Tag: STARTUPS

How to strengthen the security of your web application?

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

Do you know how to develop web applications that bring unparalleled success?

Your web apps should provide a rich and consistent user experience while being flawless and fault-free, regardless of being open source or paid. At the same time, web security is of key importance. Use this extended checklist to focus more on the web application security regardless of your development stage as it is suitable for both before the launch period and during the very first stages of software development.

Before we go further, please note: this web app security checklist is a good starting point and inspiration for your work and you can save it for later, so it’s always at hand the moment you might need it. Plus, you can use it to control things at the development stage upon outsourcing.  That will minimize risks while choosing the needed vendor for your web app.

Anyway, to deliver a truly great product, ensure you deal with secure web development. And now, let’s take a closer look at key recommendations on how to secure your web product.

So, let’s get started. We will divide our web application security list into 4 main groups:   

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And now let’s examine every of this group in details.

During the software development processes, a lot of attention should be paid to web app security. Whether you are developing on your own, or prefer outsourcing/outstaffing services, make sure the developers make strict use of canonicalization and know what the server is expecting in every field.

  1. Scan for web application vulnerabilities: all components of your software (from each pushed version up to production should be scanned. Your product should not contain any format string vulnerabilities. Improve the security when some weak points are detected.
  2. Start with secure coding. Develop each piece of software using both secured and separate dev systems. It’s crucial to set both development systems and production systems with equal security vigilance.
  3. Upgrade without downtime in a fully automated manner.
  4. Avoid SSHing into services (except for one-off diagnosis).
  5. Decommission the app in case its maintenance and support are no longer available.
  6. Set TLS for the whole web resource, not just login forms and responses.
  7. Set HSTS responses to force TLS only access. HTTP requests should be redirected to HTTPS on the server as backup.
  8. Ensure that users using your APIs are authenticated and authorized in the right way.
  9. Set canary checks in APIs that would detect illegal or abnormal requests, therefore, preventing attacks.
  10. Assure the developer’s choice of randomness and algorithm is always of top-notch quality.
  11. Consider creating a practiced security incident plan. Who knows when you might need it.

Being a first line of defense, authentication should be really securely and carefully crafted. Below are the key secure web applications authentication things to keep in mind upon creating any software:

  1. Ensure that all your passwords used are hashed with the proper crypto, for instance, bcrypt. Creating your own crypto is not recommended.
  2. Don’t invent your own login, forgot password and other password reset functionality — you might not get it right in all scenarios, instead, use industry-standard best-practices and proven components.
  3. Set clear but adequate password rules encouraging your users to create long passwords.
  4. Set CAPTCHA on front-end APIs to safeguard back-end services against DOS.
  5. Don’t forget to set several-factor authentication for your logins to all service vendors you deal with.

The way your data is stored and handled is of vital importance. When you develop or outsource, these are the key web development database aspects to take into consideration:

Fully encrypt all of your data, including private data such as name billing details or access tokens.

  1. Store all of your backups in an encrypted manner.
  2. Ensure that all your backend database and services are stored on private VPCs, which are not open to the public.
  3. Put strong passwords and use minimal privilege for the database access user account.
  4. Keep and share sensitive data via a key store created for this purpose. It’s not recommended hard-coding in your products or storing valuable data in GitHub.
  5. Prevent SQL injection by using SQL prepared statements. For instance, when you use NPM, use npm-mysql2 that supports prepared statements rather than npm-mysql.

If you take security very seriously, cloud configuration issues should be handled in a proper way:

  1. Your services should offer minimum open ports. Of course, security via obscurity is in no way a protection, still, non-standard ports can make it a more difficult for hackers.
  2. For inter-service communication, divide logical services in separate VPCs and peer VPCs.
  3. Minimize IPs and “botification”; use min. access privilege for your ops and developer team.
  4. Set IAM roles rather than root credentials.
  5. Rotate passwords and access keys on a regular basis.

Key Takeaways

During every stage of the development processes, a lot of attention should be paid to security. All of your sensitive information should be encrypted. Start with secure code and make sure every aspect of your web app remains secure. Don’t forget to take strict use of canonicalization and ensure you know what the server is expecting in every field.

Never forget a step in your website development again, use the checklist, which includes many straightforward vulnerabilities. However, pay attention to the fact that checking all items off the list is by no means a guarantee that your web app is secure. Nevertheless, it’s still a good starting point.

Why Outsource Startups Prefer React

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

Modern web app startups require web development technologies allowing to create an app with a basic set of a functional and user-friendly interface within the shortest period of time. Unfortunately, not all companies have their own development team, which can develop the required application for them.

Moreover, it might not be profitable for a custom software development company to develop such an app using its inner development services and therefore, many companies these days have turned to using outsource services. By default, software outsourcing allows big product development companies to save both time and money.

When it comes to software development outsourcing, there are many web mobile solutions to speed up and simplify the process of modern applications development. One of the leaders is React.JS. React.JS means Facebook development, today, everyone knows what is Facebook. The main products of this company (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger) are written on React.JS. Hundreds of software development startups also choose React.JS and to tell you the truth, there are multiple reasons for that. In this article, we will be speaking about 8 reasons why React.JS is the best choice for outsourcing startups:

  • It has a great community and support

There are plenty of training materials available to quickly master this app development technology, and the React.JS development community can always help you to solve a nontrivial task. This web applications technology has passed the “run” on the most popular resources in the world with the maximum loads and confidently proved itself as a powerful development project tool. React.JS has steep rivals in the form of Angular and Vue.JS – but developer statistics speak for themselves.

  • It is reactive aka fast

The name itself speaks about speed. React.JS was created with the requirements of modern users in mind – everything should happen instantly, that is, “reactive” and without reboots. React.JS was specially designed to display changes to the data as fast as possible without reloading the page. This causes the users to “catch up” and spend time in the application more – downloading once, and the information itself is updated. It’s hardly possible to sell an app when it simply does not load or takes lots of time to load.

  • It is flexible

The end result is often significantly different from the original idea. After the project is launched, its support requires constant flexibility to change and react projects are ready to deal with that. Indeed, React.JS is designed taking into account the fact that the display of the app will constantly change, and react.JS developers as such should be able to easily and quickly change the necessary components without negative consequences for other components of the system. React.JS itself is divided into many packages, and if necessary, they can be replaced or removed at all. This allows you to save significantly on the development and, if necessary, change the business model of the startup, which is critical for many.

  • It is only about view and design

React.JS responds exclusively to the display of the content, it’s updating. This is not enough for a full-fledged site, but it’s enough to manipulate all graphic content. React.js takes on the function of displaying the site correctly and quickly, giving developers the ability to choose the necessary server technology and supplementary levels. In a React.JS-based software development project,  you can easily manipulate user-themes and different views for different devices, which has already become a must-have.

  • It’s Easy To Learn

React.JS was designed to simplify its own development. Therefore, it is made as simple as possible. React.JS is easy to learn as it essentially contains a regular JavaScript and an add-on over HTML, which allows you to attract JS developers to develop and do not waste a lot of time learning the team under compressed deadlines.

  •  It has a cross-platform mobile framework

React.JS includes a React.JS Native project that allows creating mobile applications just like a React.JS site. The system requires some sort of customizations to build under Android or iOS, but everything is very simple. This allows you to write a fast cross-platform application with access to even the hardware functions of the phone. The majority of startups today are oriented to the mobile market and React.js is a good choice.

  • It can be easily integrated with 3rd-party libraries

React.js easily interacts with thousands of existing libraries. This allows us to use the knowledge of existing libraries and, when designing software development projects, use a variety of technologies, and, with the same ease, change them to others. Also, there are already many adaptations among the other JS frameworks to React.js for better interaction. Therefore, there’s no necessity to write a redundant code – a duplicate, and it’s possible to immediately get started with writing the core functionality.

  • It is free and open-source

React.JS is open source, meaning that it’s free, and its code is open for viewing. It has become the standard. The control over the code of the technology itself is constantly followed by hundreds of programmers, since they themselves have chosen React.JS for their products. This gives some confidence that this technology will be as successful in future as it is at the moment. This is quite critical for young startups, which depend not only on their own efforts, but also on the application development technologies used.

The Bottom Line:

When it comes to a display technology for a modern startup, React.JS is one of the best choices as it’s fast, powerful and at the same time easy to learn.  That’s exactly what the majority of the web developers have been waiting for so long, but everyone was forced to write their own decision.

The ability to adapt to mobile platforms makes its way to the mobile app market. Its direct competitors such as Angular and Vue.JS are also good solutions, but in most cases, React.JS takes the crown simply because it comes with a better documentation and it’s easier to use.

When it comes to outsource a software development, the ease of the framework based on React allows attracting into the design as many people as possible and it’s easy to control the development process, which is critical for startups, who have to implement a cool idea that looks cool even in the shortest possible time.

Every day several new IT startups pop up somewhere in the world, and more and more executives these days prefer React.js as a good technology for developing a modern application.

A CRM Customisation Guide

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

Think it’s high time for you to switch to a great customer relationship management system to improve your business process? But don’t know how to choose the proper one and the technical partner who can help you with that? This CRM Customisation Guide has got you covered.

In short, the structure of this CRM guide is as follows:

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CRM or customer relationship management system is a great option for any modern business. When it comes to CRM customization, it means that you simply add new or altering existing CRM features to make it a better fit for the needs of every certain business. Instead of using numerous SaaS systems for every activity, you have a completely customized CRM solution.

There are different ways to customize, here are three most typical ones: 

  1. Custom table grids: you adjust the table to your specific needs. For instance, you can move, reorder, delete, and manage column titles. Choose which columns go first, which you don’t need, determine how to display the dropdown menu.
  2. Custom fields: you can add custom fields to the existing CRM software solution, to gather additional important information that default forms fail to allow.
  3. Advanced custom settings: some specific features which are developed from scratch and added to the existing CRM system to meet your specific requirements. These may include custom dashboard widgets, custom menus, form layouts, opportunity lines, and etc. You can also create or modify workflows to run in accordance with the way your business works. In most cases, advanced custom settings include managing different API integrations.

Before we go further, interesting is to mention that you can meet both customiSe and customiZe and these words are the same term meaning the same. The only difference is that a word “customise” is used in a British way of spelling whilst Americans prefer “customize”.

It’s for sure that you can hardly find two businesses that would have identical workflows or operations. Companies may use similar options, still, one business might need specific features tailored to its ultimate needs. So, you might want to create new functionality to help you efficiently explore the market, change your user interface and navigation methods to improve your customer relationships management. That’s why to take maximum the CRM has to offer, it should be either developed from scratch or fully customised. Of course, it’s great to have your solution developed from scratch, but not always it’s the best way to go. Intrigued, right? Consider the following: there are many benefits expert CRM customization has to offer, not to mention:

  • It does not require a lot of investments
  • It’s pretty fast to implement
  • It caters to thousands of customers across a wide range of industries
  • It can save you lots of human and time resources in the long run.

Basically, these are the most widespread cases when you need to customize the CRM system:

  • You find a good CRM system, but it lacks some of the features you business would benefit from. For instance, you want to be able to track leads and engage proactively with your customers.
  • You want to achieve a more closely fit with your organization’s industry
  • You have a web accounting platform, but you need to generate quotes and place orders on the go.
  • You need to better understand your customers, identify inactive clients and find out the reasons why they have become inactive.
  • You want to automate the major everyday activities of your business.
  • You want to improve your user engagement by personalizing and targeting messages and implementing several data distribution channels.
  • You want to be able to set different privileges for your team members. Such security roles would help you manage your business in a more effective and secure manner.
  • Your business needs extra options to improve data management.

Thus, to get many benefits which may help you win against your competitors, opt for a customised product. By the way, you can implement many customizations without developer agencies by using tools that are part of the particular service. There are many famous services which offer you such a possibility and now, we will reveal them.   

Today, there are a bunch of great customer relationship management systems available. When it comes to the big names in the CRM world, we have to mention the following ones: Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Infusionsoft, HubSpot, Salesforce, ProsperWorks, FreeAgent CRM, and Base CRM.

Every of these services is unique in its ways, but all of them offer numerous customization options and come with the inbuilt optimisation tools. Moreover, they configure business demands, and have a proven experience in the area. Plus, every of the mentioned above solutions can be applicable to multiple industries.

By default, any CRM platform helps businesses manage their workflows and control expenses. Plus, major CRM capabilities help businesses manage interactions with new and existing customers. However, there are many other technology features a good customised CRM solution can offer. Wondering which ones?

In general, any good customized CRM system does the following:

  • Places the customer at the core of the company and its concerns.
  • Keeps all data easily manageable, centralized, securely archived and linked to each other in an intuitive way.
  • Assists sales, marketing, customer service technicians and admin personnel to become more efficient in their everyday activities.
  • Retains customers by giving them a higher quality of service that is uniquely adapted to their needs.
  • Helps you configure business rules and optimise your business process flows, setting all your activities and preferences to the way you need.

So, now you agree with us that you need a customised software. Wondering how to customise and who can help? Let’s find out more about that.

The process is pretty simple and straightforward: you browse the reputable CRM solutions, check their reviews and CRM features, and finally find the one that fits your business the most. Once you’ve done that, you need to decide whether you want to customise by your own or address a professional development company. If you need the basic CRM features, for instance, marketing automation, consider choosing the company from the big list of best SRM systems. But if you decide to customise crm on your own, make sure you don’t make the common CRM customization mistakes.

Common Mistakes with CRM Customization:

  • Your custom software is too complex and powerful: make sure that the solution you have meets all your business requirements, but doesn’t seriously overgo them. In this case, a too complex or a too powerful system will bring more harm than use as it will significantly lower your working processes.
  • You have too many checkboxes: that can be too time-consuming as you will need to always put the
  • Your system doesn’t show the parent fields in a child table: your employers will need to spend extra time on finding the parent fields upon adding the tables.

There are other common CRM mistakes you should try to avoid, so make sure to look for them before you decide to customize the CRM on your own.

Should you need something more specific and advanced, find a reputable IT partner and an expert CRM implementation. Luckily, there are many services which can help you with the SRM system customisation, for instance, Unicrew. We can customise your existing platform or create custom software solutions from scratch. Plus, we also offer CRM support services. No matter which industry you are involved in, we can deliver you the top-notch CRM software solution that will cater to the needs of your business.

The Bottom Line

There are dozens of reasons why you might want to customise your CRM software, but most likely you just want to find a solution that will help your business easily and effectively manage your workflows and sales cycle, keeping you ahead of competitors. And you have two ways to go: to find and use an already existing CRM customisable platform and customise it on your own or to ask a custom software development company to help you customize your business software.

How to know you need a user portal for your business?

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

Have you noticed that more and more companies these days are turning to online customer support portals? Do you know the reasons? Maybe it’s time for your organization to consider taking full advantage of all a good customer portal has to offer? This article will help you determine whether your ultimate business needs adding a self-customer support service.

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But before we start, tick the issues which are true for you.

  • Your support team is always stressed and busy, bringing your business additional expenses on a regular basis.
  • You don’t have a decent amount of regular customers as most of your customers are one-time-going individuals.
  • You don’t know your customers, their real demands and reasons for dissatisfaction.
  • You want to improve the customer experience your business software offers.

If you tick the majority of these cases or all of them, you definitely need a self-service online customer portal. Such a service augments your business potential, giving your customers what they expect to receive and the time they want to. In other words, a good integrated customer service might not only create a better customer experience, but also offers novel opportunities to grow and develop for your business.

Today, there are several types of an online customer service:

  • Live chat or a chatbot (you can speak to a company’s representative and get answers to all of your questions in real time). In most cases, live chats are completely automated, meaning that they have a definite set of most frequently used questions and possible answers. The computer sees the question and detects the right answer from its database. If the answer for the particular question is not found for some reasons, the question is send to a real person (customer support representative) who the replies. By the way, by means of AI (artificial intelligence) technologies you can teach such chatbots, so that they get smarter and smarter.
  • Knowledge base and self-service or a FAQ (it’s a site of questions and answers). You have a question, simply find the product’s knowledge base usually located at the main site. Enter this page, find your question and check the answer. That’s it!
  • A combination of these two options. (It’s a full-cycle self-service customer support).

Basically, a good online knowledge base in a user portal creates a better customer experience as it answers any questions your customers have. But that is not all. Actually, it’s a secure and efficient way for your target audience to get information which bypasses queues and waiting on return calls or emails. In other words, a customer looking for possible ways to solve issues doesn’t wait for your support team’s call or email, but checks your online knowledge base and can find answers to all their questions without your team being involved. Meanwhile, your team can concentrate on doing other tasks rather than just answering calls or emails. Sounds great, doesn’t it? 

In general, a good business portal does the following:

  • Answers the demands of modern customers: they don’t need to bypass queues and wait on return calls or emails.
  • Brings customer satisfaction: your users get what they want via live chat and messaging and they know how to solve any issues which might occur.
  • Saves time both for your business and your customers: your team doesn’t need to waste its time on questions and calls answering. Meanwhile, your customers don’t depend on your working hours and can solve issues all by themselves anytime they need, even at night.
  • Centralizes information and problems gathering and solving: you have a robust customer service agent solution, which gathers all information in one place. Thus, you customers and you know where to search for the required data.
  • Gives you the vision of your customers’ needs: you may check which issues your customers experience, which solving solutions they prefer. Thus, you will have all chances to improve your business, offering your customers exactly what they want.

Luckily there are a number of self-service options offering omnichannel support currently available, both free and paid. But sometimes, you might need not only a good portal, but an out-of-the-box customer portal system, providing customers with more specific support and care. In that case consider finding a reputable custom software development partner, for instance, Unicrew. Our development company has the needed knowledge, skills and expertise to create an awesome client portal tailored to your ultimate business needs or customize the one you already have.

Are you now wondering what extra advantages can an out-of-the-box customer portal system bring?

If yes, check the key advantages a customer-centric integrated customer support offers:

  • More elegant, smooth and business-centric portal software: the solution takes into account all your business needs, all your regular activities are automated and everything just works fine.
  • Happier customers : since every single interaction with your customer matters, your software records all customers requests and helps you determine the best problem solving options for each particular customer.
  • More ways to go for your customers: the custom-made online communities portal can bring your target audience the possibility to adjust the customer preferences to their individual needs.  
  • In-depth glance at your target audience and right personal-touched marketing: the custom in-built tracking and insights analytics and reporting tools can gather the important information about your target audience and thus, you can personalize exclusive marketing materials for your customers.

Therefore, a customer portal enables both your business and your customers benefit from it. By the way, Unicrew can help your develop and set up your business-centric self-service portal with ease. Just for the record, our expert application development team has developed numerous integrations apps, including a nice customer portal called The Daily Escape. Check this case study to find out more about it and advantages it can bring. We can develop a similar or even a better product for your business, improving the experiences for your customers.

Bespoke Business Operations Software for Growth

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

What should I do to stimulate the business growth? With dozens of ready-to-use management software solutions out there, why should I opt for a bespoke business operations software? And how to find out that it’s the right time for my business to start thinking about the business operations software? How can business operations software streamline all of my website business operations and improve my business performance?

These are the most typical questions business owners ask themselves on a regular basis, right? Let’s try to find answers to all of them.

Basically, a good custom software platform is tend to improve your business operations and it saves time and money in the long run. We all know that. But, a bespoke business platform also takes time and money to be developed in the short run. So, how to find that you need a custom-made business solution and are there any bespoke solutions advantages apart from just cost savings?

We will check the main advantages a customer-centric software solution brings and you will be able to determine whether you need it for your business.

In short, a bespoke business operations software brings the following 7 advantages to your technology business:

  1. Saves time and money by automating multiple business operations which usually require hours of work: Surprisingly, but that’s a fact: whilst it takes time and money to be developed, it brings time and money savings. You can optimize your business resources in a great way: your team members will spend fewer time on routine tasks, instead, all your business processes will be optimized and automated.
  2. Keeps track of the day-to-day operations of your business: all your business management operations are managed and controlled within one platform. No more switching from one channel to another. You can keep, check, review and analyze all your documents and business important data within one platform.
  3. Improves business operations: all operations and updated, optimized and always run without errors.
  4. Improves Your Business’ Quality: you can now focus more on quality control rather than daily operations and activities. You can easily identify and correct errors and deficiencies, eliminate pitfalls and reduce risks.
  5. Lives space for further development: by default, any bespoke software development team takes into consideration the future needs of your business, ensuring the bespoke software solution you get is sustainable and able to evolve with your needs over time.
  6. Makes your customers happier: a customer-tailored software product is not only robust and straightforward, but also intuitive, user-friendly, and of course, effective.
  7. Brings more profit and adds value: your custom software takes into account all of your business requirements and offers great customer experiences, and you have more happy customers, which lead to returning customers and novel customers. And therefore, due to the proper development process of your ultimate software product, you have the solution that adds value to your product and brings more profit.

The Bottom Line

With millions of software applications out there to stay competitive in our digital world you have to turn to custom software or, in other words, bespoke solutions. By default, bespoke solutions can bring at least seven ways to improve any business management system. The key advantages of bespoke software are that it brings cost and money savings to all of your projects, satisfies all your specific business requirements, helps you control and examine your day-to-day operations, and makes your customers happy, providing you with more profit and ways to grow. But to benefit at full, don’t forget that you need an experienced custom software development company. It’s crucial to find a great team of software developers, such as Unicrew that can deliver a top-notch software package for your ultimate business. We’ve already developed a lot of  software applications, both web based and desktop, and we can provide you with the shelf software that will make your business processes more transparent yet effective.

So, if you want to improve business operations and are at the moment looking for a bespoke software solutions provider, our application development company is here to help you. We’ve got the needed skills and resources to make your future product important to your customers.

P.S. If you are worrying when it’s the right time to opt for the bespoke software solutions, here’s an answer – right now. While you are just considering the possibility of turning to a bespoke software solution, your competitors are already taking advantage of these 7 benefits listed above.

How to become GDPR compliant?

Posted on by Olivia Nols

Calling all online business owners! On May 25 2018, a new European privacy regulation called GDPR (GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation) will be enforced. It has increasingly become one of the trendiest topics among digital businesses around the world as the new data privacy norms are going to completely change the way online resources are used to gather, store and use individuals’ data. The main purpose of it is to better protect sensitive information of users.

In fact, the General Data Protection Regulation covers businesses having EU customers, nevertheless, it will affect all companies globally, both small, mid-sized, and the big ones. And the fines are really mind-blowing – your company might get the penalty up to €20 million or 4% of your company’s worldwide turnover.  We are not joking! The times are changing and now, you should be looking for the increased transparency of your businesses. So, make sure your business is GDPR compliant. Of course, due to the novel protection regulation, you may be having a tough enough time coping with it as you need to understand it, be ready to implement it into your working processes in a proper way and to report when needed.

No worries, though. To help you better realize all pitfalls your organization can experience because of the novel GDPR new rules and to find the ways out how to cope with that, Unicrew has prepared an introductory guide to Data Protection Regulation GDPR.

The General Data Protection Regulation requires business owners to protect privacy data of your EU customers. But, what privacy data does it feature? Here comes the answer – according to the GDPR laws, your company has to provide your customers with the proper data security, consisting of:

  • Key person’s identity data: name, address, and ID.
  • Online data of your clients: exact location, IP address, cookie data and RFID tags
  • Customers’ health and genetic information
  • Biometric data
  • Racial and ethnic data
  • Political thinking
  • Sexual orientation.

Bear in mind that the way data management and data processing is done should be consistent, transparent and clear, and moreover, recorded because you might be asked to report about that. So, consider finding the proper data governance solutions your business might require. 

Naturally, Data Protection Regulation features every organization that gathers and processes data belonging to European Union (EU) citizens. And since internet world has gone global, people from various parts of the world can visit your website. Therefore, regardless of your location, GDPR will affect the way you do business. Noteworthy is that you should not only be aware of the GDPR laws, but also to become GDPR compliant. To put is simpler, you have to make sure that all of your customers’ personal information is used for legal purpose only, when needed only. Plus, it should be protected and kept in a proper secure way. Finally, as mentioned in the opening, the way your process data should be recorded and might be reported upon request. 

To help you cope with everything GDPR covers, we have divided the GDPR readiness plan your team should prepare for into the following sections:

  • For business owners and top managers
  • For your technical team. 

Things to consider for business owners and top managers:

  • Learn the basics of the GDPR requirements: find an expert data governance solutions provider who can teach all of your team how to become GDPR compatible and ensure your staff has successfully passed the study.
  • Evaluate and manage your Third-Party Risks: reduce your supply chain risk by performing your due diligence and carefully selecting your partners. Ensure that every of your partners correctly understands and complies with the GDPR. It’s crucial to know how your vendors operate including their security framework and how they manage all of their users’ data.
  • Hire a data protection officer or a team: your business might want to have a special GDPR compliant department who would be responsible for keeping your business with the regards to GDPR and generating and sending the reports upon request. Of course, that brings addition expenses for you but on the other side, in that way, handling subject access requests within the GDPR new time frames would be easy and snap.

Things to ask your technical team to consider:

  • Study the GDPR requirements: as mentioned earlier, your team should be taught how to work with the web data according to the GDPR rules.
  • Audit the data your business already keeps: ask your team to carefully examine all data your company platform uses and find the weak points with regards to GDPR and develop and apply necessary changes.
  • Achieve greater data security: encrypt all sensitive data. Use only novel data encryption technologies and techniques.
  • Make sure all of your data is GDPR compatible: ensure the way all your customers’ personal data is kept corresponds to the GDPR rules.
  • Turn to the Privacy by Design development methodology approach: let your team embed the privacy measures and privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) into the design of information technologies and systems.
  • Include both web and mobile GDPR rules to your working process: both web and mobile data collected from your EU users should be treated and stored in a proper way. Make sure your web and mobile developers are aware of that.
  • Provide your customers with a refuse marketing option: ask your team to make it possible for your customers to refuse being data-collected to conduct marketing affairs.
  • Find the best data report option: Think about the best way to record your data management and processing.
  • Prepare for data breaches: you should have the procedures in place and be able to easily detect and investigate any data breaches, and then to report about them.

By the way, Unicrew team can help your business become GDPR compliant. We are there to help you protect the interests of your business that would be able to maintain compliance with GDPR in a correct way across the world.

Is your web app ready for the Google mobile first index?

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

The need for optimizing for the mobile-first index in Google grows apparent from day to day as more and more people use mobile devices to browse the Internet. That is why when it comes to having a decent ranking factor, we can’t stress enough to our customers the importance of having a beautiful mobile friendly website with a responsive design. Wondering which impact does that the mobile-first index have on your app?

Undeniably, with the Google’s mobile-first index, to remain competitive within Google search engine, your internet resource has to be ready for mobile-first indexing. So, do you need to make some serious changes to your site to accommodate the new ways customers are engaging with your online business? Of course, from the first glance, it’s easy to get distracted with everything mobile-first index features. But don’t panic, this post will teach you how to prepare your business for that.

In short, in this article, we will cover the following: 

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So, let’s dive in. 

Mobile-first indexing means that the mobile content is indexed and used for showing listings to both desktop and mobile users. To put it simpler, Google uses the mobile version of the web as the primary search engine index. So, we have to admit that mobile rankings do matter. Surprisingly, but it’s a fact: today a smooth mobile experience is critical even for desktop sites.  

In fact, being in the Google’s mobile-first index will bring a huge number of advantages to your business, with the most important ones: 

  • You are shown first in the mobile search results: your mobile pages site is shown prior to those ones, which are not in the mobile-first index.
  • Increased traffic: the bigger numbers of people see your service, the greater traffic you may count on.
  • Increased time on page: if your site is well optimized and a fun to use, your customers will likely to spend more time on it.
  • The reduced bounce rate of both web and mobile users: responsive mobile sites deliver an optimized browsing experience and a two-for-one value. Indeed, since the design of the sites with a great, responsive web design has been changed to perfectly fit the size of the mobile user’s screen, such sites do rank well on both mobile and desktop.  So, users adore your site, no matter whether they are visiting it via mobile device or a Mac.
  • Boost on sales: the more happy customers you’ve got, the bigger sales you might count on.
  • It might be said without exaggeration, if your website is not ready for mobile-first index, remember: another potential customer giving money to your progressive web competitor.
  • Mobile-first indexing: How to find out whether your site is in?
  • To check if your mobile app or a desktop version app is now in the Google mobile first index, you will need to do several things, not to mention:
  • First of all, scan your internet resource for flaws. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, for instance, will help you reveal all of your site’s red flags for concern. If your mobile and desktop versions are green, it’s ok. If any of them is red, consider optimizing it.
  • Second, have a look at your log files. If you see that there is an increase in smartphone Googlebot activity, your product is in.
  • Mobile-first index: How to implement and what should your technical team know?
  • Getting your websites ready for the mobile-first index is not that easy. There are several things your team should do to rank well on Google with the mobile-first index.

Unicrew has handpicked the basic steps for your technical team to follow:

  1. Get started with performing Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test and checking Google’s recommendations on how to improve your site.
  2. Get all of your content ready for mobile viewing. Just for the record, the Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test is a great developers tool, which can also help you visualize what your mobile version of the site looks like and what your customers view.
  3. Add only relevant (related to your product) high quality content to your site and make sure that you have the same content on a page-by-page basis from your desktop to your mobile site.
  4. Ensure your internet resource has a responsive web design. If not, consider switching over to a responsive theme. Luckily, today, there are numerous open source responsive themes for popular CMS, such as WordPress, for example. You can also ask for professional Unicrew custom development help. We will find the best suiting theme for your business and will help you transfer everything from your irresponsive site.
  5. Structure all your data in a beautiful, comprehensive way. Ensure that metadata is present on both versions of the site and your site’s mobile content and desktop content is the same and the URLs within the structured data are updated to your mobile version on the mobile pages. 
  6. Improve the mobile page load speeds. Currently, the page load speed should be 1-2 seconds (yes, the lower, the better). Note that even when some of your mobile pages fail to load fast due to heavy graphics, you should make them speed optimized as possible.
  7. Eliminate Flash. Instead of Flash, which takes a lot of time to render, consider using HTML5 and JavaScript.
  8. Find a good hosting. Indeed, it’s critical to make sure that you have a decent hosting provider who can easily cope with the potentially increased crawl rate.
Tip number one: optimizing for Desktop Sites is still highly recommended. Your site should be mobile and desktop friendly. Bear in mind that since Google is not the only search engine currently available. That is why it would be smart to make your digital product caters to other search engines, applying different search engine index metrics, for instance, Yahoo, Bing, or DuckDuckGo. 
Tip number two: The sooner you can make improvements to your mobile site, the better.

The Bottom Line

Anyway, to gain a competitive advantage among modern technology businesses, applying “mobile-first indexing” techniques to your internet service, whether it’s a mobile-friendly site or a desktop app, is of paramount importance. So, make sure that your application is in the Google mobile first index. Should your ultimate site already have a responsive design, you just need to focus on your user experience. And we kindly remind you, Unicrew is a great customer-centric application development company, which can deliver A-level apps which will be ready for the mobile-first index regardless of the version of your site.

All-in-one marketing automation software

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

To seize the opportunities ahead, businesses must go beyond sensors. Definitely, they need all-in-one marketing automation software including Big Data, in-built reporting and analytics capabilities, artificial intelligence, and social media. This article will tell why marketing automation is important. We will reveal major benefits and possible pitfalls an automated marketing campaigns platform features.

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But before we jump into today’s post, let’s hit the basics first: What is automated marketing? 

Marketing automation programs are special programs, which can automate your regular activities, such as sending emails, managing leads, social media activities, and what is very important, they allow to collect various marketing data along with the new information about your customers, in other words, to get proper analytical data. For example, you can automate not only email sending but also the whole process of email marketing . There are a number of other everyday activities, which you can automate, saving you both time and money. In fact, you can even include a live chat or an AI-driven chatbot into your software.

While marketing automation software helps to automate specific steps out of your routine, the all-in-one marketing solution usually offers a combination of marketing functionality in one holistic solution.

Today, there are dozens of both open source marketing automation systems and their paid versions. Typically, the open source solution comes with a defined set of basic features while the paid one includes customization and some industry-leading functionality.

Looking for the best marketing automation software for small business? HubSpot, Marketo, ConnectWise, Autotask, and Salesforce are some of the big names in the sales and marketing automation software industry.  

Don’t want to use the already-made solutions? Have a need in a custom tool, which is integrated with different API integrations? Consider developing your ultimate inbound marketing product by specialists.

Without doubts, marketing automation software certainly opens the doors to a lot of opportunities but also to many challenges. Below, we will closer regard both of them. So, let’s get started.

Key Benefits Of A Marketing Automation System:

  • Enhanced productivity – you can get more done in less time. Automate common activities, spend less efforts on performing regular tasks.
  • Consolidated data –  single source for all your reports, analytics, social media engagement, planning campaigns, and other valuable data. Easily compare all your data from multiple platforms and benefit from data-driven decisions.
  • Solid time savings – arrange your time in a proper way, simultaneously plan and launch several campaigns, both web and mobile marketing.
  • Accurate customer relationship management  – the majority of modern all-in-one marketing platforms have a convenient way to keep track of a contact’s behavior through multiple marketing channels. Never lose sight of your leads again. Keep all data about your customers in a well-structured manner, analyze your customers and their needs in a snap.  
  • Cost efficiency for big companies  save money you spend by managing your campaigns in a fast manner, optimizing your staff, and making changes.

And now once we have talked about benefits the all-in-one marketing automation software can bring, it is of vital importance to take a closer look at all possible cons it might feature.

Top Cons Against Your all-in-one Marketing Software Automation:

  • Too complicated. Yes, that’s the first thing we have to mention. Indeed, even when it comes to the best marketing automation platforms, there’s always a risk of setting up too many automated campaigns.
  • Time-consuming. Yes, you read this right: marketing automation takes time to set up and to manage. In other words, it’s not just send and forget.
  • Too expensive. Major sales and marketing automation tools have rather high mandatory kickstart fees. And very often you have to pay for a functionality you do not need.
  • Needs customization. Each solid automated marketing platform needs customization and assistance of professional developers. Needless to add, if your marketing software automation platform has been customized for your business needs or better, created from scratch in a proper way in the long run, it won’t be too expensive, too complicated or too time-consuming for you. On the contrary, you are likely to embrace your company’s potential.

The Bottom Line

Thus, these are the most widespread pros and cons of all automated marketing tools. Still, after weighing the above four criteria against using automated marketing platforms, it becomes obvious that a good, feature-packed yet elegant digital marketing automation tool still can bring you more benefits than harm, especially if you find a good IT partner that could greatly customize it according to your needs. In fact, using a well-crafted automated marketing platform has become a necessity both for a small business, and big one. That’s not hype. It’s the new business reality.

Still not convinced? Here is one more reason to get a robust, customizable all-in-one marketing platform: your competitor has probably already started using it. So, don’t stay behind, contact Unicrew and benefit from all advantages a smart automated marketing platform tailored to your business needs has to offer.

Still having doubts? Take a peek at our case studies to better comprehend how we have already helped other businesses.

Top Ten Startups In The Logistics Industry

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

Running a shipping and logistics company is not easy, especially when it comes to startups since small business owners do not usually have the needed resources to cope with all concerns the logistics process involves.  Still, lately, the tech times have arrived and things have dramatically changed.

By using cutting-edge technologies, not to mention big data, machine learning as well as artificial intelligence and business intelligence combined with completely different approaches to the way people run businesses, tech startups have managed to significantly reduce costs, increase flexibility and effectiveness, therefore streamlining all operations. What is more, the tech network logistics sphere has also reached the highly competitive mobile world.

As mentioned in the opening, different tech startups have cropped up within the shipping, supply chain, and logistics industry. As a result, there have appeared a number of promising startups, in which venture capital businesses invest millions of dollars or even billions of dollars. Below, we have hand-picked top ten logistics startups that are definitely worth mentioning.

But before we get into any specific chain and logistics examples, let’s quickly go over the main idea what the term “unsexiest trillion-dollar startup” means. In fact, these days, this term can be seen almost everywhere when it comes to the web and mobile world shipping and logistics industry. It means that from the unpopular, not-perspective industry (meaning freight, which used to be too complicated, boring and poor) the logistics services app has risen to a highly famous startup bringing its owners trillions of dollars.

Thus, the top tech 10 unsexiest trillion-dollar startup companies are:

  1. Uber Freight. Being an Uber-based startup, Uber Freight is a great, smooth yet elegant logistics and transportation app that helps truck drivers to find loads easier and pay them in a faster manner. Surprising it is, today, there have also appeared dozens of tech startups calling themselves the “Uber for trucking”.
  2. Dispatch. Established in 2015, Dispatch is a fancy autonomous robot that was specially crafted to automate the last-mile delivery. Simply speaking, it’s a small delivery service with a high tech twist. What makes this app so cool is the fact that it’s a carefully thought self-driving delivery. To deliver different kinds of items, it walks at the pace of pedestrians on sidewalks and bike paths. You can check the real time location of Dispatch carrying your item. Plus, you will be notified once it arrives. For now, the robot solving the last mile travels around US only, but things keep changing and more and more locations are expected to cover soon. So, don’t be surprised if you happen to see this robot in the area. By the way, just for the record, this unique robot is smaller than ordinary people, it is about 100 pounds and has four compartments.
  3. Cloud Van Lines. Being end-to-end SaaS logistics software to manage household moves, CLOUD VANLINES totally covers all business operations of an average logistics company. To put it simple, this secure and feature-rich chain and logistics platform covers everything logistics household has to deal with on a regular basis: transportation, loading, unloading, as well as packing, and unpacking.
  4. Haven. It’s a state of the art freight marketplace, which has changed the way people transport goods. Haven lets shippers bid on guaranteed shipping container capacity, therefore saving up to 20%. In most cases, freight carriers get the best freight quotes among bidders. Today, this freight forwarding company has become truly worldspread and yes, it is for ocean freight and air freight carriers.  Picture this: it runs around the world, taking 15 of the top 20 ocean carriers and freight forwarders.
  5. Transporteca. It’s an amazing web logistics platform that allows shippers and consignees to compare prices for shipping and check transportation rates from freight forwarders. The service was established in Denmark and currently, it includes tracking and transportation and logistics options from Asia to Denmark only. Still, we have to admit that it’s a rather promising startup, so new coverages are expected to appear soon.
  6. Shippo. This novel state-of-the-art shipping application was specially created for e-commerce businesses, both small and big, to facilitate the shipping and everything it concerns. In fact, it lets business integrate shipping with multiple carriers through their API and handy web application. Thus, you can easily and effortlessly track all your shipments with it.  The other good thing to mention about Shippo is that it covers both domestic and international shipping. Today, it can be said for sure that it makes global shipping fast, simple, and rather cheap.  
  7. Zipline. Founded in 2014 in San Francisco, Zipline is a tiny autonomous life-saving robot. Yes, this robot airplane (a “zip”) delivers medical care. Surprisingly, that’s a real small airplane that can vaccines, medicine, or blood from one location and deliver to other medical facility or to the locations, which are hard to access or to completely inaccessible ones. Currently, these electric drones have saved hundreds of lives across the United States, but don’t have global logistics. Let’s wait and hope they will appear in the other parts of the world as well.
  8. DoorDash. It’s a robust, consistent and easy to use platform that lets small business owners offer restaurant deliveries in a charming and convenient manner. In other words, it helps small restaurants easily deliver its foods and beverages in a simpler, cheap and fast manner. Currently, this has more than one million customers and it keeps improving and growing.
  9. BlackBuck. This novel software platform offers a seamless experience for shippers and fleet operators by aggregating freight to transport goods between cities. Needless to note, the freight here always involves large goods and covers everything from trucks to trains and ships.
  10. PiggyBee. This logistics tech service connects people who want to get or send something with the help of travellers. It’s one of those small businesses that offer a rather innovative and unusual goods delivery solution.

Anyway, these are the killing startups in the freight, shippers and carriers apps we have come across so far. By the way, if we have missed any of outstanding logistics or transportation management app that has gained a competitive advantage, please share them with us in the comment section.

P.S. Got a wonderful chain management startup idea? We, at Unicrew, can transform it into reality. Join the ranks of the most promising startups, feel innovative and tech-savvy!

First Time Outsourcing

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

Calling all business owners who consider outsourcing service for their development! It’s truly an art to get the right outsourcer: to benefit from this kind of product development, you need to make sure that you have chosen the right IT partner or you risk to run into nothing but trouble.  

Wondering why? Below, you will find the most common pitfalls business owners might face if they are not launching a profitable home-based business, but happen to choose the wrong outsourcing software development company for their projects. So, please have a more detailed look.

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Key pitfalls the improper outsourcing can bring:

  • Horrible bugs that results in application errors and customers dissatisfaction
  • Lack of realization of expected cost savings
  • Poor process automation
  • Unhelpful customer service, which is constantly unavailable
  • Big project delays costing you lots of time and money
  • Lack of proper communication in the team, which results in misunderstanding or unwanted changes within the project

With this in mind, we have to admit that’s only the tip of the iceberg. There can appear more serious problems should you contact the wrong company. So, it’s obvious that you need the right software development partner. Save big when you outsource the right way, preventing most unforeseen problems. To help you with that,  below we have handpicked some tips to consider when launching a profitable business with an outsourcing team.

Your business can easily surpass competitors failing to see the advantages of the proper outsourcing should you outsource the smart way. Major considerations for effective, smooth, and result-driven first time outsourcing are as follows:

  • Define your clear project vision and state major requirements. Never start outsourcing until you know what you need. You have to fully understand what your product requires and how the outsourcing development team can help you. Have each and every requirement listed in a detailed fashion.
  • Set realistic expectations. Who would mind having the cutting-edge business-centric solution delivered tomorrow? But we all know that is hardly possible. To eliminate pitfalls and common risks, make sure you always set realistic deadlines and scope of work for the given period of time.
  • Know your team. Get to know more about every member of the team you are going to work with. Hand-picking candidates for your project is a smart way to go.
  • Determine the required budget and do not overdo it. Before signing the contract with the outsourcing partner, ask for a free project development calculation and make sure that all needed features are included. Once stated, follow your budget and never exceed it.
  • Monitor, control, and evaluate all the processes. Stay in the know with everything happening to your product during development, testing and deploying.
  • Mind the time and culture differences. If you outsource, your development team might be sleeping while you are awake or vice versa. Bear in mind the time difference when deciding upon vital meetings. Sometimes, it’s better to double check that the outsourcing team manager has understood you correctly than to believe he or she has.
  • Think outside the box. To take your projects from average to amazing, both you and your IT partner have to think outside the box. Remember that when choosing the right people to work with.
  • Invest in the training and development. Ensure the people managing your campaign remain competitive, update their competencies in all skills needed on a regular basis.
  • Collect some information about your outsourcing partner. Check its case studies, find what people think about it, make sure its site is easy and fast to navigate. By the way, if you want grandiose, partnering with Unicrew is highly recommended. It’s an expert software development company boasting customer-centric thinking, which helps businesses find their sweet spot of creativity, productivity and making money. Time to achieve something really unique and meaningful with Unicrew, which is featured by many independent resources as a top software development company!