How To Optimize Ecommerce Checkout Page?

Checkout is the most crucial stage of a customer’s journey in online shopping. 7 Out of every 10 people who get to your checkout page leave without making a purchase. No matter how good their experience leading up to this, something must be going wrong. There are many reasons like hidden costs, limited payment options, compulsory logins, or security concerts. So how can you optimize the final step in a consumer’s journey for a better customer experience (and more sales)? Let us see the ecommerce checkout page optimization tips to drive more sales.

Know the best ecommerce platforms at- Top 10 Ecommerce Platforms To Know In 2021

Ecommerce Checkout Page Optimization Tips- 

1. Convenience-

Convenience has become one of the most important factor affecting the overall conversion rates. 83% of shoppers agree that they value convenience, hence provide shoppers what they want, even on the checkout page too. 

1.1. Allow Guest Checkout-

Providing the ‘guest checkout’ option next to register/sign-in is great for those customers who don’t want to sign up. Regardless of whether they’re security conscious, a first-time buyer, or have another reason for not wanting to sign up, this will cover it. Rather than seeing ‘register’ and leaving the page, visitor can select ‘guest checkout’ and just provide the details required for purchase.

You can push for them to register after the sale has been completed. Create a custom thank-you page for after-purchase, or use onboarding email. Also providing order number and details where order details will be sent, will help them chance to create an account to keep track of their orders.

1.2. Single Click Sign In-

No one likes to remember AccountIDs and password. A solution to this is, you can offer one-click sign-ins. Let them use their social accounts like Google and Facebook to register on your marketplace. Cross-platform functionality eases the login process to sopper and get access to some pre-vetted user info. This can be done by using OAuth2 with an Identity and Access management tool like keycloak. It lets the third party authenticate users and you get limited access to user accounts.

1.3. Provide Pre-filled Fields-

Registered customers should not need to enter the same info every time they buy something from your store. Entering the delivery details is tedious tasks, particularly when they are in the middle of a checkout process. This feature adds convenience, speeds up the process and leaves shoppers with less time to think about abandoning the cart. Common practice for pre-filled is to store the user’s info in small packets. With this way, shopper has to select only one of the many saved delivery and payment options.   

1.4. Progress Indicator-

Most of the time,it is not always possible to keep the checkout process short. We know that online shoppers are impatient, then how to stick them through the entire process? Use a progress indicator on the checkout page.  

With an idea of how long the complete process might take, the customer will be mentally prepared to go through with it. Progress indicators works well for all type of checkout situations. Also, you should remember to not limit the progress indicator to three to five stages.

1.5 Checkout Buttons With Products-

With shopping carts, customers can buy multiple products and pay for all of them at once. Add a “BUy Now” or “Go to Cart” option to directly take shoppers to the checkout page. It saves more time and reduces the effort taken to scan navigate to the final process. 

1.6. Save Cart In Wishlist-

Sometimes buyers use the cart as a glorified wishlist. But they don’t often purchase all the cart products at once. For such case, they remove everything from the cart except the product they wish to purchase and proceed to checkout. However, if there were an option of saving other products in the cart for later, the customer might buy them eventually. Provide the option of cart item saving into the wishlist and you might end up selling more to the customer in the long run. You can provide recommendation engine that shows relevant products based on shopper’s preferences. You can easily generate more revenue with additional AI and ML capabilities. 

2. Design-

2.1. Simple Design-

It is easy to create an attractive design but its of no use if the UI of the checkout page is not good at conversions. Create simple design that don’t confuse shoppers. Checkout page should have a clean and elegant design that makes the shopper want to buy the product. You may want a variety of design elements to reflect on your checkout screen, but actually you don’t need that. Rather, just focus on what’s important and highlight the same. So create and improve the checkout page for your eCommerce website.

2.2. Remove Distractions-

Distractions distract the shoppers from their primary goal. It can be a last minute offers, advertisement pop ups, product recommendations, unwanted graphics. This increases the possibility of shopping cart abandoning without completing the checkout process. One of the best tip is to get rid of usual header, footer and menu options from the checkout page and make it blinker for the process.

Unnecessary long process is another common distraction for buyers. Keep it short and include just required fields. 

2.3. Use Single Page Checkout-

One-page checkouts are popular as they speed up the checkout process and improve overall conversion rate. Create a one-page checkout to give customers a path of least resistance. Avoid filling the checkout page with lots of information. It is also important for you to know that one-page checkout form is not for every eCommerce business. It is better to conduct A/B testing to determine if it’ll work for you. 

WooCommerce one page checkout and shopify customize checkout page are easier ways to employ a single-page checkout on eCommerce websites.

2.4. Optimize For Mobile-

Here are some guidelines to follow-

• Design a page for single-handed operations
• Avoid creation of lengthy checkout page. Break the process into smaller stages. 
• Keep the font and form fields large for better readability and CTA buttons big enough to avoid accidental taps.

3. Payment-

3.1. Offer More Payment Methods-

Even physical shops offer multiple payment options like credit-debit cards, cash etc. PayPal is one major player. For many customers, paying through PayPal means they don’t have to go and find their card in their wallet. For B2B companies,  you may find many departments prefer the old-fashioned way of invoicing. If you use that, you’ll draw customers in who might otherwise have avoided you. You can offer over-the-phone payment with a single click to connect to your VoIP services.

3.2. Allow Order Modification-

Order modification on the checkout page can prevent shoppers from leaving the checkout page. You can let them switch other variants, change the delivery address and alter with other modifiable attributes. The more modification options on the checkout page, the less likely they will abandon the cart. This fundamental feature is mostly hard to execute in an eCommerce application. The modified cart has a ripple effect throughout the codebase, affecting inventory and payment status.

4. Security-

4.1. Implement Data Validation-

Data validation makes the checkout process more secure for shoppers. When you make it binding for just a specific kind of input, decreases the capacity of conmen to interfere with it. Also, it prevents customers from making errors while filling those fields and saves them from further iterations of process.

Hence, proceed and set up validation rules for form fields. Mark out the necessary fields and display input errors if buyers miss or enter incorrect information.

4.2. Show Reviews And Ratings-

Customer words are the most convincing among all promotional techniques. Hence most of the eCommerce portals show customer reviews and ratings with the product descriptions. Display product ratings in summary to show the customer’s feedback. Showing reviews on the checkout page can be tricky though. One can also include a summarised version of reviews.

4.3. Ask About Exit Reason-

You can use exit-intent pop-ups to know the reason of – why shoppers left your cart. The data collected can help you in the improvements that users want to see in your online store.

4.4. Testing And Improving-

There’s no one size fits all solution for a perfect checkout page. Most effective way to ensure you develop the best version of checkout page is by continuous testing. Consider the different metrics, test them and see if you can bring  a positive change for your business. Perform A/B testing and discover what works best for your eCommerce store. Go ahead and try page optimization techniques for your business.

Know the details of ecommerce testing at- How To Test An Ecommerce Website/Application?

Final Words-

Building an ecommerce website or app is easy but optimizing it to grow sale is not a simple task. Following the above optimization tips will help you to create an optimized checkout page for ecommerce store. If you’re facing any difficulty to create ecommerce website or app, consult with Solace experts. We are here to help you through consultation and development. You can hire ecommerce developers of Solace team for an effective ecommerce solution development. Connect with Solace and get a free quote for ecommerce development. We will be happy to help you.

 

How To Estimate The Cost Of Custom Software Development?

The term “Software” is not specific and has a wide range of applications. Custom software has gained more attention in the past few years because of the scalability, flexibility and personalized experience they offer. But there is a confusion among CTOs and CEOs about the cost of custom software development. Although all custom software projects are different, execution remains the main concern for many businesses. Technologies like Artificial intelligence, Internet of things, AR/VR, and machine learning have become common as integrations. Such innovative integrations need robust execution of software development projects.

Accurate cost estimation is a key to successful software development project. It may sound different, but this is a truth as it includes money and software. Here we will discuss some of the approaches that eases the software cost estimation process for the businesses and how to estimate the custom software development cost for project. But before proceeding to it, let us see what is custom software.

What Is Custom Software?

Custom software is a user-specific software that caters to a generalized user base. It has features that are in line with your business requirements. For example, a tailor-made banking desktop application or ERP software comes under custom software. A custom software development process includes requirement analysis, coding testing and deployment. It offers a personalized experience for users, lowers the development cost and increases ROI. Also, scalability in custom software is better than other softwares. Let’s get on the factors that affect custom software development costs.

Factors Affecting The Cost Of Custom Software Development-

1. Size Of The Foftware-

One of the most important factor that determines almost half of the development cost is the size of your custom software. For instance, a simple mobile application or online store that offers products will be less costlier than a multitasking ERP solution used by banks or hospitals. Also, CRM solutions, warehouse management and security apps are premium software that is expensive and time consuming to build before the final product is released. Ensure that you know the exact features that a software should have when you explain it to team. 

2. Complexity-

Complexity of a software plays a vital role in final development estimate. It refers to the overall purpose and additional requirements you have for your software development team. As the complexity increases, cost also increases. Design, features, user interface and technological requirements are the main factors that make the software simple or complicated. You can develop a simple software or application with traditional platforms and technologies in just a few weeks. The degree of complexity can increase development time and tools required to add highly responsive functionality. 

3. MVP Requirements-

We all know the importance of MVP. It test your product before they launch in the market. MVP is a great way to receive valuable feedback. For instance, you want to build a music streaming app that plays music. Though this seems like a fantastic thought, you may still need to find out how users react to this addition. Hence, you can create a beta version and release it. MVP may take  up to 20-40% of total development cost, but it is worth the investment because user reviews can give you a complete understanding of product’s usability. Also, it gives some extra time to work on complex features of the application. Inshort, MVP of software not just improves the time-to-market but offers valuable feedback on its functionality.

4. Design Requirements-

Providing creative designs and animations to your software is always a better idea as it keeps users engaged. Because the design has the potential to scale up your development efforts, that may increase the cost of custom software development. It will be better to choose an elegant and simple design. 

5. Development Approach-

Starting from selecting a framework to following a development approach, the project plan includes modules that help you complete the execution strategy and budget. After this, you need a development approach that is reliable, fast and has few errors. Agile development is an approach with iterative process. As per the report, 95% of organizations used Agile development, where tasks are distributed across sprints to take address feedback from stakeholders and developers also.

Agile development allows cost-effective development lifecycle in a following manner-

• Starting stage lets you to create a roadmap to clarify tasks, allocation and interaction metrics, reduce team efforts and technical debts.
• Prototyping gives stakeholders a look into the product, that provides space for improvements before the product comes into the market.
• Iterative sprints ensure each version integrates with user feedback to reduce development time and bugs.

6. Integrations Of Systems-

Third party API integrations help you to include more functionality to apps. APIs are a set of instructions that help different systems to interact. When you integrate third-party APIs, there can be compatibility issues, integration costs can increase. For instance, instant messaging integration. If you want to integrate whatsapp into your application, then there are two ways- Set up docker container and use AWS solution. In case of the docker container set up, you will need to create containers using developer’s guide provided by Whatsapp. It may increase the development cost and effort too. Understanding the compatibility of third-party APIs with custom software and the cost of integrations becomes quintessential.

7. Database Migrations-

Database migration can be costly if not planned properly. You can avoid this by creating a backup of existing data, among other database migration practices. It reduces the risk of data loss during migration. Here software development company can help you. It helps you seamlessly move your data between systems, formats, locations and includes data conversion, validation, profiling, cleansing and quality assurance. 

Steps To Determine The Cost Of Custom Software Development-

1. Select The Right Software-

In the market there are different types of software models but selecting the right one is an important task. It can be challenging to find a product that matches your requirements. Hence, to avoid the time waste in thinking of custom features, you may go for a boxed-product that has features like your requirements. But if you want to extend capabilities, integrations, maintenance, upgradations, training etc, select the right software at the start.

2. Hire A Suitable Development Team-

You can choose in-house developers and off-shore technical experts. In case of the cost aspect, off-shore experts are better. If you prefer in-house employee, you should provide insurance, productivity metrics and allowances etc. It can be costlier to hire new employee when migrating to a new technology. 

Know the reasons of- Why should you outsource the software development?

3. MVP Features To Choose-

Product features are the core reason for your product success hence, if you want to increase your return on investment, then divide your features into two priorities while you define your project requirements. Select as per your software’s primary features a top priority and remaining a second priority.

Know the- Top 7 considerations for developing an effective MVP (minimum viable product)

4. Considering Risks For Future Developments-

While building a large-scale product like SLack, you have to assess the risks involved. The repercussions of neglecting the magnitude of your scalability can cause more damage than you can imagine and in some cases, can cost you users’ credibility.

5. Impact Of The Funding Type-

Small scale software has simple architecture with low-cost development, enterprise software has list of features. This difference affects the cost of development for software. Enterprise-grade software requires substantial funding resources. With investors like non-profit organizations, government authorities etc, grant-funded software becomes highly scalable. The right amount of funds allows you to procure premium resources and hire in-house or offshore experts.

Factors To Determine The Average Cost of Custom Software Development–

1. Software Type-

There are three types of software: enterprise, mid-market and small scale. Every type affects the development price differently according to the level of software. Enterprise-level custom software development needs quality developers and may range between $200,000 and $100,00,00,000. Mid-market software may cost about $45,000 to $60,00,000, whereas, the price of small-scale software may range in between $10,000 and $5,50,000.

2. Based On Work Hours-

Hourly pricing models differs depending on the location of technology partner. Large scale software owners mostly see a increase in their overall development costs, for these projects take more resources and time to develop.

3. Size Of The Team-

According to the designation, number of employees, their salaries etc., the cost of software can change.

4. Fixed-Price Cost Package-

Fixed-price cost package is an agreement between stakeholders and the vendor. This contract covers the cost of custom software development per hour, project work statement and details of payment schedule. Mostly payment is offered in milestones after software developers get the validation from product owners. Contract should have transparency to evaluate the exact cost of software development.

Request For Proposal-

It is a great practice to estimate custom software development costs. Organizations draft RFPs for their technical partner or vendor. The RFP should include all the requirements you need for custom software. Companies can post the excerpts from the RFP draft on open-source channels. Feedbacks from peers and vendors on the platform can help you draw some crucial points in the final draft. Some vendors will come up with requirements and suggestions that you might have missed. This will help you gauge the cost of custom software development at very early stage. There are two types of vendors. One offers low hourly rates than its average cost. They seem to fit right into your budget, but the real picture shows during the development stage, where there are some hidden costs.

The other may seem costly on the paper, but are reliable and do not cut corners to fit right into your pocket. RFP will help you to choose the right vendor and estimate the cost of custom software development.

Final Words-

Estimating the custom software development cost is difficult when compared with the development of ordinary software development. But with proper planning and strategy, cost estimation will be easier. The above points will help you to estimate the project cost more accurately. If you’re still confused about estimating the software development cost, consult with Solace experts. We are here to help you through consultation and development with our expert developers. You can hire php developers, ios developers and android developers of Solace team for web solution development. Connect with Solace for software development as per your business requirement. We will be happy to help you.

 

Top 10 Reasons To Choose React Native For Hybrid Apps

In this digital era, technology changes with a blink of an eye. When it comes to apps, we are very much aware of the notifications. Here we’ll discuss about the React Native for Hybrid app development. Previously, biggest challenges that app developers faced was before developing apps that work well on various platforms like iOS and Android. But now with the react native app development, one can create separate apps for ios and android both. React native framework is a rising mobile solution and has the ability to build high-performance future proof native mobile app for your business.

Why React Native For Hybrid App Development?

Previously, for app development, one must adopt for either building a hybrid app with HTML5 or coding for two different native apps that perform the same tasks in Android and iOS. But, now, things are not same. After launching of React Native, all things become simple and convenient. And hence the following reasons justify why React Native is better for Hybrid app development.

React Native is an open source framework developed by Facebook which introduced the concept of web development into mobile app building by using Javascript. They don’t differ from apps built on Java, Objective-C or Swift and they use the same UI building blocks as native iOS or Android apps. But with React Native, building mobile app is more faster and less expensive. Let us see some features of React Native that makes it best for mobile app development.

Know the hybrid app frameworks at- Top 5 Hybrid App Frameworks that you must know in 2020

Top 10 Reasons To Choose React Native For Hybrid Apps-

1. Improved UI/UX-

React Native is about mobile UI. Comparing React Ntive with AngularJS or MeteorJS,  it has been found that it looks more like a Javascript library than a framework. As React native does not have UI components library of its own, it uses third-party libraries. React native material design, react native elements, native base and Shoutem are some similar UI libraries that are available for user. Also, user interfaces designed in React Native are more responsive, reduces load time and provide smoother feel.

2. Cross-Platform-

Component describes its own appearance in react and it handles the rendering for you. Clean abstraction layer separates these two functions. To render web components, React uses standard HTML tags. This abstraction layer call as “bridge”, that allows React Native to invoke the actual rendering APIs on iOS and Android. On iOS, that implies your React Native components render to real UI Views, while on Android, they’ll render to native Views. Rather than compiling down to native code, React Native takes your app and runs it using host platform’s Javascript engine, without blocking main UI thread. One can get the benefits of native performance, animations and behavior without need to write Objective-C or Java. Other cross-platform frameworks like Cordova or Titanium, can never match this level of native performance or appearance.

3. Performance-

Comparing native versus react performance the mobile applications made on Swift versus React-Native were practically indistinguishable in their UI somehow swift found little edge over react native. Estimating both of the application’s CPU, GPU, and Memory during the tasks, the applications are also almost identical in how they perform. Native won in CPU category, React native won in GPU category and React native won in Memory category.  Native makes use of CPU more efficiently than React-Native. React native uses GPU slightly more effectively than Native, and that React native uses memory more effectively than Native does. React native wins in two of three categories. 

4. Code Reusability-

One of the most useful feature of React native is code reusability. It shares the single codebase for ios and android app development. With this feature, app developers can reuse code from web apps that are written using react or react-native-web. So that developed web applications can use their website front-end and convert it into mobile apps.

5. Reduction In Development Costs & Time-

React native lets you keep the same codebase or its part between different mobile platforms. Wen you write an app for iOS devices, it is possible to compile it into Android and vice versa and it takes 33% less time for development instead of writing a project from scratch. We can develop mobile and web apps with reusable modules improves development time.

6. Speed-

Hybrid applications are faster than native and mobile web apps. With hybrid mobile apps, there is no need to reload the app data often here hot reload comes to the picture. The reason behind its speed is framework and technology used in React Native app development.

7. Ease Of Integration-

When you start mobile app development from scratch, react native is great. Hybrid applications uses the device’s internal programming system through overlay that helps in seamless synchronization with other compatible apps. It reduces the integration issues for developers. Hybrid apps work great with device’s native applications like camera, GPS, messaging and so on, to ensure a smooth user experience. 

8. Animations-

Animations are important in improving the UI of mobile app or web app. These days most of the app contains animated components. As compared to other frameworks React native provides more smooth animations as the code is converted to native views before rendering. 

Know more at- https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/top-10-reasons-to-choose-react-native-for-hybrid-apps/

Top 10 Frontend Trends In 2021

 

Frontend web development standards and trends are known to change rapidly, that makes it challenging to discern transient fads from the game-changers. So it is important for developers to stay updated with the latest programming languages, frameworks and technologies to remain relevant and competitive in a continuously evolving industry. Microservices and its multi-tenant architecture allowed easy data transmission amongst its large number of users and prevent minor server errors from disturbing the whole system. This is just a starting, there are some other trends too that lots of organizations are embracing. If you are also developing a software solution, knowing the well known trends will help you for best frontend development. Let us see which are those.

Top 10 Frontend Trends In 2021

1. Popular Frameworks-

ReactJS is the most popular framework used by developers not only for speed and simplicity but also for its ability to create rich and engaging web apps with less coding. This framework ensures better performance because of its ability to prevent updates from DOM, and this results in faster and smoother app rendering, improving the user experience.

AngularJS is the next popular and easy to use framework. It’s MVC architecture allows you to attach app code that saves a lot of time. Also Angular’s features like, two-way data binding, coding modularity and community support makes it a top performing framework in 2021.

VueJS is gaining popularity because of its relatively easy learning curve. So developers with minimal experience can master the framework more than others in the market. It is a progressive framework for Javascript with its main focus on making UI development simple and fast. 

2. Headless Architecture For Content Management –

According to the report, headless CMS software market will grow at a CAGR of 22.6% from 2020 to 2027. With the increasing number of online app users, companies are now shifting their content management strategy that adopts a hybrid approach to provide consistency and uniformity across different platforms. Headless CMS is a content repository that independently runs on background using web service API to push content across  various devices. This approach allows scalable opportunities while reducing the maintenance and production costs of a large team. Considering the huge demand for service in the European market, Deliveroo wanted a site management strategy to reduce the load on developers and improve their on-site experience. They centralized their global experience by adopting a headless CMS architecture to allow customized content for segmented targets. Transition increased their sales across Europe and make them one of the largest and successful online food delivery company. 

3. Micro- Frontend Architecture-

Micro-frontend is a popular architecture style where independent frontend apps are built and then added into the whole codebase. With separate components development teams can simultaneously work together on individual components of a single codebase to develop the entire frontend. Near about 24.4% developers have taken advantage from micro frontend for their web app development since it improved efficient bug-free development. 

4. Alternatives To Javascript-

Javascript is a long-time staple in the web development world and is still very popular among web developers. There are some alternatives gaining popularity in the community. Blazor enables developers to build browser-based apps using C# and transpiles that code to WebAssembly  that is supported by browsers like Safari, Chrome etc.

5. AI Chatbots-

AI chatbot trend has been growing for quite a few years now. In 2021 you can almost expect a chatbot on almost every website and web apps. Frontend developers can use Javascript to implement pre-available chatbots onto websites. It is a great way to improve user experience and increase conversions on website.

6. Motion UI-

Incorporating unique designs to the software/app is the best way companies can cater to user experience and increase click-through rate. Motions designs, web animation APIs and CSS animations in the frontend is a new trend in the future. Use of animation will highlight the action and allows users to navigate through the web application with attractive information. For example- motion designs can be added while transitioning from one page to another, for graphical changes in chart etc. Google standardized motion graphics for their product lines as it increases the importance of action and brings positive click rates for user experience. Some of its examples include uber, facebook, google apps, instagram, CRED, snapchat, Spotify etc.

7. JAMstack-

JAMstack is an architecture that works on core principle of pre-rendering and decoupling. It makes a website faster, secured and easy to scale. Also, it provides tool to improve the workflow and productivity for frontend developers. 71% developers are using JAMstack architecture with the mobile devices for their work. Some popular brands like Nike, Unilever, Louis Vuitton, Victoria Beckham Beauty, PayPal uses this architecture.

8. Component Driven Development-

It works on the principle of modularity that gives the components a benefit of reusability and composability. Bottom up methodology helps in rapid development, smooth integration, improves code maintainability, focuses on interface consistency and enables scalability. CDD helps autonomous teams to concentrate on particular features or products of web app, that would be in a decoupled codebase. With separate web components, team can update, test and debug components without directly affecting other components of user interface.

9. GraphQL-

Facebook introduced GraphQL in 2018 to fulfil the requirements of complex apps and resolve inflexibility issues with RESTful APIs. Query language is updated tool that allows data retrieval in an effective manner. Rather than fetching single data from multiple endpoints, GraphQL rapidly returns a JSON object with all necessary data from various sources. Process reduces the number of requests sent to server.

Some of the popular benefits of GraphQL are single graph for query retrieval, smaller payloads, efficient error handling etc. Some popular companies like Audi, Coursera, Facebook, GitHub and Lyft used GraphQL to their mobile apps, websites, and APIs. 

10. Lighthouse Tests-

Lighthouse is a web page test created by Google. It has very important insights for SEO and SERP positioning with metrics on the website’s or web app’s performance. Developers have to implement this tool and ensure Lighthouse tests are standard part of their web development process.

 

Top 11 New Features Of iOS 15

Recently, Apple released an iOS 15 software update with some latest features and new Apple updates. They made overall improvements and added some functionalities across all apple devices and platforms. All iOS developers were eagerly looking forward to all new changes and features. If you are thinking of building an iOS app, it is good to know the latest features. So here we’ve curated ios 15 features and capabilities. Let’s see latest ios 15 features.

Top 11 Features Of iOS 15-

1. FaceTime Video Improvements-

• Portrait mode for Facetime-

iPhone is popular for its great portrait photography mode, used to click some unrealistically aesthetic and pleasing pictures. In 2021, apple decided to extend this feature to faceTime. Particularly, it is designed for video calls, enabling users to blur the background and bring themselves in better focus.

• Grid view for Group FaceTime-

New FaceTime has introduced a new grid view that allows users to see more faces on their screens at the same time. Grid of individuals prompts an animation for you to know who’s talking when avoiding confusion altogether.

Connect with Family and friends using Share Play-

• Users can share their experience with family and friends on facetime.
• Users can listen to songs together using Apple using, watch a show using Netflix or share screens to view their apps.
• SharePlay works across all apple devices- iPad, iPhone and Mac.
• Shared playback control- anyone in the session can pause, play or jump ahead.

2. Facetime Audio Improvements-

Spatial Audio- It makes each participant’s audio contributions feel like they’re coming from where they are seated in their FaceTime call frame.

Wide Spectrum- This feature captures your voice and everything around you.

Voice Isolation- This feature distinguishes the wide spectrum of different noises that your mic captures, block out the ambient noise and prioritize voice. It provides clear communication.

3. Use Your Apple Wallet To Store Your Keys And State Ids-

Apple has extended its Apple Wallet’s capabilities with a single tap. Now, you can easily unlock your smart homes, hotel rooms and workplaces. Apple wallet added support for personal IDs for US citizens that will be accepted in airports and more such places. They are using same secure Element for ID integration that provides private and secure Apple Pay.

4. Redesigned Apple Maps-

Know more at- https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/top-11-new-features-of-ios-15/

All About Micro Frontend Architecture

 

Micro-frontend architecture is a lucrative approach to grow organizations as most of the time they face multiple issues at the frontend. This is understandable as it doesn’t make more sense to meddle with the codebase for frequent feature updations. Modular approach reduces the impact of upgrades and changes for one element on the rest of the codebase. Here we will discuss the micro frontend architecture and its implementation. So, let’s get started with what Micro frontend architecture is.

What Is Micro Frontend Architecture?

It is a strategy in which the traditionally monolithic frontend codebase is divided into smaller apps, ideally addressing the various business domains. These small elements creates a seamless frontend interface that delivers great user experience and is easy to scale and modify. Prior to micro-frontend architecture went mainstream, most common web app development strategy includes a frontend monolith on the top of a microservices backend. With time, data that come from various microservices made things complicated. Consider that one of the microservices went through an upgrade at the backend.

The frontend would require extensive changes, but we know developers would ignore such tasks. Convincingly, the situation would get so out of hand that a revamp would seem like just a logical solution. Micro frontend framework enables cross-functional teams to take care of end-to-end development and deployment of micro apps. Lets see the reasons to use micro frontend architecture.

Reasons To Use Micro Frontend Architecture-

1. Development Flexibility-

Micro frontend framework allows the team to select the tech stack for their microservice. This ownership improves decision making, fast track development cycles and enhances features.

2. Prefers Native Browser Over Custom APIs-

In case of web applications, there are lots of things to do to deliver great user experience. Micro-frontend principles use simple browser events for communication that are more manageable and easy to administer compared to APIs. Also it helps to attain faster rendering regardless of slow internet connections and sluggish browsers.

3. Decoupled Codebases-

Micro-frontend framework eases the management and modification of codebase. The principle of isolated team codes ensures seamless development, testing and deployment cycles.  Also it strengthens the team autonomy and tech agnostic nature of micro apps.

4. Reusability-

Chatbots, payment processing are some of the common features of enterprise sites. With micro-frontend architecture, one can easily adapt existing workflow for new website. It prevents reinvention of the wheel and  saves valuable resources at various instances.

5. Scalability-

Decoupled micro frontends and modular architecture  allows you to easily upscale and downscale, also they lend an interactive approach to entire process. With the knowledge that new micro frontend element or change to a current one will not influence the rest of the frontend and other teams’ work, you can generally focus on continuous growth.

6. Fast Build Time-

Independent development and release cycles of different micro frontends allow parallel development, reducing the effort to manage changes and downtime. Also, a micro frontend architecture allows to do upgrades at a blistering pace and updated with the current trends.

7. Easy Maintenance-

Maintenance is an important task when frontend monoliths grow to a mammoth size. Generally developers fear making changes in the codebase because they don’t know how a small change might ripple through the system. Also, overload of dependencies may cause trouble. Micro-frontend architecture divides the complete codebase into smaller and more manageable bits with clearly defined dependencies. This becomes easy for new team members to understand and maintain the system.

How To Implement Micro Frontend Architecture?

Various strategies are used for a micro-frontend architecture approach dependent on how and where the distinctive micro frontend components are created. Let’s see the various implementation strategies.

1. Server Side Composition-

In server side composition approach, various micro rontends are composed at server level before replaying it to the browser. Sever includes the view, calls micro frontends and organizes the page before it serves. Also, you can load core content on server, preventing unnecessary loading time or blank screens for users. And they get a view of core offering, the rest of the micro apps can load in the background. For instance, Facebook divides its typical page into multiple components called ‘pagelets’, it could process and serve one pagelet at a time while the others processed in the background.

2. Build Time Integration-

This strategy is used to organize the various micro-frontend codebases as independent code repositories. For this you don’t need to spend more efforts to organize teams and overall UI consistency also remains intact. And when optimized, the general data transfer to browser reduces during build phase. But one major disadvantage is -increased dependency between various frontend elements makes it difficult to keep the release pipelines independent of each other. This risks you experiencing similar bottlenecks as the frontend monolith. This technique has some use case like, DAZN an OTT streaming service, prefers predictability and performance over other parameters. While deploying frontend, it has been found that build-time integration to be the best way forward because it verified  the app’s performance by running all the end-to-end tests before serving it.

3. Run-Time Via JavaScript-

Javascript addresses the integration challenges presented by iframes. With run-time compositions, one can easily determine which micro frontend should be added and when and where it should render itself.

4. Run-Time Via Web Components-

This integration technique is a run time integration via web components. The prior method referred to bundles, and here web components are micro frontends. These web components can respond to URL routing and preserve all above benefits. You can choose the one that fulfills your needs.  

5. Runtime Via iframes-

We have client-side integration or run-time integration techniques. It follows fundamental principle, where all required micro-frontends are delivered to browser. This approach limits the UX experience you can deliver because the micro frontend content cannot exceed the iframe boundaries. Also, integrating various apps parts adds lots of complexities while building a responsive page.

You can also know- Top 10 Front End Development Tools In 2021

Final Words-

The above basics will surely help you to understand the new approach to build scalable frontend which is micro frontend architecture. If you’re thinking to build web solution with micro frontend architecture, consult with Solace experts. We are here to help you through consultation and development. You can hire dedicated developers of the Solace team for effective web solution development. Connect with Solace and get a free quote for customized web solution development. We will be happy to help you. 

Why You Should Use Whitespaces In UI Design?

 

Visual and graphical design has evolved over the years and is now known as UI design. But one crucial aspect of UI or visual designing that has remained unchanged over all these years is the importance of whitespace. Generally whitespaces are ignored by users and website owners, but they can have a big impact on the effectiveness of the design. Here you can know the reasons of using whitespaces in UI design. Before digging to the reasons, let’s see What is Whitespaces?

What Is Whitespace?

Whenever designers talk about whitespaces, they mean negative space. In other words, space between screen elements. Mostly it is in white colour. This space can be a colour or texture background image, or pattern, as it refers to the design’s background. On a webpage it is between buttons, images, links and text. Some of the clients consider it a waste of space but it is necessary. Here comes the question, Why is it so important? Let’s see the reasons to use Whitespace in UI design.

Why You Should Use Whitespaces In UI Design?

Whitespace is an important element of design. If used properly, it can transform a design and provide lots of benefits to your website. There is a need to develop and deliver layouts that are easy on the eyes and engage people to keep reading. Here are some of the benefits of using whitespaces in UI design.

1. Foucssing Where It Is Necessary-

Skilled designer should be capable enough to guide the users’ attention to the content and make the message unique. Really simple to over-plan, it is necessary to stay away from unnecessary mess to achieve the objective of the product. Clarity means not a boring design, a great design will justify itself rather catching the crowd’s eye. For example, Apple branding and advertising. It uses large areas of white space for simplicity and reflect the user-friendliness of its products. 

2. Improved Comprehension-

Use of whitespace makes the content in design easy to scan and improves the legibility significantly. As per the research, proper use of whitespace between lines of paragraphs and its right and left margins can maximize comprehension to 20%. Small spaces between paragraphs, lines or menu items are also known as Micro Whitespaces. 

3. Adds Emphasis-

What if you use whitespace for separating a design component? Human brain tend to put emphasis and importance on design elements that are surrounded by whitespace. Negative space is offering visual clues about where you must be looking, giving sufficient buffer space around a component so your brain can process it rapidly. Hence, sometimes whitespace surrounds important design components like logos so that they are clearly visible. Space can separate logos from other components so viewers get attracted by branding and didn’t get confused with other images.

4. Sophistication And Luxury-

When whitespace is used to create a certain mood or look, it can become a central element. We link a lot of white space with luxury and sophistication, so using it viably might be an approach to bring these associations to design. Too many graphics elements lowers the overall look. Instead trying to improve a design by using add white space so that you can focus on making graphics elements more better to look. 

5. Guides Your Users’ Eyes-

Use of whitespace design can assist users eyes. You can do this by streamlining the content of page into less than 15 points on that page. Then fix the priority order for those points. For instance, the the first point might be logo, then navigation bar, then hero image, and later on text paragraph etc. While placing the content, one should decide on where the macro whitespace will be, means where you will put a piece of content on the screen. Macro whitespace surrounds each component or group of components.  This space surrounds different components in one group or the spacing between lines, letters and paragraphs in a text.

6. Interaction Rate-

As per the analysis, an user’s average attention time span is 6 seconds. Proper use of whitespace helps the UI design to get rapidly message through users and increase the possibility of interaction by adding the call to actions. Hence, designers should create communication lines between users and design and whitespace can help more in it. 

7. Invokes Imagination-

Whenever you see white space in design, it gives lots of space to imagination, that results in powerful emotional response.  Human brains have need for assessing things, which creates a type of narrative between what you see and how you can process it. What our brain mark onto the whitespaces does not actually matter, thinking about it involved our mind is important. Investing in a design make sit more likely to create a good first impression.

8. Showcases The Visual Hierarchy-

Use of whitespace helps you to show the visual hierarchy between components on your page. Think about increasing or decreasing attributes like margin and padding for putting more stress on explicit components. Make sure to place essential elements like CTAs in the place where they particularly look unique.

Know the amazing mobile app ui/ux design trends at- Top 10 Mobile App UI/UX Design Trends In 2020

Wrap Up-

Whitespace is an important component in website design. It not only makes balance, but also can be used for leading a reader from an element to another. Main objective is to make the website look clear, simpler and engaging. If you are thinking to design a website, consult with Solace experts. We are here to help you through consultation and development. You can also hire dedicated developers of Solace Infotech for an effective web design and development. Connect with Solace and get a free quote web design and development. We will be happy to help you.