As we have recently released a couple of shopping carts and e-commerce solutions, we have had a chance to validate some of the newer and older requirements when designing these kinds of solutions.
First off we will say that, while we occasionally design mid size marketplaces, most of our shopping carts address the needs of small businesses hence these are shopping carts with less than 50 products. We implement shopping carts in a variety of technologies ranging from Ruby on Rails gems to wooCommerce plug-ins for WordPress.
1. PCI compliance
The needs for PCI compliance are not new. The credit card processing industry had been implementing software security, specific procedures and standards for years. The bigger your company is and the higher the # of transactions you perform, the stricter the requirements are.
What is new is that we get requests from start-ups and other entities (such as educational entities) to provide PCI compliant solutions. That's usually a challenge because the budgets of these kinds of entities generally do not allow for detailed audits and specific procedures. Making a cart PCI compliant does not only involved packing their cart with a SSL certificate or passing the buck to a PCI compliant gateway (even if these things are steps forward to achieving PCI compliance). There are also specific training, internal procedures and manually procedures involved.
2. Products dashboards
Even smaller companies nowadays need the flexibility to add/change/delete products from their stores, edit prices and descriptions, update pictures etc. They also have to have the ability to do that using non-technical staff so they asked us to create product dashboards and management consoles.
3. Custom carts
From pictures to pricing, from layouts to integration with payment processors all of our carts are quite custom designed.
Our clients are asking for that rather than going with more generic (and often miss labeled as more secure or with a higher performance solutions such as Magento, Volusion or Big Commerce). We like that way too. There is no need to overload a small business with bells and whistles when they don't need them and actually can't afford them. Plus the effort spent on configuring a pre-packaged e-commerce solution is often times bigger than integrating a well done open source cart.
4. SEO friendliness
In the era of $25-$30/Google PPC more and more companies come back to the roots of SEO and organic search. They feel that investing long term on that web based real estate where they put their cart on is more important than driving immediate results by paying nightly prices in beach side hotels.
Hence most of the requirements we had for shopping carts lately involved designing the cart with SEO friendliness in mind. And that's everything, from how we call the pages, to how we put the copy of the text on the page and to how we name the pictures of the products. Meta tags too, even if they are lately less important than they used to be.
5. Pictures quality
Pictures quality is more important than ever. Unless you have a professional / superb quality / good size picture of your product, do not even think to put it up. In an era of minimalist websites and responsiveness it is a challenge to produce beautiful pictures that also load fast and scale well on all kinds of devices including laptops, desktops and mobile devices.
6. New industries / verticals
Interestingly enough, we have witnessed some new industries getting into shopping carts and e-commerce solutions. One of them is the education sector with quite a few schools implementing carts for parents to order uniforms or even contribute to school budget with direct donations.
As these kinds of solutions were traditionally adopted more by retailers, wholesalers or companies implementing market places for their own variety of products it is something new that we salute and appreciate.
Make it a great day!
Adrian Corbuleanu
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittywebnow.com
Witty Web Solutions (http://wittywebnow.com) is a Miami Beach based software development company. Our code is lean, small foot print, easy to read, reliable and fast. We have excellent tech support. We save development costs by implementing agile project management techniques.
Monday, June 22, 2015
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Maximizing ROI in software development
In today's competitive marketplace implementing software will necessarily deliver ROI for virtually any kind of business. That gets done by both minimizing the operational costs and by maximizing the market reach of your business product or service. I.e. by implementing a custom CRM and billing platform a company will save money with staff and by releasing mobile applications a company will increase their digital distribution channels.
But there is also a question of investing in creating the software itself. Depending on how you run the project and how well you work with your client, the same amount of functionality can be achieved in different amounts of time and with different amounts of investments (sometimes with astonishingly different amounts of investments). The worse a project is run, the more expensive it gets.
Here are a few tips from our own experience to maximize your ROI when implementing software. Some of these will be obvious, some others won't.
1. Assign highly specialized developers on separate components
Specialized developers write faster and more accurate than generalists. You want to have your database developer work on back-end, your APIs / web services developer write APIs and your front end guys focused on front end. It is a must for them to work well as a team and to communicate flawlessly and as a consulting business owner you should focus your efforts on recruiting them right.
I had the best results with specialized teams who had previously worked together on similar complexity (or higher complexity) projects.
And, yes, there are full stack developers out there who can do them all and they do it very well. They are great! However a lot of projects have enough complexity and require enough upfront bandwidth so that you cannot rely on one person only for any given project.
2. Work agile
Agility gives any project a lot of traction and optimizes implementation costs a great deal! By bringing requirements inconsistencies and defects up early in the processes and by continuously iterating and tweaking the code, you will release faster and with better quality.
I always used to give the example of this major telco project I was involved in. After six month of coding, production release and deployment the client changed a big portion of the requirements. Took us another three month to implement them.
Note that for the agility to work well a few things have to happen: you have to have a great development and business team (easy to work with, highly skilled and non-testy) and the client also has to be interested in working in an agile way as well (some of them are not, it's a culture thing).
3. Pull the most competitive rates per head for the amount of expertise
Weather you employ on-shore or off-shore resources always strive to get the best deal out of your per head developers rates. Important: that CANNOT be at the expense of lack of quality or lack of experience. An inexperienced developer is much more expensive than an experienced one.
4. Use pre-defined & pre-written components / modules. Integrate.
Pre-defined modules and components also give you a lot of traction. Imagine the project of a local school district where they need a web based CMS platform for their school with shopping cart and marketing capabilities. While you can write things from scratch, there are very inexpensive and easily customize-able educational related Word Press themes, pre-designed e-commerce carts such as WooCommerce and pre-written modules for events calendars. Plugging in and configuring these components will reduce the man hours with 60%-70% (!).
There are projects where the level of customization or configuration of pre-written components is higher than others. In those situations it is worth writing from scratch rather than integrating. However in most of the cases integrating saves money!
5. Constantly facilitate between the development team and the client
This comes back to agility. There is a tendency in certain projects for the development teams and the business side not to collaborate efficiently. It's your job as a project manager to keep communication flowing, eliminate road-blocks, mediate and negotiate, keep your developers away from distractions (such as distractions related to internal tech support or non-impact-full technical work items).
Reporting daily progress in an agile way with web links and tangible digital assets is also another great way to keep the client involved and get feed-back.
Involving the client in the decision making process of designing features (even if the client is not technical) is also a great way of collaborating with the client.
Make it a great day!
Adrian Corbuleanu
http://wittywebnow.com
But there is also a question of investing in creating the software itself. Depending on how you run the project and how well you work with your client, the same amount of functionality can be achieved in different amounts of time and with different amounts of investments (sometimes with astonishingly different amounts of investments). The worse a project is run, the more expensive it gets.
Here are a few tips from our own experience to maximize your ROI when implementing software. Some of these will be obvious, some others won't.
1. Assign highly specialized developers on separate components
Specialized developers write faster and more accurate than generalists. You want to have your database developer work on back-end, your APIs / web services developer write APIs and your front end guys focused on front end. It is a must for them to work well as a team and to communicate flawlessly and as a consulting business owner you should focus your efforts on recruiting them right.
I had the best results with specialized teams who had previously worked together on similar complexity (or higher complexity) projects.
And, yes, there are full stack developers out there who can do them all and they do it very well. They are great! However a lot of projects have enough complexity and require enough upfront bandwidth so that you cannot rely on one person only for any given project.
2. Work agile
Agility gives any project a lot of traction and optimizes implementation costs a great deal! By bringing requirements inconsistencies and defects up early in the processes and by continuously iterating and tweaking the code, you will release faster and with better quality.
I always used to give the example of this major telco project I was involved in. After six month of coding, production release and deployment the client changed a big portion of the requirements. Took us another three month to implement them.
Note that for the agility to work well a few things have to happen: you have to have a great development and business team (easy to work with, highly skilled and non-testy) and the client also has to be interested in working in an agile way as well (some of them are not, it's a culture thing).
3. Pull the most competitive rates per head for the amount of expertise
Weather you employ on-shore or off-shore resources always strive to get the best deal out of your per head developers rates. Important: that CANNOT be at the expense of lack of quality or lack of experience. An inexperienced developer is much more expensive than an experienced one.
4. Use pre-defined & pre-written components / modules. Integrate.
Pre-defined modules and components also give you a lot of traction. Imagine the project of a local school district where they need a web based CMS platform for their school with shopping cart and marketing capabilities. While you can write things from scratch, there are very inexpensive and easily customize-able educational related Word Press themes, pre-designed e-commerce carts such as WooCommerce and pre-written modules for events calendars. Plugging in and configuring these components will reduce the man hours with 60%-70% (!).
There are projects where the level of customization or configuration of pre-written components is higher than others. In those situations it is worth writing from scratch rather than integrating. However in most of the cases integrating saves money!
5. Constantly facilitate between the development team and the client
This comes back to agility. There is a tendency in certain projects for the development teams and the business side not to collaborate efficiently. It's your job as a project manager to keep communication flowing, eliminate road-blocks, mediate and negotiate, keep your developers away from distractions (such as distractions related to internal tech support or non-impact-full technical work items).
Reporting daily progress in an agile way with web links and tangible digital assets is also another great way to keep the client involved and get feed-back.
Involving the client in the decision making process of designing features (even if the client is not technical) is also a great way of collaborating with the client.
Make it a great day!
Adrian Corbuleanu
http://wittywebnow.com
Monday, May 11, 2015
After an eMerge Americas event
Last week we've been proud participants to one of the biggest tech events South Florida is hosting year around: eMerge Americas. Hosted in a prime location at the Miami Beach Convention Center, with more than 10,000 participants, with all the major tech companies boasting big booths, 100+ start-ups showcasing their new ventures, a Career Section and a number of celebrity speakers the Conference was a success!
Now that we were able to catch our breadth following up with contacts after the event, here are some thoughts we came home with from this event.
1. South Florida's tech market is definitely growing in initiatives
There were 129 start-ups participating in the start-ups contest. That's more than I expected! It is correct, some of them were from out of town but Miami was very well represented as well. It is a great thing to see young entrepreneurs putting together ideas and business plans and pitching. And it is a great thing to see crowds flocking and National TV Networks broadcasting the events.
2. The South FL tech investment community still looks pretty shy
While the initiatives are great and Miamians show very entrepreneurial, the investors community remains shy. Prizes of the $25k, $50k and even $100k of sorts will not drive talent to Miami fast enough to make it compete with major tech hubs like San Francisco, New York or Boston. Make it a million $ for a prize and then we are talking!
I spoke with a lot of very talented developers that I personally know: they would easily relocate to Miami should the opportunities arise! They are attracted by the weather, the relatively low cost of living and the good taxes environment but they look for the same things: great projects and great salaries.
Prior to this show this piece of information came in that for every single dollar invested in tech in Miami there are a thousand dollars invested in in tech in San Francisco ($14 mil. in 2014 as opposed to $14 bil. in 2014). That's a huge difference!
So I challenge the South FL investor's community to step up to the plate and significantly raise the bar in terms of invested amounts in South FL projects.
3. The tech talent looking for full time jobs remains scattered
While the entrepreneurs were great, the job seekers were shy. We participated in the Career Fair section. In two full days we gathered only about 25 resumes out of which only 2 people had the actual education and skill sets to be interviewed for a full time position.
This comes back to two avenues: one is the School's System in Florida- which can definitely be improved. And another one is the amount of capital investments that is poured in the local economy. The better schools and the more investments we will have, the more successful people we will be able to drive and the more innovation will happen.
4. We are in Miami- so we have to show off!
At that times it was funny to see how some people turned a tech event into a fashion show! Attendants showing up late and without an apparent interest in technology were showing off expensive clothing and apparel and looked like they were in a big hurry just to pass by.
5. We still need a major innovative driving force to take this City to the next level
I appreciated the speeches and keynote speakers: they are a necessity at these kinds of events. I love Manny Medina and I even like Pitbull. I am even okay with a Mayor talking here and there- even if I am not sure what a Mayor actually does for the tech community in a City like Miami.
But I wish more tech super stars were invited to talk. How about a Bill Gates or a Mark Cuban? How about an Elon Musk? They would have been inspirational!
So Mr. Manny let's try to bring over better quality speakers next time!
Along the same lines one thing Miami (and South FL more general) is still lacking is a major recent innovation story like the ones that people used to write when the first PC was invented in the IBM"s facility in Boca or when Citrix was founded in Ft. Lauderdale. I agree that things like growing and selling Teremark to Verizon for a lot of money was a great business success in South FL but I am looking for the next Steve Jobs! And the next Apple Computers!
Make it a great day!
Adrian Corbuleanu
http://wittywebnow.com
Now that we were able to catch our breadth following up with contacts after the event, here are some thoughts we came home with from this event.
1. South Florida's tech market is definitely growing in initiatives
There were 129 start-ups participating in the start-ups contest. That's more than I expected! It is correct, some of them were from out of town but Miami was very well represented as well. It is a great thing to see young entrepreneurs putting together ideas and business plans and pitching. And it is a great thing to see crowds flocking and National TV Networks broadcasting the events.
2. The South FL tech investment community still looks pretty shy
While the initiatives are great and Miamians show very entrepreneurial, the investors community remains shy. Prizes of the $25k, $50k and even $100k of sorts will not drive talent to Miami fast enough to make it compete with major tech hubs like San Francisco, New York or Boston. Make it a million $ for a prize and then we are talking!
I spoke with a lot of very talented developers that I personally know: they would easily relocate to Miami should the opportunities arise! They are attracted by the weather, the relatively low cost of living and the good taxes environment but they look for the same things: great projects and great salaries.
Prior to this show this piece of information came in that for every single dollar invested in tech in Miami there are a thousand dollars invested in in tech in San Francisco ($14 mil. in 2014 as opposed to $14 bil. in 2014). That's a huge difference!
So I challenge the South FL investor's community to step up to the plate and significantly raise the bar in terms of invested amounts in South FL projects.
3. The tech talent looking for full time jobs remains scattered
While the entrepreneurs were great, the job seekers were shy. We participated in the Career Fair section. In two full days we gathered only about 25 resumes out of which only 2 people had the actual education and skill sets to be interviewed for a full time position.
This comes back to two avenues: one is the School's System in Florida- which can definitely be improved. And another one is the amount of capital investments that is poured in the local economy. The better schools and the more investments we will have, the more successful people we will be able to drive and the more innovation will happen.
4. We are in Miami- so we have to show off!
At that times it was funny to see how some people turned a tech event into a fashion show! Attendants showing up late and without an apparent interest in technology were showing off expensive clothing and apparel and looked like they were in a big hurry just to pass by.
5. We still need a major innovative driving force to take this City to the next level
I appreciated the speeches and keynote speakers: they are a necessity at these kinds of events. I love Manny Medina and I even like Pitbull. I am even okay with a Mayor talking here and there- even if I am not sure what a Mayor actually does for the tech community in a City like Miami.
But I wish more tech super stars were invited to talk. How about a Bill Gates or a Mark Cuban? How about an Elon Musk? They would have been inspirational!
So Mr. Manny let's try to bring over better quality speakers next time!
Along the same lines one thing Miami (and South FL more general) is still lacking is a major recent innovation story like the ones that people used to write when the first PC was invented in the IBM"s facility in Boca or when Citrix was founded in Ft. Lauderdale. I agree that things like growing and selling Teremark to Verizon for a lot of money was a great business success in South FL but I am looking for the next Steve Jobs! And the next Apple Computers!
Make it a great day!
Adrian Corbuleanu
http://wittywebnow.com
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