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For individuals and businesses who wish to develop applications for their ventures, coding is their nightmare. But now, they can have their dish served with fewer spices.

‍Welcome to the era of no-code application development.

‍As the name suggests, we have come across the opinion of many IT aspirants who say that it is too astonishing to be true. It sounds like daydreaming, but it exists. When you dig deeper and extract more information regarding how it works, you will be surprised that it wasn’t coined earlier. No-code development platforms are undoubtedly the future of development, and the end is already here.

No-code development - In a Nutshell

No-code development involves simple operations like drag-and-drop and choosing from the given utilities to develop an app. Thus, the scheme is a visual platform that enables people with zero knowledge about coding or programming to develop a full-scale app.

Ever since the world steps into the digital era, developers’ teams deemed as a frontline force. As a result, their demand has skyrocketed with time, and so does the use of no-code development platforms worldwide. In modern times, with the digital revolution is molding every industry and field, the demand is much higher than ever. This demand upsurge is triggering anxiety in businesses as they would like to adapt to this digital transformation; they cannot afford or find skilled It experts who can drive this change within their organization.

Experts have restlessly been finding a way to reduce this supply-demand gap and burden of finances by suggesting a platform that allows businesses and their employees to develop apps without any prerequisite knowledge or the need for training. This is why no-code development is a game-changer, and the market is evolving rapidly.

Will no-code software replace experienced developers?

Although non-expert staff members can quickly adapt to the no-code environment without assistance or training and effectively deliver enterprise-level applications, experienced technical developers will remain in the picture with slightly different and molded roles. Instead of replacing experienced developers, no-code platforms will allow them to drive governance and focus on higher-level tasks such as improving and building platforms to carry out no-code development and security and scalability of applications delivered by no-code development.  

What can you build with no-code?

Now you got an idea about what no-code application development is. But we wouldn’t rely on something that doesn’t give us what we want and add value to the existing utilities.

No-code development is the magic wand. They offer a multitude of possibilities to develop any kind of application as per business requirements. All you need to have is just an idea and an intelligent no-code development platform. Then, you can implement it in hours or days. Some of the applications that you can build using no-code development include:

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Project and Task Management
• Travel and Budget Management
• Human Resource Management System (HRMS)
• Staff Management
• Asset Management
• Websites, eCommerce Stores, and Portals
• Mobile Applications

Features of the best no-code development platforms

According to Gartner, no-code/low-code platforms are among the top 10 highs casting contrasting shadows on infrastructure and workflow in 2020. It also reveals that no-code is the future of development. This is because the platform helps in meeting the never-ending demand for app development. Now different questions are going to pop up in your mind. How much can no-code development offer? Why are they so appealing? Let’s find out by discussing their most notable features.

1. User Interface builder

You can build a complete web page with a drag and drop function. Everything that ranges from the header to the footer, the form, tables, and images can be integrated on a page within a few steps. As an output, you will get a web page as per your imagination. If you want further scalability and expansion, you can also merge your web page with a framework such as Angular2.

2. Workflow modeling

Workflow modeling is not just fast, and it is also entertaining. It allows you to handle all your data effortlessly without putting your effort into coding.

3. Reusability

Imagine using multiple small segments of a particular application to build a new one. To employ this utility, everyone is gearing up for no-code development as it allows you to use the part of other’s applications to build their app. Again, all these practices demand absolutely no tech knowledge or experience.

4. Integrations

From Twitter to Slack and everything involved, you can integrate with your no-code app and fully streamline the processes. This utility is particularly attractive as it eliminates the need for human intervention and removes complex Excel sheets in the process.

5. Mobile capabilities

The top no-code app development platforms offer layout compatibility with mobile devices. It means you can determine how your app appears and works on mobile devices and make necessary alterations accordingly. It is crucial to consider this aspect, as it is estimated that 3 billion smartphone users exist today.

6. Reports and analytics

No-code development platforms provide an additional treatment along with all the great utilities that no-code offers; you get to produce customized reports & insights and receive them as and how you want them to appear. In addition, it means that all the analytical insights throughout the process can be saved and displayed visually.

Benefits of no-code application development

Here’s another catalyst for your interest and excitement. With the notable benefits of adopting no-code app development, there will be no door left for you to leave this amazing development environment. So let’s discuss those benefits.

1. Anyone can build

The primary and most important benefit has already been discussed in this article as a spirit of No-code development. It is a fact that anyone can develop apps using no-code development platforms easily. You are not required to have technical experience or any prerequisite knowledge about coding or programming.

2. Reduced costs

Professional developers don’t settle for the less. They charge a very high amount for their services. As No-code allows everyone to have their hands on development, it results in reduced costs. Secondly, it saves your work hours and efforts, which interns translate into less expenditure in the long run.

3. Reduced time

As we have discussed earlier, developing apps via no-code development platforms are fast and quick. A decent app can take only an hour to complete.

4. Excellent agility

Agility is always a savior in any development process. No-code development affirms agility by streamlining everything from development to testing. It allows the teams to have their hands on actual work instead of wasting it preparing for work. Also, if you are required to roll back any step, make changes, or update, you can do it quickly without being bothered to change any logs or code lines, etc.

5. Enhanced innovation

No-code development lessens the burden on the IT sector by allowing every individual to develop their apps. It pushes them to try their innovative ideas and turn them into digital reality.

6. Business alignment

When the employees linked with internal operations and core business tasks engage themselves in app development, inefficiencies reduce up to a large extent because they have experience working across different departments, and they are well aware of the problems. This helps align business goals with digital solutions and reduce the chances of any clash and failures.

7. Rogue IT risk alleviation

Rogue IT means the unsanctioned information technology resources within any facility. The use of no-code development platforms, when implemented with a pre-planned strategy, policies, and assistance from the centralized IT staff, bring accountability to the rogue IT activities, turning them into a regulated mechanism for the greater good.

Comparing no-code development with alternatives

1. No-code development vs. custom development

While custom software development has its perks, no second thought is that no-code development is quick and cheap. According to statistics, a custom software application development takes months, requires much more sophisticated development and maintenance, and more than 80% of them fail to meet the project deadline. However, as far as no-code development is concerned, the overall aspects of no-code apps are positive regarding quick availability, costs, and maintenance.On the other hand, the extreme scalability of custom app development may be suitable for businesses with thousands of users and require more complex functionality in digital solutions.

2. No-code application development vs. COTS

More advanced and updated products are required in dynamic market conditions that meet the demands of evolving industry patterns. A lack of freedom in terms of scalability and changes can clog your entire business process in the long run.No-code development lessens this burden by allowing businesses to freely customize and build an app that exactly meets their needs and can be elastic enough to be changed easily with their evolving business requirements.

3. No-code development vs. low-code development

Now, this is the most frequently discussed aspect. Most companies get confused and think that both terms can be used interchangeably. But this is not the case. Low-code development requires minimal coding, while no-code doesn’t require coding at all. Apart from the requirement of at least basic coding skills for low-code development, some other parameters differentiate these two development models. Such as:

Conclusion

The demand for digital solutions is increasing with every passing day that the IT industry fails to supply. There are not enough software developers on board to meet the increasing demand. This supply-demand gap is fueling high costs, and no-code is the ultimate solution to these problems.No-code application development is the future of rapid application development, and the future is already here.

Either the Coronavirus spread from China or Turkey, no one can deny that it changed the face of Earth. The air is cleaner, the streets are empty, and half the world is still shut down. Yet, the world doesn't stop for anyone. When the brick and mortar stores were closed, the online market boomed by a majestic 146% growth in all online retail orders to keep things afloat.

Online shopping transformed from luxury to necessity. Now, each brand had to fight on two fronts, maintaining brick and mortar stores and capturing the eyes in the swiftly passing digital world. According to Business Insider, Payless and Gymboree are not the only stores facing an economic meltdown. Many brands have collapsed in administration, changing not only the Stocks market but the physical face of Earth.

However, the solution is a challenge in itself. eCommerce has been developing and evolving with the latest technology trends. So before you quit your job or shut your business entirely, let's analyze the options you have in the eCommerce industry and how you can successfully launch a steadily growing eCommerce business in 2021-22.

How to launch a Successful eCommerce Business

Step-1: Redefine your goals

Before diving into the market, let's analyze your intentions and revise them. Why do you want to launch an eCommerce business? The obvious answer must be to tap into the growing marketing, but what's the bigger picture? Is your goal bigger than yourself? If so, you're on the right track. If not, analyze your intentions and include your country or at least your neighborhood in the ripple effect. If we all focus on the man next to us, we won't need to care for ourselves. The people you want to help will end up helping you. When you read further, pick local and nearby resources to help you build your empire.  

Step-2: Decide your niche and research your products

"I love traveling and high-tech gear, so that's what I'll sell!" said no one ever. Good business ideas always revolve around solutions. Each new product or line is a solution for a specific audience in need of that product. Traveling goods and services were a booming industry in 2019, and then 2020 happened. Within days, whole countries were shut down, and the industry went bankrupt. The key to a growing business is finding the right niche and researching the most required products with less competition. Sounds hard to swallow? A great example of this can be beard or hairstyling kits. Although many kits would've been available online, rather custom kits would've been the edge you're looking for.

Step-3: Let's Talk Business

E-Entrepreneurs got a chance to enjoy the limelight during the pandemic, and their businesses might have boomed overnight but before making any decisions, let's take a step back and talk numbers. Jot down your investments, check your stocks at hand and decide your business based on a detailed risk analysis. Have an accountant friend? It's time to call him and perhaps call over that lawyer colleague out for a drink. It's crucial to play safe and test the waters before depleting your assets due to incomplete research. Resources are also an investment. The most neglected resources in business plans are time and labor. It's easier to throw caution to the wind and decide the bird's eye view of the business. Time is money; either it's invested by you or someone you'll hire. So it is better to play safe and have a clear road map before finalizing your business idea.

Step-4: Define your target audience

Let's go old school and find your target audience. Empires aren't built in a day. So select one target audience from the below-mentioned types and once you've won over that, only then move to the next.

Business to Business (B2B)

Business to Business model represents one business providing to another. This model is perfect for your eCommerce business if you're in wholesale, manufacturing, or distribution. This model demands a bulk quantity of quality products at your disposal and requires up-front or advance business investment. You'll need to pre-order products that may need to be kept in a warehouse. Moreover, you'll need staff for sales, inventory, shipping, management, and customer support.

Business to Consumer (B2C)

Do you want to maintain your wholesale, manufacturing, or distribution position yet not be willing to invest money in bulk production? If so, catering to individual customers will give you a breather and room to establish your business before getting on the highway. This model will require elbow grease and the ability to adapt to change as per your customer response. Not all products need to be a hoot or a failure. It's a hit-and-trial model at the start, but once the customer base is established, it is far easier to maintain this model.

Consumer to Business (C2B)

The odd man jobs you neglected in your childhood and thought weren't enough to earn you a livelihood? They are in style and here to stay. Thanks to the 2020 pandemic, concerts are enjoyed at home, and Jeremy McLellan is in the house. Literally! The consumer to Business model works on services offered based on projects or per hour. Short-term contracts fulfilled based on your skills on Upwork and Fiverr can earn you hard money without stepping a foot out of the house.

Consumer to Consumer (C2C)

The Consumer to Consumer model is from the good old days and is here to stay. In this model, one consumer sells its services or products to consumers, connecting them to ethnic clothing, artifacts, or custom pieces. The key to this model is the personal connection between the two entities and the seller's flare.

Step-5: Select your eCommerce Business model

Keeping your target audience in focus, let's figure out the right business model for your eCommerce business plan.

Private Label

The Private Label business model starts the business chain by purchasing the product from a reliable manufacturer. The purchased product is rebranded and sold to consumers through the seller's eCommerce shop. However, this model saves production costs but requires elbow grease, exceptional designing skills, and extensive product/production manager hunting skills.

White Label

Like the above, generic products are purchased from a supplier and rebranded in the White label business model. Though it seems a cheap and quick deal, the competition is tough. As many businesses sell the same products, it's vital to find eye-catching products yet not easily available.

Dropshipping

One of the successful models with the least hassle is Dropshipping. Need-based orders are placed to the supplier/manufacturer, and they dispatch the orders to the customer. This model only requires established infrastructure, efficient customer support, and reliable suppliers.

Print-on-demand

Like dropshipping, the business showcases custom design samples of goods (such as t-shirts, cups, pens, tables). When the customer places an order on the eStore, a third-party manufacturer prints on-demand. The order is rebranded and dispatched to the customer.

Step-6: Register your Company and Brand

It's time to leap! Now that you've finalized your investments, niche, target audience, and business model, let's register your business and brand. Discuss the legalities with a trusted advisor and register your company so the books will be maintained and you'll be able to register your business. After company/business registration, the next step will be to get your Employer Identification Number (much like a social security number for your business) and business licenses. It's better to consult a legal professional for correct filings as it can be a hassle but will help you grow exponentially without any legal hiccups.

Step-7: Supplier/Manufacturer Hunting

After extensive niche and product research, supplier or manufacturer hunting can be exhausting. Many suppliers/manufacturers might be selling the same products, but the key is to establish long-term relationships. Consult a virtual assistant if you're working with Amazon to make sure you've security and less overhead. You may find manufacturers at Small Businesses Associations or Alibaba. The million-dollar question will be how to judge a supplier/manufacturer? Below is a quick but foolproof litmus test.

Products Offered

A supplier/manufacturer's success can be no value if they don't offer your desired product. It's vital to research their product catalog and check out their peers. Moreover, a reviewed product always triumphs over a newly launched product. A supplier/manufacturer's product catalog can give you a clear idea of their business organization and dealing.

Reliable Shipping

The backbone of the eCommerce market is shipping. The customer wants the product in their hands in a flash. You need to order from the supplier/manufacturer before finalizing them. The shipping time and reliability are critical to maintaining good business relations with your customers. If the products are delivered late or not in good condition, the first impression can be ruined, and you may end up losing a long-term client.

Price

When many suppliers are offering the same products, they reduce the price of one product but compensate it with another. It's better to research all available suppliers to decide which supplier you want to finalize for which product. This research will help you align backup suppliers just in case things go south, or the product becomes unavailable with the finalized supplier.

Customer Service

Imagine a shipment gone wrong! Catastrophic for a startup. Reliable customer service at your supplier's end can ease things and help you resolve the issue on priority. Check if they have multi-channel support: phone, email, live chat. An expensive but active supplier is always better than an unreliable cheap supplier.

Step-8: Select eCommerce Business Platform

Now the question arises, where will you set up your eShop? The answer to this is again dependent on your investment research. The top three reliable channels are listed below.

Shopify

Shopify is a go-to solution for nontechnical business owners. Equipped with an easy-to-use system, Shopify is a complete package covering marketing, sales, e-shop, and payments. A beautiful website can be customized using many available themes for a minimal fee as low as $29.

Amazon

All hail to the king! Amazon is giving all businesses a run for their money, but it's not all bad. A reliable, well-established system will host your shop at low prices. Amazon relieves the business owners from shipment, inventory, and warehousing tensions. Being a giant business, you'll find certified virtual assistants and listing promoters to help you run a smooth and exponentially growing eCommerce business in 2021.

WooCommerce

Though Amazon and Shopify are attractive, WooCommerce offers a free solution for an eStore. The catch is that you need to get your hands dirty or hire a person to manage your store. WooCoomerce offers many themes and plugins, but they can be overwhelming to a person looking for a quick fix. It's better to seek the help of a technical person with hands-on experience to set up your e-shop.

Step-9: Set to Launch your Business

A plan without real action is just a dream. So gear up and launch your eCommerce business. For a successful launch, you'll need to cover the following.

• Strong SEO integration and eCommerce marketing for improved customer outreach.
• Finalize Shipment Provider.
• Finalize Customer Support Channels and set communication benchmarks.
• Create terms and conditions and refund policies.
• Set new products or promotion plans.
• Finalize and onboard the involved personnel and resources.

Step-10: After the Launch

Welcome to the arena. The stage is yours. The crucial part after a business launch is to welcome and drive customers to your e-Store. One foundation stone is product marketing. An efficient product marketing plan can entice customers from social media, ads, and analytics. The second foundation stone is often overlooked but is of equal importance, the personal connection. In the beginning, each business owner needs loyal customers. The secret to customer loyalty is knowing that you care and deliver the best possible product to them. This may seem overwhelming at the start, but all personal and professional relationships require time and effort. So, are you ready to launch your eCommerce business in 2021?

If you want to deploy self-service business intelligence or reporting solution, you have likely come across Microsoft Power BI. But is it the right business intelligence platform for your organization? How will Power BI benefit your business? This blog post is intended to address all such queries. Here is what you’ll need to know if you’re considering Power BI management.

Power BI in a nutshell.

Power BI is the collective name for various cloud-based apps and services that help organizations collate, manage, and analyze data from various sources through a user-friendly interface. Business intelligence tools like Power BI can be used for a multitude of purposes. Primarily, Power BI pulls data together and processes it, turning it into intelligible insights, often using visually compelling and easy-to-process charts and graphs. This allows users to generate and share clear and useful snapshots of what’s happening in their business. Power BI connects to various data sources, from basic Excel spreadsheets to databases and cloud-based and on-premise apps. Power BI is something of an umbrella term. It can refer to either a Windows desktop application called Power BI Desktop, an online SaaS (Software as a Service) service called Power BI Service, or mobile Power BI apps available on Windows phones and tablets and iOS and Android devices. Power BI is built on the foundation of Microsoft Excel, and as such, the learning curve from Excel to Power BI is not that steep; anyone who can use Excel can use Power BI, but the latter is far more powerful than its spreadsheet counterpart.

Functions of Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is used to run reports and surface insights based on a company’s data. Power BI can connect to a wide range of data sets and “tidies up” the info it’s fed so that it can be better digested and understood. The reports and visuals generated from this data can then be shared with other users.

Power BI helps users see what’s happened in the past and what’s happening in the present and what might happen in the future. Power BI is infused with machine learning capabilities, meaning it can spot patterns in data and use those patterns to make informed predictions and run “what if” scenarios. These estimates allow users to generate forecasts and prepare themselves to meet future demand and other key metrics.

Why do Organizations use Power BI?

Power BI is the next level in business intelligence for businesses who want more reporting power and analytical muscle than Excel. With Power BI, businesses can assemble, scrutinize, and visualize data from across the company, giving them greater insight into their operations and performance and making more informed decisions based on real data.

‍Here are some of the key benefits of using Power BI Management:

• Businesses can input huge quantities of data into Power BI that many other platforms would struggle to process
• Built-in machine learning features can analyze data and help users spot valuable trends, and make educated predictions
• Information can be visualized using powerful templates to allow businesses to make sense of their data better
• Power BI is cloud-based, so users get cutting-edge intelligence capabilities and powerful algorithms that are updated regularly.
• Powerful personalization capabilities allow users to create dashboards so they can access the data they need quickly.
• Alerts can be set up on KPIs to keep users up with date important metrics and measurements.
• Power BI has an intuitive interface that makes it more user-friendly and easy to navigate than complex spreadsheets.
• The platform integrates with other popular business management tools like SharePoint, Office 365, Dynamics 365, and other non-Microsoft products like Spark, Hadoop, Google Analytics, SAP, Salesforce, and MailChimp.
• With data security a massive talking point for modern businesses, Power BI management ensures data is safe, offering granular controls on accessibility both internally and externally.

So, what are the top reasons for using Power BI for your business?

Reason #1: Allows you to build personalized dashboards and interactive reports easily

Power BI is known for its dashboards, which can be customized to fit your company’s requirements. It also has intuitive and interactive visualizations. Plus, thanks to the easy drag-and-drop functionality, your staff can easily generate custom reports quickly. You can easily choose from limitless options and produce powerful models and visualizations.

Reason #2: Gives you access to real-time information

Your dashboards will update in real-time. As data is pushed or streams in, the dashboard will display and update your visuals with the new information, as data is updated several times per day. This gives your staff the ability to solve problems quickly, identify opportunities, handle time-sensitive data or situations more efficiently.

Reason #3: Supports a wide range of data sources and integrations

You can import data from a wide range of data sources. Power BI seamlessly integrates with Microsoft products, such as Dynamics 365, Excel, Azure, and more. It also offers data connectivity with third-party tools and solutions, like Salesforce, Google Analytics, Spark, Hadoop, and more. It can also connect to data files (such as XML and JSON) and SQL server databases. This means you will be able to connect to all sorts of data sources for your analysis and reports.

Reason #4: Offers an unparalleled Excel integration

Many businesses still heavily rely on Excel when it comes to analytics and reporting efforts. Power BI integrates seamlessly with Excel. Without learning a new application or language, you can easily connect queries, data models, and reports to Power BI dashboards and create interactive visualizations. You can set it up so that you get the right data instantly when you open your dashboard.

Reason #5: Is affordable and cost-effective

Power BI is relatively inexpensive for small and mid-sized businesses compared to equivalent business intelligence and analytics tools. It also offers numerous versions so that you can pick the one suited to your business. For instance, Power BI Pro is ideal for small and mid-sized companies, and you can get access to a host of features for as little as USD 9.99 or CAD 12.80 per user per month. You can also download the free version, Power BI Desktop, and start using it to make reports and dashboards on your computer.

Reason #6: Has Regular Monthly Updates

Another striking feature of Microsoft Power BI is that there are regular monthly updates made to the platform. Microsoft also listens to the Power BI community suggestions and implements most asked for functionality on a regular. This means users always have access to the latest and advanced features to help make accurate business decisions.

Reason #7: Allows you to deploy multiple dashboards with Power BI Apps

In many companies, business users need multiple Power BI dashboards and reports to run their business. With Power BI apps available for Power BI Pro users, you can quickly deploy a collection of purpose-built dashboards and reports and efficiently distribute them to the whole company or specific groups of people. This feature also gives report developers the power to customize navigation to help viewers find content quickly and understand the relationships between different reports and dashboards.

Reason #8: Lets you take advantage of cutting-edge AI

Take advantage of Microsoft AI's latest advances to help non-data scientists prepare data, build machine learning models, and find insights quickly from structured and unstructured data, including text and images.

Reason #9: You don’t need specialized technical support

Power BI empowers your staff to create analyses and reports without requiring a technical or IT team to help as a self-service business intelligence platform. It supports a natural language interface, uses intuitive graphic designer tools, and has a simple drag-and-drop functionality to create dashboards.

Conclusion

Microsoft Power BI may be right for your business if you are looking for reporting and analytical capabilities that go beyond Excel. With Power BI, you can easily visualize and analyze data across your entire business and gain deep insights into your operations and performance. Recognized by Gartner for the thirteenth consecutive year as an industry-leading business intelligence platform, Power BI management can help you drive better decisions across your organization.

Imagine your organization has decided to opt for Outsourcing Software Development. Now the question that can come to your mind is will Outsourcing Software Development affect the software quality? The answer is No, provided that you choose the right Outsourcing Software Development partner.Choosing the right Outsourcing Software Development partner will not compromise software dev quality, and we assure you of that.However, you must be wondering how I can decide which Outsourcing Software Development provider is the best for my project? We have made your task simpler by compiling down all the important points to be considered before the Outsourcing Software Development team.[lwptoc skipHeadingLevel="h1,h4,h5,h6"]

Checklist Before You Outsource Software Development Team

Basic Preliminary Check

The following questions will help you narrow down to 2 – 4 prospective software development partners. After doing the initial background check, one should send out the request for proposal (RFP) to the shortlisted partners.

1. Do they have your industry experience?
2. Have they handled or completed projects similar to yours?
3. Do they have expertise and experience in the technologies you are looking to use?
4. Do they have a good reputation? Look for reviews, testimonials, and client base.
5. How many clients do they currently have?
6. Do they offer end-to-end services? What additional services do they offer?
7. Can they add new areas of service whenever required?
8. What is the time it has taken to get started with a project?
9. What is their financial condition?
10. What is the size of their team?
11. How soon can they hire a replacement for resources leaving a project, if any?
12. Which cities are they based in?
13. How is the availability of talent in those cities?

Once the basic background check, we need to assess the selected software development partner in-depth.

Pricing Model

The most popular pricing models that software development partners propose are:

• Time & Material (T&M)
• Fixed Bid.

While a fixed bid may give an idea for a budget, it is wise to understand what changing the requirements would cost in the future. Usually, the requirements change, especially when following a Scrum Agile methodology. This adds to the total cost of the project. It may also become difficult to get additional budget approvals during the development phase. T&M may work better as you can control both the budget and product outcome/delivery.Note: It is also important to check if the development partner is ready to scale up or scale down the resources as per business changes.

1. What is their pricing model?
2. What is their payment schedule?
3. What is the cost of changing requirements?
4. Can resources be scaled-up or scaled-down as per business changes?

Process Management

1. Are they ISO/CMMi certified?
2. What methodologies are used – e.g., Agile/DevOps/Microservices?
3. Is the methodology flexible to suit different product/delivery requirements?
4. Is there a process for review and feedback at the end of each sprint with the customer? (This check will ensure features are fit for purpose and potential issues are rapidly resolved.)

Requirements Gathering

1. What methodology is used for requirements gathering?
2. Check if any tools are used for requirements management and what are they?
3. If no tools are used, find out what the collaboration processes their team uses are?
4. Are system reviews held with customer representatives throughout the duration of the project?
5. What is the required approval process followed by the vendor?

Development Process

1. Does the external development team have the right mix of resources between Product Owners, Scrum Masters, Developers, and Testers?
2. What systems and tools are used for development workflow management?
3. What tools are used for project management?
4. Does the vendor have CI/CD capabilities?
5. Are they using a version management system?
6. How are software artifacts dependencies managed?

Project Governance & Delivery

1. What are their reporting guidelines and escalation matrix for deliverable and performance?
2. What is the response time for escalation?
3. How is the time accounted for?
4. Find out how their team will log hours in the development process?
5. What is the process for milestone management?
6. What tools are used for reporting code & quality metrics, defect tracking, and management changes?
7. What are the communication methods and tools used?
8. How do they ensure transparency of communication?
9. Are appropriate dashboards in place to measure progress on work, test execution, automation, code quality, defects, and other metrics throughout the project?
10. How do you ensure proper knowledge transfer when a resource leaves the project?
11. Does the vendor supply the CVs of people assigned to the project?

Quality Standards

1. Is there a Testing Strategy to ensure the project maintains high quality throughout its duration?
2. Is Code written consistent with a well-defined team coding standard?
3. Is continuous integration and testing used to find potential defects and fix them early in the development cycle?
4. Do they use proper test environments and data to ensure that test execution is done in a near-real-world setting?
5. What percentage of testing is automated?
6. What tools are used for Quality Assurance operations?
7. What are Quality Assurance metrics tracked?

Organization & Workplace Culture

To select a good software development partner to outsource software development, also look at the general internal atmosphere in the vendor company. The check is usually done to get details such as how they treat their employees and the company mission and values.

1. What is the mission or vision of the organization?
2. How do their business objectives relate to what you do?
3. To what extent is the customer a priority?
4. How is the management style throughout the organization?
5. What is the current overall performance of the company?
6. Are the organization’s plans/roadmap shared with the employees?
7. What programs do they have for personnel development?
8. What kind of employee benefits are in place?
9. What kind of rewards and recognition do they have for their employees?
10. What is the attrition rate in the organization?

Legal and Security

Just checking the technology capability, processes, talent, and quality does not give the whole picture. You also need to check the business and legal side of things. This basically means the SLAs, NDAs, SOWs, and other practical aspects of the project.

1. Are there security and confidentiality guidelines in place to protect your Intellectual property/ Source codes and other sensitive data?
2. Who will own the code, the licenses, the hardware, and other things required in the project?
3. Does the vendor provide any warranties for intellectual property and work deliverables?

Delivery Team

Being intentional about team design, roles and responsibilities is key to successful collaboration and accountability.

1. Are all team members identified and their respective roles and responsibilities so that the entire team (internal and external) knows each other and understands how they will collaborate?
2. For the internal teams, have these critical roles been identified and resourced appropriately?

Product Manager — This person is responsible for the overall project direction, customer requirements, and priorities for the development team. They are also responsible for the customer validation plan and coordination with project stakeholders.Architectural Representative — This is the architectural contract for the outsourced team and is responsible for consistent architecture across products and features.Stakeholder Group — Leadership representatives responsible for overall project success.For the external (outsource team), have these critical roles been staffed;Technical Lead— whose ultimate responsibility is for the outsourcing development team's technical advice and programming and partner with the client-architect team to ensure architectural consistency.Product Owner — whose role is to partner with the client Product Management team and is responsible for breaking down and refining user stories and acceptance criteria and coordinating with the development team.

1. Does the external development team have the right mix of resources/talent between Product Owners, Developers, and Testers?Are the external teams co-located and broken down into individual teams no greater than 7 people?
2. Did the internal and external team leaders together to determine and agree on roles and responsibilities for key product development deliverables?

Agile Project Management and Delivery

Continuously adapting and adjusting with iterative sprint cadence allows the team to execute effectively, learn from mistakes and recover quickly.

1. Are the key planning and sprint deliverables (requirements, sprint plans, daily stand-ups, definition of done, etc.) agreed upon by the team and in advance of starting the first increment and sprint?
2. Are clear roles and responsibilities, including points of collaboration, defined for each key deliverable to reinforce ownership, accountability, and teamwork?
3. Are project deliverables planned iteratively through the course of the project in no greater than 3-month increments? For example, What do we plan to accomplish in the next 3 months, Epics, priorities, the risk to resolve, etc.
4. Are the appropriate dashboards in place to measure progress on work, test execution, automation, code quality, and defects throughout the increment?
5. Are backlog items assigned to the increment and sprint and worked on in relative priority order to ensure the team is working on the highest priorities early in the project?
6. Are Sprints no greater than two weeks in duration and a sprint plan and goals completed at the start of each sprint?
7. Is there a clearly defined Definition of Done for each User Story and sprint, so there is a common understanding of completeness and transparency of progress?
8. Are the aspects of defect lifecycle management, like definition of Severity/Priority, bug status transition, etc., clearly defined and unambiguous for all stakeholders?
9. Does the team determine and have the necessary capacity or velocity to accomplish increment and sprint goals in the allotted time?
10. Does the team hold a daily stand-up and review and update the team board daily to increase collaboration and project transparency?
11. Does the team review Epic/ Feature at the end of each sprint and provide feedback to the development team on fit for purpose?
12. Is there a milestone checkpoint at the end of each increment with the core team and key stakeholders to review and align on project progress and issues and resolve open items?
13. Does the team use a standard and shared set of development tools for collaboration, project management dashboards, source control, bug management, test management, and test automation?
14. Do all team members and stakeholders have full access to the project management tools and dashboards to drive a mutual understanding of status and issues throughout the project?
15. Does the team have a common understanding and agreement on Source Control Management, Configuration Management (a.k.a. Build), and Deployment practices around branching, merging, executing product/component build(s), and deployment to pre-production? When estimating capacity, does the team allocate time for vacations, meetings, and unplanned work such as customer escalations, resolving unknown items, managing risks, etc.?

Conclusion

Whether you are a startup founder looking to create a development team from the bottom up, or a longtime business owner trying to find additional resources to grow your existing tech team, this checklist will assist you in shortlist software outsourcing vendors effectively and enable you to make informed decisions for your business.

As the tech industry skyrockets, more and more people prefer to make careers in software development and software engineering. What should one expect in terms of salaries? And how much software developer salary by the country can one expect?After a comparative and analytical study on sites like PayScale, Upwork, Indeed, Glassdoor, StackOverflow to collect data about average annual salary packages per country, this information is showcased in this article in a more user-friendly and understandable way possible. The record involves developers’ salaries in the USA, UK, Australia, and Canada.[lwptoc skipHeadingLevel="h1,h4,h5,h6"]Below is a visual of the average salaries of developers in the countries mentioned above.

Average Salary of Software Developers (Breakdown according to Programming Languages)

United States of America - USA

Tech stackSalary 2017Salary 2018Salary 2019Salary 2020

Salary 2021

Java$102,059$102,985$102,424$104,838$103,476C#$92,378$94,567$95,052$72,921$82,490C++$115,619$115,430$117,293$107,845$104,681.NET$92,378$88,919$91,785$96,182$96,937JavaScript$110,057$110,514$111,373$115,261$112,550PHP$86,353$86,335$89,149$81,582$90,707

United Kingdom - UK

Tech stackSalary 2017Salary 2018Salary 2019Salary 2020

Salary 2021

Java$58,166$69,114$72,000$95,171$89,001C++$51,714$62,203$65,454$65,635$82,155.NET$54,909$58,747$57,600$59,072$61,616JavaScript$58,133$66,349$65,454$66,948$78,731PHP$48,444$52,197$52,363$55,790$54,770

Australia

Programming LanguageSoftware Developer Salary in Australia in 2020

Software Developer Salary

in Australia in 2021

Android$50,937$63,319iOS$49,000$62,052C#$47,705$57,986Ruby$46,001$65,534Python$45,467$59,300C++$44,622$60,780Java$44,052$63,342.NET$43,906$58,539JavaScript$42,578$58,076PHP$38,607$53,996

Canada

Programming Language

Software Developer Salary in Canada in 2020

Software Developer Salary

in Canada in 2021

Android$55,600$62,300iOS$48,000$60,500C#$45,700$55,880Ruby$45,000$60,000Python$44,450$56,500C++$42,600$58,700Java$42,052$62,000.NET$45,900$60,000JavaScript$40,500$56,000PHP$36,607$55,000

In-House Staff or Staff Augmentation?

In the light of the data mentioned above, you can easily understand why finding and recruiting an in-house development team is a time-consuming and costly practice. In a post-COVID era, outsourcing is becoming a new norm as more and more companies are gearing up for IT outsourcing.Staff augmentation is based on hiring many developers for a certain period or developing a particular project segment. It offers an opportunity to extend the existing human resource. The outsourced team members work with the in-house employees, sharing their skill set, experience, and knowledge, offering different viewpoints, escape routes, and solutions for different problems and deadlock scenarios.Upon choosing staff augmentation, your company will focus on more crucial aspects of a business and hire software developers with the necessary skillset required in the ongoing project.Some of the primary benefits of Staff augmentation include:

• No recruitment burden
• Fewer operational costs
• Fewer development costs
• Less legal burden
• Access to the rare and suitable specialists
• Control on your side (As compared to that Project Outsourcing in general and Managed Services)

Conclusion

As per the statistics mentioned above, the USA is a utopian setting for software engineers, with the average software developer’s salary in 2021 reaching $110,638. It reveals that the US software developer’s salary per month is $9,219, followed by Australia, Canada, and the UK. Junior developers in the USA are paid $103,382 a year, while senior software engineers with 5-10 years of experience enjoy the perks of having a $121,488 annual salary. Keeping in mind the above-mentioned alary models, as a business owner, Staff Augmentation services are ideal for your project scaling when a particular skill set is required, and your in-house employees cannot find all the solutions. In such a case, the external team will fill in the voids. This temporary and to-the-point engagement turns out to be a cost-effective and flexible strategy. Let us know your views on the average salary of software developers in the USA, UK, AUS, and Canada in the comments section below.

The rapidly evolving eCommerce industry is impacting consumers and retailers in a way that no one ever imagined. The events of 2020, specifically the COVID-19 pandemic, caused a massive shift in business routine. Despite many ups and downs in every industry amid the pandemic, the eCommerce industry grew bigger and faster than ever before.

As more people are bound to stay at home due to preventive measures like lockdowns and travel restrictions, the shift in buying habits and inclination of consumers towards online platforms is not only causing a significant impact on businesses but also introducing a new way to do things that consumers generally hesitated to do before. This sudden and rapid change in the psychology of consumers and the shift from mainstream business routine to eCommerce utilities demands us to dive deeper into this area. It will help us determine the contemporary trends and prepare us for future challenges as it is crucial to know the competitors to achieve success.

Also Read: How to Write a Winning eCommerce Business Plan?

The pandemic triggered the chain reaction of changes across several horizons, and that accelerated evolution is expected to continue in 2021-22 and beyond. Every ecommerce business must know the contemporary and upcoming trends influencing the industry.

In this blog post, we highlight some notable and vital growth trends to generate new ideas, overcome the barriers, and make you prepared to set up a productive eCommerce business for the years to come. Let's discuss these trends in detail.

Worldwide eCommerce industry sales to hit $5.6 trillion by 2022

Recent studies projected that global eCommerce sales would hike to a new summit by 2021. Ecommerce businesses would experience a 265% growth rate, from $1.3 trillion in 2014 to $5.6 trillion in 2022. This reveals a continued steady uphill trend in the future with no sign of decline.

What’s more surprising is that the mainstream retail market is falling prey to global eCommerce sales. In fact, by the end of 2021, physical retail will be occupying only 17.5% of global retail sales.

eCommerce Industry: What to Expect in 2022

To capitalize on this eCommerce revolution, physical stores must welcome digital solutions to convert their businesses from offline to online.

Upheavals in the Western eCommerce Market

The online world does not obey the legitimacy of borders. For instance, the United States’ share of the total global eCommerce retail market is continuously decreasing. One of the main drivers of this change is globalization and improved technology and infrastructure as welcomed by the non-western regions. This eCommerce shift reveals that businesses must adopt a global mindset to ensure their global availability. In this regard, enriching global access in your existing business model doesn’t mean you have to make a physical presence outside your region or country. What you can do is to look for trusted partners in a country or region where you capture a notable market.

Cross-Border shopping

The world is becoming a global village. With cross-border online exposure, shoppers are now looking for products outside their country or region. Cross-continent shopping is becoming a new norm. In 2020, more than 60% of online consumers had made online purchases from overseas retailers. The average percentage breakdown of consumers who made overseas purchases by continent is:

• 64% Europe
• 58% Asia-Pacific
• 55% Africa
• 55% Latin America
• 45% North America

This growing eCommerce trend is demanding retailers for what we discussed above about global approach and availability. Apart from strengthening the global eCommerce presence, it's crucial to invest in intelligent infrastructures and methodologies which may assist you in adapting to the unique challenges related to the engagement of overseas buyers.

Optimized Delivery

According to recent statistics, poor delivery practices have triggered a crisis of confidence amongst online buyers over the past year as almost 40 percent of shoppers experienced delays to their orders. Below are some categorical statistics of Global Online Shoppers who would consider abandoning an order due to delays.

As e-commerce sales are expected to grow faster, deploying optimized delivery methodologies must be the top priority in 2022.Those methodologies must involve two primary components.

1. Enhanced Delivery Speed - to ensure the retailer competes with the rivals and the upsurge in online shopping.
2. Dynamic Model - to facilitate the shifting consumers' demands, like blended experiences.

Adapting these two components adds speed and flexibility to the delivery process, which can be achieved by automating the supply chain, from order processing to inventory and shipping, to get orders quickly.

Analytics in eCommerce

In the AI-driven tech world, data and information are the most valuable assets. Your customers are likely to buy worldwide, pressure your product pricing for different regions to maximize sales growth. Getting deep insights into what issues are needed to be addressed before getting noticed by customers is what data analytics can do for you. These insights can help you determine the best product mix and marketing strategies and sales promotions to be deployed as an online retailer. This is how eCommerce analytics assist you in boosting your ROI.

Punchout eCommerce

“Punchout” is the term that denotes the e-communication between a company’s internal procurement systems and its suppliers. Using punchout, a buyer can access suppliers’ catalogs and then purchase products easily within the internal infrastructure.B2B companies, especially mid-sized to giants ones, likely use or plan to use punchout. Around 50 percent of B2B businesses use an e-procurement system, and 30 percent plan to implement one. If your B2B customers enrich an e-procurement methodology, you can interact with the punchout facility with them. More giant B2B suppliers like Staples, CDW, Amazon Business, and Grainger involve the state of art punchout system.

Cloud Computing and eCommerce

It has been expected that cloud-based systems can encourage eCommerce retailers, and growing numbers of eCommerce industries are adopting cloud technology. In eCommerce industry, businesses deal with a large amount of data, including client details, product details, inventory details, stakeholders, etc. In these circumstances where the information handling is crucial, cloud systems become a critical factor as it provides 24/7 server maintenance. Cloud is a promising technology for the future. The revolutionizing application of the cloud is set to transform the eCommerce industry in a highly optimized manner.

Chatbots in eCommerce

Customers expect to be able to find what they’re looking for in a single click of a button and the blink of an eye. Chatbots are tiny programs that automatically simulate interactions with consumers based on predetermined statements and replies. eCommerce platforms with chatbots for consumer-facing are proliferating. Statistically, over 60% of millennials and 65% of X-Gens in the US have interacted with chatbots. According to a Facebook survey, more than 50% of customers say they’re more likely to shop with a business they can connect with via chat. According to Gartner, by 2020, 85% of online engagement with businesses will be carried out without interacting with another human due to the assistance of chatbots. Similarly, Oracle conducted a survey that reveals that 80% of eCommerce businesses disclosed they are currently using or planning to use chatbots.

eCommerce Automation

Ecommerce automation is a primary growing element for online businesses, from marketing automation to warehousing and beyond. Almost every business department or function has an element that can be automated to some extent, if not entirely. This strategy effectively saves human resources and cuts costs as it sets free human attention and other valuable resources for more core business areas. eCommerce businesses can quickly implement automation to manage repetitive tasks. Supply chain management can be simplified and made efficient by automation software that can schedule inventory alerts for reordering when the stock falls below a certain margin. Experts and Futurists have claimed for quite some time that robots and AI will be performing more tasks than humans as advancements in technology continue with exponential growth. In few years, we will be living in a world fully automated and controlled by machines. eCommerce businesses are the ones experiencing this revolution right now.

Effectiveness of Content Marketing

Content ensures brand awareness, improved demand, and more revenue when done in the right direction. Content marketing is expected to capture the audience’s attention more effectively, with almost 80 percent of buyers claiming that relevant content increases their purchase cravings.

Also Read: 8 Must-Have eCommerce Marketing Techniques for 2022

Getting content out there will be more different in 2022 as social distancing is becoming the new normal, and businesses are still coping with the post-COVID content creation process. The instant and only solution to this problem is content atomization. Content atomization means that you take one vast and detailed piece of content and break it down into several other smaller pieces of content. As businesses find ways to ensure that their content is more engaging and worthy for their audience, working on one piece of content and breaking it down into smaller chunks will enable them to extract more benefits.

The Connection between Green Economy and eCommerce

Many countries' economic and social priorities amid climate change have shifted the focus towards making environment-friendly products. eCommerce giants such as Amazon have taken the pledge towards sustainability. Other eCommerce brands are likely to follow the steps as humans struggle to find better ways to curb the active and passive impacts of the existing industrial model on our climate. It involves finding ways to reduce waste and carbon footprint to preserve the earth for our future generations. With more debate about climate change and the Green Economy in all regions, consumers are willing to play their role as much as possible. Research by Harvard Business Review found that 65% of buyers wanted to buy from brands that practice or aim for sustainability.

Conclusion

The crisis triggers the transition of ownership from outdated ones to updated ones. The same is the case with the COVID-19 driven socio-economic turmoil. New technologies and approaches always emerge during the crisis, making it an opportunity rather than a hurdle. With the trends mentioned above in the eCommerce sector, 2021-22 will experience a lot of evolution. Is Virtual Reality and face recognition going to affect the way online consumers use to buy? Will people start saving money or start consuming even more once the pandemic is over? Which company is going to be a Top eCommerce giant in the near or far future? These are the questions that come to every curious mind that no one certainly knows, but there will surely be a solution. What are you expecting from the eCommerce industry in 2022? Let us know in the comments below.

Data Clustering is the most renowned methodology in unsupervised learning by which data is grouped with regards to the similarity of the data points. It has numerous real-life applications where it can be deployed in a variety of scenarios. Data clustering algorithms are widely used in different fields.The fundamental working principle behind clustering is assigning a big dataset into subgroups termed clusters in a specific manner that attributes in the same cluster share a degree of certainty. This methodology is inspired by the cognitive process of the human mind to distinguish objects based on their incongruity.For instance, when you go out shopping, you can easily differentiate between mangoes and watermelons, even if they are kept in the same space or container. You distinguish these two items based on their size, color, texture, and other sensory attributes that your brain perceives differently for both items. Clustering is an emulation of this cognitive process to make machines capable of differentiating among different items.[lwptoc skipHeadingLevel="h1,h4,h5,h6"]In unsupervised machine learning, this methodology is used to identify objects lacking external labels attached. The machine learns the features and patterns automatically on its own without any given input-output directives. The clustering algorithm can retrieve hidden attributes by intelligently examining datasets and then create different classes to group them appropriately.The algorithm divides the populated dataset into different groups. Each data point is congruent to the data points in the same group and contrasting to the data points in the other groups. Based on these similarities and dissimilarities, it then separately labels each sub-group known as a cluster.In this article, we have discussed 8 Applications of Data Clustering Algorithms.

Real-World Applications of Data Clustering Algorithms

Identifying Fake News

Fake news plays an increasingly dominant role in spreading misinformation by impacting people’s perceptions or thinking about a certain event to deform their awareness and decision-making. According to research, Fake news is being spread faster than the actual news. This spread rate is further accompanied by technological mediums such as social media. In a recent study at the University of California, computer science students use clustering algorithms to identify fake news based on its content.The said algorithm works in a way that by examining the content of the fake news blog posts, filtering certain words, and then clustering them. These dedicated cluster sets are utilized by the algorithm to separate fake content and authentic news. Usually, a specific set of words are used in hyped and click-bait blog posts. Upon detecting a high percentage of these certain words in content, the algorithm declares such material as fake or fiction.

Spam filter

You know about the spam folder in your email, where emails declared as spam by the algorithm are stored. Spam emails are one of the most annoying factors of today’s digital marketing tactics. The worst these spam emails can do is phishing for your sensitive information and confidential data. Email service providers use machine learning algorithms to perform clustering to avoid getting these emails in your primary inbox session. The main purpose of these algorithms is to identify an email as spam or not.K-Means approach is a highly effective clustering algorithm to identify spam emails. It works by assessing the different email sections such as subject, sender’s email, and body. The data is then grouped in other clusters based on its attributes, revealing the nature of email as spam or useful.Using clustering methodology in the classification process helps in attaining the accuracy of the filter around 98%. This high level of accuracy ensures that users won’t miss out on their desired emails, letters, or offers.

Customer Segmentation

Targeted marketing is the backbone of digital marketing. This process is driven by evaluating consumers' behaviors and approaching them with dedicated campaigns or offers that they are likely to accept.If you are a business owner and struggling to get the high RoI, it is high time to target the right people in the right way. Approaching your customer contrary to the said strategy may damage your sales and lose your Customer’s interest.Clustering algorithms are capable enough to group consumers with similar buying habits and likelihood to purchase specific items. Once you have the groups, you can test campaigns on each group with different products to help you engage them more effectively for a similar campaign in the future.

Also Read: 5 Data Scraping Tips That Can Give You an Edge in eCommerce

Let’s assume the case of a car manufacturer here. A car manufacturer wants to rectify and make intelligent guesses over the customer’s behavior and buying habits to evaluate which product is experiencing more sales and their customers’ mindset behind their buying habits.They use to process each customer’s details based on the available information to decide which product should be manufactured more and the attitude and interest of customers towards a certain product. This study helps the company monitor and forecast sales, start a targeted marketing campaign, and make available resources.This whole scenario can be done without human interference using clustering methodology in machine learning. Products and customers are segmented in clusters and feed to the machine to drive fruitful results. It may result in more accurate outcomes and spare time for employees to focus on the core business process.

Identifying Criminal Activities

In this scenario, the algorithm can detect the probability of fraud or crime occurrence based on individuals’ different behaviors, such as certain social media posts, buying habits, hate speech, and connections with other dubious people or groups over the internet. The challenge comes amidst the recognition of fiction and reality.By analyzing the activities mentioned above of an individual, the algorithm can group similar people according to their behaviors or patterns. Based on the data obtained by evaluating and distinguishing normal and abnormal behavior of individuals in a group. Machines are then able to classify them as criminal or not.

Sports

Which players are going to perform best for the national cricket or football team against the specific team? Which player can best suited against the clear rival? Which team or player is likely to exploit the particular weakness of your team? What is the batting and bowling style of a rival team’s players? What are the weaknesses or strengths of the competitor? Answering such questions can help the team selectors station a team that can outperform in the competition with high probability.If you have a very small dataset of players and team performance to train the machine learning model, the role of unsupervised learning comes in. In this scenario, you can label similar players using some of their common attributes using K-Means clustering. It allows us to better station a team and strategy more quickly and gets a competitive edge over the rivals.

Identification of Cancerous cells

Information about patients is not easily available due to confidentiality and privacy issues. Limited knowledge and datasets of Cancerous patients can be best processed using clustering algorithms. A complex data containing a record of both cancerous and non-cancerous patients are evaluated using the clustering algorithms capable enough to distinguish the intricate patterns and features in the data upon which they construct the clusters. Through experimentation, it has been proved such datasets give promising results upon feeding an unsupervised clustering model.

Search Engines

While surfing on search engines like Google, your query responds with similar results that match the criteria. This is one of the best things a clustering can do, grouping similar items, images, or posts in a single cluster and provides that to you. It saves both time and energy on behalf of the server. It doesn’t bother to search the whole database; instead of searching in the clusters that best suit your query, that specific item is likely to be available there. This perfection is attained due to data being assigned to the single cluster providing a comprehensive output to the respective input.

Defense and Security Purpose

The state-of-the-art aspect of technology is always used by military and intelligence agencies. To evaluate the behavior of enemies, predicting their next moves, and formulating defense strategies accordingly is the primary concern of any nation-state. In modern times, the data gathered by intelligence agencies are clustered and passes through intelligent machine learning algorithms to get first-hand knowledge about enemies’ activities by labeling similar activities as the same clusters. This data is shared with the armed forces and state institutions to formulate the policies and strategies further.

Conclusion

There is too much to improve in this domain. The selection of algorithms depends upon the nature of the data collection because each algorithm has its advantage and disadvantages. It means there is no single algorithm that exists to tackle all the clustering challenges.But luckily, there are some algorithms to provide an optimist solution, and more specifically, K-means best serves the process in managing huge datasets. Despite too much space for improvement and advancement in the obscure field of data clustering, the existing clustering methodologies are capable enough to deal with so many problems, as discussed in this article.Let us know if you have used any other data clustering algorithms.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digitization and boosted eCommerce. Due to the containment measures, consumers move online to make purchases to maintain social distancing. In this article, you'll learn how to start dropshipping store from scratch. The change in behavior and activities of people worldwide is well understood by the fact that in a recent survey conducted by YouGov, 82 percent of people in Hong Kong reportedly avoided crowded places in March. This sudden change in public activity is very disappointing for the retail sector but a piece of good news for the eCommerce industry. After the availability of vaccines for the general public, the world is coming back to old normal, and economies are slowly reopening, but health and safety concerns are still in place. Industry analysts predict that the online shopping trend will remain active.

It is the perfect opportunity to launch your eCommerce dropshipping business with minimum investments and no inventory or logistics. Moreover, you can handle it effectively without leaving the comfort and safety of your home.An eCommerce store with a dropshipping model will allow you to start your business without spending a fortune on inventory, and eradicate the risks associated with large stocks, thereby giving you the freedom to test out different products and ideas in your target market. Since you are not involved in the supply chain, dropshipping will let you focus on more active areas like marketing and growing your business. Dropshipping doesn’t know continents and borders. It will allow you to source products from anywhere in the world and engage customers across the globe. This attribute will enable you to sustain rapid growth and improve the scalability of your business. Another benefit of the dropshipping business is it doesn’t demand your full-time attention. You can continue to handle it in parallel with any other full-time job.

What is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a kind of retail fulfillment that allows you to sell products without managing your inventory. You remain in touch with dropshipping suppliers and source products to sell on your eCommerce platform. Customers visit your online store, make an order, then forward the order info to the supplier, and the supplier fulfills the order. Unlike traditional online retail businesses, dropshipping releases the burden of fulfilling orders. It allows you to skip the stress and cost of manufacturing products, managing inventory, and shipping to customers. So what’s left behind for you as a dropshipper? You’ll select products, handle marketing campaigns and provide customer service.

How Dropshipping Works

Here’s the fundamental workflow of dropshipping:

• Choose products. Source the desired item/product from independent suppliers or link yourself with a dropshipping marketplace.
• Import items to the online store and set prices. You can enjoy full control over your listings and profit margins.
• Accept customer orders. Shoppers search for the items they want to purchase by checking out and paying on your eCommerce site.
• Forward customer orders to the supplier. Provide the order and shipping detail to the supplier. Then, pay the dropshipping supplier on behalf of your customer.
• Ship and fulfill orders through the supplier. Your supplier ships each order directly to your customers. You can enjoy transparency by getting a tracking number so you can update your customers accordingly. The white label shipping option provided by a supplier allows you to use your branding on the packaging.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Dropshipping

To decide whether dropshipping works for your business or not? Here are some factors that you need to consider:

Why you should start Dropshipping - Advantages

• You can easily start an online store with readily available inventory, as Dropshipping makes filling your storefront easy and handy. You just have to select products, add a payment method, and set up your online eCommerce platform.
• You can easily expand the domain of products that you offer. You don’t need to restrict the number of products you sell. The lack of storage space or what you can manufacture are the areas you don’t need to worry about.
• You can easily dodge upfront inventory costs, whereas dropshipping suppliers handle production and storage costs. It allows you to focus your budget and efforts on core eCommerce aspects like website and marketing.
• You can operate your business from anywhere in the world. You just need a sufficient WiFi connection. You can make sales while resting in the resorts of Maldives or from the beaches of Thailand.
• You can enjoy utmost independence by testing products and quickly adjust your inventory as per the latest trends without any hustle or physical effort. Sourcing products from suppliers make your inventory flexible. For instance, if a specific item is not selling, you can easily switch to another item or product.

Why you should not choose to Dropship - Disadvantages

• You don’t have full control over the quality of a product. In the case of working with independent suppliers, it’s harder to tackle this issue. To ensure suppliers’ reliability, always choose to source from authentic dropshipping marketplaces such as Modalyst or Spocket.
• Customer service tends to be more technical. If you lack knowledge and experience with the products you sell, questions pop up that you don’t know what and how to answer. To curb this issue, ensure rich communication with your suppliers.
• You’ll need to deal with returns & exchanges and handle the refund process independently, depending on your suppliers.
• Shipping costs depend on the supplier’s location, not yours. The further your customers live from where the orders are dispatched, the higher the shipping cost will be. But you can turn this problem into an opportunity. For instance, if you’re located in Europe and your supplier is in the U.S., you can engage U.S based customers by offering less shipping rates.

How to Start Dropshipping

By now, you have a general idea and insight about what dropshipping is. Let’s discuss how you can make it work for you in the more efficient way possible.

Create Your Online Store

Start your dropshipping business with an eCommerce website maker. With online site makers like Wix and Shopify, you can choose from various customizable online store templates. Then, register a unique domain for your site so customers can find you online.

Choose Products to Sell

With hundreds of categories and millions of products to choose from, it can be challenging to filter out your offerings. Check out this article for tips on choosing products to dropship. With niche products, you can sell more effectively to specific audiences. Specific doesn’t necessarily mean small; your niche market can be anything from mountaineers and travelers to the millennial who loves to play games at home. Use tools like Google Trends and Amazon’s bestseller lists to take a deep insight into your customer’s interests and buying patterns. See what they want to buy, find a supplier, and get selling. Tending products are best in terms of earning you more profit. Shift your research to find upcoming products. Since you are dropshipping, you don’t need to worry about overstocking your inventory. If a trend shifts, you can change your suppliers or products as well.

Find a Supplier

Finding independent dropshipping suppliers requires in-depth research and more time. If you’d like to connect with independent sourcing, search for suppliers on Google. But even after choosing the suppliers who seem reliable, having positive reviews, it remains risky to some extent or degree. To make the process hustle-free and widen your product choices, always try to source through a dropshipping marketplace. A dropshipping market allows you to connect to millions of products from authentic wholesalers. Alternatively, you can choose to sell your own branded products via print-on-demand services. Print on demand is a type of dropshipping where the supplier handles order fulfillment and shipping, and the supplier also puts your custom logo or brand title on the packaging.

Add Products to Your Online Store

Customize the product listings on your site. Make product pages with product details, high-quality images, and videos that match your product. Next, set your pricing and shipping rules. Must put your profit margin on the table by setting up your prices after taking wholesale and shipping costs into account. Try to find a grey line that increases your revenue while keeping your products under an affordable price range. Engagement is the key; the more interactive your online platform is, the more time customers spend on your site, making them more likely to buy more. Think like shoppers and view your online store from your customer’s viewpoint to better understand their experience. Improve categorization and layout using filters, categories, and collections for your products.

Promote Your Business

Once you start importing dropshipping items to your storefront, it’s time to initiate a marketing campaign. Boost the reach of your business with a marketing plan that best suits your targeted market or customers.

Focus on these five marketing channels

• Branding: Use a consistent and catchy color scheme to develop your brand identity. Create a clear and memorable logo, write a slogan or title in a language that’s personal and makes relevant to your brand, and makes sense to your shoppers.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Effective SEO makes it easier for customers to find you on Google. Achieve this milestone by using relevant keywords for your business and using key phrases in your site pages and blog content.
• Email Marketing: Attract your subscribers by offering exclusive discounts. Set up an automated email service and remind shoppers what they left in their carts to improve engagement.
• Social Media Marketing: Run marketing campaigns on social media platforms. Upload posts, tips, product photos, and promotional clips to engage your audience.
• Paid Ads: Boost your reach with targeted ad campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and search engines.

Getting Started with Dropshipping

As we have discussed earlier, the order info is forwarded to the supplier once you receive an order. You pay the supplier for the items. Then, the supplier packages and ships the order directly to your customer. This is what dropshipping is all about. Many suppliers use white label packaging, which means that the product packaging lacks the supplier’s branding. This is ideal for you as your customers won’t confuse you with the supplier. Some dropshipping suppliers will allow you to place your branding on the packaging. Branded packaging boosts trust, appears professional, and helps consumers remember your services.

Myth vs. Reality

Question over Legitimacy

Dropshipping is a fully legal practice. You are selling products with the suppliers’ permission. Ensure honest marketing campaigns and abide by online sales tax laws and other regulations.

Profit vs. Loss

As a dropshipper, you need to maintain a balance between your Investment and revenue. Take into account the wholesale prices of the products as well as your marketing efforts. Price your products so that you are generating more RoI while keeping your costs affordable and reasonable. The key to a smart dropshipping profit margin is aggressive pricing. Undoubtedly, you are eager to cover your investment and boost revenue but keep in mind the competition you can give your rivals by holding your price reasonable is of great importance. Maintain a balance in profit margin that can win you more customers.

Cost Analysis

Three main cost drivers must be taken into account while starting a dropshipping business. Every online platform or site maker costs you a slightly different amount than its counterpart. For instance, let’s take a case with Wix. Wix eCommerce platform plan costs around $17-$35 per month. Website domain costs around $5-$20, depending on your domain name. With Wix, you can enjoy a free domain for the first year when choosing a Premium Plan. Your choices and strategy drive your marketing cost and budget. Each Wix Business and eCommerce Premium Plan possesses built-in and professional marketing tools. Additional expenditure in terms of targeted Facebook Ads can add around $80 per month.

Importance of Dropshipping in 2022

Without managing a warehouse and shipping process, as a dropshipper, you can enjoy utmost independence while taking minimal risk by making small investments. It allows you to experience new markets and product categories without any fear of losing out. If everything works fine, you can easily end up being a successful dropshipper. Be sure to do your research before selecting products entering a new market. Put your best marketing efforts in place and review the aforementioned dropshipping advantages and disadvantages.

Top eCommerce Platforms to Start Dropshipping Business

1. Magento

Needless to mention, Magento has emerged to be one of the most powerful eCommerce platforms for dropshipping. It has two variants: Magento 1 and Magento 2 (Highly recommended), and two editions: Magento Open Source, free, and Magento Commerce, a premium service.

‍Setup time and cost: As mentioned, there are two Magento editions, but the free (open source) edition has enough utilities for starting a dropshipping business. However, you are required to have detailed technical knowledge about developing a Magento dropshipping website, so that you might need to outsource the services of Magento developers. It costs you from $3,000 to 5,000 and took 1-3 months for Magento website development.

‍eCommerce features: No doubt, Magento provides everything a dropshipping business requires, and even more than what you need. By default, a Magento website offers you some interesting utilities like fast page load speed, easy and hurdle-free checkout, well-developed product and catalog page, built-in SEO and marketing tools, comprehensive site management tools, and high-security features.

‍Ease of use: The front end of Magento websites is very user-friendly and interactive. On the other hand, the back-end is very complicated for the administrators who are just dummies without any prior knowledge of web development and management. However, in a short period after using Magento websites with the assistance of comprehensive Magento user guides, the store owners started to monitor their sites effectively and easily.

‍Scalability: Magento is the most scalable eCommerce platform for dropshipping among all the existing models. It allows you to create a great website with a small number of products and also assists you when your business is on summits to new heights. You can add an unlimited number of products, catalogs and handle an unlimited number of orders without any lack or limitation.

‍Support: Due to its wide usage as an eCommerce platform, you can ask for assistance from Magento officials or Magento community forums, social media groups, or even Youtube tutorials. Other than that, if you are unable to find these sources, you can hire a trusted Magento agency to assist you with their customize support packages.To integrate dropshipping option into a Magento website, you will need to install a third-party extension that costs you around $0 to $950.

2. WooCommerce

Another renowned eCommerce platform for dropshipping is WooCommerce.

It is less technical and provides you rich features at the same time.Compared to Magento, it has less advanced eCommerce utilities due to its user-friendly outlook for beginners. However, from the developers’ perspective, this platform is difficult to customize, and most of its functionalities must be enabled by third-party plugins.

‍Setup time and cost: WooCommerce is a free plugin of the WordPress framework. You need to create a WordPress website first and then install the WooCommerce plugin on your store. In practice, it will take fever time to build a WooCommerce site than a Magento if you are a developer. If you lack technical expertise, you might still need the help of web developers. Besides, a WooCommerce website cost is often in the range of $1,500-3,500, but to integrate advanced features in your site, you will have to spend notable expenditure on additional plugins and customized features.

‍eCommerce features: Your WooCommerce website will be equipped with fundamental eCommerce utilities such as product, catalog, and inventory management, pre-installed payment methods, geo-location, shipping charges calculator, multiple shipping methods, discount and coupon codes, sales report, etc. If you want to upgrade your site, there exist more than 75,000 WooCommerce plugins for your custom needs and support.

‍Ease of use: Thanks to the simple and interactive user interface, WooCommerce is very easy to get your hands on. Moreover, the WooCommerce user guide is very detailed, which is a very important and helpful source for the administrators to manage their site professionally.

‍Scalability: WooCommerce is more suitable for small dropshipping businesses. If you are running a medium to a large eCommerce store, opt for Magento. When the number of products on your WooCommerce site increases, its performance will likely drop notably.

‍Support: When you encounter any problem, you can find the remedy by searching on Woo documentation or asking for Woo support.Like Magento, to integrate the dropshipping function to a WooCommerce website, you need to deploy a third-party plugin that can cost you around $50.

3. Shopify

The third name on the list of best dropshipping platforms is Shopify. To date, Shopify has contributed to developing around 600,000 eCommerce platforms around the globe, including dropshipping businesses. Especially, Oberlo, a dropshipping plugin that works exclusively on Shopify. Oberlo helps you search for products to sell from Oberlo Verified Suppliers, Oberlo suppliers, or AliExpress suppliers.

‍Setup time and cost: You are required to pay Shopify a monthly fee in exchange for its services, which range from $30 to $300 per month. Besides, you might have to buy the theme for the website. Among 100 Shopify themes to select from, only 10 of them are free. Apart from that, there is a dark side to using Shopify as it will charge you a certain amount per sale if you integrate an external payment method instead of Shopify Payments. As far as time is concerned, that is required for setting up the website; this is a main advantage of Shopify that it takes only a few hours or days to create and launch a new Shopify store.

‍eCommerce Features: In general, Shopify provides a variety of useful features for dropship eCommerce businesses, from theme settings, products, orders, and customer management, online payments, multiple languages and currencies, unlimited hosting, SEO, etc.

‍Ease of Use: If you lack technical knowledge, Shopify might be a good decision. It does not take a lot of time for you to get used to this platform. To develop a website, you just need to register by signing up, selecting a package, choosing the desired theme, and starting customizing it as per your feasibility.

‍Scalability: It is a highly scalable platform. You can easily scale up or down your business by choosing from a variety of packages.Support: It offers multiple support mediums via email, phone, live chat, community forum. However, some users argue that live chat is just a chatbot service intended to collect our email information rather than helping us.

4. OpenCart

OpenCart is a free eCommerce platform for drop shipping that you must put on the table. Magento and OpenCart also share many similarities, such as free, open-source, powerful, and more appropriate for technical users than beginners. But keep in mind, the Magento community is larger and far more robust than that of OpenCart.

‍Setup time and cost: It is an open-source and free to deploy eCommerce platform. Additionally, you can get lifetime free support and free software updates when OpenCart is your dropshipping eCommerce platform. The major cost comes from hiring web developers to create your online store, and it will take around two months for your web development.

‍eCommerce Features: The utilities provided by OpenCart include unlimited products and categories, support for different currencies, integrated payment methods, a variety of shipping methods, backup tools and restore mechanisms, detailed sales reports, etc.

‍Ease of Use: OpenCart is preferred for those having a certain degree of web development experience and knowledge. It does not necessarily mean that OpenCart is hard for the beginner to learn how to use the platform; the user-friendly and clean interface is very helpful for front-end users.

‍Scalability: It is not scalable as it is more suitable for small to medium-sized businesses.

‍Support: To get help from OpenCart, you can create a ticket or email the support team. You can also visit the OpenCart community forum to ask other members for help.There is a variety of OpenCart dropshipping plugins in the market, starting from $100.

5. BigCommerce

Last but not the least, BigCommerce has empowered around 50,000 eCommerce websites around the globe. Like Shopify, BigCommerce provides several monthly plans, ranging from $30 to $250.

‍Setup time and cost: BigCommerce offers three packages, namely Standard, Plus, and Pro. Also, it provides an enterprise version with an undisclosed price. You have to connect with the BigCommerce team to discover their custom pricing. Apart from that, it is quick and easy to develop a website on the BigCommerce Platform. What you need to sign up for an account, select a theme and start customizing your store. BigCommerce offers 15 days free trial; after that, you have to buy a specific package to continue using the services.

‍eCommerce Features: BigCommerce provides all essential eCommerce utilities for you to start with, such as order management, products, and catalogs creation, support for multiple payment methods, marketing features, etc. It has integrated features of ShipperHQ and ShipStation for shipping services and Avalara for tax automation.

‍Ease of Use: It is not much complex for non-technical users. After selecting a certain theme, you can easily customize it as you wish without any technical knowledge or skill.

‍Scalability: Due to the availability of monthly plans, you can easily scale up your fast-growing businesses over time by opting BigCommerce platforms for dropshipping.Like Shopify, BigCommerce provides support via email, live chat, phone, and community forum. Another way for you to seek assistance in finding the solutions is using BigCommerce Resource Center.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that you’ve only figured out how to start a dropshipping store; now you need to figure out on your own how to take it to the extreme summits. Owning dropshipping eCommerce business is about improving your sales, customer engagement, and, most importantly, yourself. To run a successful dropshipping store, you’ll need to focus your marketing efforts via ads, blog creation, and attracting an audience on social media platforms. These three areas can have a potential impact on your business in the long run. Right now, you need to improve your reach and showcase your brand for everyone out there to visit and explore. Make a bucket list of tasks that you want to accomplish with your eCommerce business, but first, start the learning process. Ensure consistency and begin by investing one hour daily to improve your dropshipping store so that you can further customize your website, explore new ways to skyrocket sales, and continue learning how to maintain consistent growth. With hard work, dedication, and a sales push on your side; there are endless possibilities and opportunities for you to discover. Never forget why you started the dropshipping business in the first place, and let that motivation drive your determination.

A company can grow exponentially if it has access to the data on competitors, and it will also offer a strategic niche advantage. To stay competitive, you need to add data scraping as part of your ecommerce marketing techniques. In this article, you'll learn ecommerce data scraping tips that will help you gain a massive edge over your competitors.[lwptoc skipHeadingLevel="h1,h4,h5,h6"]According to the World Economic Forum report, by 2025, the daily data creation would exceed 463 exabytes. This data offers valuable market insight. It will help you decide and build successful strategies. However, its scale renders it impossible to retrieve manually.

Image Source: WorldEconomicForum

Here is when the revolutionary technology called "Data scraping" kicks in to make your job easier with its AI mechanisms. Data Scraping, aka web scraping, satisfies the organization's requirement to collect information about its rivals and the market.

eCommerce Data Scraping Tips

One of the biggest problems for eCommerce companies is how to use the data they collect and how they can attribute the collected data to their overall company development. Keep on reading to unlock the five tips that can give you an edge in e-Commerce.

Interests and Preferences of the Customer

A company should know the requirements, interests, needs, and preferences of its customers. You can manage your actions accordingly and make your best effort to sell goods and services which your consumers need at fair rates if you know what they want.

Thankfully, data scraping can help you evaluate your thoughts and foresee what your clients are searching for online. Millions of people like their pages of interest on social media and leave their reviews there.According to a survey, 84% of clients have confidence in online reviews, and 68% form an opinion after reading one to six online reviews. By collecting online data on consumer behavior and responses, you can virtually see a product or service's success and determine if you should keep that product or stay away from it.

Image Source: BrightLocal

Tracking consumer activity is not restricted only to testing customer accounts on eCommerce websites; it opens doors to a lot more opportunities. There is a range of tools for social network scraping that can help you collect and utilize information created by users for online branding tracking, market segmentation, and trend analysis.

Predictive Analytics

You need a great deal of data to predict the future eCommerce market and the specific trend to be followed. Predictive analyzes enable eCommerce traders to realize what consumers need and how much they can pay for it. With data scraping, you can use massive amounts of data to evaluate previous and current trends to forecast future trends and utilize this tremendous strategic edge to increase revenue.As web scraping is an essential component of predictive research, investing in this mechanism is necessary. Marketing strategies can only be successful if a business will target products and services, which consumers need at the required time. Predictive analytics play an essential role in reducing revenue expenditure.The combination of data scraping and predictive analysis will allow managers to produce more revenue at controlled costs. Therefore, a business needs to invest in data scraping and predictive analysis online or offline.

SEO Audit

You will easily figure out the SEO competitors for a given search term by scrapping organic search results. You can then find out what title tags and keywords they are targeting.Different SEO tools and resources rely on domains and keywords to achieve top ranking. Data scraping is essential o increase the overall output of your Web pages.

Image Source: jbKlutse

You may also use data scraping tools like import.io and KimonoLabs for meta-data extraction and web page indexing. You can use either of these resources to figure out why your competitor's site is better than yours and examine the right keywords for your site. These tools will allow you to extract meta explanations, meta titles, and meta tags and enhance your website efficiency.Data Scraping is also used to verify if an entity exists, count the number of objects on the page, check the element length, and more. This approach helps you ensure that you have written a product overview, satisfying the minimum word count. Any blog post includes at least one link to a particular category.

Lead Generation

Lead information is accessible across the Internet, from registry pages to social networking channels. The more information you obtain and utilize, the more effective your sales activities can be.61% of business-to-business marketers claim that the generation of high-quality leads is one of the biggest challenges, and 68% of companies report having difficulties with lead generation.

Source: Forrester Data: Marketing Automation Technology Forecast, 2017 to 2023 (Global)

You can stay in touch with potential clients or influencers through social media and blogs. It would help if you defined the appropriate characteristics such as age, work, place, etc. The scraper then uses these search parameters to retrieve the appropriate data from the listed pages.Lead generation is the most critical sales and marketing target for businesses. Having the right lead scrapping tools to develop the system to capture lead generation data is extremely important.

Price Comparisons

Today the global eCommerce industry comprises hundreds of thousands of stores. And the amount is only increasing day by day. Manual monitoring to determine and maximize product costs is virtually impossible in this scenario.But wait. No need to worry! Web Scrapping helps you create software for competitive price tracking that significantly reduces time in analyzing competitors’ prices via offering a dynamic pricing strategy.With a real-time market monitoring process, you can see how your competitors adjust prices over time, identify the patterns and formulate tactics that will contribute to an optimum price evaluation.

Image Source: PromptCloud

A data scraping solution for real-time market monitoring will let you be mindful of the product life cycle, seasonal price adjustments, sales, and advertising tactics. Take reliable decisions that increase profit and reduce expenses while saving time.Data scrapping helps the business provide an efficient, competitive pricing plan and change product and service rates to satisfy real-time demand. This approach is simply a must for online retailers, and according to eConsultancy, it will raise income by 25 percent on average.

Conclusion

Data scraping allows successful market analysis, and it’s a legal technique. You can use a data scraping tool(s) to analyze your rivals, know your clients, and build better pricing and selling tactics.You should give data scraping a chance, regardless if you are already an established business or new to the online business. Moreover, you will not require coding or other complex skills: in most situations, you only need to give a scraping tool some necessary details and wait until it does the work for you.Let us know in the comments section if you have ecommerce data scraping tips that you'd like to add to the above list.