Software Development Cost Estimation: How Not To Be Mistaken?

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When calculating software development cost, you need to inspect several factors like project complexity, functional features, business size, tendency or probability of changes in requirements, and more. The developer hourly charges or salaries also play a vital role in determining the cost of software development.

Many companies consider the formula where the total cost is the product of developer hourly charges and the total time required to tailor software.

Software Cost = Developer Hourly Charges X Total Development Time in Hours

This gives a flawed estimate, and it can be challenging to establish the total time required to build the software applications.

This becomes even more difficult if you are new to IT and handling the project for the first time. A software development company can offer you an accurate, guilt-free quote for transforming your ideas into viable solutions.

I have discussed several factors in this blog that can help you estimate software development costs.

What is the average cost of software development?

The average cost of building software solutions lies between $20,000 to as much as $300,000. The size, business industry, and complexity of the project plays a key role and influences the final costs.

For example, making a complex healthcare software can cost between $50,000 to $400,000. In contrast building a simple attendance marking software lies between $20,000 to $50,000.

What are the key factors influencing software development costs?

Project Complexity Levels

A simple-to-build application tends to cost less than a complex web or mobile app. The more complex the software application is, the higher the cost of software development. The level of complexity further depends upon the following:

Functional features of the software application

Required technology stack for building the project

Innovation in design elements of the UI/UX

Integration of emerging technologies like AI, ML, Big Data, etc.

Necessity of backend coding

A simple software requires minimal backend coding and delivers just a few goals. In contrast mid and high-level complex software requires intensive backend development with complex algorithms, databases, and more involved.

Software Category

The project category also plays a vital role in accurate software development cost estimation. Different project types have varying requirements in terms of technology tools and required skill set in the developers team.

When anticipating the overall charges of building software, the usual categories are:

Web development involves creating websites, web apps, and PWAs with JavaScript technologies. These usually cost between $10,000 and $50,000.

Mobile app development is higher and ranges between $30,000 to as much as $100,000. Most companies make mobile apps with React Native or Flutter

MVP or Prototype helps you test new ideas and can cost the least in the IT world. You release the product with a few features and later build iterations.

Software Modification or Third-Party Integrations cost between $10,000 to as much as $40,000.

SaaS development is one of the costliest undertakings, and the cost could start at millions of dollars and go higher. However, the brightest ideas have massive ROI.

Business Requirements & Functional Features

A software development company can carefully study your business needs and requirements to establish a suitable set of functional features. Once the functional features are established, they can provide a veritable roadmap for building the software ideas with timelines.

Studying your business requirements involves the following:

Finding the pain points and sections that must be addressed on priority

Determining the objectives of the project

Analyzing the needs of the target audience

Meetings with various stakeholders

Defining potential risks and ways to mitigate them

UI/UX Personalization

Poor UI/UX designs lead to customers or users losing interest in the software product. The user interface of the software application must be interactive and friendly and offer intuitive navigation.

It is essential to onboard the right professionals with hands-on experience in building immersive designs. The guide to hire developers in India enlist key factors like how to determine experience & credibility for building the best team.

Paying for high-quality UI/UX designs helps you build a successful, market-ready product. It also ensures seamless conversions and helps build credibility, brand values, etc.

Technology Platform Used

Are you building a multi-platform application? Targeting users only on iOS or Android may lead to a massive revenue loss. Further, you may need to hire several developers with specific skill sets to construct applications for different platforms and versions. Rather, building cross-platform applications helps you reach a larger user base seamlessly.

Team Size & Salaries

Factors like the size of your team and salaries also influence the budget. Whether you onboard full-stack developers or opt for a full-fledged team also directly helps to determine the software development cost.

The more members, the higher the charges, as you pay every individual for additional perks or benefits. Additionally, each team member's rate varies and depends upon the technology skills they bring to the table.

You can outsource software development India for building the application at a cost-effective budget. Compared to US and UK based organizations, a software agency in India can help you save 40% of the development cost.

Conclusion

Analyzing the above factors can help with an accurate software cost estimation. Various agencies can provide guilt-free estimates based on your project requirements.

However, avoid being lured by cheap quotes when choosing IT partners. It is essential to weigh the value for money the software development company offers to make a compelling choice.

Acelerate Your Ecommerce Business: Top Trends for 2020

The ecommerce market is rapidly growing each year therefore, businesses need to monitor ecommerce trends to stay ahead of the competition. By the end of 2019, the global ecommerce market had sales reaching $3.5 trillion and represented 14% of the total share of global retail sales. As we move into 2020, it’s important to learn about the latest trends and technologies in ecommerce sector to make the best out of your online business.

Without further ado, here are some of the emerging ecommerce trends that continue to be major players in 2020.

Headless Ecommerce

Headless ecommerce is a talk of the town as it allows the presentation layer of a website to be decoupled from the ecommerce functionality. Headless ecommerce refers to the use of ecommerce platforms like Magento or PrestaShop that don’t require a pre-designed storefront. Data is retrieved from the backend via an API and is separated from the frontend. This gives retailers full control over their storefronts across a variety of channels, including desktop, mobile and social media.

Voice Commerce

Voice assistants like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Assistant are becoming popular day by day. By 2023, 8 billion devices will be equipped with voice assistants in them (including smartphones). Moreover, voice shopping is expected to grow to 40 billion by 2022. As per Loop Ventures, 75% of U.S. households will own a smart speaker by 2025.

Chatbots to Communicate with Customers

By 2025, the global chatbot market is expected to generate revenues to approximately thousand million dollars and ecommerce represents a big slice of this. 45% of end users consider chatbots their primary choice for customer service inquiries.

Source: Credence Research

Chatbots allow stores to communicate with their customers while giving them the feeling of personal attention and thoughtful recommendations based on their responses. Research shows that 60% of customers prefer chatbots to answer their inquiries due to faster response time. Experts also  predict that chatbot usage will increase by 80% in 2020.

Rise of Virtual and Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) has become a major game changer when it comes to online shopping, significantly closing the gap of ambiguity. It helps consumers to see how they would look while wearing a certain item or which paint color will suit heir home. This eliminates the hurdle of not being able to see the product firsthand and makes shopping easy.

By 2022 over 120,000 stores will be using Augmented Reality (AR) technologies, offering a much richer buying experience. 

Personalization for the Win

Ecommerce sites are widely investing in personalization tactics as it helps consumers feel a connection to brands and can simplify the online shopping experience. It includes personalized messages via email, updates about relevant discounts, and engaging with customers through video content.

Recent data also shows that incorporating personalization feature can reduce bounce rates by 45%. 94% of companies see personalization as a critical component of their success. Creating a more personalized experience online has shown to boost revenue by 10% . 

Environmental Concern Influences Buyers

Green consumerism is on the rise, as half of the digital consumers say that environmental concerns impact their purchasing decisions. Thus, online businesses need to comply with environmental-friendly practices. Whether it’s organic or vegan skincare products, there is an increasing demand for cruelty free products. Consumers feel more responsible for the planet, which in turn increases the responsibility for brands to cater to the eco-friendly needs of customers.

User-Generated Content on Social Media

Brands are seeking influence partnerships and ripping out the benefits of user-generated content (UGC). The photos and videos that social media users share about brands can be a fertile ground for unique and engaging content. Such content brings authenticity to brands when influencers make IGTVs while using those products or endorse through pictures. It further gains consumer’s trust and affects their purchasing decisions. More than 64% of social media users will seek out UGC before making a purchase, and UGC videos get 10 times more views than brand content.

Wrapping Up

Incorporating the aforementioned mentioned trends can take your eCommerce business to a whole new level. And to do so you need to find the right web development agency that delivers successful projects. Well, your search ends here! Being a trusted web and app development company, we merge superior quality, agile methodology, collaborative approach and technological understanding to bring products that take your business to a higher grade. Get in touch with our certified experts for more information.

Top Benefits Of Hiring a Laravel Certified Developer

Do you know why so many people are looking to Hire PHP Developer nowadays? It is due to the high demand for PHP based websites on the web.

The last few decades have witnessed a complete transformation in the way we live communicate and get information. Today, most of us rely on the internet to get information about everything and everyone. With this, websites and search engines are constantly getting more advanced to cater to the growing demand of people. Therefore, static websites are being replaced by creative dynamic websites since they offer much more features and functionalities. And to create such websites, developers mostly use PHP or ASP.NET where PHP holds more than 80% of market share. And guess which PHP framework tops the list? It’s none other than Laravel.

Well, the graph clearly depicts how Laravel has taken the lead as the best PHP framework, and there have to be some strong reasons behind. Let’s mention some of them:

The next question is, how can a Laravel Developer help you?

Don’t worry, we have the ideal answer to this question:

• eCommerce Website Design and Development
• Web Application Development
• Social Networking Application
• Custom Solutions
• Migration
• RESTful API Development and a lot more…

After knowing the expertise areas of a certified Laravel developer, it’s time to discuss

The Benefits of Hiring Dedicated and Certified Laravel Developers

Adept and Experienced

Laravel development is adopted by numerous people/companies for their PHP-based web projects. Finding a highly-qualified Laravel developer is not easy since the framework is complex and you need to find someone who has excelled in Laravel development to make the best of it. A Laravel developer is required to deal with routing, middleware, views, blade templates, eloquent models, response etc, and an amateur can’t handle all of these effectively. So, it is crucial that the developer you hire has experience with the architecture of the framework and everything it brings along.

Higher Return on Investment (ROI)
The competition is huge and you need to make wise investments in the tech space to reap good results and more benefits.

The first step towards investing wisely is choosing Laravel and second is hiring a certified Laravel developer. This can give you unexpectedly impressive results since they know the A-Z (or even beyond) of development and the art of offering relevant results to the visitors. After all, they’ve dealt with similar businesses and brands like yours. This, in turn, helps in generating higher ROI and ultimately success.

Great Compatibility with Various Web Browsers
Millions of people on the web use various web browsers to search for your business and your products/services. Thus your website should be working well across all the available web browsers and platforms. Professional Laravel developers deliver you a powerful and dynamic website which is both platform and web browser independent and works seamlessly on all the major web browsers. This helps in getting and attracting the desired traffic without any worries on bad user experience.

Enhanced Security
This goes without saying but dedicated and certified Laravel developers have experience and knowledge of how to create a safe, secure and reliable website for your business. No one likes a vulnerable website.

Once you hire certified or experienced Laravel developers, they employ all the in-built and additional security features of Laravel and develop a highly secure website for your business. With no vulnerability in code, you can be relaxed of hackers harming your website and run your business uninterruptedly. 

Laravel could be your best programming partner and the perfect framework for web application development. Just make sure you hire a certified Laravel developer and you are good to go!

Impact of Social Media Networks on eCommerce

Gone are the days when social media was just a tool for socializing and making contacts. In the last decade, the social network has gained remarkable attention and as the evolution takes place, accessing social sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube has become very facile and economical. With a large population, reaching your customers and potentials through these channels has become extremely convenient. Thanks to smartphones and mobile applications!

                       

Today, it is the pursuit of every respectable brand to maintain a social media account for business growth and marketing. Consequently, the improved role of social media in eCommerce has shifted the dynamics of consumer-marketer communication. Further, consumer buying decisions are massively affected by social media.

“The Internet has become a central destination for those seeking the ultimate options in variety, value, and availability. Also, the fact that approximately 86% of consumers,18 and older, are likely to engage with one of the major social media platforms on a daily basis tells how social media is one of the most powerful influencers of an eCommerce site.”

Well, the main objective of this article is to identify the role of social media and evaluate its importance in building a brand and consumer behavior. Let us get you acquainted with some of the key points:

Personalization

If you run an eCommerce business, no matter the platform (PrestaShop or Magento or any other), you need to identify the habits of your consumers and users to create more targeted advertising campaigns. For instance, by collecting data points like search queries, social behaviors, geographic location or purchase history, you can better align yourselves with the interests of your buying audience. Further, you can create customized social media campaigns for a particular group - the one that resonates with your target audience and automatically hits the right note.  

User-Generated Content

User-generated content or UGC involves photos, video clips and other digital displays that demonstrate an individual’s affinity for a certain brand or product line. Luckily, social media offers the easiest and most accessible means for consumers to post photos and videos. So, it’s your job to keep a check on the digital posts and use them to influence your users. Studies have shown that UGC photos are 5X more likely to convert customers versus non-UGC.

Boost SEO Ranking 

Comments and advertisements on social media websites are very often liked, shared and commented upon. These together help build brand image and visibility. Moreover, if some positive things are being said and shared, your SEO ranking will automatically increase while driving more traffic and leads.

Chatbots

Where the people go, the businesses must follow, and brands are edging their way into private messaging through chatbots. Often linked-in to one of the company’s social media account, chatbots act as a customer support service. These AI personalities can simulate real conversations, answer product-related queries, offer recommendations and resolve customer complaints. Thus, these are an effective way to reach customers ad leave a positive impact on them.

Customer Loyalty 

In the era when customers are just a click away from doing business elsewhere, increasing customer loyalty and value cannot be overstated.

By building relationships with new customers and strengthening relationships with existing ones via social networks, it stands to reason how both will increase.

CONCLUSION

As far as eCommerce is concerned, it has already changed the way we shop. The catch is, eCommerce businesses need to constantly evolve with evolving technologies, especially social media- only then can they stay in the long run and attract customers. Social media ignites serious visibility and value, provided appropriate strategies are put into play.