Dive into the latest insights from the IT industry, updates on disruptive technologies, and business aiding products.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are the newest trend in web-based mobile application development. It’s not a revolutionary new technology, but rather a new word for a collection of technologies aimed at improving the user experience of web-based applications. They are apps that are built on technologies like regular websites but are perceived as full-fledged native apps. There’s a strong chance they’ll eventually supersede native and hybrid apps. In contrast to hybrid apps, they are extremely quick, and unlike native apps, they share a single code base across platforms.
What is a Progressive Web App?
A Progressive Web App is a type of web app that may be used as both a web page and a mobile app. They are very robust and can work on any browser whether iOS or Android.
The general concept of Progressive Web Apps is simple to grasp. They are web apps that look and operate like conventional web pages and are created in web technologies (JavaScript, CSS, HTML). Web applications, for example, are more detectable than native apps; visiting a website is easier and faster than installing an app, and you can easily share web apps by emailing a link. They are linkable and visible in search engine results, but they have identical functionality to native mobile apps: they work offline, provide push notifications, and utilize device hardware in the same way that native apps do.
PWAs aren’t made with just one type of technology. They represent a new approach to web app development that includes certain patterns, APIs, and other features. It’s not always clear whether a web app is a PWA at first sight. When an app fits particular criteria or implements a set of specific features, such as working offline, being installable, being simple to synchronize, and being able to deliver push notifications, it is deemed a PWA. PWAs are developed by meeting the majority of the standards outlined in Google’s checklist, after which they are quick, dependable, and engaging.
Basic difference between Native Apps, Hybrid Apps, and PWA.
Native apps are created with the platform’s programming languages and/or tools (i.e. iOS or Android). They are installed from an app store and run straight on the device (desktop or mobile) without the use of a browser.
Hybrid Apps are so-called because they’re constructed using web technologies (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript), but they also provide you access to platform features that a browser can’t.
Progressive Web Apps are websites that load instantaneously on any connection, whether you’re online or offline. They’re made to work on any device, but they only provide you access to the platform capabilities that browsers provide.
Features of Progressive Web Apps:
Fundamental Characteristics
Offering these capabilities and utilizing all of the benefits that web applications provide can result in a compelling, highly versatile offering for your users and clients.
Companies using it
Is it for your business?
Is it necessary for every firm to develop a Progressive Web App? Certainly not. Consider your business needs and, more significantly, the needs of your end-users, just like you would with any other business choice. Do they make use of mobile apps? Do they have reliable Internet access? What is their method of accessing your website and from whence do they get it? Will a PWA help them in their careers or daily lives? Will PWAs be beneficial to users or provide a solution? Although it is simple to create PWAs, this does not automatically imply that you should. Consider not having a PWA if your users won’t benefit from it or if constructing one isn’t cost-effective.
Conclusion
Progressive Web Apps, pioneered by Google, joyfully embraced by Microsoft, and reluctantly adopted by Apple, are rapidly getting popular among the world’s leading online technology companies. Companies like Pinterest, Aliexpress, Trivago, OLX, and Forbes, which have already put PWA technology to the test to increase user engagement, have proven that it is the ideal solution to the mobile world’s difficulties. PWAs, in my opinion, are really valuable and can enable people who access the internet via mobile devices to have a better experience.
Startxlabs, one of India’s top digital transformation service providers. Launched in 2014, Startxlabs aims in innovating a digital future by developing technology for the web and mobile platforms. From our beginning as a technology development company, we’ve tried to stay true to our core beliefs and to deliver exceptional services to our clients. Whether it’s people we work for or people who work for us, we value honesty, passion, and the desire to explore. We have expertise in website development, android app development, iOS app development, Flutter, React Native app development, UI/UX design, and marketing strategy. With the engagement of our highly technical team, we have delivered over 110+ projects providing a positive impact on the users.
When a web design is responsive, the site can change to fit in with your customers’ devices or variable viewport extents. Regardless, the site will be adaptable so that your customers can relish your site at its best on whichever device they prefer to use. This means that your customers can experience fast loading at a suitable size to be viewed optimally.
A responsive website will provide the most pleasing user experience across all devices and has many other benefits. If you are still doubtful if you should go responsive, here are 11 practices to advance business growth with responsive web design that may convince your determination:
For those that are not knowledgeable about the term ‘responsive web design, the most uncomplicated definition I can give is that a responsive website is optimized for viewing on distinct types of devices, screens, and resolutions. Specifically, the design acclimates to the available viewing space presenting the user with a pleasant experience without having to move or scroll any side in order to read the text or view an image.
If we can take an example, try to consider the article you are reading now on a desktop or laptop, iPad, or smartphone. Try to divert the devices to landscape/portrait mode and monitor how the design adapts to the screen size and resolution.
What is not a responsive design? A website that looks precisely the same on mobile as it looks on the desktop (with a smaller size) is not a responsive design. With a responsive design, you can read, steer and interact with a website on the gadget of your preference without having to zoom in or out.
Enhanced user experience is the outcome of a responsive website. The size of time users consume on your site is an effective indicator of the quality of the user experience. If they have to swipe and zoom to navigate or use your website constantly, they won’t stay on it.
Guests won’t experience difficulties accessing menus, links, buttons, or filling out forms if your website scales and answers to the modification in screen size. As a result, they will have a finer user experience and consume more time on your site.
You can then expand your word-of-mouth referrals and customers by enhancing user experience and site usability.
Mobile devices assumed for nearly 52% of global web traffic in the last quarter of the year 2017. Over half of all internet traffic is compelled by mobile devices, demonstrating that you cannot overlook responsive design. Examine how many of your visitors access your site from mobile devices and how long they spend on it. Correspond the two numbers after executing the responsive design. You will analyze the growth in mobile visits and the long time expended on the site once your site is set up for the viewport width.
In the past, users used to make a different mobile version of your site when they witnessed a smaller screen size. Designing a mobile version of your site will take more time than assembling a responsive website that looks prominent and works well no matter what device your visitors are using. Further, a mobile version of your website costs more than a standard one because your developer has to create two sites rather than one.
Effortless website maintenance is precisely related to the point given above. If you have two different versions of your website, your product team has to dedicate more time and resources to handle them. Maintaining a responsive website permits your staff to spend more time on other tasks, such as marketing, A/B testing, customer service, and designing products.
It’s also crucial to remember that duplicate content is designed with two versions of your site. While search engines are evolving more and more intelligent, they still require to specify which version of a site is more significant. However, of the URL, your content stays the same if you are using a mobile version of your site.
Search engines won’t know which content is appropriate, so both versions of your website will have diminished search engine rankings. Both mobile and desktop versions of your site demand different SEO procedures and campaigns and substantial acquisition in building unique content. Various website owners resort to using the canonical tag on their mobile website that refers to the desktop version since two different SEO techniques would take too much time and money. Therefore, most distinct mobile websites are not indexed by search engines.
You can sidestep all of the above headaches by using a responsive website. The following should help relieve any doubts about the significance of responsive web design.
It is essential to track two sets of analytics when you have two different website versions. This will help you comprehend where your visitors are reaching from and how they respond to your content. In different words, you have to handle multiple signups and conversion points, funnels, and more.
Whereas, when you have a responsive website, you can keep track of all your website stats in one place. The details you get will help you comprehend which browsers your visitors are adopting, where they drop off, and how long they put in on your website, but you will no longer require to go via multiple reports to get a precise shot.
A responsive website will load quicker than a non-responsive website on all devices, consisting of mobile phones and tablets. Fluid grids and responsive images present it much faster for your site to load, which directly impacts how long it reaches to load for your users. As per a report, 53% of mobile site visitors will leave the site if it takes more than three seconds to load. In the same report, it was determined that websites that load quickly are expected to have visitors contribute more time to their website. The significance of responsive web design cannot be stretched.
Bounce rate is a crucial part of monetization as it refers to how many visitors to a certain website leave after only considering a single page. In addition to diminishing bounce rates, a responsive website means visitors will stay on your site prolonged if it is responsive. You’ll be able to keep visitors on your site longer and stimulate them to read other pages on your site.
To enhance your visitor’s experience and demonstrate trust, you should disburse more time on your site and lower your bounce rate. Whether conversion ensues with a newsletter subscription, a buy, or a phone call, an enhanced user experience and trust will provide higher conversion rates. When you suppose that the average smartphone conversion rate is 64% higher than that of a desktop website, responsive websites become integral.
Search engine rankings are also enhanced with responsive web design. Google commenced taking into account a website’s responsiveness as one of the elements in resolving its position on search engine results pages as of April 2015. At the same time, a mobile-friendly website will exhibit higher on the results page if it does not give the search engine giant’s responsiveness test.
Your content can obtain more social shares if you use responsive web design accurately. Responsive web design delivers you this usefulness as well. Transmitting links to your site’s pages is easy when using responsive content and responsive social media buttons. More traffic, more modifications, and more excellent credibility and exposure. As well as impacting your search engine rank directly, social signals can also involve your rank indirectly as search engines will determine the improved engagement and search request.
Likewise, building backlinks can particularly benefit having a responsive website. The objective of backlinks is to notify search engines that your site is a respectable source of data, which is key to any SEO strategy. Your website won’t be connected as much if it’s not responsive. It makes them look bad if they connect to a poor user experience site.
A responsive website design is a must for different types of websites. Whether you are marketing products online, promoting your services, or handling ads, a responsive design can help you improve your traffic, produce more conversions, or gain more from your advertisements. Practices to advance business growth with responsive web design can be made responsive, the cost relies on the complexity of the website and the platform that it is built for.
You can reach us today to give you an assessment of how much it will cost you to develop your website responsive and profit from the benefits described above.
Startxlabs, one of India’s top digital transformation service providers. Launched in 2014, Startxlabs aims in innovating a digital future by developing technology for the web and mobile platforms. From our beginning as a technology development company, we’ve tried to stay true to our core beliefs and to deliver exceptional services to our clients. Whether it’s people we work for or people who work for us, we value honesty, passion, and the desire to explore. We have expertise in website development, android app development, iOS app development, Flutter, React Native app development, UI/UX design, and marketing strategy. With the engagement of our highly technical team, we have delivered over 110+ projects providing a positive impact on the users.
As technology evolves, the transformation in e-learning businesses for monetization increases. When shopping for a learning platform, It is important to understand specific monetization capabilities. Does that platform allow you to mix and match revenue-generating features to make the most out of your learning content?
The global digital learning market is reported to reach over $243 billion by 2022. If you plan to develop an e-learning platform, you should focus on these 7+ strategic ways to monetize it.
The e-learning industry is presently one of the most prosperous service sectors. With the awareness programs and workshops and, of course, the growth of technology, it is developing large and wide all across the globe. With the usefulness of the Internet and associated resources, the education sector has grown to be more methodical in education methods. It has generated various scientific ways to educate children and encourage different forms of learning to help them absorb information and train them more virtually and resourcefully.
E-learning applications are growing very fast and gain popularity. If you want to release a project in the place, you will assumably be interested in the ways to monetize an educational app. Let’s discuss this.
If we compare traditional learning approaches, digital learning can increase consumer retention rates by 25-65%.
Advertising is considered as one of the most popular approaches for monetizing apps for most companies. The information supports and induces your services or products to the target clients. Most educational academies and connected businesses that want to establish their brand are very well trained to allow visibility in the app. With the benefit of affiliate marketing, this can be done. You accumulate large on the finances with advertisement.
Paid subscription is considered as one of the most used strategires of e-learning application monetization. Application users get authorization to all training courses after the payment done. Here, access can be either limited or unlimited (Lifetime).
For good results, your paid subscription requires to be demonestrated by certified authorities in certain learning areas or use material from verified data sources so that your potential users understand exactly what they are paying for.
The data monetization concept has increasingly captured crucial results and insights through customers with notable names such as Facebook and WhatsApp. You can use this to serve and improve on data-driven offers.
Setting course fees is the most generic option for e-learning business. Using educational applications as a platform to sell trendy and copyright courses. Also, free workshops and webinars can be carried to garner a customer for a certain course. If the course is in high demand, it can be cost at a more elevated value, and the price can be grown after a while.
In the e-learning market, there is an average price for distinct courses. It is crucial to set fair price which is similar to the market price, as the requirement for a course acts as a conclusive factor for customers. By invariably sustain demand and change the pricing policy regularly is not viable. Therefore, it should be assumed that the course price should rely on product strategy and not contrariwise.
If any customer want premium access, the price can be doubled, but if wide range is the preference, then the cost of the course should be kept ideal. Monetize an e-learning application by charging course fees demands a constant authorization of its value. Therefore, special attention should be given when finalizing the cost of a course.
With Referral marketing, you can fast broaden the extent of an e-learning app to create a huge customer base. It authorizes users to efficiently promote the e-learning app without summing to the marketing budget.
Traditional approaches such as word of mouth and personal requests are the tried and tested approaches for years that spread awareness. These strategies can holistically overtake a potential marketing strategy, as more than 90% of people depend on personalized marketing.
This model in e-learning is specifically on the Internet, which delivers free basic service while paying for premium features. You can contrive this by providing an extract, trial, or preview of your services and allow your entire solution to be bought by customers who consider it is within.
A subscription is also deemed as on of the popular approach to monetize an e-learning app. The user is practically charged a subscription fee, it can be monthly or annually. The benefits for this is a subscription includes free access to helpful content, courses, or videos.
The ultimate on the number of courses accessible under a subscription can be designated either based on users or the number of stops. This can assist create the courses complete and keep the user on the platform for a more extended period. A user can also prefer the subscription plan as per benefit and condition.
Using the In-App Purchase Model
When you adopt the educational app’s in-app purchase profit model, you enable your users to use most services for free. You should encourage users to use different added value or increased benefits if you buy them.
Whatsoeverbusiness model an online educational platform develops will work effectively under three conditions.
Even when building an e-learning app, you should think wisely about what you can provide the custoimer so that individuals learn from you and pay valuable cost for it.
The e-learning apps attract online customers with useful courses from top universities and authorities. Noteworthy online platforms provide end-to-end products that can set self-study and one-to-one distance learning with a instructor.
Various e-learning apps allows original courses, gamified approaches for study new material, use augmented reality, attract the best leactrures from different parts of the world, and devise unique subjects that connect on specialists’ pain.
While creating an e-learning platform, it is essential to focus on modern trends and demands of course. Such type of content permits you to better incorporate the material due to the student’s involvement.
You must believe in your product and help students about it in as specific aspect as possible. The importanec of the knowledge that you sell in your business should be helpful to everyone.
With a clear characterization of the product can make it feasible to develop the circle of users fast. And you can tell a larger customer about your product with marketing campaigns.
Social media is one of the most essential channels for e-learning applications nowadays.
Consedering social activity is a must on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and other social platforms where your customer is.
The promotion of e-learning platforms is impossible without social media. The e-learning app is a B2C product which means that the direction to the customer lies specifically through social platforms. And the other factor that should be considered is the ability to maintain public opinion about the business.
Price of the course can decide the business expansion, it extremely matters to any customer. A decent pricing model will give customers a great catch and buy option. Reasonable pricing will help you attract more users and get good reviews.
Monetize an e-Learning Business can provide many benefits to your organization. Choosing the ideal approach of providing elearning can be a cumbersome task, but it is essential to the scalable success of your eLearning program. Promoting your e-learning app takes expertise and persistence; however, the gates will be opened once you reach this level. The e-learning app will start to be used, and your downloads will explode.
Startxlabs, one of India’s top digital transformation service providers. Launched in 2014, Startxlabs aims in innovating a digital future by developing technology for the web and mobile platforms. From our beginning as a technology development company, we’ve tried to stay true to our core beliefs and to deliver exceptional services to our clients. Whether it’s people we work for or people who work for us, we value honesty, passion, and the desire to explore. We have expertise in website development, android app development, iOS app development, Flutter, React Native app development, UI/UX design, and marketing strategy. With the engagement of our highly technical team, we have delivered over 110+ projects providing a positive impact on the users.
When we use applications like Ola, Uber or Zomato we see a map. In the case of Ola we can track the current location of our driver.But, does Ola have a satellite in space which tells the current location of the person in the map. The answer is a big NO!!! These applications are using the map services provided by the Google Maps Application. But, Ola can not directly access the data of google maps because of security reasons. That’s why Google has kept a security layer in between which is known as Google Maps API. So, to access google maps data and services Ola will access this API. On account of this, we can think of API as a messenger which delivers data from one place to another.
In this Blog, we will talk about API their types, architectures, roles and future.
What is an API?
API stands for Application Programming interface which is an intermediary software that allows two applications to share data and services. It’s a set of rules and definitions for creating and integrating software applications. Every time you use Instagram, Facebook, and Zomato you are using an API.
In other words, API gives us the answer of What and not How. To understand this statement let’s take a real life example. When we go to a restaurant we see a menu and order the food according to it and the waiter works as the API and goes to the kitchen counter and requests for the dish we ordered and if that dish is present it brings our order otherwise tells us that the dish can not be served. Likely, When an application will send a request to an API asking for some data, the API will then send this request to its server and then the server will either accept the request and send the required data to the API or will reject the request and will send the corresponding error. Consequently, the API that gets the data from the server will manipulate it in the required format and then will send the data to the application or will return the error which it received from the server.
When you browse web pages over the internet, the same type of request/response cycle works.You send a request using the browser the browser then requests the server for data and then sends the response it got from the server. The only major difference in case of web pages is the data returned is in HTML, CSS, or JavaScript format and in the case of an API it will be in raw format i.e JSON or XML.
Let’s see some examples where you can use an API
What are the types of APIs available?
On the basis of access and scope of use, APIs can be categorized in 4 types.
1. Open APIs
Open APIs are also known as External API or Public API and as the name suggests they are open to use means they are accessible by any developer to use and integrate in their application. Since they are open they provide less authentication and authorization measures.
2. Partner APIs
Partner APIs, as the name suggests are those APIs which are shared among business partners with mutual decision. Because they are available to only authorized clients they are safer as compared to Open APIs.
3. Internal APIs
Internal APIs are those APIs, which are unlike Open or External APIs not available to other users and can be used by 3rd parties. They are made to use in a company to streamline the process of sharing data among the employees of its company only.
4. Composite APIs
Composite APIs combine various APIs, allowing developers to combine calls or requests together and obtain a single unified response from multiple servers. A composite API is used when you need data from multiple apps or data sources.
What are the various kinds of API architectures that are currently in use?
The rules that govern what information an API can share with clients and how it communicates data constitute an API’s architecture. The most widely used API architectures nowadays are REST, SOAP, and RPC.
1. REST
REST stands for representational state transfer and is a set of rules for making APIs that are scalable, lightweight, and simple to use. A REST API (or “RESTful” API) is a data transmission API that meets the REST standards and is used to send data from a server to a requesting client. Client-server isolation, a consistent interface, a stateless, layered system, and cacheability are all guidelines to follow.
2. SOAP
SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a network data transmission protocol that can be used to create APIs. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has standardized SOAP, which uses XML to encode data. SOAP specifies how messages should be sent and what information must be included. SOAP APIs are therefore more secure than REST APIs, despite the fact that the strict rules make them more code-heavy and difficult to implement in general.
3. RPC
The RPC protocol (Remote Procedural Call) is the simplest of the three designs. RPC APIs, unlike REST and SOAP, which permit data transfer, invoke processes. To put it another way, they run scripts on a server. In its calls, RPC APIs can use either JSON (a JSON-RPC protocol) or XML (an XML-RPC protocol). Although XML is more secure and flexible than JSON, the two protocols are otherwise very comparable. The RPC protocol is a reasonably simple and easy technique to run code on remote networks, despite its strictness.
What role do APIs play in the growth of digital businesses?
APIs are the primary integration mechanism in the distributed cloud-native development environment, offering developers and the applications they produce a number of benefits, including:
Why does it appear like APIs are the way of the future?
Developers nowadays primarily use APIs to connect across services, create integrations, and send data to third-party customers. APIs will become increasingly crucial in the future.
It was good a few years ago if your application had a public API; now it is virtually a requirement, and in a few years, it will be required. APIs are a terrific way to transfer information between different programmes as they become increasingly integrated.
It doesn’t matter if the app you need data from is written in PHP, NodeJS, Go, or C#; as long as it has an API, getting the data you require is simple.
Conclusion
When we approach APIs not only from the perspective of software development but also from the perspective of business collaboration, they play a far larger role. These resource-exchange machine-readable interfaces are similar to delivery services that operate behind the scenes and provide the necessary technological connectivity.
In the current condition, digitally aware firms rely largely on private, public, or partner APIs to function. APIs produce 50 percent of income for Salesforce, 60 percent for eBay, and 90 percent for Expedia. As a result, infrastructure service providers must fully utilize the capabilities of an API-powered infrastructure platform to stay ahead of the market and competition.
Startxlabs, one of India’s top digital transformation service providers. Launched in 2014, Startxlabs aims in innovating a digital future by developing technology for the web and mobile platforms. From our beginning as a technology development company, we’ve tried to stay true to our core beliefs and to deliver exceptional services to our clients. Whether it’s people we work for or people who work for us, we value honesty, passion, and the desire to explore. We have expertise in website development, android app development, iOS app development, Flutter, React Native app development, UI/UX design, and marketing strategy. With the engagement of our highly technical team, we have delivered over 110+ projects providing a positive impact on the users.
Django is an open-source web development framework. It was developed in 2003 by Adrian Holovaty and Simon Willison when they were working at the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper. Since then Django has been used in the IT industry by large companies to develop highly scalable, reliable, versatile, and secure web applications. Moreover, In the last decade with python gaining its popularity in different sectors ranging from web development to social networking sites, and scientific computation applications, Django is in-demand.
In this blog, We will have a look at top 10 products developed using Django. But, before that lets first check out questions like: Why should one choose Django? What are its features? What makes it different from other frameworks available in the market?
What is Django?
Django is a web development framework based on the Python programming language. It follows the MVT(Model-View-Template) architectural pattern which is one of its key features.
Django offers many different features some of them are
Learn more about Django features here.
How can Django prove to be a better choice for your project?
Now, We’ll look at the key advantages of using Django by looking at the following products made using this framework.
1. Bitbucket
2. Disqus
3. Dropbox
4. Eventbrite
5. Instagram
6. Mozilla
7. Pinterest
8. Spotify
09. The Washington Post
10. YouTube
Final Thought
We’ve only shown a few examples of popular Django-powered apps.
There are a lot more Django apps available. Django is an excellent choice for both small and large businesses that want to offer products as rapidly as possible and at a low cost..
You may use this framework to not only build a website, but also to enhance it with new features and updates, as well as scale it for a wider audience.
Startxlabs, one of India’s top digital transformation service providers. Launched in 2014, Startxlabs aims in innovating a digital future by developing technology for the web and mobile platforms. From our beginning as a technology development company, we’ve tried to stay true to our core beliefs and to deliver exceptional services to our clients. Whether it’s people we work for or people who work for us, we value honesty, passion, and the desire to explore. We have expertise in website development, android app development, iOS app development, Flutter, React Native app development, UI/UX design, and marketing strategy. With the engagement of our highly technical team, we have delivered over 110+ projects providing a positive impact on the users.
