Best Application Development Practices To Follow In 2020

There are a lot of things to keep in mind when it comes to application development. As a business, you want the best of everything for your customers but sometimes it’s hard to achieve with a limited budget and resources.

Here are some best practices to make the most out of what you can do with your application:

Think streamlined

Being able to quickly and easily understand how to use an application is one of the top things a user will look for. People would much rather choose an interface with simple design rather than one with overwhelming clutter because people do not want to waste their time combing through everything in the application.

Ask yourself  how your customers will want to navigate through the application

Where would your business be without its customers? When you think through the development of an application, you should make everything easy: Are the categories clear and obvious? Are all links titled?

Keep all the information you get from customers protected

Professional hackers steal customer information through data breaches of corporations all the time – and the result is never pretty. From the very beginning of the application development services, building up a protective security detail is essential to keeping your customer’s important information safe.

Do your research on the competition

What do they do that customers dislike? On the other hand, what do they excel at? While you never want to copy what your competitors are doing, it can be extremely helpful for the development of your application to know what will and what will not work. Instead of making the same mistakes they did, you can save money by skipping them entirely!

Be customer-driven

Here at Charter Global, we often talk about being customer-focused within every aspect of a business strategy. By thinking of the end customer, you focus on what will bring you the most profit, in the long run, returning happy customers. While it is important to stick to a budget when developing, it is even more crucial to the overall success of the application that it is spent on working on the parts of the application that make things easier, simpler, and better for your customers themselves.


Following these 2020 best practices will enable your application to better utilize the budget you set, integrate customer-focused tools, and increase your application’s chance of success once it is published. Deciding to create an application is a big decision – not to mention all the smaller


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https://www.charterglobal.com/follow-these-best-practices-when-developing-your-application/

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Five Advantages of Custom Software Development

1. Custom Software is your own – and not someone else’s


Even though ready-made solutions can be cheaper and easier in the beginning, this type of software can have a lot of updates, regulations to abide by, and may not be a long-lasting solution for your business. Custom software development gives you freedom someone else’s out of the box software will not be able to.

2. Development is tailored for all of your needs and wants 

Your business is unique – so shouldn’t your software be as well? The sky is the limit when it comes to custom software development services. You can add in all the features and functionalities your customers will love on a custom solution without being restricted by any rules or boundaries a typical out of the box software will force upon you.

3. Lower costs in the long run

Ready-made solutions require regular fees and force you to use their internal development team when you want to customize your software at any point.

Although custom software development companies might be harder on a budget upfront, there aren’t any recurring fees and it is often cheaper to manage an ongoing custom development rather than needing one-off solutions.

4. Scale without typical issues

Businesses that use ready-made software will outgrow it at some point – it is inevitable. Once the cap is reached on that software, there isn’t much else to do than start from scratch all over again with new software. When businesses use a custom software development solution from the beginning, they are able to accommodate growth as they go.

5. Specifically integrate security precautions for your customer 

Businesses tend to collect different types of information from their customers – which means there should be a unique security solution for each one. Because you know your customer best, you know how to properly protect their data and can specifically work that into the development of your software.


The Charter Global team often recommends using custom software development because it tends to provide the most return on investment while boosting brand recognition to its customers. However, each business will require a different solution. When you are thinking about getting your own software developed, give us a call to see which solution is perfect for your business!


Read More:

https://www.charterglobal.com/five-advantages-of-custom-software-development/


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One of the Most Expensive Software’s Due to High Maintenance Costs

Oracle is a popular system created around a “relational database framework,” where data can be found on the front end of an application through queries and can run on multiple different platforms like Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. There are different editions that Oracle offers, each with various functionalities appealing to developers. With advanced features as well as hosting leading database solutions, Oracle continues to be a top choice among developers.

It is no secret that when companies grow, they attempt to become more streamlined to provide the highest quality services with the lowest expenses possible. As companies become more aware of the features and costs associated, Oracle has come under heavy scrutiny. Oracle strategy is increasingly complex, with many hidden costs (as well as hidden complexities) that companies do not understand until they are trapped within the long-term use of the software.

The high maintenance cost of Oracle software is one of the highest across the industry. Instead of allowing businesses to grow through simpler processes, Oracle forces the use of their products that requires long migrations. Additionally, Oracle doesn’t typically innovate their new features, opting for acquisitions of other companies to provide these instead. Because the plan to acquire companies is kept a secret, customers are unable to plan at all.

Oracle requires newly acquired products to be licensed and re-engineered with non-integrated features: On top of that, they require customers to purchase the integration technology necessary to properly integrate their new products into the system. With a 22% maintenance fee customers see their expenses grow as they need more features and services.

Now, it’s safe to say that there are some good reasons why Oracle’s software is so expensive. However, there are also a lot of cheaper alternatives that can offer many of the same benefits. In a rapidly changing technologically advanced society, staying on top of the best options (with a balance of a smaller budget) can allow a company to be flexible. For most of our clients here at Charter Global, we don’t tend to recommend software that costs a lot to maintain just because there are so many other cheaper options that might be better suited for your budget. We never want you to spend unnecessary money on maintenance costs! Our job is to make your company succeed – and that means offering the best software aligned with your business.

Give a Fresh Look to Legacy User Interface (UI)

We continue to use Legacy User Interface’s (UI) for lots of reasons: they’re dependable, tried, and true methods that developers have used for years and years. However, when it comes to traditions, developers can get stuck using the same solutions to problems that have evolved (leading to solutions that aren’t effective anymore).

Why It’s Important to Update

The way technology changes make it hard to stay with legacy User Interface (UI) for very long (unless a company has no other options or is simply being stubborn). By updating, an application can be easier to use, provide more functionality to customers, and better reflect a company’s brand. At all times, an application needs to be optimized for the end-user: a company’s target audience. Because an audience’s needs are never static (they are constantly evolving as technology changes the way they live their lives), it’s important to maintain an evergreen approach to UI design.

Companies that have not been able to make any changes to their legacy UI for a long time will typically notice a dramatic decrease in customer engagement and use of their web or mobile application. Anticipating a customer’s needs or desires is the key to placing yourself at the cutting edge of an industry, and a critical aspect of showing your audience that you are the expert.

Drawbacks of Updating

Depending on how long it has been since the UI has gotten a fresh look, it could take a while to go through the lengthy process of reworking many of the outdated features on the application. This will typically require some research to see just what your customers need within the application and might even force an overall branding update if it’s been long enough as well. Integrating the brand within the application, along with beautiful UI design is the best way to show your company can adapt to change and do what is best for their customers. With so many companies already modernizing their apps, businesses that are left behind will surely feel the impact in their retention and engagement rates.

Where Charter Global Comes In

Simplifying navigation, adding voice commands, overall presentation look, and even how the customer can interact with the site itself are all new updates that can give legacy UI a fresh design. The Charter Global research team can suggest a variety of new UI screen recommendations off of what your customer wants or expects from your application. We will be able to tell you all the features to focus the most time and effort on, as well as which ones can be taken off of your application entirely. Let us help you modernize and update your old legacy User Interface (UI) to a beautiful, state of the art UI design.


Read More: https://www.charterglobal.com/give-a-fresh-look-to-legacy-user-interface-ui/

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It’s time to upgrade your application development Tech Stack

Tech stacks are the source of data and all the elements that go into the building (as well as running) a mobile or web application. New versions of tech stacks are very common – as people continue to innovate, changes must be made in how applications are created. These updates can improve the capabilities of the stack, boost security, and make applications easier to develop overall.

As with anything, it can be easy getting stuck in the traditional way of doing things. Developers might find a tech stack they like and stick with it for quite a while because it’s familiar and easy for them to use. However, these developers are missing out on many tools and opportunities that new industry tech stacks bring. The best developers understand the need to balance reliability with modernity and scalability.

A company’s tech stack should constantly be evolving. While it might stick to the same foundations, finding ways to reduce response times, cut costs, leverage data, and better meet customer needs is a critical aspect of being successful. The most profitable companies in the world are those that are consistently updating their tech stacks to better support the ever-evolving applications they create for their customers.

Not only is it important that the application is backed by updated technology, but also with developers that are able to adapt to the changing situation. New industry tech can sometimes have a hard learning curve, but without learning the proper skills, this new tech can go to waste (or simply not be used to the best of its ability). Developers should always work as a team when deciding what to add on to their stack to ensure widespread support and synergy across them all in order to maximize the potential of the tech.

Additionally, when adopting new industry tech, developers have a better opportunity to automate their base processes, enabling them to add on more things without compromising the integrity of the entire application. This can also free up the time needed to learn those new skills we mentioned above. Instead of worrying about keeping up with adding on more and more things to a developer’s to-do list, they are able to take a large amount of static work off of themselves with automation to streamline the process. Developers can then work on creating new features that will add value to their application, like more extensive dashboards.

Keeping track of all the new tools available for your stack can be overwhelming. Charter Global is able to help you reduce cycle time while increasing quality and stability with the various tech stack tools available. We can evaluate your current tech stack to determine areas for improvement making your application development easier to develop overall.


Read More: https://www.charterglobal.com/its-time-to-upgrade-your-application-development-tech-stack/

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Upgrading Monolithic Applications into Microservices

Monolithic architecture is typically code-based formed as a singular expansive system. On the other hand, a microservices architecture is formed from a variety of smaller services that each host their own coding foundation. There are a lot of reasons why a company would start with a monolithic application. Monolithic structures can be less work for smaller teams, typically is less complex, and can sometimes process faster than microservice applications. However, monolithic apps can get increasingly difficult to manage and can be very tricky to understand with its many dependent intricacies.


Microservices utilize a batch of services that run independently of each other. For some companies, utilizing this type of architecture is the way to go. Microservices can be much more organized than monolithic apps, easier to manipulate when trying to single out one service, can have easier scaling abilities, and less room for error when changing or modifying an area of code within the application.


The downside that companies run into with microservices is that they tend to require more time to design at the beginning (and with much more overhead). Although, down the road, it can be much more cost-effective changing services in a microservices architecture rather than a monolithic.


For businesses that want to see a faster pace and more adaptability, migrating from a monolithic architecture to a microservices architecture might just be the way to go. Using a team experienced with this form of architecture is crucial for the success of the application. When upgrading, it’s important to build out the infrastructure and management system first, and then slowly migrate over services that are either fairly simple or relatively independent compared to others. Start from edge services and slowly work your way into the core capabilities of the application. It’s important to do it this way so that the core functionality of the application is not affected. If at any point there are services that rely on the monolith core after breaking it away, it’s a sign that this particular service is not defined enough and needs to be reworked into smaller, separate services.


While this might be a rather extensive migration process at first, it will create much more flexibility and scalability in the long run for the application. Charter Global can upgrade your existing big application into multiple independent manageable microservice applications so that each application can run on its own. With microservices, your application will be able to save you measurable costs than if you had stayed with the slow-moving monolithic architecture that once applied to your business but is no longer viable.


Read More: https://www.charterglobal.com/upgrading-monolithic-applications-into-microservices/

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What is the difference between UI and UX Design?

Branding is important to businesses because it leaves a lasting impression on customers. Instead of confusing the customer about what exactly you can offer them, a consistent look and feel to your website and applications better tell your story and make you memorable. Think of Nike: Stories of successful athletes and their famous slogan “Just Do It” come to mind almost immediately. Customers equate the Nike brand with being victorious, driven, and athletic – without the company expressly saying that at all. Just like Nike, the design around your website and applications defines your overall brand.

What is UI and UX Design?

With only one letter difference between the two of them, it can be confusing for people to distinguish what makes UI and UX unique from each other. They’re often used together, making it even more difficult. UI (user interface) design is the layout of a type of application – for example, the layout of text, images, buttons, etc. that people can use. UI also includes the transitions and animations (basically all the visual elements) that complete the design. On the other hand, UX (user experience) is all about how a person interacts with those elements. UX designers think in the mindset of a user: does navigation feel right? Is it hard to find certain things? While UI and UX design go hand in hand, the focus is on different things.

How to keep the design consistent with guidelines?

Developing guidelines for design across multiple platforms does not have to be difficult – but it can take skill and time to think in an overarching manner to connect all of them. One of the first things that must be done is proper research into the end-user: Figuring out what users want to use the website/application for and exactly how it is used is the most important step. Keeping the end-user in mind is how businesses can account for everything their customer will need and want out of their applications.


Another important element is not to reinvent the wheel. Being able to use common UI elements is a great way to build familiarity easily with an application for users (however, putting in a couple of unique branding elements is how you tailor the function to your company). UI design patterns should be reused to show consistency across platforms for customers – whether that’s templates, layouts of text, or specific images. Logos and fonts should be the same throughout any application and website. Once you have figured out the UI design and proper UX flow in a website or application, you can attempt to use that as a guideline in every other application that is designed down the road.


Here at Charter Global, we understand the necessity of integrating your brand into your UI and UX design elements across your applications. When it is time for you to think about an overarching plan of consistency in your application development, give us a call to guide you!

Read More: https://www.charterglobal.com/what-is-the-difference-between-ui-and-ux-design/

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