosophy.

Whether it be using AI to analyze the student’s pain points or using the immersive experience to providing a better comprehension of the subject, EdTech holds immense potential for the education.

Why EdTech is important?

EdTech is more than merely changing the education material from books to digital form. In fact, it is enhancing the age-old education system by improving the pedagogy and learning process that ultimately results enhancing the human race.

Making Learning a Lifelong Process

The concept of acquiring knowledge at school and applying it at the workplace seems to be obsolete. The reason being – learning is not something to be left behind after completion of school or college but it is a lifelong process. In fact, in this rapidly changing competitive world, irrespective of age, it becomes imperative to keep on updating your skill sets.

And EdTech is making this concept of continuous learning possible. Whether it be updating knowledge and skills for better employability, casual learning for hobbies and personal interest or even reskilling for a career change Edtech is at the disposal.

A report by KPMG and Google states online education is the primary source of learning between the age group 21 to 50+.

(Online education being used for learning – Reskilling, corporate training, and hobbies. Source – KPMG)

Bringing Down the Cost

The cost of education has massively increased these days. And the cost of textbooks is contributing a major part in it.

According to US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost of textbook rose by 88% between 2006 and 2016, which way more compared to increase in tuition fees and housing cost, i.e. 63% and 50% respectively.

(Consumer Price Index for tuition fees, college textbooks housing at school between 2006 and 2016)

A survey by Cengage, an EdTech firm, revealed that on an average a student in the US spends $1,200 annually on textbooks. The same survey also reported that 43 percent of students have skipped meals and 31 percent registered for fewer classes to save money for the books.

This cost can be brought down with digital course materials. These digital resources not only saves cost on publishing but also allow far-reaching distribution among learners. Moreover, digital resources are easy to update and revise.

EdTech has also enabled students to attend the classroom remotely as many colleges have adopted virtual learning. This further reduces the cost of the commute for the students and even space for the collages.

Technology is playing a major part in bringing down the cost of ever-increasing education. Whether it be the cost of delivering education or cost of building the school or colleges itself.

Democratizing Education

One of the most noteworthy benefits of EdTech is that it is democratizing the education. Ages ago, a good education was something available to royalties or a certain wealthy class of society.

Since then, we have put many efforts to enable access to a high quality of education to everyone. However, still, the wealth and geographical location are breeding the same discrimination. Schools in a remote village have an inferior education compared to that of a well-funded one in a developed city area.

EdTech holds the potential to change this. With EdTech, a high standard of education can be catered everywhere. The schools in underdeveloped regions of Africa can have the same level of educational content as available for the renowned school in developed countries. And even the online platforms and mobile learning apps can provide certified courses from reputed universities.

What EdTech Holds for Start-ups?

Edtech is getting enormous. Enormous not only in terms of influence on education but also in terms of money.

The global EdTech and e-learning market is projected to grow at 5.08 percent CAGR by 2022 making the total worth a whopping $243 billion. Yes, that’s $243 billion, a billion with a ‘b’.

Observing this massive growth even the investors are lured to fund EdTech startups. The global EdTech Investment in 2017 reached skyrocketing $9.5 billion funding 813 EdTech companies. In 2018 EdTech shattered its previous records with $8.24 billion in investment in the first half itself, funding a total of 437 companies.

EdTech companies seem to fit in the shoes of the Uber and Airbnb, to be the next unicorn startups. China-based education startup Yuanfudao is reported to raise a whopping $250 million from Tencent.

Even the Indian EdTech giant BYJU is in talks to raise $200-300 million in funding from General Atlantic and Temasek Holdings.

The reason for this exponential growth? High demand of the EdTech products.

The number of K-12 students in Asia is 600 million. An average family in Asia spends 40 percent of the total income on education-related product and service.

As per the report by KPMG, in India alone, 280 million students are expected to enroll in schools by 2021. This means that there will be high demand for primary and secondary online supplemental education.

But it’s not just the students, even working professionals consists of a large amount of user base. These professionals have surged the demand of reskilling and online certificate category.

There’s an unfathomable pool of opportunity in the market and if there’s a good time to penetrate – it’s now.

Wondering How to Get Started?

If you are an entrepreneur looking to play your part in enhancing the education, it’s obvious that you’ll need a technical partner, a mobile and web development company to develop your state of the art software and resources. And Techuz can help you with all your project needs from design to development, testing, deployment and beyond. Feel free to contact us for any queries.

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