How to Successfully Wrap up your Web Development projects
Web programmers are always busy, often engaged in multiple projects at the same time. Therefore, it is as important to wrap up projects as it is to start the development. Our team of experienced programmers at HireIndianProgrammers have been in the web and mobile app development business for over a decade and a half. Having said that, in this blogpost, we come up with a few things that you as budding programmers can follow in wrapping up a project. We will also be suggesting some tools that can help you with the same.
As you near the end of the software development life cycle and about to deliver the product, only one thing must occupy your mind – final payment that the client is obligated to pay you by contract. After you release the final output of the website and the client gives the thumbs up, you can start sending the relevant invoices. Fortunately for us, there are some smart tolls that can automate the invoice configuration process with ease. We recommend AND CO. You can do a number of tasks ranging from creating proposals and contracts with timelines, scheduling and automatically sending invoices to the clients.
The second task is to draft a formal and polished e-mail to your client after receiving your payment within a time period of 7 days. As programmers or anyone hiring programmers, you must certainly be familiar with keeping in touch with the client by mail and other communication mediums. The goal of this mail, however, must be to get the client to schedule an appropriate closing call as soon as possible along with an objective for the same. With the help of Calendly tool you can create events for on-boarding and off-boarding in addition to availability times and communicate it to clients through links.
Next comes the task of handling the closing call itself. This can be better done through setting up video calls using tools like Zoom but you can also opt for screen shares. In this stage, as professional programmers you need to go over the basic operations of the website for the client, including but not limited to creating posts, pages, managing users etc; If the client has hired your services for a mobile app development project, then you could probably give an overview of the application’s frontend and backend. In other words, this training session of yours must instil confidence in the client.
The next step is to deliver on the final important things such as login credentials, style guides, design assets, licenses, if any. This stage is yet again very important lest you run the risk of uninformed clients coming to you at a later point of time (after contract period) for any urgent queries. Therefore, it is better to label everything and send it across a cloud tool like Dropbox.
Your off-boarding process comes to an end with this technically. But, experienced programmers will acknowledge that doing follow-ups with the client after a period of, say, 60 days is essential. So, to ensure things are up and running smoothly, set a reminder in your project management template, to follow up with your client. Follow ups reflect your professionalism and commitment to delivery of quality service. This holds true for both web development and mobile app development projects.
Hope these steps for a smooth wrap up of your web development projects were useful.
Looking for quality programmers for any web development projects? Check out the previous projects completed by HireIndianProgrammers for a number of clients over the years. If satisfied, you can now hire a programmer by getting in touch with us here.
Customising WordPress Plugins
Web designers in general and WordPress developers in particular will readily acknowledge the immense functionality and usefulness of plugins. But as with everything in life, plugins are not perfect and developers always yearn for that extra bit of functionality in plugins to obtain the optimal WordPress Development experience.
In this blogpost, our WordPress developers at HireIndianProgrammers seek to suggest ways to customise plugins. With this, developers can customise or broaden the scope of existing plugins to serve their needs. A basic knowledge of HTML, PHP and CSS is all that is needed.
The first and most challenging part of this process is to select the right plugin. Considering that developers are mostly preoccupied with work and their aim to make WordPress development services more efficient, this is certainly important. There are thousands of WordPress plugins out there, but developers need to zero in on that plugin that almost always plays a key role in all of the web development projects.
In other words, developers must look for a plugin that they can work on in the long term. In addition to that, the said plugin must have a significant user base with a good record of fixing bugs and providing support.A great add on benefit would be an inclusive library of plugin specific hooks that they can use for various functions.
The next thing in the process of customising plugins is to determine the kind of extra features that developers want to add to the plugin. Sky is the limit. Experienced WordPress developers can always turn a good plugin to a better version. At the same time, they also need to remember not to deviate but rather focus on the actual site functionality. Either they might want to facilitate website maintenance or improve upon on the ease of use for the user.
For example, they can leverage the functionality of WordPress custom fields to add, modify any kind of data – case in point – an improved calendar plugin that has the ability to add links, documents in a user friendly way.
Another way WordPress Developers can look to customise a plugin is to change the plugin’s output. It can be done in a way that aligns with the subject matter of the client’s website – for example making use of WordPress filter gettext. Developers can also experiment with changing or adding new data in accordance with special situations – those that in particular seek to improve user experience. Look to streamline as much as possible.
Developers can also try various combinations of plugins, like for instance, using a slider to display the top selling products of the client’s website, if it is an e-commerce business. Combinations can work wonders if some quality time is spent on it. They can be achieved even with plugins built into WordPress itself. Again, here sky is the limit.
Are you looking to hire dedicated wordpress developers for your website? Look no further. The developer team at HireIndianProgrammers has completed quite a number of projects in the past decade. Often, it is the smaller and finer details like customisable plugins that differentiates a great site from an average site. This enhances the overall functionality of the website. Our WordPress development services promise to pay attention to such details and much more to provide clients to the best possible web development output.
How to Sell your Web Development services
While the advent of different website builders like Wix means that it is easier to design websites, it most certainly doesn’t mean you are equipped enough to design a full functional website for your business. A working business website has a lot more complexities that often requires the expertise and services of a dedicated web and mobile app development company.
In this blogpost, seasoned web programmers at HireIndianProgrammers give you insights on approaching and converting reluctant prospects. Clients can be of every kind and we programmers as part of a leading web and mobile app development company, have come across our share of different clients. It is a challenge in itself to get in fruitful conversation with them.
- Let’s start with the basics – The norms of communication between the client and salesperson mandate courtesy on the latter’s part at all situations and circumstances. The client is more likely to hire a programmer if he is a courteous person.
- When clients start off with an air of reluctance and impatience, rather than treating it as a difficult situation, your task becomes cut out. Be fully prepared with a concise explanation on what you plan to achieve with them – deliberate on the benefits rather than features.
- Having been in the programming field for a long time, you must obviously know the merits of developing and maintaining an in-house website over social media. Now you just have to convey in a language that can be understood by clients who might construe it differently. Focus on specifics of what the website can possibly do for their business
- Do your research before embarking on a conversation with the client – if at all the client already has a working website, identify real flaws with it that might affect the online business and work on feasible solutions to improve the same.
- If the client is hesitant to hire your services, engage in some sort of confidence building actions – for instance – demonstrating your workflow can result in winning immediate brownie points for you and further remove any remaining doubts in the client’s mind.
- As stated earlier, doing your research and trying to understand the client’s business is important. Since it must likely be your niche, go one step further and gather some similar projects that you successfully completed as a programmer and show it to the client.
- Now comes the pricing part. Here three possible cases can arise. If the client doesn’t have the required budget at the time, thank them and make sure to do a follow up at a later point of time. If the client still doesn’t see the value in your services, it is better to move on rather than arguing or worse, dropping your price. If you see the client to show signs of bargaining, it is crucial not to lose ground and reduce price but leave them be.
- Never make false promises for the sake of closing deals, instead make promises that you can actually deliver on.
- Devote time to prepare precise contracts and make the client agree to and sign the same. This projects professionalism.
Hope you found this post to be helpful. HireIndianProgrammers has been in the industry for more than a decade and our programmers have delivered several web and mobile app development projects successfully. Our clients, mostly from the US and also the UK, have continually hired the services of our programmers in a variety of projects, some of them lasting for years.
Contact us here to get in conversation with our programmers.
Top Payment Gateways for your E-Commerce Website
The work of developers can turn out to be quite challenging for normal projects itself. Add to it, an E-Commerce project, the number of project variables spiral out of way. Talking about E-Commerce, one of the most important components of E-Commerce websites are payment gateways. The mere presence of payment gateways and their design and implementation directly affects the end sales of the clients.
In this blogpost, as experienced Magento and OpenCart developers, we show you some of the options with regard to Payment Gateways.
We are sure that you are already familiar with some of the existing payment gateways such as – Stripe, PayPal, Amazon Pay, Authorize.net and so on. In your task to hire an OpenCart or Magento developer or any other website developer, you need to be aware of the fact that the choice of payment gateways changes with the website builder solutions.
The leading E-Commerce platforms are WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento and OpenCart. Let us go through them one by one.
WooCommerce
You must already know that WooCommerce requires WordPress to run on and therefore there are a large number of third party payment gateways to choose from.
Among them, we would recommend PayPal because – firstly, it is PayPal and if you are starting out new in the online business then PayPal would be apt as it brings about trust in your customers. Secondly, an E-Commerce site is clunky as it is and so adding a third party payment gateway through a plugin, this could negatively impact loading times. No customer wants that!
PayPal also has low processing fees, fraud protection and available to transact in a number of currencies.
Shopify
Shopify, a hosted website builder, is impressive and popular as well. While it is extremely easy to use, it is perfect for those clients who want to just start a store ONLY excluding other features like blog, social media feeds etc;
Like WooCommerce, Shopify is also equipped with an inbuilt payment gateway called Shopify which is actually powered by a leading platform called Stripe.
If you really want to use an alternative, please think again. This is because, in using an alternative, Shopify charges you for the third party payment gateway in addition to the processing fees. Apart from that, Stripe offers you fraud protections, quicker funds transfer and partnerships.
Magento
Magento is the third most popular E-Commerce site builder followed by OpenCart. Due to its close association with Adobe and other interactive platforms, it can be said that Magento focuses on complete business website variables like design, CRM, marketing and so on.
Magento development services is most suitable for big clients who want to develop large E-Commerce websites. Coming to payment gateways, Magento provides support for three different payment gateways namely – PayPal, Braintree and Authorise.net.
While Braintree is more apt for clients targeting customers in North America alone, both PayPal and Authorise.net are good options. However, Authorise.net has a slight edge over PayPal when it comes to huge quantity of sales. And it is much more simplified than PayPal.
Having gone through the list, we must let you know that our developers at HireIndianProgrammers offer both OpenCart development services and Magento development services.
Have any further doubts? Contact us here.
Mistakes you need to steer clear while developing your Website
If you are someone new to online business or already have an established online presence, either way, you would readily acknowledge that business websites are strongly linked to your brand image. As dedicated programmers at HireIndianProgrammers, we have a compiled a list of some blunders that you may make while developing your website.
In committing such blunders, it will heavily cost your business in terms of not only signup conversions and sales but also your brand equity.
Mistake 1 – Not Adapting to Mobile
It is 2019. Smartphones have made deep inroads into people’s lives and studies show that more than two thirds of the people browse online using their mobiles. So, it is extremely crucial that you also develop your website accordingly for the mobile version.
In fact, mobile searches are to grow from here on and adapting to mobile will help in your SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Not developing a mobile friendly website will be a loss of business potential. Clients who have hired our programmers attribute the significant boost of their sales to our successful deployment of mobile versions of websites.
Mistake 2 – Sluggish Loading Times
Time and again, we have come across this issue. Visitors coming to your website to make a purchase and learn about a new product invariably want a smooth browsing experience. Long loading times irritate the visitor and they are likely to immediately exit your site if there are other alternatives.
So guess what causes slugging loading times? Yes, you guessed it right. Too much Content. This also includes heavy images and irrelevant sliders and animations. Remember, you are conducting business online and people are here for convenience. Therefore, keep things simple – talk about your products exactly with accurate images.
Mistake 3 – Not Optimising your SEO
Programmers who have been in the game for long recognise the importance of SEO optimised content i.e making your website relevant. It means that curating your content exactly as you want your target customers to perceive your business (brand) and Google’s web crawlers.
In other words, design content that is original and unique with a set of keywords that lead directly to your business.
Mistake 4 – Not Keeping your Website Upto date
This is pretty straightforward and holds true for the conventional business as well. There MUST be regular updation of website – whether addition of content or modification of design elements and so on. In failing to do so, you are losing to competitors and visitors will not hesitate to hop on to next viable alternative.
One of the most common signs of an outdated website is the presence of dead or broken links. Any prudent programmer you hire would say that the mere presence of these links will turn away visitors.
Mistake 5 – Not paying due attention to CTA elements
CTA – Call to Action elements are those buttons and links that directly influence your signup conversions and end sales – pretty common in any e-commerce websites like Amazon. Both visibility and orderly attractiveness are the key factors when designing CTA elements.
Positioning them in a completely random and irrelevant way not only causes inconvenience to your visitors but also negatively impacts your website credibility.
In all these mistakes that we have compiled, there is a common theme – your website is never complete but rather it is always a work in progress.
By hiring our dedicated programmers at HireIndianProgrammers, we ensure that these mistakes are steered clear of throughout the software development cycle.
Get in touch with our programmers here.
Top 5 Useful UX and UI Tools
Web programmers around the world have the mandate of not only providing error-free software but also address usability issues much before in the software development cycle. In fact, they are so common that these can be very often resolved in the design phase itself with the help of several tools.
In this blogpost, our dedicated programmers at HireIndianProgrammers having extensive knowledge of multiple software platforms, will delve into the different front-end tools to reduce usability concerns – providing for a breezy experience.
Mason
With Mason, programmers spread across different geographic locations can collaborate and work on a website’s front end. There are not much expenses related to the addition or modification of any feature that is usually associated in this part of the development cycle.
What makes Mason a hit among programmers is the fact that it takes care of the hard coding stuff and programmers can directly focus on the larger issues of deploying robust software. By using Mason, you can seek to bring your entire product team together, push updates in seconds and includes, among other things, features like, user registration, SSO, two-factor-authentication and so on.
Interfacer
Interfacer is a quality front end tool available for programmers to makes the best use of – especially with regard to its extensive library resources. This library is not only highly comprehensive but also a fun resource for programmers to experiment with.
Now what does this library contain? It is a collection of everything ranging from fonts, icons to UI Designs and templates for websites. All of this is free for programmers to work with.
Webflow
Webflow is a one-stop solution for all your website development needs including but not limited to website design, CMS, hosting etc; Even if you are a beginner in programmer, fret not, for Webflow is designed for both experienced programmers and beginners alike.
You can design whole layouts for every website or app from scratch with ease, therefore, Webflow is creative hotspot for programmers to unleash their full potential.
UXPin
UXPin is built on the premise of iterative wireframing and prototyping. A powerful cloud based prototyping tool, UXPin promises programmers to allow them to design, prototype and collaborate.Programmers can start designing from the pre-coded modules.
The best thing about UXPin is the provision of sharing designs across stakeholders including clients and other programmers on the team in any form like wire frames. This means that feedback becomes central to the design process ultimately reducing costly time resource.
With that we come to the end of this post and would like to reiterate to programmers and online business people the importance of UX. UX is one of those small things that impresses visitors to your site. A good UX will impress visitors to the extent that they go on to bookmark your website for future browsing – thereby increasing brand loyalty and word of mouth.
After all, a smooth online purchase experience is what all customers yearn for, isn’t it?
Start designing your website with a renewed emphasis on UX by hiring our programmers. Get in touch with our team here.