Tushar, Author at anteelo

Insight on Why and How Often Should You Update Your App?

Posted on 05/09/202011/06/2021 by Tushar

Various startup founders and established brands come to us for mobile app consultation. They frame several questions regarding what features and technologies to introduce to their app idea, what checklist to consider for optimizing the application, how to promote their app, etc. But, there are only a few who ask how often they should update their app.

Why? Because most of them are unaware of the fact that mobile app development lifecycle does not end at launching the application or bringing eyeballs to their platform. They are still alien to the fact that updating an app can improve their app visibility and add more profits to their app plan.

For the same reason, I have decided to write this article as a mini guide – disclosing why, when and how to update your mobile app so that you could reap better outcomes in the mobile industry and enjoy the popularity like that of Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and SnapChat. Later, we will look at how much does it cost to update an app.

So, without making ado, let’s begin with the first section of the article, i.e, why to update your app.

Why to Update a Mobile App?

The answer to this question lies in the fact that the second you enter the Mobile App Market, you become a part of a whirlwind of select factors that are constantly moving and getting bigger than the day before.

There are so many things that change when your app enters the market, such as:-

New Devices are Released
New Android and iOS versions come up
Programming Languages changed
The users’ demands changed
Security Standards are continuously updated

A change in these factors brings a major difference in your app visibility in the marketplace, making it necessary for you to look into the app update process.

Along with, various other factors come into play to incite the feeling that it’s the right time to update your mobile app, such as:-

1. Bug Fix

No matter how carefully you developed your app, a bug free application is a myth. There will be times when you will find a customer review saying ‘my app is acting weird’ or ‘it’s consuming a lot of battery juice’. It’s a normal occurrence, which would require an effort into the process of bug fixing and maintenance app update.

2. Introduction of New Features

The consumer base in your industry will start demanding newer, faster, and different value offering. To be in the competition, you will have to adhere to them before your competitors do.

This situation again prompt you to look into the right strategy to plan your app updates.

3. Launch of New Configuration Devices

The introduction of new mobile devices also come under the category of reasons for app updates. This is because when a new device enters the market, it comes up with some significant change in the look and feel of the device. This makes it difficult for your application to fit well and be equally in sync with all the versions, as we have seen in our earlier blog, titled: The X Factor: What is the New iPhone X doing to Your Current App Design. And thus, create the necessity to update your application accordingly.

4. Change in Business Strategy

Many times, the mobile app developers realize that they are not getting as much as traction from the target audience as recorded earlier. This makes them ponder upon the business strategy they are following and therefore, look forward to the process to make app updates.

5. Change in App Store Guidelines

Another factor that creates the necessity to invest your time and effort into app update cycle is the change in app store guidelines.

The Apple App Store and Google Play Store keep on changing their app submission guidelines from time to time. These changes, many times, bring a drastic impact on the future of your mobile application. For example, as per the Google Play Store’s updated policy, any app operating on Android 7.0 or less won’t be able to sustain in the market and enjoy its perks. This implies the app developers have to update these applications to make them ‘Android 8.0’ ready and thus, remain in the market.

Now that you know why it becomes imperative to update an app on the stores, let’s now how often should you update your app and the technicalities of it.

How to Update your App – The Technicalities

When talking about app update, the steps to follow varies with the platform considered. So, here in this section, we will dig out how to update an Android app and how to update an iOS application individually – beginning with the former one.

How to Update an App on Android

When you have designed the mobile application as per the changes, you need to follow these steps for rolling out the update on Google Play Store:-

1. Increment the Version

When you upload an app in play store, you are assigned a version number. So, the best practice for app updates in the case of Android is to change this version number in the ‘App Info’ section of the Andromo setting. Once you have updated the version there, create the app again and download its new APK file.

2. Upload the new APK

Once the new version is ready with you, sign in to the Google Play Developer Console and select your application from the list, then select APK tab there. Once there, click on ‘Upload new APK to Production’ button. You can then either save the file or send it over for publishing; reaching to the next step of the process to make app updates.

3. Update the App Description

Once you have published the new version, you need to inform the users of the change. For this, you can put in what changed data in the ‘Recent Changes’ tab of your description section.

Once you have updated the new version, it takes around 24 hours to make it visible to the users.

How to Update an App on iPhone

To update your iOS mobile application, you need to look into these steps:-

Log in to iTunes Connect
Click on My Apps
Next, click on ‘+Version’ on the left panel
In New Version box, put in the new version number and click on ‘Create’
Once you have put in all the information about the Version in the iTunes App, it’s time to upload the build.
Use either Xcode or Application Loader to upload the new version of the app
Once uploaded, the new version will now get prepared to submission. If you have gone through it, press ‘Submit for Review’.

Once uploaded, it takes maximum 30 days for the update to show to the users.

With this attended to, let’s turn towards the last section of the article, i.e. how often should you update your app.

How Often Should You Update Your App?

As depicted from the above figure, every mobile application development company has a different answer to what is the best time to update your app. While some keep on updating apps in fixed schedule, other turn towards the process only when they are introducing a new feature or targeting a market. There is no concrete answer to this question.

Now while this gives a hint of when you can update your app, this also adds to the risk. As per the top mobile app development agency, the app update process comes with a ripple effect which is not always in your favor. There are situations when rolling out an update can bring more bugs and issues in your application or reset the existing review and rating – compelling you to restart the journey from the first day of app launch.

Knowing this infamous ripple effect, it is wise to take a deeper look into the market and check how do other companies plan for an app update.

So, let’s see:

Appbot analyzed the releases of 200 apps on the App Store and divided them in Paid, Free, and Grossing categories to get their Update picture.

Here’s what they found out.

The majority of Top Free Apps were updated at least once in the time span of 18 days and there were at least 25 updates in 75% of the free apps in both the stores, combined.

While this was for the free apps, the paid ones showed a different picture.

The paid apps on an average took 89 days break between two app updates and there were just 1 to 2 app updates in a year.

So how often should you update your app? What is the best time to update your app? What happens when you update an app? Why app needs to be updated?

It’s safe to say that you should update your app as often as possible. Here, ‘As often as possible’ means when you have the resources, when there is a new technology in the industry, and when your competition has introduced a feature that the world is loving.Now that we have discussed the implications of when to plan your app updates in great details and you have gotten an idea of how frequently we are supposed to make updates in the current application, let’s move on to the Costing part of the app maintenance.

How much does it cost of updating an app?

Just like what we have seen in the case of calculating the cost to make an app from scratch, the cost of frontend maintenance and its backend update also depend on various factors, including :-

1. Hosting Costs

The backend of your app would probably be on some third party cloud server such as Microsoft Azure or AWS hosting site. Your hosting cost alone can reach over hundreds or thousands of dollars every month. The hosting cost estimate is also directly proportional to the involvement of human resources invested in creation and maintenance of the backend.

2. Crash Analytics and Monitoring

In order to plan your app updates and execute them timely, you will need a monitoring tool to analyze the app usage patterns. While most of the crash analytics and monitoring are available free of cost, you will need to invest in people who would be responsible for extracting data for gaining business insights.

3. Play Store Optimization and App Store Optimization

After you make app updates, you will need to update the app description in the stores, for which you might need to look into a comprehensive guide on Play Store Optimization or have guidance from someone who knows how to find the right keywords, design new screenshots and videos, and write the new content.

With this, we have covered everything that will help you to know when and how often should you update your app so as to take the best advantages of the process without burning a hole in your pocket.

Hope you find this helpful with your app updates needs.

Python-Based App Development

Posted on 03/09/202009/06/2021 by Tushar

Python is a very popular programming language among developers. In fact, it was declared the top programming language for 2019 beating even the original coding language – Java. It has indeed facilitated the whole mobile app development process to a great extent and hence, won the above-mentioned title.

For decades now, technology has been going through makeovers, changing and improving a little every day. And as a result, we have SmartPhones, Supercomputers, Artificial Intelligence, a lot of amazingness like such.

Now, to utilize these technologies we now have developed different programs and mobile applications, which, by the way, are created by programming languages. One such popular language is Python.

So, let’s take the road of knowledge leading towards the answer regarding Python app development and the kind of applications that can be built on it.

What is Python?

To answer one of the most frequently asked questions “What is Python” in simple words – Python is object-oriented, interpreted, and a high-level programming language. It has incredible built-in data structures that are combined with the dynamic typing and binding to render hassle-free app development. It poses as a scripting or glue language to combine several components together.

Python is renowned for its simple and easy-to-learn syntax which supports readability and reduces the expenses incurred in the program maintenance. It also favors modules and packages, which in return promote modularity and code reusability. To add another jewel to its crown, it totally favors cross-platform, making Python ideal for mobile app development.

Now, merely saying that Python is a popular language will not suffice. So, let’s look at its features which played a crucial role in spreading its popularity like wildfire.

Why Python has Become Popular?

1. Python’s code is easy to read and understand

One of the most renowned features of Python is its syntax. The rules of its syntax enable developers to express concepts without writing additional code. Python has a way of making complex things simple; the reason why it is deemed suitable for beginners to learn.

Python is the only language to focus on code readability which is why it allows developers to use English keywords instead of punctuation. All these factors make Python perfect for mobile application custom applications. Moreover, the clear code base is going to help developers maintain and update the software without any extra efforts.

2. Python is Quick

In Python, the programs are added to the interpreter that runs them directly. This means there is no compiling, which happens for almost all the other languages. On the Python code, it is easy and quick to get your hands on the feedback on your Python code such as recognizing errors. With Python, you can finish and execute your programs (run them) faster than with other programming languages.

3. Python is Compatible

There are numerous operating systems such as Android, iOS and Windows which Python supports. In fact, you can use Python interpreters to use and run the code across platforms and tools. It also makes it possible to run the same code across multiple platforms and the modified app code without the need for recompilation. Moreover, if you wish to check the impact of changes made in the code and that too instantly, then Python is your choice.

4. Facilitates Test-Driven Development

Creating prototypes of software applications has never been easier. All thanks to Python app development. Python fully supports the development of prototypes and even allows you to build applications directly from the prototypes by refactoring the code.

Coding and testing can now go hand-in-hand, thanks to Python. It has adopted the methodology called TDD, acronymous of Test-Driven Development.

5. Strong Standard Library

Python has a pretty robust standard library that gives it an edge over other languages. Python’s standard library enables you to select modules from a wide range as per your requirements. Now, each module allows you to add functionalities later in the process without extra coding.

This point can be cleared with an example. Suppose you are writing a web application, now you can employ certain modules in Python to implement web services or manage OS interface. Just browse through Python’s library and even gather information related to modules.

6. Python Supports Big Data

Big Data is another emerging technology and Python is one of the most used languages for its development. It is because Python possesses a huge number of libraries to work on Big Data. Moreover, it is easier and faster to code with Python for Big data projects as compared to other languages, making it a popular choice of developers around the globe.

7. Strong Supportive Community and Corporate Sponsors

Another prominent element that decides the popularity of any programming language is its community support. Unlike many languages out there, Python has a very active community providing impeccable guides and tutorials, and other forms of documentation for a better understanding of the language. Moreover, having a sponsor like Google only adds up to the list of reasons for Python’s popularity.

Popular Python Frameworks for App Development

1. Django

Django is a high-level and open-source Python framework that streamlines web app development by providing access to different features. It is perfect as it allows developers to create complex codes and Python web applications efficaciously.

A few features that make Django one of the best frameworks for Python are its authentication mechanism, database schema migration implements ORM for mapping its objects to database tables and template engine.

2. Flask

Another extremely reliable Python framework is Flask, developed on Werkzeug and Jinja 2. It is denoted as a microframework because it does not require tools and libraries like other frameworks. Due to its features like integrated support for unit testing, RESTful request dispatching, etc. it is considered an ideal option for small projects, as opposed to Django which is used in the development of big projects.

3. Web2Py

Web2Py is one of the most popular frameworks of Python for mobile app development, loaded with a debugger, and a deployment tool. It helps the developers in debugging and building the code effectively along with testing the apps.

Because Web2Py is a cross-platform framework, it is compatible with Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, etc. It follows the Model View Controller design. One element which impresses the developers most is its ticketing framework, a component that issues a ticket whenever a mistake is made.

4. Pyramid

Pyramid is a highly adaptable Python framework for app development that works incredibly for both easy and complicated applications of Python. It is useful in creating prototypes of applications and also for developers to chip away at API projects.

A majority of Python developers admire this framework simply for its transparency and high-quality features. One other feature that is worth mentioning is Pyramid’s transversal framework used for mapping URLs for coding, making it easier to create RESTful APIs. In fact, some tech industry giants like Mozilla, Dropbox, and Yelp have used it in their processes.

5. CherryPy

Another Python app development framework is CherryPy. It is an open-source framework that is capable of implanting its own multi-strung server. This framework possesses features like setup framework, thread-pooled web server, and module framework.

Moreover, it doesn’t demand you to use any particular and specific ORM or template engine. In fact, it allows developers to utilize different technologies for data access, templating and whatnot, making it a preferred choice of developers to build applications in python.

What Type of Apps Can You Build in Python?

1. Blockchain Applications

Blockchain, being one of the hottest trends of this decade in technology has swept the market of its feet. From the developers’ point of view, Blockchain development was not as easy as shelling peas. However, Python has literally made it so. Because Python is a very understandable language, the process of building blockchain applications is a lot more facilitated.

By employing Python frameworks like Flask, developers can use HTTP requests to interact with their blockchain over the Internet and create endpoints for distinct functions of blockchain. Developers are also able to run the scripts on multiple machines for developing a decentralized network – all with the help of Python.

2. Command-line Applications

Command-line applications and Console Applications are the same. It is a computer program created to be utilized from the command line or a shell and does not have any graphical user interface.

Python is deemed a suitable language for such applications because of its Read-Eval-Print-Loop (REPL) feature which enables developers to evaluate the language and identify new possibilities.

Since Python is a popular language globally, top app development companies have access to a sea of free Python libraries that they can use for building command-line apps.

3. Audio and Video Applications

Python app development helps in creating music and other types of audio and video applications. Since the internet is loaded with audio and video content, you can use Python for analyzing it all. Some Python libraries like PyDub and OpenCV help in the successful completion of the app development.

YouTube is one such application that is created using Python. So, you can easily surmise now how effective and incredible this language is in delivering apps with high performance.

4. Game App Development

For all the gaming enthusiasts, many games such as EVE Online and Battlefield 2 have been created using Python. Battlefield 2 game employs Python for all of its add-ons and functionalities and World of Tanks game uses it for basically the majority of its features. In fact, Disney’s Pirates of the Carribean game was written with the help of the Panda 3D game engine – whose game development language is Python.

Developers are given the facility to create a rapid game prototype and Pygame and Python can be used to test them in real-time. Additionally, Python in game development can be used to create game designing tools that assist in many tasks of the development process, namely, creating dialog trees and level designing.

5. System Administration Applications

We know how tedious system administration can get, given there are thousands of tasks to be completed and a sea of data to be managed. System Administration applications are a savior for the management, to say the least.

Python is regarded fit for creating system administration apps for it allows developers to easily communicate with the operating system via the ‘os’ module. It enables developers to interface with the OS on which Python is currently running. This language makes all the IO operations accessible which includes simple reading and writing to the file system.

6. Machine Learning Applications

Another inspiring tech trend of this decade has to be Machine learning development. Machine learning is an algorithm technology that feeds data to operating systems and enable them to make intelligent decisions. Before creating applications of machine learning was a tricky task, but now we have Python for machine learning applications.

Python comes loaded with libraries like Pandas and Scikit for machine learning that are available in the market for free and can be used under GNU license.

NLP (Natural Language Processing) is one branch of machine learning enabling a system to analyze, manipulate, and understand human language for the algorithm to work.

With the basic knowledge of Python, developers can create machine learning apps with the help of these highly competent and effective libraries.

7. Business Applications

Python highly supports practical agility, meaning it is capable of developing numerous kinds of applications. This is why Python also assists in ERP and E-Commerce app development solutions.

Odoo, an all-in-one management software is written in Python and provides a wide range of business apps forming a suite of business management apps. Another famous business application built with Python is Tryton which is a three-tier general-purpose and high-level application. It is so easy to create such apps with Python which is why app development companies choose it.

Other Use Cases of Python Language

1. Web and Software Development

Since Python has a code that is very simple and easy to understand, this uncomplicates the web and Software development services, making the process more efficient. Another charming feature of Python is its compatibility to integrate with other languages, making it a more flexible option.

Some effective frameworks like Django and Pyramid assist the developers in software development with Python and enable them to create web apps from scratch. The standard library of Python also supports numerous internet protocols including XML, JSON, and HTML. Instagram is one such application create with Django- a Python framework.

2. Image Processing and OCR

Python has this amazing ability of object detection and Image processing. With the help of a wide range of Python libraries such as PyTesseract for OCR (Optical Character Recognition), TensorFlow for object detection and the Python Imaging Library (PIL) for Image processing, it has become highly efficient for developers to create apps with self-contained deep learning and Computer Vision capabilities.

3. Automated Testing

When it comes to Automated Testing, Python is the language of choice. Automated testing is the process of execution of the apps’ features using a script rather than a human being. In this regard, Python along with Selenium (a web-based automation tool) provides a plethora of libraries and tools to perform automated tests. These tools are also known as CI/CD tools acronymous of “Continuous Integration” and “Continuous Deployment” and can run the tests, compile and publish applications along with deploying them into production.

4. Web Crawlers

Web Crawlers, also known as Spiderbot, are typically used to make a duplicate copy of all the visited pages of the world wide web for later preparation by a search engine. This will index the downloaded pages to render fast searches.

In fact, Crawlers are useful for automated maintenance tasks on a Website. For example, checking links or validating HTML code. Python is considered ideal for creating these Spiderbots because of its simple and fast code, and due to the availability of impeccable libraries.

Conclusion

All in all, we can see Python app development is really fast and flexible. It is very easy to create various types of applications because of the versatility of Python’s code. There are numerous types of libraries available for different kinds of applications – the reason why app development companies opt for Python over a sea of other languages.

Insights on Designing Experiences in Digital Healthcare

Posted on 02/09/202009/06/2021 by Tushar

With world in your palms, user experience is becoming a necessity in every domain. Everyone is looking for a memorable and seamless experience that is intuitive, intelligent and definitely a solution provider.

This is why today UX is gaining extreme importance and is playing a major role in simplifying the complexities. It is undoubtedly the foundation to success and all the passionate designers have proven this time and again. Many companies, be it product or service oriented are acknowledging the role of designing in the pavement of success like Fintech, Travel & Tourism, E-commerce, Enterprise Applications. But, there are few industries who needs to brace up like Healthcare, Oil & Gas, Insurance etc.

Today, I will share some insights from our experience in Healthcare and also touch upon the world of possibilities waiting to be discovered.

“How awesome it would be to have an intelligent system that calculates patients BMI, pointers of medical history, important notes of patients and then suggests drugs accordingly and doctors could pick up from that.”

Our first step in Healthcare UX

We started in the field with ‘Context media’, a US based client that aimed at designing an interactive tab app that helped patients gain more knowledge about the chronic diseases. Though, it was not a big project but helped us touch the unanswered vacuum of the industry. Soon, we got our milestone project ‘Surgeon logbook’, a project of ‘Narayana Health’. Dr. Varun Shetty approached us to design an extremely simple app that would aid surgeons in maintaining their log book digitally. We spent hours with the doctors understanding their requirement (conscious and subconscious) and them. We were appalled User Experience in Healthcare to discover how healthcare industry was so heavily paper dependent in 21st century! With our mobile first approach and research, we were happy to unearth that the world of surgeon’s was looking forward to an App like this.

3 Years in Healthcare industry and after spending few thousand hours with doctors, nurses, surgeons and patients, we have been entrusted with immense knowledge and thrust to design many more healthcare products. We are on a mission to revamp health care with outstanding UX and ensure that it is way more accessible than shopping.

Let’s see the current scenario of EMR in Healthcare and later I have shared some tips for designing Healthcare products.

EMR – Electronic Medical Records

Today Healthcare is not just about cure it is more about prevention. We have power to access the knowledge with just a tap. But, it’s sad to observe that current Electronic medical records (EMR) in market is just another piece of software that can be used by doctors and patients only post formal training.

Seriously? Training for an EMR! We didn’t need any training for Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon, did we? It’s not just about providing a technical solution but it is about providing a right solution that is empathetic towards users and intelligent enough to eradicate problems. Major software companies have spent months and years building EMRs, just to realize that hospitals, doctors and patients aren’t using it the way they were supposed to.

This is where User Experience Design and Emotional intelligent designs play a major role; every other day we read of medical errors that leads to loss of life, but with practicing a good UX practice, we can definitely avoid and overcome these errors.

Imagine an EMR with a seamless experience for doctor while he is prescribing drugs. The app that is as simple as an e-commerce checkout page and takes you through easy but essential steps. What if we design an experience where doctors can see side effects of drugs tailored to individual’s medical history before clicking Prescribe button. How awesome it would be to have an intelligent system that calculates patients BMI, pointers of medical history, important notes of patients and then suggests drugs accordingly and doctors could pick up from that. It’s about time to add a layer of intelligence to the app by creating an algorithm that offers helpful suggestion to users. A great example would be Tapgenes app Designed by us that takes data from embedded health tracker from iOS and suggests how can we better manage health of ours and our loved ones. This is way too exciting, I would rather stop, else I might end up building one.

Anyways, here are some tips to ponder on before designing UX for healthcare.

Start with Design Thinking aka Solution Based Thinking Session

This session with the stakeholders is the first and most crucial step. Involve the entire team, right from product owners, dev team and marketing team. Here are some links for a design thinking workshops.

Design Thinking. Thoughts by Tim Brown

What happens with a design thinking approach to healthcare? by Tim Brown

Keep it device friendly

Desktop version of EMR is history; let’s think of mobile or tabs. In one of our research, we found that doctors were more comfortable using EMR on iPad. IoT can be smartly used to supplement patient treatment through remote monitoring and communication, and to keep track of patients as they move through a healthcare facility or connect your EMR with smart wearables.

Create a UX Process

Every project has its own challenges, be it budget, timelines or development constraints. It is very important to understand them, sit back and draw your process that is adaptive to the project. We followed following steps for one of the healthcare projects:

Empathy: Understand users (doctors and Patients) wants and needs.
Discover: Research, create user scenarios, interview stakeholders, users and others playing a major role, create personas, competitor analysis.
Define: Create user journey, process flows. wireframes, clickable prototypes.
Test: Wireframes can be turned into clickable prototype, test it before you fine tune the pixels, heuristic evaluation.

Know your Users and Know them better than them

A good product is the result of good IA. Card sorting helps you group and organize necessary information by getting users involved. For example: What information doctor needs before prescribing medicine and in which flow can be easily determined by having an internal discussion and also by involving doctors involved.

Our team at Lollypop loves this activity, as Card sorting is simple, cheap, fast and user-focused. Card sorting also helps in bonding with clients and knowing the users better.

Understand HIPAA Compliance – Health Insurance, portability and Accountability.

Make sure you are aware of all the laws before you start designing fancy things. Few healthcare products fall under regulations that can impact the User Experience. Not being aware of these laws could delay the products release and could also lead to other issues. Understand the laws in handling and protecting personal healthcare information. Most of these laws are around who can access what information.

Once your personas are ready, map it to the roles and create user flows. Health insurances and their coverage are different in every country, it’s important to understand insurances role and regulations while building a product. As a designer be responsible and consider privacy of patient’s information.

Follow “Intelligent Devices, Dumb People” Rule

Yes, you read it right. We should not overweigh anyone to go out of their genre and become extremely tech savvy. Keep it simple, doctors are interested in treating patients and definitely not learning your software.

Conclusion

When you understand “What users need and not what they want” you are treading on a right path. We can order pizza, call for a taxi, maintain our finances, plan our holidays with few clicks, because, these products have appreciated the criticality of designing user centric interfaces and investing in UX to make the experience emotional intelligent. Now it’s time for healthcare to pace up and build an amazing product for hospitals and patients.

We will call it a winner when:

Patient would be able to maintain their health records and updates as seamlessly as FB posts.
Share medical records like sharing pictures in Instagram.
Doctors have all the information in few clicks.
Doctors can prescribe with easy reminders.
Doctors can concentrate on patients and not technology.
When doctors and Patients smile together.

All-Inclusive Checklist for Mobile App Development

Posted on 02/09/202011/06/2021 by Tushar

Has the app industry enticed you into submitting to its popularity? Are you now at a phase where you know you want to join the crowd but are unsure where to start? Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

Many have been where you are now. Your worries related to which platform to choose, whom to trust to not rip you off financially in the promises of an amazing app, how would you make money off your app, how will you see that people actually use your app, etc. are shared by thousands of first timers around the world.

While, it is still easy for those halves who have years of experience in the mobile market, who are well-versed with different aspects of mobile app development as mentioned in this mobile app development guide, and have launched their own app; for your half, who is new in the game, you have to lot to gear up for.

But it’s okay. You have stumbled over the right place.

We have something that no one will let you on this easily and in one place.

Keep reading to fast-track your glorious app development journey:

We have created a checklist, which covers the complete mobile app development process from its ideation stage to the stage it’s uploaded on the store. Here, we have itemized various elements that one must consider before initiating their mobile app development effort. Irrespective of whether it is done in-house, or with the help of a mobile app development company, the checklist will help in preparing you successfully developing a mobile app.

Here’s how to use it:

First select what stage you are at in the App Development process and then cross off or answer the points that are mentioned against each stage. This will give you an idea of how prepared you are for every stage.

Without further ado, let me take you down the ultimate Mobile App Development Checklist.

But before that, a quick prologue.

When you partner with a third party mobile app development company, they share a scope which entails all the parts of the checklist, superficially, which you are going to read right now. So, when dealing with a mobile app consultant, use this checklist as a means to finalize one company out of the lot you mean to interact with for developing your app.

Discovery Phase

This is the stage which preludes the app development process. This is where the app idea is checked for its viability. At this stage you analyze your target market, look at the similar apps and see what features are being offered to your target group.

If you have associated with a company, this is the part where they will sharing a scope with you that will be developed on the basis of competition analysis.

Here, you will be looking out for the :

1. Do you know who your target group is?

2. Do you know the problem your target group is facing?

3. Is there any other company offering solutions to their problems through mobile app?

4. Do you know who are the app’s competitors?

5. Have you listed down the features the competitors are offering?

6. Have you read the reviews on their app?

7. Do you know the monetization model the competitors use?

8. What app monetization would you use in the app? [Here’s a guide on this]

Technology Requirement

Once you have the understanding of the features that you need to add in your app and the behavior of your target market, the next part is to look at the basics of what your app would be. This stage will set the foundation of what you plan to offer.

9. Will your app work on Android?*

10. Is your App for iOS?

11. Will you make an app for both, now or will you wait to see its performance?

12. Is the app native or hybrid?

13. Will your app be integrated with device’s features?

14. Will it need cloud based infrastructure?

*the reason I have mentioned Android and iOS separately is because both of them come with their set of advantages and shortcomings. And even though, majority of the businesses are moving to Android, it would be completely your choice of which platform you wish to hit first.

User Interface Details

After finalizing the details related to the platform your app would be based on and the type it would be, the next step is to think about the look and feel of the app. If there is one crucial element that can affect how your app is received by the world, it is the User Interface. When you reach this stage, this is the checklist for designing an app.

15. Do you have the wireframe ready?

16. Have you decided on the App orientation? Landscape or Portrait?

17. Does the app easily transitions from one orientation to another?

18. Have you finalized your benchmarks?

19. Have you worked on the transition between screens?

20. Are the call to action button standing out from other elements?

21. Are the design elements in line with the culture of the region the app is in?

Until now you must have got a clear idea of what your app would look like and where. Beyond this point, we will now see who and how would convert this concept into a functioning app that would be used by the world. And what all would follow your app after it has been developed.

Development Criteria

This is where your app transforms from an idea into an app that would soon be available on millions of devices. Every concept that you had envisioned up until now will start taking shape here. Here is your checklist for a successful mobile app development

22. Are you making the app in house?

23. Are you hiring a sound mobile app development company?

24. If hiring, is the company in your region or based internationally?

25. If making in-house, do you have a team and expertise?

26. Do you have a cost range set for your app development process?

27. Do you know how much time would it take to develop the app?

28. Have you settled on the development process? Iterative, Agile or Waterfall

29. Have you paid attention to your app’s backend development?

Performance Metrics

Once you have settled on the decision whether to develop an app in house or employ an external agency, the next step is to make a checklist to measure its performance. This is what you need the answers to

30. Do you know how the app behaves in case of special events like low battery, less network coverage, Airplane mode, less storage?

31. Does the app has a web service?

32. Does the app have a server side component?

33. Does the app have scope to be scalable vertically or horizontally?

34. Do you get notification of app crashes in real time?

Security Measures

If there is one part of your app that can make users look beyond the performance and design and everything material, it is concrete security. Our industry is full of examples of data breach and security lags. It goes without saying that your app should not be the next example of an app that could have been made secure.

While any experienced app development company would know of the concrete ways to make an app secure, Here’s what to check from your behalf –

35. Do you have secure sockets layer incorporated in the project?

36. Does your app has two point user authentication in place?

37. Do you have control on who would have an access to your app?

38. Will there be sub-admins?

39. Does your app comply to industry security standards, like HIPAA or PCI DSS

40. Is your payment gateway integration done right?

Testing Checklist

Nearing the end stages of the app development process, testing comes into the picture. At this stage, you measure the outcome of your app development process with what you had envisioned before it all started.

Are your target users interacting with the app as you meant them to? Is it behaving like you want it? Are there any bugs and misses? You will get an answer to all these questions at this stage. Let’s see the points that you will be checking off at this stage –

41. Is your app performing same on different device and OS versions?

42. Are you testing your app on your tech team?

43. Are you testing your app on real, non-technical users?

44. Have you checked your mobile app Localization strategy?

45. Is your app ready for the next device update?

46. Is your app ready to be scaled to the next OS Update?

47. Do you have a test plan in place with tests like QC testing, Unit testing, and User Acceptance Testing?

In continuation to this, here are the things that you need to consider when testing your mobile app.

With this, you have the complete checklist for developing a mobile app. But there is one element that is still left to be worked on and that is your app brand. All these elements will fail to deliver if your app is not able to entice your target segment into using your app.

Here is the branding checklist of a successful app –

Branding Requirement

These are the elements that would define your brand impression and attract people to install your app among the sea of thousand other apps. Here’s what should be perfect in your app, before you publish it in the Apple or Google Play Store

48. Does your App icon follows the app store guidelines?

49. Are your App images are clear and contextually right?

50. Is your App Store Optimization done right? (More on this, here)

51. Are you sure your App name is not taken, unique, not unheard?

52. Have you added real screenshots in the app description?

53. Have you added tutorial videos on how to use the app?

54. Have you crossed over the various multilingual app challenges?

A quick recap:

Till now, we have seen all the elements that you will have to check pertaining to the different stages of App development process. Now, we will see how to shortlist a company out of the thousands of app development agencies in the world.

While, the internet is full of articles and guides related to this, here is a quick digestible checklist for you to finalize a brand, sooner.

Finalizing a company

If after reading through it all, you’re unsure of how you would finalize a company that can be given the responsibility to handle not just these but many other related tasks in the long run, don’t be unsure any more.

Here is a checklist to help you with the selection and finalization process.

55. Are they present on the app development companies’ review and rating sites like Clutch, Appfutura, Extract etc?

56. Are they in your time zone?

57. Are they based out of some other location?

58. Have they worked with Start-ups before?

59. Do they have experience in platform your app is based on?

60. Have they worked with the features that are to be included in your app?

61. Do they offer designing services or just the development?

62. Do you know of the team size?

63. Will they communicate with you on your mode? Skype, phone, email etc.?

64. Will there be a common report to track performance?

65. Do they follow your style of the development process?

66. Do they submit apps in the store? [If not, here’s how to submit app to Google Play Store]

67. Do they outsource any part of app development?

68. Do they take full payment upfront?

69. Do they take payment stage wise?

Mobile App Metrics

Even after it’s all done and your app has been made live on the app store, the crucial part of analyzing how the app is performing remains. There are number of standards that your app will have to fulfill before being validated as the top ranking app in the charts.

Here are the questions that you have to prepare your app to answer –

70. What is the number of your app downloads?

71. How many new visitors are on your app?

72. How many active users are there on your app any given point of time?

73. What is the average session interval of your app? The time gap between when user opens an app and when he starts using it?

74. Do you know of the time users are spending on your app?

75. Do you know at what stage are they leaving your app?

76. Are you able to calculate the Lifetime Value of a user?

77. Do you know how many people are your app able to convert in buyers?

78. Are you tracking the app store ratings and reviews daily?

79. Have you fixed a time for support response?

THE EVOLUTION OF DESIGN THINKING

Posted on 23/08/202009/06/2021 by Tushar

Who started design thinking? And where is it heading? In our Long Read, I feel design thinking’s growth from a niche activity to a mainstream practice. Pulling examples from the worlds of technology, public sector and finance, there is an endless argument that we need design thinking and designers more than ever.

The evolution of Design thinking

There’s no birthday for design thinking. Despite important landmarks and significant claims and contributions from designers, projects and agencies like us, there was no big bang. In the old days, the term “design thinking” described the techniques and methodologies employed by designers to create abstract services and experiences. Now, it’s much broader in scope and application.

Design thinking was present a long time ago in any design education. The system of analysis and synthesis, sketches, computer renderings and models made in workshops was all about customer insight, concept creation, prototype-building and testing. These are the same processes and techniques that nowadays we call design thinking.

But in my very first job, I noticed that the business world was actually very disconnected from customers and design practice. The prominence was more to the engineering team rather than the end user. Earlier design briefs (or I should call it User Interface briefs) focused on features and market research instead of user insight and testing. Unconscious decisions were made, resulting in marketing that over-promised and an operationally focused customer service.

The spread of design thinking

Geoffrey Moore’s Law of Technology Adoption describes how an initial idea is spread by visionary early adopters (good example is Facebook began as Harvard sophomore and early adopters made it big). The idea traverses the “chasm” of slow adoption and then grows dramatically when those applications and contexts show evidence of success.

Design thinking began with the spread of design practice. When the pioneering agencies began to talk about service design and design thinking, early adopter organisations were quick to see the benefits. Economies moved towards creating value from services as well as products.

But for many years, design thinking remained the domain of the early adopters, because it was seen as threatening traditional, expert-based thought. It wasn’t until we created sustainable service and design thinking practices and the mainstream started believing that such “soft” techniques actually worked that design thinking took off.

Fast-forward to the end of 2015, when tech services giant IBM launched its design thinking methodology and recruited 1,000 designers worldwide, though they burnt close to $100 million in just a year and scraped everything later. But across the globe, design has become an important integrated element within companies and organisations.

Design thinking – in Technology

Technology is an obvious application for design thinking. As a central part of our lives, technology has to be accessible, usable and appropriate to people other than the clever few who developed it. During my time at GreeneStep Technologies, the techniques of usable interface allowed me to shape the strategy and delivery of technology projects. Usability and beauty was a driver of revenue, not a “nice to have”. And this helped companies see the real business benefits and allowed them to successfully exploit the scale and reach of technology. The future of big ideas such as the Internet of Things is as much about trust and customer approval as it is about big data and networks.

…In financial services

The interest in design methodologies in business has been phenomenal. I am as surprised as anyone to find that at Barclays, design practice and design thinking are at the heart of how they develop digital banking services. The same goes with Fidelity USA, How many of us know they have a humongous UX centre where close to 60 creative minds put design thinking to work.

Barclays set up a centralised design office four years ago. Through a series of industry-leading products such as Pingit and Barclays Mobile Banking, it led the way in digital banking. Design is now integrated into every business – and designers are in great demand.

But with digitisation comes opportunity to do more than designing screens. Deconstructing processes, removing bureaucracy, putting the user at the heart of process and designing their service experience all change the nature of how we engage with customers.

…And in the public sector

It’s a lesson learnt by government too (Not to the fullest yet).

For the public sector, design thinking has been particularly attractive and at odds with traditional practice. Whether it’s obesity or mass transport, engaging with societal problems and driving real behaviour change is tough.

Customer empathy

I am amazed every day at how keen business leaders and managers are to use the tools of design and user research in projects and strategy. And it’s no fad. In a post-innovation world, where blindly pursuing new ideas is no longer the primary objective, empathy with customers comes top of the list.

We need emotional context to create clearly differentiated brand experiences that are simply more beautifully designed. This demand often comes from younger generations of employees who are frustrated with old corporate ways of doing things. And, of course, from customers, who increasingly articulate their thoughts and criticisms via social media.

The revolution of design thinking

This is an important moment in the journey of design thinking. Great progress has been made. We’re fed up that so many aspects of our lives have been designed by accountants, marketers, technicians or policymakers – those who care more about revenue, message, technology or politics than our real needs and desires. Design offers tangible benefits that complement, orchestrate and deliver human value.

But this is just the beginning. Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, is often cited as the creator of design thinking (though he’d agree that we’d all been doing it anyway). In a recent speech at Central Saint Martins in London, Tim noted that business school students were great advocates of design thinking and a more creative, empathetic approach to management.

There’s great value in demystifying and sharing the tools of design. But it’s also vital to know when a higher level of skill and design thinking processes is required.

Design’s interest in deep user insight, rather than mass research, can therefore offer great value. The same goes for tools such as co-creation and prototyping. By piloting prototypes, you gain feedback and catch problems early in the process. In this way, design has the potential to impact on the success of an initiative or policy.

So, we’re surrounded by success and the embracing of design. Job done? Mission accomplished? No.

Designers are different

A designer will see things differently from an accountant, stakeholders or a technology creator. In creative workshops, business students would come up with a single concept and be happy with it, whereas a design-trained student would create five and iterate each idea before finding the ultimate solution.

In a world fascinated by processes that promise responsiveness and rapid development, as exemplified by agile, the role of the designer becomes ever more important.

The designer is a facilitator, a champion of human empathy and a guardian of quality and simplicity. Designers override organisational or technical decisions that can chip away at the customer’s eventual experience. It’s collaboration between all parts of the organisation that makes great design happen.

It’s time to love design

There’s also a perception that design thinking and associated activities like service and customer experience design are somehow weak when it comes to aesthetics. But this should never be the case.

Now is the time to raise our ambition. The outputs of design thinking should be as beautiful as we can make them. They should be loved and treasured by all who use them. Rarely does this cost more, though it can take time to find talent and allow it to flourish. The results are always worth it.

Now that we love design thinking, it’s time to love design. Design of the detail, the delivery, the communication, the feel and the experience. People know design is their right and not a luxury; it’s merely humankind deciding how to make things as good as we can make them. This can be applied to an exceptional health service. Or to a transport system that’s empathetic to those who live around it as well as those who use it.

Design is the ultimate shared human activity, by us, for us. It’s time to love design, not just on its birthday, but every day.

Stay tune for what Anteelo has for you on this year’s DESIGN DAY!

Inspiration: Smart Design – Products that Change Our Lives by Clive Grinyer

* Disclaimer: all the images are copy right of their respective owners, we have only used it for display purpose.

UI and UX – Critical Components of E-Commerce Success

Posted on 23/08/202009/06/2021 by Tushar

The strong shift towards e-commerce in India is ever more evident with India stepping into ‘1 billion mobile user club’. According to a new Bloomberg report, country now has around 1.03 billion mobile phone subscribers. SBI research report says the e-retail market was around USD 6 billion in 2015. And India expects 125 million online buyers with USD 19 billion (only through mobile) business by 2019.

One of the research held in India shows, ‘The largest digital properties in India (Facebook, Google) and e-commerce businesses have acknowledged that they receive 50% traffic from the web and 50% traffic via mobile (mobile web and app)’. However, mobile traffic is growing at a much faster rate. But, we most definitely cannot ignore the fact that only 7.8% of mobile users have smartphones. But the non-smartphones users heavily use the Internet!

125 million online buyers in India by 2019
Mobile Commerce sales to hit $19 billion by 2019
Just 8% of e-commerce addressable market lives in Top 8 cities, rest to be reached by mobiles.

The rapid change in e-commerce has strongly focused the entire design industry. Looking back, from print we shifted to web design and today we have stepped into the whole new era of designing for systems. It’s not just limited to that! We see highest level of personalization and customization taking place serving almost individual customer needs. The question here is ‘Who’ tracks the online behaviour and needs of your target consumer, ‘Who’ digs into the competitors product, ‘Who’ study the market trends and ‘Who’ gives you a solution that exceeds expectations?

The success mantra to stay ahead in the game for all online businesses lies in innovation and tactfulness of online platforms – the answer and key is with UX (user experience) and UI (user interface) experts. These are the people who ensure that your company makes a lasting impression on your potential consumers and convert them into loyal ones!

User should experience a complete bliss when they are navigating through your platform. An easy to use portal with all the necessary information and detail makes a big difference. These designers have an ability to get inside the heads of users and present you with answers to typical ‘What and How’s’ of your digital product! They are part researchers, observers, thinkers, developers and marketers. Remember, when you went to some website and in seconds, were fed up because you could not find the information you were looking for or you had to look up the entire page just to find one simple login; thus, is an example of a bad experience. Such that you would not want to go again. And then there are Websites like ‘Facebook and LinkedIn’ that generate high volume traffic mainly due to the enhanced user experience. Therefore, if you are interested in generating high volume traffic on your portal, you should ensure that it is user friendly and easy to navigate. And, more so serves needs of every individual customers in a way that they feel that they feel part of it.

Like, Beauty is incomplete without brains. Similarly, UX is imperfect without a great UI! A great User Interface is the part of the web interface (portal or mobile) that faces the user when he looks at the portal. The use of effective and simple user interface design will be of immense help in achieving the objectives of going online. Right from colors, fonts, graphics, animations, wordings, placement, almost everything is so beautifully inter-related and in a flow that users are bound to fall in love with your product and portal. A good user interface not only increases the usability but also leads to the smooth completion of any task at hand thereby making everything enjoyable and flexible as per the requirements of users. The visual appeal of a UI on portal or mobile has a significant impact on users as its information Architecture doesn’t enable engagement on its own.

To conclude, UX is as simple as making an online, digital world as human friendly as possible. And, UI makes it as pleasing as possible. The world of e-commerce, demands an expert guidance in offering a platform that would ensure that profits see an upward trend.

Impact of Digital on Brand DNA

Posted on 22/08/202009/06/2021 by Tushar

“Brand is a CONNECT between consumers and companies”. This is a very simple yet powerful definition.

This so called ‘connect’ has undergone a seismic change recently. This change can be attributed to continuous evolution of technology which has really simplified a consumer’s life. Brands are continuously finding it difficult to establish a connect with their consumers and more so in this digital age. Earlier, brands had fewer, what is popularly known as, “moment of truths”. Consumers didn’t have access to much information. Hence choices were also limited. Marketers hardly focused on their prospective consumers. Advertising was seen as a potent weapon as a brand building tool than customer satisfaction and other elements of brand building. Customers had very limited options to voice their feeling about brands.

Digital has had a transformational effect on how brand business is done. According to Interbrand.com, Google was ranked 38th in 2005 out of top 100 brands whereas in 2009 it is ranked top 7th brand of the world. Considering the fact that Google stared its operations only in late 1998, it’s a huge achievement. Brands like Google, iPod, Facebook & YouTube have proved the notion wrong that brands take a long time to become the top brands.

Digitization has empowered the customers with unlimited tools to make them heard. Abundant access to information, thanks to Google, has left little room for brands to act smart with customers.

Brand touch points have increased in comparison to what they used to be. More interestingly, customers now have the power to make them heard at every such point through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Orkut to name a few. Brands are now aware that negative word of mouth spreads faster than positive word of mouth. Hence, brands are continuously employing “Online Reputation Management” tools to cater to disgruntled customers.

Digital has proved that brand building need not be an expensive activity. Brands are constantly exploring the power of ‘viral videos’ which are rather cheap to create and still give the brands great mileage. The recent “miss u maggi” campaign, by Nestle on YouTube has close to 1 million views so far and still counting.

PR seems incomplete without ePR. Upsurge of blogs and review websites have made people trust their peer group more than the advertisements. Worse, users may give more credence to feedback posted by a stranger on a website more than what a brand is communicating.

Today, marketers are in a better position to understand online behavior of the users that visit their sites. Web analytics tools can be of great help in understanding what pages are most visited by users, what is the path traversed by users before making some purchase on your website, how many users are coming through paid media versus how many users are coming organically etc. Never have brands got so many insights to serve their customer better, all thanks to this Digital Age.

Brand building has become more comprehensive today wherein customer satisfaction, customer experience, customer delight get equal, if not more, weight age which probably only advertising once enjoyed. Digital empowerment has changed the rules of the game. It has opened up a bag full of opportunities for the brands. It has taken brands a step closer to their customers. And the good news is that you can be a top brand in few years if you are updated about the game. You are closer to your customers than ever before. But the point is: Are you listening, do you even care to have a INTELLIGENT DIGITAL INTERFACE?

*All the content and images are sole property of their respective owners, This is just a knowledge sharing platform.

Guidelines for Writing a Great Corporate Email

Posted on 16/08/202009/06/2021 by Tushar

We are living in a world where communication is taken way more seriously than ever before. Communication has been taken to a different level, from letters to mobile communication to emails to sms to Whatsapp to Snapchat and the list can go on.

Today the most basic form of communication is either email or chats or messaging (be it sms or Whatsapp). Although personally I do not favour the modern forms of communication since it kills the whole corporate feeling to it, I have come to accept it, as it is a vital part of corporate communication.

In today’s world, we communicate more in the form of written rather than verbal text because of which the language used and the correct use of grammar surfaces as of the utmost importance, especially while writing to clients. Clients might just take the literal sense of what we say and miss the whole point altogether!. So here are 8 things, one should be careful about while writing a corporate email!

1. The KISS Rule

Keep it simple silly. No one likes to read long paragraphs or a long story in an email. It’s best to keep it short, simple and crisp. That is how a client would like it. But when I say simple it doesn’t only mean the simplicity of thoughts. More than the content it is the presentation that should be kept short and simple.

2. The Formal/ Informal Email

Depending on whom we are writing to, the tone and the content of the email changes. The kind of client he/she is left for you to decide. Remember, sometimes we should be very subtle about our opinions because not everyone can take honest suggestions in the right way. Here’s a short example of informal vs formal writing.

Informal: It is a bad idea.

Formal: I am not sure if this would be a good idea.

3. Spelling

This is where most of us go wrong. We depend a lot on the auto correct option but it’s not always a good idea. At times you need to double-check certain spellings, especially the client’s name while writing!

4. Never Say No

A client would never like to listen to phrases/words like; no, we cannot do it, it’s impossible, etc. So how would you convey a “no” to a client? There are a lot of ways to do it, here is one example: –

Instead of saying “we cannot do it” you can always say “what we can do instead.”

4. Proofreading

This one I would say is the most important part of writing emails, ALWAYS proofread what you have written. I know we live in a crazy – busy world and it is very easy to just press that send button but get into a habit of double checking what you have written.

5. Watch Your Grammar And Your Capitals.

We have to be very careful about not making silly grammatical mistakes. Like for example; we should not forget who we are addressing and keep the gender correct throughout the email. A “her” cannot be addressed as a “him”, so we need to watch out. Take care of your singulars and plurals too.

6. Punctuation

Punctuations are something that could be overlooked if it is an informal email, however while writing to a client it needs to be attended to. As we are trying to create a good image to our client (especially your potential customers whom you are writing to for the first time.

7. Write Accurate Subjects

For easy access for you as well as your clients go the extra mile and write accurate email subjects. Create versions of documents so it’s easy to pick out the latest version of a design or copy, it will be appreciated deeply.

Growing threat of E-Skimming Attacks

Posted on 15/08/202009/06/2021 by Tushar

E-skimming has been an online shopping threat for a long time, keeping pace with the growth of e-commerce overall. The current global crisis presents another big opportunity for hackers to launch these strikes as people increasingly shop online. The nefarious cybercrime targets online payment systems to collect or “skim” the payment details of customers’ payment cards at the checkout.

Unlike more traditional cyber attacks, where an entire customer database may be targeted in a single hit-and-run attack, skimming attacks continually intercept customer payment details at the point of purchase, making them harder to detect and often invisible to both customers and retailers.

Several criminal groups have become very adept at this kind of attack over the years, the most prevalent and successful of which is known as Magecart. Magecart is an umbrella term for a set of sophisticated criminal groups using similar malware and techniques — all with the goal of stealing credit card information from online retailers.

The Magecart groups are known to have been active since 2016 and have been behind some of the largest payment system attacks in recent years, including British Airways (2018), Newegg electronics (2018), the Atlanta Hawks Shop fan merchandise store (2019), Forbes magazine subscriptions (2019), as well as ticket-reselling websites for the 2020 Olympic Games and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Euro 2020 soccer tournament (2020). Such attacks earned Magecart a position on Wired magazine’s “Most Dangerous People on the Internet” list in 2018.

How it works

In most skimming attacks the threat actor introduces some additional code to a retailer’s e-commerce application. Recent attacks by the Magecart group have achieved this through the compromise of a trusted external third party whose code is legitimately included in the application, such as an external code repository, a chatbot or an advertising vendor.

So far, researchers have identified more than 40 different code-injection exploits, sometimes as small as 20 characters, which can be difficult to detect unless the application code is examined line-by-line for changes.

Attackers have also incorporated the use of valid SSL certificates tied to the domains that deliver malicious code, making traffic appear legitimate and preventing customers from receiving mixed content warnings when the website attempts to mix trusted, encrypted website content with malicious content that is served unencrypted.

A recent report has also described Magecart attacks where misconfigured access controls on Amazon S3 buckets allowed the attackers to tack their skimmer code onto existing JavaScript application code files.

Defending against card skimming

The best proactive cyber defense an organization can implement to defend against card-skimming attacks all focus on hardening the e-commerce application stack and limiting what code is allowed to run.

Use a free online scanning resource to help spot suspicious connections being opened by scripts injected into the application. Browser developer tools can also be used to analyze contents and spot suspicious connections made during a customer session.
Use the Amazon “Block Public Access” option on any S3 buckets in use by the organization to prevent unauthorized changes to application files.
Define a Content Security Policy (CSP) that defines a list of locations that resources can be loaded from on your site. This should be applied to all sensitive pages, such as payment pages, login pages and other areas where users may enter sensitive information.
Verify any external scripts, such as those from advertising partners, using Subresource Integrity (SRI). This will ensure that any scripts included from external sources are hashed and checked against a known good value to ensure that they are the files that you expect to be loaded and if not, they are blocked from loading by the browser.
Make sure that all assets on sensitive pages use SRI. Using the “require-sri-for” directive in the CSP to enforce SRI on all scripts and style tags will prevent assets being included on these pages that do not have SRI enabled.

The activity seen from Magecart and similar adversaries demonstrates that these are a persistent and resilient threat. The lucrative nature of card-skimming attacks ensures that attacks will continue to evolve in both stealth and capability in response to security precautions. However, for many of the attacks we have seen from these groups to date, had the measures described above been implemented, they would have gone a long way toward preventing some very embarrassing and expensive breaches.

Microservices vs Monolithic Architecture

Posted on 14/08/202009/06/2021 by Tushar

Microservices architecture has become a hot topic in the software backend development world. The ecosystem carries a profound impact on not just the enterprises’ IT function but also in the digital transformation of an entire app business.

The debate of Microservices vs monolithic architecture defines a revolutionary shift in how an IT team approaches their software development cycle: Whether they go with the approach that brands like Google, Amazon, and Netflix chose or do they go with the simplicity quotient that a startup which is at the development stage demands.

In this article, we are going to get startups an answer to which backend architecture they should choose when they are starting their journey to become a startup.

Table Of Content:

What are Microservices Architecture?
What is Monolithic Architecture?
Microservices vs Monolithic Architecture: Advantages and Disadvantages
How to Choose Between Monolithic and Microservice Architecture?
Migrating from a Monolithic Architecture to a Microservice Ecosystem
Conclusion

What are Microservices Architecture?

Microservices architecture contains a mix of small and autonomous services where every service is self-contained and must be implemented as a single business ability. It is a distinct approach used for development of software systems which focus on developing several single-function modules with clearly-defined operations and interfaces. The approach has become a popular trend in the past several years as more and more Enterprises are looking to become Agile and make a shift towards DevOps.

Components of Microservices architecture that makes it one of the best enterprise architecture:

The services are independent, small, and loosely coupled
Encapsulates a business or customer scenario
Every service is different codebase
Services can be independently deployed
Services interact with each other using APIs

With the question of what are microservices architecture now answered, let us move on to look into what is monolithic architecture.

What is Monolithic Architecture?

Monolithic application has a single codebase having multiple modules. The modules, in turn, are divided into either technical features or business features. The architecture comes with a single build system that helps build complete application. It also comes with a single deployable or executable binary.

Now that we have looked into what is monolithic architecture and microservices architecture, let us look into the disadvantages and benefits that both the backend system offers to get an understanding of what separates them from each other.

Microservices vs Monolithic Architecture: Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages of Monolithic Architecture

A. Zero Deployment Dependencies

An organized and well-documented Monolith architecture makes it possible for Backend developers to not worry about which version would be compatible with which service, how to find which services are present and what they do, etc.

B. Error Tracing

One of the biggest benefits of monolithic is that all the transactions are logged into one place, making error tracing task a breeze.

C. No Silos

The one factor that works in the favour of monolithic in the microservices vs monolithic architecture debate is absence of silos. It becomes very easy for the developers to work on multiple parts of the app for they are all structured similarly, using the same tools, which makes it okay to have no prior distributed computing knowledge.

D. Cross-cutting concerns:

Spending time in defining the services which do not bleed in each other’s time is the time that you can actually spend in developing things that help the customers.

E. Shared Code:

No shared libraries where the complete scope needed for services to operate is sent along each request.

Limitations of Monolithic Architecture

A. Lack of Flexibility:

Monolithic architectures are not flexible. You cannot use different technologies when you have incorporated Monolithic. The technology stack which have been decided at the beginning have to be followed throughout the project, making upgrades a next to impossible task.

B. Development Speed:

Microservices speed development process is famous when you compare microservices architecture vs monolithic architecture. Development is very slow in monolithic architecture. It can be very difficult for team members to understand and then modify the code of large monolithic applications. Additionally, as the size of codebase increases, the IDE gets overloaded and gets slower. All of this results in a slowed down app development speed.

C. Difficult Scalability:

Scaling monolithic applications becomes difficult when the apps becomes large. While developers can develop new instances of monolith and load balancer to distribute the traffic to new instances, monolithic architecture cannot scale with the increasing load.

Benefits of Microservices Architecture

The biggest factor in favour of microservices in the difference between microservices and monolithic architecture is that it handles complexity issues by decomposing the app into manageable service set that are faster to develop and easier to maintain and understand.
It enables independent service development through a team which is focused on the particular service, which makes the ideal choice of businesses that work with an Agile development approach.
It lowers the barrier of adopting newer technologies as the developers have the freedom to choose whatever technology that makes sense to their project.
It makes it possible for every microservice to be deployed individually. The result of which is that continuous deployment of complex application becomes possible.

Drawbacks of Microservices Architecture

Microservices add a complexity to project simply by the fact that the microservices application is distributed system. To solve the complexities, developers have to select and implement inter-process communication that is based on either RPC or messaging.
They work with partitioned database architecture. The business transactions which update multiple business entities inside the microservices application also have to update different databases that are owned by multiple services.
It is a lot more difficult to implement changes which span across multiple services. While in case of Monolithic architecture, an app development agency only have to change the corresponding modules, integrate all the changes, and then deploy them all in one go.
Deployment of a microservice application is very complex. It consists of a number of services, which individually have multiple runtime instances. In contrast, a monolithic application is deployed on set of identical servers behind load balancer.

The benefits and limitations are prevalent in both monolithic and microservices architecture. This makes it extremely difficult for a startup to gauge which backend architecture to incorporate in their journey.

Let us help you.

How to Choose Between Monolithic and Microservice Architecture?

The fact that both the approaches come with their own set of pros and cons are a sign that there is no one size fits all methodology when it comes to choosing a backend architecture. But there are a few questions that can help you decide which is the right direction to head into.

Are You Working in a Familiar Sector?

When you work in an industry where you know the veins of the sector and you know the demands and the needs of the customers, it becomes easier to enter into the system with a definite structure. The same, however, is not possible with a business that is very new in the industry, for the amount of looming doubts are much greater.

So, the use of microservice architecture in app development is best suited in cases where you know the industry inside out. If that is not the case, go with monolithic approach to develop your app.

How Prepared is Your Team?

Is your team aware with the best practices for implementing microservices? Or are they more comfortable with working around the simplicity of monolithic? Will your team and your business offering expand in the coming time? You will have to find answers to all these questions to gauge whether the people who have to work on a project are even ready to migrate.

What is Your Infrastructure Like?

Everything from the development to the deployment of a monolithic web application would require a cloud-based infrastructure. You will have to make use of Amazon AWS and Google Cloud for deploying even tiny elements. While the cloud technologies make the process easier, The idea of setting up database server for every other microservice and then scaling out is something that startup entrepreneur might not be comfortable with.

Have you Evaluated the Business Risk?

More often than not, businesses take microservices’ side in the Microservices vs Monolithic Architecture thinking it is the right thing for their business. What they forget to factor in is the chance that their application might not become as scalable as they are optimistically expecting and they might have to suffer the risks of adding a highly scalable system in their process.

Here is a short list of pointers that would help you make the decision of choosing to opt for software development processes with microservices vs monolithic architecture:

When to Choose Monolithic Architecture?

When your team is at a founding stage
When you are developing a proof of concept
When you have no experience in microservices
When you have experience in the development on solid frameworks, like the Ruby on Rails, Laravel, etc.

When to Choose Microservices Architecture?

You need independent, quick delivery service
You need to extend your team
Your platform need to be extremely efficient
You don’t have a tight deadline to work with

Migrating from a Monolithic Architecture to a Microservice Ecosystem

The right approach for migrating a monolithic architecture to a microservice ecosystem is to divide the monolith processes and turn them into microservices. The result of this is a two-factor plan:

Identification of existing monolithic elements which can get decoupled
A validation that the new functionality can be developed as microservice

One of the main challenges that can emerge when initiating the migration from a monolithic architecture to a microservice architecture is to design and create an integration between existing system and a new microservice. A solution for this can be to add a glue code which allows them to connect later, something like an API.

API gateway can also help in combining multiple individual service calls in one coarse-grained service, and this in turn would help reduce the integration cost with monolithic system.

Conclusion

When you compare microservices architecture vs monolithic architecture, you will find the former being a hot trend. Every entrepreneur wants to say that their app is based on this architecture. But the temptation to focus only on the problems of monolithic architecture and abandon the architecture should be measured against the actual value of microservice architecture.

The right approach would be to develop new apps using a monolithic approach and move to microservices only when the justification of the move is backed by proper metrics like performance monitoring.

For established businesses, microservices tend to be avenues for continuous deployment, team based development, and an agility to shift to new technologies. But for startups, or companies that are just starting, adopting microservices can impact the software project success very negatively.

Why to Update a Mobile App?

1. Bug Fix

2. Introduction of New Features

3. Launch of New Configuration Devices

4. Change in Business Strategy

5. Change in App Store Guidelines

How to Update your App – The Technicalities

How to Update an App on Android

1. Increment the Version

2. Upload the new APK

3. Update the App Description

How to Update an App on iPhone

How Often Should You Update Your App?

How much does it cost of updating an app?

1. Hosting Costs

2. Crash Analytics and Monitoring

3. Play Store Optimization and App Store Optimization

What is Python?

Why Python has Become Popular?

1. Python’s code is easy to read and understand

2. Python is Quick

3. Python is Compatible

4. Facilitates Test-Driven Development

5. Strong Standard Library

6. Python Supports Big Data

7. Strong Supportive Community and Corporate Sponsors

Popular Python Frameworks for App Development

1. Django

2. Flask

3. Web2Py

4. Pyramid

5. CherryPy

What Type of Apps Can You Build in Python?

1. Blockchain Applications

2. Command-line Applications

3. Audio and Video Applications

4. Game App Development

5. System Administration Applications

6. Machine Learning Applications

7. Business Applications

Other Use Cases of Python Language

1. Web and Software Development

2. Image Processing and OCR

3. Automated Testing

4. Web Crawlers

Conclusion

Our first step in Healthcare UX

EMR – Electronic Medical Records

Start with Design Thinking aka Solution Based Thinking Session

Keep it device friendly

Create a UX Process

Know your Users and Know them better than them

Understand HIPAA Compliance – Health Insurance, portability and Accountability.

Follow “Intelligent Devices, Dumb People” Rule

Conclusion

We will call it a winner when:

Here’s how to use it:

Discovery Phase

Technology Requirement

User Interface Details

Development Criteria

Performance Metrics

Security Measures

Testing Checklist

Branding Requirement

A quick recap:

Finalizing a company

Mobile App Metrics

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The evolution of Design thinking

The spread of design thinking

Design thinking – in Technology

…In financial services

…And in the public sector

Customer empathy

The revolution of design thinking

Designers are different

It’s time to love design

Design is the ultimate shared human activity, by us, for us. It’s time to love design, not just on its birthday, but every day.

Stay tune for what Anteelo has for you on this year’s DESIGN DAY!

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