Mobilunity

IT Outsourcing Company

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Web design trends. Save your money on website development, outsource web design and development and get the best web designers in Ukraine to develop what you need at Ukrainian rates!

Read more at: 

https://mobilunity.com/blog/top-pros-of-outsourcing-web-design-to-ukraine/

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Angular, Angular JS, Angular 5 facts. Find out how much Angular developers earn in different countries, how popular Angular is, where it is used and more at: https://mobilunity.com/blog/what-is-in-store-for-angularjs-developers/

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Check out a detailed Aurelia JS vs Angular JS comparison to see the differences between these JavaScript frameworks. Their features, popularity, geographical usage and salary rates. Learn more with Mobilunity! https://mobilunity.com/blog/aurelia-vs-angularjs-developers/

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List of 25 Interesting Solutions to Build a Marketplace Website

What Are Online Marketplaces?

In the late 90s of the 20th century, the development of e-business systems led to the creation of inter-corporate electronic trading platforms and exchanges. A certain prominence was given to the sites that united the giants of the automotive and petrochemical industries to solve problems related to the sale of products and logistics.

The goal of the e-marketplace is to integrate real companies into virtual business communities on a mutually beneficial basis, to create a dynamic information exchange environment and complete transactions in real time. The initiators of e-marketplace creation may be traditional corporations that produce or consume products and services, industry consortiums, service organizations, state or network firms.

List of various types of marketplaces operating worldwide

Nowadays, the marketplace is the place where the offer meets the greatest demand, when compared with the performance of the same activity in social networks of online stores. It’s no wonder that marketplaces are very popular among users. Every day such resources as Yandex.Market, Google Shopping, and others are visited by millions of people. The reason for such popularity is that such services in addition to filtering by characteristics and prices offer a rich base of reviews and ratings of companies. Another important point is pricing. Since hundreds of sellers work in one information space, competition creates favorable offers for buyers. Purchases in offline stores have become not only time consuming, but also not very profitable from the financial point of view.

Summarizing, it is possible to note the following advantages of various types of marketplaces:

Here the buyer finds a seller on his/her own;

Information provided to customers is relevant;

Prices are affordable, and the volumes of trade are very high;

Businessmen do not need a whole department of employees working on business development online.

These points in many ways characterize Internet commerce in general. In future marketplaces will develop in a similar vein.

Top 25 Solutions for Online Marketplace Development

CS-Cart. This is a professional online store intended to help create a marketplace website. It has a powerful and convenient control panel, high speed of operation, resistance to load and hacking, built-in opportunities for marketing actions, adaptive design and much more.

Screenshot of CS-Cart marketplace website builder

Storbie. This tool allows creating several marketplaces with one center of management.

Screenshot of a marketplace website builder Storbie

MarketplaceInc. It is a platform that consolidates all the main functions that are necessary to create marketplace website.

Screenshot of a multi vendor marketplace MarketplaceInc

Sharetribe. It is a network of online marketplaces where you can exchange goods, services, trips and lodging in a local, trusted environment.

Screenshot of Sharetribe to create marketplace website

PrestaShop. This is a fairly functional content management system for a small online store. It can be installed quickly and easily, in addition, it is also easy to install the necessary complementary modules.

Screenshot of Prestashop to build a marketplace website

Shopify. It is a very popular brand in the field of eCommerce in the West, that allows to easily and quickly build a marketplace website with all the necessary functionality.

Screenshot of Shopify, a marketplace website builder

BigCommerce. This is an online service for online marketplace development that allows you to easily create and configure your own professional online store without knowing and writing code and skills in design.

Screenshot of BigCommerce, which is used for online marketplace development

Arcadier. It is a very convenient and intuitive marketplace website builder for creating trading platforms of any complexity.

Screenshot of Arcadier, a multi vendor eCommerce builder

VirtueMart. VirtueMart is free software and Content Management System for Joomla that allows users to make purchases on the Internet. It is a component for Joomla and it can not be used without this engine.

Screenshot of VirtueMart marketplace website builder

Wave2 Media is a software for creating a multi vendor marketplace and digital advertising platforms.

Screenshot of Wave2, which is used for an online marketplace development

DirectoryPress offers a wide choice of backgrounds for online stores.

Screenshot of Directory Theme for WordPress marketplace development

TalkJS is a built-in messaging system for websites to meet the needs of communicating with customers.

Screenshot of TalkJS, which is used for messaging integrations while online marketplace development

Stripe Connect is an integrated payment system, which is useful in a multi vendor eCommerce development.

Screenshot of Stripe Connect multi vendor marketplace builder

Eventgrid is a tool that allows planning your events and marketing campaigns, such as sales, contests, discounts etc.

Screenshot of Eventgrid, an event registration marketplace builder

NoFraud is a system that protects your marketplace from the fraud in global network.

Screenshot of NoFraud, a marketplace website builder

Spreedly is a tool that allows you to integrate almost all payment systems to your store.

Screenshot of Spreedly, used for secure payment marketplace development

Timekit. This instrument is necessary for service marketplaces as it provides the opportunity to book services and offers.

Screenshot of Timekit, used as online booking marketplace website builder

Imagga is a necessary tool for creating and designing images.

Screenshot of Imagga, image tagging API for online marketplace development

Forest is a database that would manage all your operations and data of a marketplace.

Screenshot of Forest marketplace website builder

IZBERG is a universal instrument for operating marketplace.

Screenshot of Izberg multi vendor marketplace builder

Checkbook allows to send digital checks.

Screenshot of Checkbook for digital checks integration

Wemark provides an opportunity to stay in touch with the customers of a marketplace website and conduct regular campaigns.

  Screenshot of Wemark for autopilot marketing campaign integration

Payable is a system for providing payments.

Screenshot of Payable platform used for payments procession

SendBird is a messaging tool to communicate with customers.

Screenshot of SendBird

Shippo is a tool to operate your procurements.

Screenshot of Shippo, a shipping API to build a marketplace website

Do You Need to Create Marketplace Website?

Speaking about Europe, Ukraine is one of the most promising Eastern European countries for the development of marketplaces due to a number of reasons. The main factors here are many high-class IT specialists, profound knowledge of English, close location to any European country, cost effectiveness and the premium quality development, which all together give a lot of opportunities for developing large and dynamic online projects.

Contact our manager right now to start working on online marketplace development in the shortest possible time!

  from List of 25 Interesting Solutions to Build a Marketplace Website

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Government Marketplace Development: Pitfalls to Avoid

What Is Government Marketplace?

Government procurement is the acquisition of goods and services for the needs of the state from the state budget. In order to avoid corruption, it should be passed in accordance with the specialized scheme, regulated by law. There are the following key principles each government procurement marketplace should guarantee:

Equal relationship to the participants of procurement, as well as justice. This means that all companies and enterprises participating in the auction are given equal rights and opportunities to present their products, and all of them have the same access to information related to the procurement procedure;

Transparency and openness of the bidding procedure. A participant is obliged to post all the data on purchases on the site devoted to competitive bidding and publish information about the beginning of trading and its progress in the media;

Targeted and rational use of budgetary funds. The competitive bidding procedure ensures that the goods and services will be purchased at a minimum price with optimal characteristics and properties. The placement of all information on the terms and conditions of the bidding allows to control the procurement process. This leads to a rational use of budget funds;

Full responsibility for improper performance of obligations. To exclude unscrupulous sellers from the market, any purchase is accompanied by a report on the price and quality of the goods purchased. The report justifies why this particular supplier was chosen. If there is a conspiracy, then in this case both parties of the transaction should be responsible.

Currently, electronic auctions are becoming very popular, for which maximum transparency is key factor for all public procurement procedures. In addition, the obvious advantages of a good and reputable electronic auctions include:

Short lead time;

Economy of state budget for bidding;

Transparency and fairness of a procurement process;

Competition between enterprises;

The same equal conditions for all sellers;

Ability to take part in the auction regardless of its location.

The new electronic format for holding tenders makes it possible to significantly save budgetary funds, but the advantages of the new standard of tenders do not end there. Thanks to the publicity of the auctions, the use of standard corruption schemes becomes much more complicated, lobbying is minimized, and the process of holding tenders is simplified and accelerated. This opens up new opportunities for the business, and economy for the budget of the country.

In addition to commonly used e-procurement systems, there are also other platforms that are build for each state and similar procedures: a healthcare gov marketplace and a charity marketplace.

Technologies to Create Government E Marketplace

A number of technologies to use for a Government E Marketplace development

  Here is a list of some technologies and solutions used for gov marketplace development:

Symphony CMS  allows to manage content.

Magento is one of the most useful tools on the basis of which the most popular world websites are build.

Shopify contains ready made modules and templates for building e-marketplaces.

Virtuemart is a marketplace constructor which allows adding all necessary functionality.

PHP is one of the most popular and demanded programming languages which can be used almost for any purposes, and one of them is marketplace development.

Marketplace Inc. is a tool that is convenient for creating multi vendor e commerce platforms.

Forest is very useful instrument that is intended to control and manage operations provided on the trading website.

E Tendering System: Global Experience

E tendering system allows to fully automate the process of qualification selection of suppliers applying for a tender. The selection is done based on electronic monitoring of price proposals, in other words, by the mean of a reverse auction. In the course of real time bidding, suppliers compete in the lowest prices, the optimal terms of delivery and payment for each of the bidding lots. Here are the worldwide examples of e tenders gov:

Central Public Procurement Portal (India). As India is a country with high level of corruption, using such tender portals helps this country to decrease the level of unfair transactions in public procurement.

Screenshot of Indian Government marketplace

Prozorro (Ukraine). It is a Ukrainian innovation that has already received the approval of the European Union and other countries of the world.

Screenshot of a Ukrainian government e marketplace, approved by the European Union

GeBiz (Singapore). Singapore was one of the first countries which began to use a government e marketplace in order to make all deals with the state transparent.

Screenshot of a government e marketplace in Singapore

Federal Procurement Data System (USA). This government marketplace is based on the US federal contracting system.

Screenshot of the US government marketplace

AUS Tender (Australia) is a request for proposal (rfp) marketplace, which should be obligatory used by all states authorities and business units.

Screenshot of an Australian RFP marketplace

Some Pitfalls in Marketplace Development

Developing a government marketplace, a programmer should take care of its uninterrupted performance so that all participant of e-tendering might be able to login into the system and take part in trading;

Such a website should contain a simple and unified registration form for participants, as well as the intuitive application form;

After the end of the development the site must be immediately transferred to the state;

An indispensable condition is the recognition of the legitimacy of such a site for interaction with state and municipal customers;

The platform should contain a system for verifying suppliers in order to protect the state customers from scammers;

Programmers who create the gov marketplace should develop and implement unified requirements for the organization of electronic trading on the site and the application forms for participation;

The trading platform must be provided with the necessary electronic resources, including instructions for its usage, legislation in the field of electronic trading and government orders;

The government marketplace should be continuously maintained and monitored by programmers in order to ensure its well-functioning work, as well as information security.

How To Build A Marketplace?

If your project implies custom marketplace development of any orientation, then you are in the right place. Mobilunity has wide experience in creating similar sites and will gladly help you implement your project into reality.

Contact our manager right now to discuss the details of your tender portal creation!

from Government Marketplace Development: Pitfalls to Avoid

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How to Build an E-Procurement Marketplace: Technologies and Modules

What Is E-Procurement Marketplace?

Using e procurement marketplace today has become a popular format for any government or commercial procurement. The development of information technology is currently taking place at such a rapid pace that the state and business should take this into account. E procurement portal allows users to get all the necessary information on one site, participate in electronic trading, quickly sell the product or service or get it. This is the reason for the demand for procurement management system.

Automated procurement system has a huge number of advantages over conventional, paper-based operations. First of all, it is transparency and high profitability. In addition, it is possible to significantly reduce the costs of potential suppliers to participate in procurement. There is no need for permanent notarization of documents and the supplier can participate in procurement without leaving the office, spending money for sending applications and personal presence that was previously necessary. Secondly, e procurement solutions make it possible to bring the transparency of the procurement process to a new level. Now, thanks to procurement marketplace, suppliers can view the offers of competitors, which guarantee equal opportunities for all participants. The application of this principle prevents various illegal frauds in the form of collusion between the participants, and makes the administrative pressure from the customer impossible.

Top 5 Procurement Marketplaces You Precisely Know

Amazon.com is the largest online trading platform, comparable in popularity only to the eBay auction, which sells and purchases tens of thousands of various products every day. The main site of the company operates in the US. In addition, the company also has divisions in France, England, Germany, Canada, China and Japan. Initially created for the sale of only books, Amazon grew into a giant trading platform with a huge variety of products from fishing rods to guitars and from auto parts to designer handbags.

Screenshot of Amazon Procurement Marketplace

Etsy.com is a trading platform, which was created in 1995, and united creative people from all over the world. Throughout its existence, Etsy has attracted hundreds and thousands of outstanding creative people who have turned their extraordinary abilities into real money. The variety of items displayed on Etsy.com, most often made by hands, is amazing. There are jewelry, knitted clothes, personal care products, home interior items, paintings of little-known artists, photographs of novice photographers, magnificent earthenware, and unique masterpieces from ordinary wood.

Screenshot of Etsy E Procurement Marketplace

EBay is the largest online auction in the world. Here you can always find a huge range of various products: from food to cars, and sometimes even to incredible curiosities. So, one day, William Shakespeare’s manuscript “Prince of Tire”, survived from the Great Fire of London in 1666, was sold on this site. The price of the deal was more than impressive and constitute 5 million pounds sterling.

Screenshot of eBay Marketplace

The international procurement system AliExpress is a popular place for electronic commerce between Chinese suppliers and buyers. A web resource can be compared to a giant market where sales transactions are made online. AliExpress is a great opportunity for sellers to export products from China to other countries, foreign buyers appreciate the platform for the fact that the site eliminates the need to look for Chinese suppliers on their own and a host of problems related to the delivery and payment of goods from abroad.

Screenshot of AliExpress E Procurement Marketplace

Prozorro is a supply chain management software, the use of which is mandatory for all Ukrainian government customers when purchasing goods and services for large amounts. It won the prestigious international award in the field of public procurement World Procurement Awards 2016.

Screenshot of Etsy eCommerce Marketplace

Classification of E-Procurement Applications

There are several classifications of e procurement applications. Firstly, it is possible to distinguish the following types of marketplaces:

business-to-business, where enterprises provide goods and services for other enterprises (for example, AliExpress where Chinese factories sell goods to retail companies from over the world);

business-to-consumer, where business units sell goods and services for people (Booking.com, where owners of hotels offer their services to tourists);

consumer to consumer (Etsy.com where a deal is made between two ordinary people);

business-to-government (for example, Ukrainian recent achievement Prozorro)

The following classification is according to the way of receiving result of the deal. It is possible to underline online to offline marketplaces, where the customer receives a result in real life; and online commerce where the purchase itself and its result are completely made online.

Sometimes you can meet the following classification, which divide marketplaces into independent ones, buyer-oriented and supplier-oriented.

And the last classification is the most easy and is made according to the purpose of types of marketplaces and things they sell. There are:

product marketplaces, where different things and goods are sold;

service ones, where various services are offered (transportation services, household, car rental, repairing services, specific IT services);

hybrid marketplaces, where you can purchase goods and services as well;

project marketplaces are intended to help an investor and the initiator of some project to find each other.

E-Procurement Solutions: Modules to Use

Custom UI/UX design and development of procurement marketplaces

It is possible to purchase order management software in two ways. The first option is developing procurement system from the “box pack”. In second variant, you can purchase order software with the help of custom development. Let’s go into details of these two offers.

“Box Paсk” is a solution for start-up businesses who want to work on a classic marketplace model. This is a profitable solution for those who want to get the finished product. The main advantages of this option are that you pay once for the product, and the labor costs and time for implementation are minimal.

Custom marketplace development is a solution for serious business or innovative projects that do not fit solutions “out of the box”. Uniqueness is the main advantage of the custom trading platform. If you want your trading platform not to be limited in functionality (for example, it would be possible to arrange online auctions and tenders, modify the algorithms of electronic trading at will, etc.), it is worthwhile to focus on custom development.

Users of Procurement Systems

There are two general categories of users of such portals. There are suppliers and buyers, which can be both enterprises and private individuals from both of the sides.

The main purpose of the suppliers is to sell their goods or services in the biggest possible amount. Enterprises, companies and even private persons can perform as suppliers (for example, in the case of selling services on freelance platforms).

Enterprises, persons, and even the state can also act as customer (e.g. on Prozorro website where business satisfies the needs of the state).

Therefore, using contract management software is maximally beneficial for suppliers, who receive a possibility to show their goods to a wide audience, and for customers who can make a choice from the wide range of offers and find the best.

Technologies to Create Marketplace

Here is a list of tools, which will be useful to create purchasing and supply chain management software:

Symphony CMS  is a high-performance framework written in PHP 5. The framework is based on the Model-View-Controller pattern and its architecture uses other object-oriented programming patterns very actively;

Magento is the engine for creating trading platforms, which recently is gaining its popularity. It allows you to create several online stores on your own, at the same time you can manage them from a single center. This is the main advantage of Magento CMS, which is appreciated by many site owners.  When creating a procurement portal using Magento, you can easily use different currencies, in addition, if necessary, you can easily convert them. It allows you to create a convenient catalog of products with the ability to add categories and subcategories. In the online store, created on the MagentoCMS , you can functionally manage prices.

A business application or a PHP-based site, large or small, can be easily developed with limited time and budget. More advanced PHP programming means creating CRM solutions, online stores, websites with databases, etc.;

Developing sites using the Laravel framework is a solution to many problems. After all, this database allows you to create not only websites, business cards or trite single-page apps. It makes it possible to implement Laravel app projects even with non-standard functionality;

Opencart is an online store engine that can be installed on any web server with PHP and MySQL support. The developers have made sure that you can quickly and without problems accept payment from your customers. One of the most effective architectures for creating online stores is the one implemented in OpenCart, which allows you to work with a huge number of language versions, currencies, categories, products and manufacturers;

Prestashop. It is a tool that contains many modules for creating an online trading platform. It is convenient for the customer due to the ability to receive complex statistics, and developers appreciate the open source code. Modularity, SEO-optimization and the possibility of introducing updates are its main features;

Shopify is ready-made platform allowing you to easily create your own marketplace;

BigCommerce is a tool for custom development, allowing you to transfer products from Amazon, Ebay to your own marketplace;

Arcadier is a simple and intuitive platform for creating marketplaces of any direction;

Virtuemart is one of the most popular free components for creating online stores. This is due to the simplicity of its installation and the great opportunities that it possesses. Virtuemart allows you to create an unlimited number of products and categories of products, and users have the ability to perform a quick search for products, manufacturers or categories with filtering by some features (price, discount, etc.). You will be able to set different prices for products of the same type for different categories of customers or marking the goods as “special” or participating in the sale. Each of the products can be assigned a different currency, and the component can automatically convert the price from one currency to another. In addition, users are given order history, the ability to manage addresses and delivery methods, purchase discount coupons.

This is not a complete list of sites and tools that can be useful for creating your own trading platform, as each of them has its own purpose and functional features. In order to combine all the positive qualities of available tools, the best advice will be to contact an experienced developer.

How Much Does It Cost to Create Automated Procurement System?

Any work requires a certain time, and the creation of trading system is a work in which several specialists participate. The cost of creating a marketplace can go up to several thousand conventional units, and it is estimated based on labor costs: with the increase in the time for creation and development, proportionally the cost increases. Thus, the site will be created for at least several weeks, of course, depending on the final requirements for the product you want to receive.

Nevertheless, to make a little clarity, it is worth saying that creating a marketplace will take at least a month. If we have already begun to talk about the month as a temporary piece, then it makes sense to mention the average salary of Ukrainian developers, which, according to DOU, is about $1500 per month. This figure can be taken as the initial cost of developing the marketplace in Ukraine, and it should also be said that this is a very advantageous proposal. For comparison, according to the data of Clutch.Co, the hourly salary of the developer in Poland and Germany is $50 per hour, in Australia and the US it can vary from $100 to $300 per hour. By the end of the month, these amounts will exceed the fee of Ukrainian engineers several times or even dozens of times.

Where to Apply?

It is possible to conclude that creating a procurement marketplace is rather beneficial and demanded business nowadays. We also proved that creating e-procurement application with the help of Ukrainian marketplace developers will be rather expediently. Mobilunity has wide experience in implementing such projects, so applying for our help, you can be sure to receive a bright result in the shortest possible time.

Don’t hesitate to contact our responsible manager right now in order to discuss details of your project and receive e procurement solutions from us!

from How to Build an E-Procurement Marketplace: Technologies and Modules

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Types of Outstaffing and Remote Web Development

What is Outstaffing?

Outstaffing (or as it is also called remote web development) is a process of providing the employer with needed dedicated teams or dedicated developers they lack. It is getting popular nowadays due to the lack of professionals, such as dedicated software developers, Project Managers and QA engineers on the local market of employers. It is often mixed with outsourcing or is mistakenly regarded as the type of it.

Is There a Difference between Outsourcing and Outstaffing Dedicated Teams at All?

Answering the question – yes, there is, and it’s huge. In order to get things clear and not to mix up the terms, let’s figure out the difference.

Outsourcing is a process of handing projects, activities or functions to a third party, which has all needed resources to conduct it – such as qualified staff and equipment.

Outstaffing is all about the staff itself. When a company lacks web developers to develop a project, needs to extend the team and reduce staff expenses, they are looking for a remote developer with a certain technology, it basically “rents” them from the provider of such a services  and very often such experts can be found in Ukraine.  

So, the main difference is that outsourcing refers to the whole project support, while outstaffing provides hiring and maintenance of a remote developer or a team.

Types of Outstaffing and Remote Web Development

Now, when the difference is clear, let’s talk about the existing types of outstaffing. There are several of them:

Outstaffing in its first and main meaning. The term itself is quite rare and still remains unfamiliar to many people. There are also other synonyms: remote web development, dedicated teams recruitment, IT staffing. If you look for a workforce which you don’t have at the company now, this can be the best way of getting it. Usually, an outstaffed remote developer stays under the roof of the company, which outstaffs him/her. A company that wants to hire dedicated developers usually prefers experts to work remotely but to dedicate the whole time to their project only.

Relocation services as a type of outstaffing, involves not only search for an expert, but their relocation as well. This means that a company or a client that wants to hire dedicated developers asks for a recruiting company to find dedicated software developers of teams who can relocate to another city or country (the second variant requires a preparation of working visa).

Relocation within one country or a city can be easily performed since it doesn’t require any time on preparation of additional documents. The process is quite simple. When employer has decided on what types of developers, designers, QAs are needed for the project, he applies with a request to the company which provides outstaffing services and after signing the contract with all discussed requirements the work can be started promptly.

Relocation to the foreign country takes more time, but is surely worth it, because as a result a relocation company helps a client hire dedicated developers and build development teams which they lacked, and can implement all ideas into real projects.

Why Outstaffing is a Great Solution?

Outstaffing is very good cost-effective service provided for long-term projects. In most cases to hire dedicated teams of developers who will work remotely is 50% cheaper than to spend time looking for needed experts, interview and hire them in-house, increase operating costs and expenses for personnel instead of improving a company’s focus and productivity. When employers from other countries are considering to hire dedicated developers for their project, it is important to take into account the level of professionalism of the staff. Ukrainian developers are chosen for their talent, high level of education, flexible approach to projects, reasonable cost for the provided services and convenient location. They are often chosen as dedicated software developers, when an employer wants to reduce the cost of the overall development, and get a high-quality product at the same time.

Let us outstaff the best dedicated software developers for your marvelous project!

from Types of Outstaffing and Remote Web Development

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Happy King's Day to all #Dutch from Mobilunity :)

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Custom Law Firm Website Development and Design Solutions

There are lots of legal firms out there on the market. Some are small and relatively new, the others are older and bigger. Some have narrow specialization while the others deal with cases from most or all areas of jurisprudence.

Still, regardless of whether a law firm started legal practice recently or has been there for decades already, none of them were missed by the influence of the digital era. To efficiently provide services to their clients, legal firms widely use computer technologies including the Internet. This provides them with the efficient toolset to attract clients, provide them with the useful information that urges to choose this particular law firm.

Custom Law Website Design

Mobilunity has rich experience of building all kinds of websites including websites for lawyers and law firms. Based on our expertise of creating websites for law firms, we created a unique custom law website design that fits legal firm that wants a website with simple, but laconic design, demonstrating solidity and traditions of a firm.

Custom and responsive UX/UI design of website for a lawyer or a law firm by Mobilunity

The law firm website custom design that we created fits our vision of how legal firm website should look like to plant the seeds of confidence and trust in your firm as a trustworthy partner. Used as a basis, we may customize templates, layouts, colors, and elements to meet your requirements and build law firm website that you have been thinking of.

Website Types. Build Law Firm Website That You Need

To stand out from the wide variety of other law firms, one should not only have a prominent lawyers and successful trials, but a good representation in the Internet. Modern generation of people start their search for answers in the web and here is where legal firms can gain their clients if they dare to hire a contractor to build law firm website for them.

However, years ago you may have said that you need a website and that would be sufficient. Nowadays, there are plenty of types of websites. The majority of IT companies and developers have similar vision on the types of websites. However, some companies and specific web developers, for example Tim Trott in his classification, see it a bit differently distinguishing sites that we consider subtypes of major website types. According to the classification, we consider to be the most appropriate, websites may be categorized in the following way:

Simple websites with the static content.

Websites with the static content that assume content updates using some CMS.

Websites with dynamic content that connect to some database and usually include different options like user personal profiles, votings, blogs and other options of user interaction with the website.

eCommerce websites that provide products listings, integrations with shipping and payment providers and other capabilities intrinsic to online stores.

Web applications, which are similar to desktop applications in terms of functionality they provide, but run in a web browser instead of the desktop.

Possible Custom Solutions for Development of Websites for Lawyers and Law Firms

The simplest thing a legal firm may do to provide its presence in the web is order a static law firm website development. This is also referred to as promo website with video background.  This type of site is very stylish, customly designed and filled in with the content which is generally not intended to be frequently changed or updated.

However, to make the law firm website more useful to clients or potential clients, it should not only provide some information about a firm, its lawyers and cases won. This makes a site more complex because of added features and thus the site shifts from the static category to a dynamic website.

Legal firms provide a wide spectrum of services, which define the needs and requirements to the websites for lawyers and law firms. According to our classification, legal firms fall into these groups based on services they provide:

Legal research

E-discovery

Online legal services

Practice management software

Litigation finance

Lawyer search

Notarization

Legal tech industry landscape infographics

If a law firm wants to have a functional website, forget about a simple static promo site. Depending on what exactly you want, your future site should have additional features and functionality, but still it is not a rocket science and nothing to be afraid of.

Here is the list of typical functionality that may be planned for website development for law firms:

Social sharing and links to law firm social profiles

Online chat

Booking services for clients who want to hire specific lawyer for their cases

Submitting requests online

Integration with payment gateways for online provided services

Customizable forms

Informative blog for news and other posts related to the firm and area of jurisprudence a firm is operating in

Multimedia content

Interactive design

The law firm website development has its peculiarities in a specific needs of each law firm. The list above mentions most of the features that may be considered by a law firm considering to order law firm website development, but does not necessarily mean all of the features should be there. If your firm does not plan to offer services online, your future website may then not have online chat and integration with payment gateways.

List of Best Law Firm Website Development Projects

Here are the examples of websites for lawyers and law firms that won the annual WebAwards Competition in the nomination of “Best Legal Website”:

Screenshot of the corporate website of Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP

Screenshot of the website of Staver Law Group

Screenshot of the website of Thomas Booler Lawyers

Screenshot of the corporate website of Weinberg Wheeler Hudgins Gunn & Dial

Build Law Firm Website with Mobilunity

If you liked our custom law website design, or would like to know more of what we can do in website development for law firms, our specialists will gladly get in contact with you, listen to your requirements and expectations and get back to you with our suggestions and recommendations. We can offer 2 models (outsourcing, IT staffing) and you will be able to choose which is more profitable and convenient for you. Our team of dedicated developers, designers and quality assurance specialists always does its best to deliver unique and professional looking websites for lawyers and law firms.

Interested in website development for law firms? Contact Mobilunity today and get dedicated development team working on solution just for you!

from Custom Law Firm Website Development and Design Solutions

[mobilunity]

Hybrid mobile development equally works for MVPs and projects with limited budget. Make use of the most suitable solutions for startups Mobilunity provides.

Mobilunity is glad to have had experience in building fintech mobile apps. One of our UK clients founded a fintech startup and requested development of save up money app. Chip In app was designed and built with active involvement of its founder – Audrey Giroud. For our part, we offered hybrid mobile development solutions, that helped to build cross-platform save up money app quickly and without any harm to the startup budget. Usage of Apache Cordova framework allowed our team to compensate for a few drawbacks of hybrid mobile development. If you fancy this save up money app, contact us, as we are experts in fintech mobile apps development and can provide solutions for any startup project.

[mobilunity]

Mobilunity at Israel AdTech 2017

Mobilunity continues its world business tour, bridging the gap between the Startup Nation of Israel and the emerging IT nation, that is Ukraine.   

Kyiv – 12 April, 2017 – Continuing its active participation in Global IT events, Mobilunity, a Ukrainian provider of development teams and IT outsourcing solutions, proudly exhibited at Israel AdTech 2017, the 3rd annual Israeli conference for leaders of the AdTech industry.

Management team of Mobilunity at Israeli conference

Mobilunity’s management team, represented by CEO Cyril Samovskiy, Director of Business Development Alfonsine Williams, and Scrum-certified Project Manager Marina Negriy, attended this year’s edition of Israel AdTech to not only present the benefits of Ukrainian development, but to connect to the Israel AdTech scene that has produced some of the most influential companies in the AdTech sphere.

Israel AdTech is a networking conference that unites startups, agencies, and experts representing advertising companies from all over the world. Annually the event managed by Eli Mandelbaum (the conference chairman and managing director of PluggedIn BD) has 500+ attendees and speakers including senior executives, brands, startups, and entrepreneurs, representing emerging mobile and desktop technologies in the field of advertising.

“We have received great opportunities for networking at Israel AdTech 2017. I hope that we will have fruitful collaboration with all people we have met, and I look forward to pursuing our joint efforts to build their development teams together.” Marina Negriy, Project Manager.

Mobilunity’s  efforts are aimed at strengthening and contributing to the establishment of successful and fruitful Israeli-Ukrainian cooperation in the IT sphere. Ukraine has great potential, IT talents, and plenty of  resources to cover the Israeli demand for development teams and dedicated experts at reasonable rates.

Business solutions provider Mobilunity at global Israeli AdTech conference

About Mobilunity:

Founded in 2010, Mobilunity is a provider of dedicated development teams based in Kyiv Ukraine. Mobilunity provides turn-key, full-cycle outsourcing solutions in web and mobile development, design, digital marketing, and customer support. With clients from over 20 countries globally, Mobilunity works with all manner of businesses from startups to digital agencies across various market verticals. To learn more about Mobilunity and their services, please visit www.mobilunity.com or write them:

Mobilunity

70A Saksaganskogo St.

Kiev, 01032 Ukraine

[email protected]

www.mobilunity.com  

from Mobilunity at Israel AdTech 2017

[mobilunity]

Creating Ukraine25 FREE Avatar Generator

Being a social active company, Mobilunity always did something special on different occasions. The one who hardly expected such activity from companies could see that Mobilunity truly loves its customers either current or potential ones – the company prepared a number of videos with its employees sharing their greetings with people from other countries on their national holidays.

Going even further, the idea appeared how to make this even more entertaining and fun – to make an avatar app. Creating custom avatars is rather popular nowadays and there are plenty of so called avatar websites that allow you to upload your photo and apply some custom elements like hats, mustache, crown or mask end so on. At the end, after tweaking the size and position of custom elements on your photo, one downloads the ready avatar for sharing or uploading to other websites.

Mobilunity wanted digital avatar maker to become a nice way of celebrating a national holiday by showing your identity and pride of belonging to one’s own nation. The pilot project was targeted at the Ukraine’s Independence anniversary – 25 years of Ukraine’s independence. The team wanted to create a free avatar generator that would be available to everyone either living in Ukraine and feeling patriots of their country or those ukrainians living abroad as well as representatives of other nations wishing to try the Ukrainian elements in their own image.

Team of Ukraine25 development project

The web app to be created was intended to be available to those browsing Internet from their laptop and mobile devices regardless of the platform they use, therefore avatar web design should have been made responsive to look perfect on any device being used.

Besides the ability to upload user photos and apply design elements to them, the Ukraine25 avatar generator was supposed to be available in Ukrainian and English languages and allow sharing the generated avatars with friends through social networks.

The Development of Avatar Website

The timeframe for creating the digital avatar creator was pretty tough, and the team must have stayed within the tight budget. Having a huge expertise in different technologies and taking into account the requirements to the project, WordPress-powered website was identified as the ideal option for the free avatar generator app.

Example of creating avatars with the help of Ukraine25 avatar generator

Simultaneously with the start of development, our web designers were quite busy creating custom graphic elements that users then applied to their photos in the Ukraine25 digital avatar maker. We wanted our app to be unique, so these graphic elements should have been created by us rather than used from other sources available on the market. The simple, but attractive design for the avatar generator website was created taking deep blue, the Mobilunity corporate color, as the main website color.

WordPress itself does not allow to make an avatar app without applying additional technologies. Our team used a number of WordPress plugins to allow social sharing, content localization and the main functionality, which is what the app was built for – creating custom avatars. In particular, to achieve this goal, the team used Fabric.js, a JavaScript Canvas library, that enabled us to convert the uploaded photos to a HTML5 Canvas required as a container for graphics drawn using JavaScript.

Canvas runs on any device and this is what the team wanted to achieve – make the app that any user can use regardless of the device he uses the digital avatar maker on. With Canvas in conjunction with HTML5, Ukraine25 avatar generator app became easy-to-use web app with simple and nice looking interface.

The Issues Solving While Digital Avatar Creator Development

Every project completed by the team can “boast” with a set of difficulties that the team had to overcome and “surprises” that different technologies brought during the implementation. The digital avatar creator Ukraine25 was not an exclusion from this rule. There were multiple major issues that the team had to find the key to resolve. Here is the brief list of major issues that we encountered and solutions that we found to make this avatar generator app a success.

Saving Images on a Server of FREE Avatar Generator

When working with uploaded graphics, the issue with them being not saved on a server is a usual one. The Ukraine25 project team also faced an issue with images that a user uploads being not saved. To overcome this, the team applied the following approach: Canvas was used to generate images in base64 format, after that images are decoded and saved to the server in the png format.

Facebook Sharing

Having prepared the avatar, we found out that we could not publish it on Facebook prior to moderation. We discovered that Facebook uses the open graph tags, which acquire content when a page is loaded. That is why, as a solution, we decided to first save images on a server and load them only on the publication to Facebook step.

Mobile Makeup Issues

When dealing with Canvas, a relatively new technology for the team, we faced an issue that it is generated in absolute sizes only and does not provide the possibility to specify relative sizes in percents. To resolve this issue, which is quite important for proper displaying images on mobile devices that all have different screen sizes, the team tweaked canvas through applying different effects to make it universal for display on mobile devices screens.

Generating Canvas on iOS Devices

To have the ability of editing the photo through applying the avatar web design effects (filters and stickers) to it, Canvas should first be generated. However, as it turned out, everything is not simple as it was considered to be on iOS devices. The team faced the issue that after uploading a photo on iOS devices, it did not show up and thus the Canvas was not generated. The team did not find an easy and evident solution that was ready to be applied. However, having spent some time brainstorming, our developers resolved this issue, which otherwise would be a killer for avatar generator on iOS devices.

Summary

Ukraine25 has become the first experience of creating avatar website for the Mobilunity team. The project showed that the team is capable of managing major technological issues within the tight timeframe that otherwise would prevent the app to appear. As the result, Mobilunity made an avatar app that was a fun way to celebrate 25 years of Ukraine’s Independence. The Ukraine25 avatar generator provided all of us, living in Ukraine or abroad, considering ourselves Ukrainians or just willing to stand together with us, with nice Ukrainian-style avatars that everyone could experiment with and then share on Facebook with their friends.

With the birth of the Ukraine25 free avatar generator, the team gained precious experience working with Canvas.js, creating a unique avatar web design, resolving unexpected issues that showed up during the project run, though were not evident from the very beginning.

We now can proudly say that if you have some ideas that require involving Canvas.js, we are ready to help you with their implementation as we know the best way of how to do it. Mobilunity is always ready to take your project idea and transform it into a product for you either it be a digital avatar creator like Ukraine25  or another product built using this technology. Also, we are now offering our highly qualified team of programmers for hiring. If you already have a team and miss some of the specialists who can make an avatar app or provide avatar web design for your web app, we are ready to provide remote dedicated developers for hire.

So make sure you visit our website often to know more about the products created by the Mobilunity team!

Hire Mobilunity development team to create an interactive avatar website built with Fabric.js and HTML 5 Canvas!

from Creating Ukraine25 FREE Avatar Generator

[mobilunity]

How to Build the Website on Your Own? Free Website Builders Research.

Mobilunity team had been analyzing the need of website builders for users with a general knowledge of PC who want to learn more about web design and web development. In the majority of cases, they prefer to turn to the website builders, but still there are those who want their website to be unique, modern and of a high quality. The latter ones choose the best way to build a website and hire dedicated team of developers to have the company website development done professionally on the all-inclusive basis: project management, design, programming, testing and launching.

The aim of this research is to identify top players in the niche of Site Builders available on the market, identify their strong and weak sides, have insight on the features that they have and those they miss.

Besides that, we will be able to identify user demand exactly for custom eCommerce website development or a company website development and understand whether users tend to have at hand relatively simple system with a number of layouts that only need to be filled with content and allow simple customizations like fonts and color scheme change; or they would like more control over the website content like adding their custom code or changing page layout with a number of blocks provided by the system.

As a result we should have a clear understanding whether we should enter the market or current offering on the market covers most of the users’ needs and developing alternate solution is not worth it.

What Is the Best Way to Build a Website? Overview of Site Builders

Wix®

URL: www.wix.com

Subscription plans: Free – $4.5/mo – $24.5/mo with intermediate plans having benefits added as the price grows.

In many or most sources Wix® is considered the best solution to build your own site out there on the market. The system features enormous number of templates available to users in order to provide easier custom eCommerce website development: 500+.

In terms of the ease of use, Wix® is definitely one of the leaders on the market. Its main focus is in offering users the large library of layouts allowing high-level customizations like adding blocks, splitting it into columns, applying different color scheme to your future eCommerce store design and a company website development.

The site builder offers to build your own site if you are the most general user that is not proficient in web design and web development or coding, does not know much about hosting and simply wants to create rather standard nice looking site with a minimum efforts.

The number of templates offered by Wix® for each website kind is almost equal except for the Business kind – the number of templates here is twice as big as for any other kind of website. Let’s see figures in details:

The highest number of templates belongs to the following categories:

Business – 115

The lowest number of templates belongs to these categories:

Landing Pages – 26

Accommodation – 28

When you build your own site, the system pre-loads a set of templates, color schemes and offers to add apps related to the selected website kind.

To assist users with the initial setup, the system offers two ways to start:

with Wix® ADI

with Wix® Editor

The first approach asks user a couple of questions regarding their identity and their business and then searches the internet for more information using the details that a user provided. The information found and confirmed by a user will then be placed in a related blocks on a website saving user efforts on filling site content.

The clear benefit of this approach for non-experienced users is that the system does huge amount of work for a user. At the same time, besides the creating the nicely designed Home page, the system then guides user through a number of customization steps, allowing to take control over the customization or continuing to make changes for a user while a company website development.

Users observe system opening menus, choosing options, etc. which enables them use the system on their own further on if they want.

Steps that the system offers after creating the initial page include:

Previewing site

Reviewing entire website design

Changing website colors

Changing website fonts

Changing section layout

Editing section content

Adding new sections

Adding new pages

With this approach, even if a user is not proficient in designing websites or a company website development, but has some insights or ideas how to build the website, the system prepares a user to using the Editor for changes to his eCommerce store design.

With the Editor, the user is actually given full control of the actions he wants to perform either it is adding a page or a block or creating a website page by editing page layout or adding different content blocks to a page.

In general, customization capabilities offered by the system in the Editor mode include the following:

Changing page background (color/image/video) with a library of hi-res images provided for free as well as the ability to upload own images or buy from photo bank

Adding elements to a page

Text (in a pre-set styles)

Images (own uploaded, free Wix® images, free Wiz® clipart, Bigstock® images, images from a user social networks, Picasa®, Flickr®) offering to add related to this functionality apps

Image gallery

Slideshow

Button

Box

Strip

Shape

Video

Music

Social

Contact

Menu

List

Lightbox

Blog

Store

More

HTML & Flash

PayPal buttons

Anchors

Anchor menus

Document buttons

And provides the ability to add related apps to the site

No evident way of applying own custom layout through writing custom code was found. It looks like Wix® is not aimed at the most flexible capabilities of customization. Thanks to a rich library of professionally looking customizable layouts, useful apps in the App Market (more than 200 apps at the moment) and targeting at less experienced users, Wix® provides everything needed for a non-pro user to build a free website that is looking like created by a pro.

Web design and web development are great, no doubts, but Wix® offers mobile optimization for the created websites as well to ensure they look as good on mobile devices as they do in a full size web browser. Also, Wix® mobile app is available on Google Play and iTunes Connect to update your site right from the app.

An impression left by brief using the system:

The system has lots of templates that are looking nice and suit every taste while company website development.

The system is powerful in its editing capabilities (including design and layout editing) though all of them are provided in the WYSIWYG mode without access to the code.

The system’s weak place is inability to replace template for the already created page.

The system clearly stands out with its ADI feature as an alternative to the Editor.

The system was designed for the most of us, non-pro users who seek where and how to build the website, so that it would be an easy-to-use friendly platform allowing to build a free website that would look as if it was created by professionals and allow to resolve every issue that a website creator may have from choosing the design and layout and to hosting your website.

SquareSpace®

Website: www.squarespace.com

Subscription plans: 14-day free trial, $12-$18/mo (website plans) and $26-$40/mo (commerce plans).

Squarespace® appears to be on the same level on the site builder market as Wix®. This platform allows to build your own site with minimum effort applied. It still will be nice-looking even if you are non-professional user. More proficient users can do some customizations though.

If compared to Wix®, the editor does not allow the same level of flexibility in drag-and-drop as Wix where you may drop a block literally in any part of the page. When doing the same kind of operations in Squarespace®, you clearly feel there is an invisible grid behind which is composed of blocks where you may drop your content. The feeling that you drop your block in any part of the page is not about this platform.

In Squarespace®, same as in Wix®, a user starts creating his site with choosing the template. There are 58 templates to choose from to build your own site. Contrary to Wix®, Squarespace® allows loading multiple templates for your site that a user may use for different pages. Let’s see the distribution of templates between the different categories of websites that Squarespace® offers.

As we can see from the table above, the following categories have the highest number of templates:

Art and Design – 16

Community and Non-Profit – 14

Photography – 10

Professional Services – 15

Travel and Lifestyle – 14

The lowest number of templates are in the following categories:

Media and Entertainment – 4

Music – 4

Wedding – 6

The system also inquires basic information about a user and a future site, but beside the site content this will not be used as in Wix®. The platform however uses kind of site to suggest specific layouts and pages for user site based on the selections he makes.

Squarespace allows more customization using the following features:

Full code control

JSON access

Automatic Script Combo-ing

Git built-in

JSON-Template

Custom code

SFTP access

LESS.css

Native development tools

Query tags

Squarespace® provides integration with G Suite for emails. The platform allows purchasing own domains without leaving the system as well as connect third-party managed domains. In terms of building eCommerce marketplaces or stores, the platform provides numerous commerce capabilities. All sites created using Squarespace® are mobile ready.

For the convenience of use, Squarespace® has mobile app for Android and iOS, allowing to update your site when not at the desktop computer.

An impression left by brief using the system:

The system leaves a good impression of a powerful system with nice looking templates.

The system lists a big number of capabilities and features available to its users.

It turns out that by brief using the system I was not able to see most of those capabilities, which is the clear evidence that the system is not as easy to use as should be (or as Wix®, for example, usability of the system is not high as claimed by many reviews).

I have not seen how to use developer benefits widely mentioned in the features list.

Weebly®

Website: www.weebly.com

Subscription plans: Free (limited functionality, not all functions available), Starter ($8/mo), Pro ($18/mo), Business ($35/mo), Performance ($59/mo),

As stated in different site builder comparison sources, Weebly® is literally the best in terms of easiness to use site builder.

Weebly offers a number of attractive themes, which are split by categories as in Wix® and Squarespace®. Let’s see the breakdown of themes between categories and identify the richest and the poorest on themes categories.

Thus, the highest number of themes are available in the following categories:

Online Store – 13

Business – 14

The lowest number of themes are in these categories:

Event – 6

Personal – 7

Also, Weebly® provides additional virtual category – Featured. This category collects different themes from other categories for promotion purposes.

Based on personal experience of brief using the platform, I would doubt in this and put Weebly® on the same level as Squarespace® or even one level below. Some of the functionality like adding products (commerce) are not available in free version. The ability to drag object onto a page is working the same way as in Squarespace® – contrary to Wix® there is no ability to drag an object literally to any place on a page – locations are bound to some kind of a grid.

Weebly allows hosting your site on a subdomain of Weebly®, third-party domain or register a new domain right from the platform.

The platform provides comparatively easy way of adding content to the page – there is a side menu showing available elements that users may drag to a page. Some of the elements are marked as paid, some are not, but still the system may not allow placing them as these belong to the paid plans (Commerce Categories are free, products are paid).

Similar to Wix® and Squarespace®, Weebly® has App Center providing different apps (both paid and free) that can be added to your site. However, it was a bit confusing that some basic elements vertical divider (providing the ability to split page into columns) and popup are available as apps and not as basic page elements that you may add while creating content for your site.

Weebly® provides mobile apps to manage your site content for both Android and iOS, so if there is a need to make some edits on the go, it will not make a problem for you.

An impression left by brief using the system to build a free website:

The system is clearly one of the leaders in sitebuilders.

Though not the best in class, the system provides rather rich editing capabilities in terms of web design and layout changes.

The system provides full control over HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which makes it a possible choice for those who can code themselves or outsource website creation to a developer.

Similar to other leading platforms, all layouts are responsive, which is rather useful for a large group of users used to viewing the web on their mobile devices.

Mobile app for a platform available for both Android and iOS is clearly an advantage, a must for such platform providing capability to edit site content on the go.

WordPress®

Website: www.wordpress.com

Subscription plans: Free, Personal ($2.99/mo), Premium ($8.25/mo), Business (24.92/mo)

According to Google trends, WordPress® is the most searched term in site builders. It is evidently the most popular site builder (WordPress® claims 27% of the Internet sites are powered by WordPress®). However, WordPress® is sadly known for its poor reputation because of low security and poor performance when you use WordPress membership plugin or any other ones, which required extensive developers involvement.

About 45 free themes and about 41 premium themes are available from WordPress® as stated on their website for those considering WordPress® and potential site builder. From the first glance all themes are nice looking and it looks like almost everyone will have a chance to find a theme that he will like. However, design customizations provided in the two lower plans will not allow much changes even for non-pro users.

For those willing to use WordPress® for their website creation, the first stage is about choosing what you want to create. Based on the images on the screenshot below, depending on the purpose, different site layouts are offered.

When considering where and how to build the website, WordPress® still can be reviewed as one of possible solutions, because it allows theme change in the process of site creation – the feature that is a great advantage and may be considered by potential users (not available unfortunately in Wix®).

Let’s find out brief statistics about WordPress® themes breakdown between the website categories.

As we see, categories with the least FREE themes are:

Music – 4

Wedding – 5

Portfolio – 11

Travel – 11

In PAID themes, the least themes are in the following categories:

Wedding – 14

The most FREE themes are in the following categories:

Blog – 131

Minimal – 88

The most PAID themes belong to the following categories:

Blog – 163

Minimal – 134

In addition, wordpress.com provides two virtual categories:

Staff Picks

Trending

Both these categories include different themes from other categories and represent those themes that were picked by the wordpress.com staff and those that are currently in trend.

Filtering capabilities are rich here allowing to look for a theme in specific color, layouts features and price.

In terms of ease of use in site construction and management, WordPress® is definitely not the best choice. Claimed to be the easiest to use solution to build your own site, when logged in to the WordPress® admin panel, the system looks like well organized, but not visual enough. In particular, the section related to pages creation is not convenient.

This may be an indication that the system is designed for profound users who are used to working with the code, but this is what definitely will confuse and not meet the expectations of the average non-pro users, who are not experienced in web design and web development. Thus, they will definitely need hire dedicated team of developers or a developer to assist with building a website or consult on the best way to build a website.

Another indication that this platform is not targeted at not experienced with the code and CSS users is that when you create a page, which is easy, you cannot figure out how it will look like without leaving for Preview. I in particular did not see the ability to add some blocks to a page or split it into columns. However, the WYSIWYG editor provides the ability to switch to HTML view and code my page, which I don’t want to.

Designed as the blog platform, WordPress® now offers capabilities to build a free website. Even more – due to the free WordPress plugins and WooCommerce® in particular, you may now implement custom eCommerce website development using WordPress®.

Site created on WordPress® is mobile optimized, at the same time WordPress® offers mobile and desktop apps to update your site anywhere, even on the go. Mobile apps are available for Android and iOS.

Overall impression left by brief using the system:

The platform reviewed (wordpress.com) is not the same as well known wordpress.org. The first one is online platform for people who think that the best way to build a website is to make it rather simple, maybe host it under the WordPress domain and that’s it.

Along with WYSIWYG, the platform allows full control over the code, making it flexible to use by a non-pro users and developers (custom fonts, CSS and other customizations are available in Premium and Business subscription plans only).

Another level of flexibility is the ability to change theme in the process of working with site.

The platform is limited in capabilities compared to wordpress.org – the number of available themes is significantly lower here, there are less ready layouts for homepage, eCommerce capabilities are not supported.

Even with WYSIWYG, creating site pages is not very user friendly as in other top site builders.

Overall popularity mainly refers to wordpress.org with rich capabilities, numerous plugins and themes, but designed to be handled by users who are pro in web design and web development.

Duda®

Website: www.dudamobile.com

Subscription plans: There are three levels of subscriptions available at Duda®.

Responsive web: Free, Business+ ($14.25/mo annual), and Business + eCommerce ($22.5/mo annual)

Mobile-only websites: Free and Premium ($7.20/mo annual)

Reseller: DudaPro ($249/yr)

Duda® site builder is mentioned in the list of the most highly rated platforms. And at the first glance it looks as being properly categorized here.

Similar to most of the popular site builders, on the very first step the system asks for the template that you like and allows to filter shown templates by site kind and even to choose color that will apply the color filter and remove those templates that do not match your preferences.

There is a categorization of available templates and here is how templates are distributed between categories:

As we can see, the least templates belong to the following categories:

Blank – 6

Restaurant – 7

Blog – 7

Portfolio – 8

The most themes are in the following categories:

Business – 45

The template that you select already has a set of pages with the content inserted, so you will need to customize it before launching it as website. Editing is done in the design view mode with the ability to open a page that you create in the Preview mode to see how it would be shown to your website visitors in a browser.

It feels that most likely Duda® does not have as much powerful controls as WordPress® (through plugins) or other site builders, but in terms of ease of use Duda® wins in comparison with WordPress®, but loses to Wix®, Weebly® and Squarespace®.

Duda® allows low level pages editing including custom HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which would be interesting for those wishing more flexibility in terms of page customization.

In terms of integrations, Duda® offers its users the following integrations:

Locu

Facebook

Yelp

OpenTable

Google Maps

Google AdSense

PayPal

YouTube

Twitter

RSS Feeds

WordPress

SinglePlatform

Overall impression after brief using the system:

One of the good, but not enough platforms to build a free website.

Templates are looking nice, but their number does not impress.

Editing capabilities possible either through direct code access or in WYSIWYG.

Have not found any plugins/extensions, which is definitely a minus.

Overall, the system is one of a kind, but I personally would not look at because of its poor capabilities.

Shopify®

Website: www.shopify.com

Subscription plans: free trial, Basic Shopify ($29/mo +$49 for retail package), Shopify ($79/mo + $49 for retail package), Advanced Shopify ($299/mo +$49 for retail package), Shopify Plus (no details shared; enterprise-grade solutions for high-volume merchants and large businesses), Shopify Lite ($9/mo; sell on Facebook, chat with customers on Messenger, add products to any website or blog).

Compared to all previously listed site builders, Shopify® is an eCommerce platform, which means that it was originally built for eCommerce and as every eCommerce platform, provides some CMS capabilities to its users to make their stores look attractive to customers.

Themes in Shopify® are organized according to the products categories. There are paid and free themes for your future eCommerce store design. Let’s see which categories are themes rich and which are themes poor.

Thus, the least FREE themes belong to the following categories:

Food and Drink – 0

Home and Garden – 0

Furniture – 0

The least PAID themes are in the following categories:

Furniture – 4

Toys and Games – 4

Other – 5

Health and Beauty – 6

The most FREE themes are available in these categories:

Clothing and Fashion – 4

The most PAID themes belong to these categories:

Clothing and Fashion – 31

Jewelry and Fashion – 16

In terms of eCommerce store design customization, Shopify® does not make it hard to find this section of the site administration. There are two options available – browsing free themes and visiting theme store. 9 free themes are available for selection.

Within the selected theme, available features are listed as well as available styles.

As seen from the screenshot, themes are optimized for viewing on mobile devices. After installing a theme, you may publish it online or apply design customizations. In particular, the following customizations are available:

Colors

Typography

Social media

Favicon

Checkout

Besides the basic customizations where you may add some blocks and customize their content, Shopify® provides the capabilities to add templates, layouts, sections, snippets, assets, configs, locales and do customizations right in the code.

Web design and web development is quite easy with Shopify®. To assist developers, Shopify® stores versions of the files that you create and you may always switch to older versions. Also, variable reference is available for convenience of use. Shopify® uses Liquid, the eCommerce template language, which is written inline with theme’s HTML and allows displaying site content according to your vision.

Custom eCommerce website development is quite desirable by users, because as long as trends in design are changing constantly, there will be need to adapt the website to the latest updates in terms of appearance. Considering the customization capabilities in Shopify®, basic customizations are provided on a high level allowing an average user to get some unique look of their store, but to get the truly different site, you will need to either dig into the code or involve developers into this work.

Shopify® has the App Store offering numerous apps for its users. Since Shopify® is a  platform for custom eCommerce website development, apps in the store are targeted at improving merchants’ sales capabilities.

Themes store has numerous themes to choose from. Search and filtering capabilities are there to make it easy for you to find a proper eCommerce store design theme to match your tastes.

Even if you found an eCommerce store design that you like, but it is a paid theme and you are not sure about buying it, Shopify® allows you to install a preview of this theme and see it applied to your store. It even allows to do customizations to a theme preview. After the testing is conducted you may buy a theme and get full access to this eCommerce store design.

Shopify® has mobile app to manage your store on the go. The app is available for both Android and iOS.

To summarize, Shopify® has slightly above basic eCommerce store design capabilities compared to other site builders, but let’s not forget this is not what it was created for. However, taking into account that most eCommerce stores are created and services by technical specialists, the platform has benefits providing the ability to add and create content in the code, which however requires to hire dedicated team of developers who are skilled specialists knowing Liquid.

Overall impression of the platform after brief using:

First of all, the platform was initially designed for a specific purpose – as custom eCommerce website development platform, thus expectations from it were not high.

Compared to Duda®, certainly wins as offers numerous apps from own App Store, which extends its functionality and is good.

Customization capabilities are flexible as the platform provides access to the code. However, Shopify® uses its own language Liquid, thus there is a possibility that not all developers will be able to start customizing the code immediately without having to learn Liquid.

In terms of eCommerce store design customizations, capabilities are not so rich as in Wix®, Weebly® and Squarespace®.

For layout customizations, the system allows adding templates, layouts, sections, snippets, assets, configs and locales, which is pretty good and does provide flexibility, though a non-pro user will most likely have difficulties with this.

Club Website®

Website: http://ift.tt/2nOuxla

Subscription plans: N/A

Club Website® appears to be a platform designed for specific needs, so it cannot be compared to other site builders. It has its specific niche, thus offers its users a set of functionality that is highly requested by them: creating and maintaining teams and leagues, providing timetables for games and statistics for games results.

As additional bonuses, the system offers built-in email and sms platform, fundraising and eCommerce capabilities.

However, in terms of web design and web development customization, the system capabilities are rather poor.

Site owner may only change design of some basic elements. In terms of customizing page layout, site owner may only change the position of blocks on the page, add blocks or remove them.

However, this platform not only allows to build a free website, but also has such an advantage: since it was created to serve specific needs, it has dynamic blocks that are intended to display specific information from the database, which changes with the time. Each block is considered an add-on in the system and can be configured and added to a page if you like.

Though the system features drag and drop capabilities, you are bound to block sizes, which cannot be changed and thus the site always looks very basic regardless of information displayed and design you applied.

Overall impression after reviewing the system:

In terms of web design and web development the system appears rather weak and dull.

Once in the design mode, all you can do is add/remove blocks and drag and drop them over the page composed of the same blocks.

Nevertheless you may build a free website with the help of this service, there are no themes that you may apply, but only change some colors, which is an extremely limited design customization capability.

The system nevertheless has its own niche and no other platform that has been reviewed can beat it there – it has backend with the functionality allowing to put information about teams and leagues on the frontend in certain blocks.

Taking into account poor customization capabilities, you cannot clearly say numerous themes and layouts are needed here or people using this platform to build a free website do not want nice design and are fully satisfied with what the platform provides.

Summary

General

This research was intended to create an overall picture of platforms available on the market, identify what kind of system is the most demanded by the audience, which exact functionality/features are there in the most popular systems, which we consider necessary there and what the average user needs from those systems to build a free website.

As a result, this research should provide us insight on whether there is a niche not covered by such systems and whether it is worth to enter this market and if yes, we should know what the solution we should create to gain success.

Platforms Reviewed

For this research we concentrated on a couple of platforms which allow you to build your own site and are considered market leading players based on different reviews and Google Trends. These are:

Wix®

Squarespace®

Weebly®

WordPress®

Duda®

Shopify®

The first three platforms are the absolute leaders in the area according to the number of sites created, overall popularity, Google Trends information and numerous site builders reviews available in the Internet.

The Duda® mobile solution was taken for comparison purposes, as it could not be considered one of the leaders, but still is one of the solutions people choose to build a free website.

WordPress® was also chosen for comparison purposes as it is considered one of the most popular and widely used site builder. We wanted to know more and find out whether it is true and why it is so popular.

The Club Website® was also reviewed as the representative of site builders for specific purposes (in this case site builder for sports clubs).

Shopify was taken as a representative of the platforms that were initially designed for custom eCommerce website development, but as each store uses all possibilities to attract and retain customers, CMS is one of the tools used to make stores unique and attractive for customers.

Niches Occupied by Reviewed Site Builders

Most of the reviewed platforms belong to the same niche – CMS/Site Builders. These are:

Wix®

Squarespace®

Weebly®

Duda®

WordPress®

Club Website®

However, WordPress® being a site builder platform was considered a blogging platform till certain time. Now, providing large amount of focus to blogging capabilities, WordPress® is also providing capabilities in custom eCommerce website development, site building for other types of businesses, therefore not just blogging.

Shopify®, as already mentioned, is primarily an eCommerce platform, thus CMS capabilities are secondary in this platform. It may be put to the Shopping Cart category.

Finally, Club Website® is also a CMS, but rather specific one. We put it to the list of CMS/Site builder platforms, but Club Website® is clearly not solely one of them. None of the other CMS solutions listed there can compete with Club Website® due to its unique capabilities that none of other platforms provide.

All of the reviewed solutions for web design and web development are hosted, which means  everything is done online and hosted on the site builders’ servers either under their domains or custom domains purchased by site owners. WordPress® however, has an option of creating website on your computer and then arranging hosting for it, but according to this research, this is not what most of users, who are non-pro, demand.

Sitebuilders Features

Here we will list the features available in each reviewed site builder to have an insight on the capabilities offered by each platform.

Wix®

Multiple subscription plans providing extended set of features in advanced plans

Huge number of categorized templates at your disposal

Create site in the Editor or with ADI

Mobile app for Android and iOS available

All themes are mobile-ready which eases up web design and web development as a whole

Numerous apps from own App Market extending the functionality of website

The site is built in WYSIWYG only; no access to the code

Extremely flexible drag-and-drop

Intuitive and user friendly interface

Rich design and layout customizations

Blogging and eCommerce capabilities available

Integration with Facebook, Google, Instagram, Stripe, YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook Live Messenger, and Dropbox is available

Flexible hosting options: host on Wix®, connect your own domain or buy it without leaving Wix®

Does not provide hybrid app creation for your developed website

Squarespace®

Multiple subscription plans providing extended set of features in advanced plans

Nice looking templates, though not too many of them available

All templates are mobile-ready

User friendly interface that is easy to use

Possible to switch templates for already created pages

Creating site is possible in WYSIWYG mode

Direct access to the code (including JSON, custom code, LESS.css) is provided

Integration with G Suite, Dropbox, Google Analytics, DIsqus, Facebook, Google Docs, MailChimp is available

Layout editing capabilities include adding different kinds of blocks, though inserting them is not very flexible

Numerous design customization options available based on different page elements

Flexible hosting options: host on Squarespace®, connect own domain or get one directly in Squarespace®

Blogging and eCommerce capabilities available

Mobile app available for both Android and iOS

Does not provide hybrid app creation for your developed website

Weebly®

Multiple subscription plans providing extended set of features in advanced plans and explaining how to build the website 

All themes are responsive, thus are adapted to mobile devices

The number of available themes is way insufficient – only 18 available

Mobile app available for both Android and iOS

Provides blogging and eCommerce capabilities

User friendly interface with a good structured menu

Provides apps for use on the site from the own App Center

Very intuitive way of adding apps to the site pages

Preview on multiple emulated devices available

SEO tools available

Pages creation is possible in WYSIWYG mode

Direct access to the code provided

SSL certificates provided

DDoS mitigation provided

Blogging and eCommerce capabilities provided

Possible to change theme for already created pages

Full control over HTML and CSS

Flexible hosting options: on a Weebly® subdomain, connect your own domain or register a new one directly in Weebly®

Layout customizations with dragging and dropping elements

For the chosen theme, few customization options are available – changing fonts for different page areas is allowed only

Does not provide hybrid app creation for your developed website

Duda®

Multiple subscription plans providing extended set of features in advanced plans

Does not provide mobile apps to manage site content on the go

Provides numerous nice looking templates

Site creating in the WYSIWYG editor

No extensions/plugins available

All themes are responsive

Provides blogging and eCommerce capabilities

Provides integration with Locu, Facebook, Yelp, OpenTable, Google Maps, Google AdSense, PayPal, YouTube, Twitter RSS Feeds, WordPress, and SinglePlatform

Provides full code customization capabilities including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

Provides a choice of creating a responsive site or mobile-only site

Preview site on different emulated devices available

Provides numerous widgets for site content and layout customization

Provides website personalization capability through creating rules (for returning visitors, special promotions, nearby visitors, popups, etc.)

Very simple store available in the free plan (up to 10 products)

Provides SSL certificate for a site

SEO capabilities

Google Analytics enabled

URL redirects

Site backup

Hosted on Amazon Cloud

Does not provide hybrid app creation for your developed website

WordPress®

Multiple subscription plans providing extended set of features in advanced plans

WordPress.com is different from what most of users think – wordpress.org

WordPress.com (the one being reviewed) is a hosting solution like other site builders in this research

Functionally, this site builder is more limited in capabilities that what wordpress.org allows

The number of themes available is significantly less than wordpress.org offers – 356 free and 734 paid themes, but still the total number of templates exceeds 1k

Offers nice looking themes that are responsive

Plugins: offers only Jetpack feature set

Some of the features in the Jetpack are available in premium subscription plans only (SEO tools, Google Analytics, Custom Design, and Video Uploads)

Supports user roles: Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, Follower

Allows building multiple structured menus based on the pages available on site

Allows replacing the currently selected theme

Customizations available in free subscription plans: change color scheme, set font for headings and base font, set header image, and add widgets from the limited list of available ones

Blogging enabled

Provides mobile app for both Android and iOS

Hosting options include hosting on wordpress subdomain and the ability to connect your own domain

Does not provide hybrid app creation for your developed website

Shopify®

Multiple subscription plans available differing by eCommerce capabilities

Initially designed as eCommerce platform, CMS are not the main feature here

Blogging and eCommerce enabled

Provides mobile app for Android and iOS

The number of templated eCommerce store designs offered exceeds 100, which is not bad for eCommerce platform

Themes are responsive

Provides the ability to edit website in WYSIWYG editor

Provides direct access to the code allowing flexible customization

Code customization should be done in Shopify® internal language Liquid

Provides different apps for site content through own App Store

Provides social media integration, integration with seventy payment gateways and shipping carriers

Allows adding templates, layouts, sections, snippets, assets, configs and locales

Provides version control to roll back to a specific saved version

PCI compliant

Extremely high (99,99%) uptime

Provides SSL certificates

Allows flexible hosting – either on shopify subdomain, by connecting your own domain or buying one without leaving Shopify®

Allows changing theme for already created site

In terms of customizations allows changing fonts and colors

Allows editing layouts through adding/removing blocks and changing their position on page

Does not provide hybrid app creation for your developed website

Club Website®

Optimized for viewing on mobile devices

Only one template available

eCommerce enabled

Design customization limited to choosing page header and adjusting background and color scheme

Layout customizations limited to adding/removing blocks from pages and moving them using drag-and-drop

Multimedia features allow to add media gallery

Provides fundraising capabilities

Integrated sms and email platform

The main benefit of this platform is that due to it being dedicated solely for sports clubs, it allows displaying specific information acquired from backend in the dedicated blocks

Does not provide hybrid app creation for your developed website

Conclusion

The market of site builders is definitely not lacking solutions if you’d like to build your own website. Solutions available on the market are very different in their approach to site design from very simple to advanced.

Most of the site builders are present in the niche of site builders for personal sites and blogs. Some are basically eCommerce platforms providing CMS capabilities, the others are site builders created for specific purposes, like Club Website®.

The ideal system will be intuitive and easy to use system capable of creating a site that looks professional, allows flexible customization and providing hosting capabilities, that is doing everything in complex without forcing users to learn how to change the code, manage hosting, etc.

In terms of customizations, the ideal system would provide numerous themes allowing maximum customizations plus changing layouts through dragging and dropping them in WYSIWYG mode. The ability to edit HTML, CSS and JavaScript would be a plus for more advanced users or those who still would like to outsource website creation to a more experienced user or developer.

The most comprehensive platform would allow something like Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) of Wix® that would go through the steps of website creation doing all the necessary steps, being triggered by a user and teaching him how to do everything himself for future experience.

In terms of integrations, depending on the need, the platform should definitely provide integrations with social networks, payment gateways, shipping carriers, SEO tools, analytics tools, ad managers etc.

The system should provide users with the ability to add blog to their website and most likely some basic store capabilities. Enhanced store functionality is not needed as for professional stores there are plenty of custom eCommerce website development platforms.

There is no need in a hybrid app created specifically for website, but there should be mobile app for Android and iOS definitely.

The platform should provide flexible subscription plans that vary in functionality the platform provides, but some basic and most common functionality should be available in free plan.

The ideal system would have the app store providing users with a sufficient number of widgets and blocks allowing to easily customize website layout and content.

Taking into account all information found during the research, getting on the market of common CMS/site builders for blogs and websites is too risky as the developed platform should be almost ideal to beat competitors. Besides, taking into account support efforts and hosting options, such platform could become profitable only with certain amount of clients, which is not so easy to achieve.

Looking at the market of specific platforms like Club Website®, it seems like the possibilities are bigger here, but a more detailed research will be needed to identify features that mandatorily should be there and which are demanded by clients and users, but not yet available in existing systems. However, we need to take into account that the market niche here is much narrower and it will be also not so easy to gain profit with such platform.

The main competitive advantage here would be providing enhanced design customizations, but not yet known whether current users of such systems consider very limited design customization capabilities a significant drawback of the systems they currently use.

Here is the comparative table of all reviewed site builders providing some basic information about each platform.

Name Wix® Squarespace® Weebly® WordPress® Duda® Shopify® Club Website® Market Niche Site Builder/CMS Site Builder/CMS Site Builder/CMS Blogging platform/CMS Site Builder/CMS Ecommerce platform Site Builder for sports clubs Features Drag and drop, rich media gallery, Editing pages with Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) or the Editor, flexible page layout customization Switching templates for an already created page, Design customizations, page layout customizations, commerce customizations, analytics User friendly and easy to use, nice templates, app store to apply additional functionality, possible to register own domain in the system, use own domain or host on Weebly®. Free and paid themes, the most popular site builder on the market, preset layout options for a site, theme change is possible, flexible capabilities for developers, mobile optimized sites Nice templates, rates in the list of 10 most popular site builders, user friendly editing in the Design mode, templates filtered by site kind All advantages of the online store, direct access to the code, version control, nice looking templates, numerous themes available with the ability to filter and search for a theme, PCI compliant, 99,99% uptime, SSL certificates Very narrow niche site builder offering limited capabilities that may not be positioned as advantage of this system in comparison to other site builders, very easy to build, mobile access, eCommerce, fundraising, integrated email and sms platform Level of Customization WYSIWYG only; change page layout and design Full code control, JSON access, Custom code, LESS.css, Native development tools, Custom WYSIWYG editor WYSIWYG, page layout customization, theme, possible to change theme or fonts within a selected theme, Full HTML/CSS control Full control over the code1 along with WYSIWYG editor WYSIWYG plus full customizing the code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) Add templates, layouts, sections, snippets, assets, configs, locales, direct access to the code (HTML and CSS) Very low, drag and drop blocks in WYSIWYG, remove blocks from a page Third-party Integrations Facebook, Google, Instagram, Stripe, YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook Live Messenger, Dropbox G Suite, Dropbox, Google Analytics, Disqus, Facebook, Google Docs, MailChimp Through the apps Jetpack essential features included with every plan, no ability to install other plugins. Google AdWords and CEO tools available in Business subscription plan only. Locu, Facebook, Yelp, OpenTable, Google Maps, Google AdSense, PayPal, YouTube, Twitter, RSS Feeds, WordPress, SinglePlatform Social media integration, integration with 70 payment gateways and shipping carriers to get shipping rates Integration with maps Plugins/Extensions Yes, own App Market. Apps suggested based on the blocks that you add. N/A2 Yes, App Center Yes, numerous plugins available, built-in social sharing N/A2 Yes, App Store N/A2 Advantages Very flexible drag and drop, ADI, huge amount of templates, rich page layout editing capabilities, possible to purchase domain from Wix®, extremely easy to use, maximum user friendliness Template switching, Custom CSS, Free TypeKit fonts, Free Google fonts, CDN, Squarespace® Analytics, user friendly and easy to use for a non-professional Nice templates, good structured menu, evident way of adding apps to your site pages, preview on different devices available in the emulation mode, SEO tools, custom code, SSL certificates and DDoS Mitigation Rich capabilities for developers to customize the code, most popular platform on the market, big number of developer available at client disposal, statistics, SEO optimized, the biggest community of online publishers, mobile friendly, numerous themes available, possible to set custom domain for your website One of the most popular site builders with the ability to build site using WYSIWYG editor, nice looking themes available, well structured menu for customization Numerous nice looking themes, different level of design customizations including direct access to the code, version control to rollback the changes, mobile app to manage site changes on the go, built originally as eCommerce platform Designed for specific websites, offers capabilities of sending information to database and displaying it in the dedicated blocks Disadvantages No access to the page source code3, not possible to switch templates once you created a page Drag and drop is not very flexible, number of templates is not very high to choose from Some of the elements are paid, but not marked so, which is confusing, not so intuitive as Wix, drag and drop is not flexible to full extent Not intuitive enough to easily handle, known for being insecure, adding plugins slows down the site, introduces plugin conflicts, developer involvement is almost 100% required, some themes and plugins are low quality Not flexible enough in WYSIWYG capabilities, no evident extensions/plugins In terms of site customizations slightly weaker than other site builders. Code customizations are done in Liquid, the specific language used by Shopify® only. Very poor design and customization capabilities Mobile app4 Android and iOS Android and iOS Android and iOS Android and iOS No Android and iOS No Number of Templates 500+ 58 18 10905 80 100+ N/A Responsive Themes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Blogging System Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes N/A eCommerce Enabled Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes

1 In Premium and Business subscription plans only. 2 Have not found evident place for apps, assumable no apps or plugins are available. 3 With Wix this can hardly be considered a disadvantage. 4 By mobile app we mean that there is a mobile app available for site builder that you may use for managing your created site after signing in to your account. No platform offers to create a mobile app specifically for your site. 5 The actual number of themes is lower since some themes are present in multiple categories.

This research will definitely help users with general knowledge of PC to pick the right variant of site constructor and build a free website on their own. In case the end product or offered number of designs is not enough and not what you’ve expected from the builder, you can outsource website creation to IT company or hire dedicated team of developers for this project as it is the best way to build a website. You can also check out our portfolio to make sure, that we offer solutions of the highest quality.

If you are wondering where to order custom eCommerce website development or hire dedicated team of developers – Mobilunity is the answer.

from How to Build the Website on Your Own? Free Website Builders Research.

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Hire Mobile App Developers in Israel

Why Is Mobile Development So Necessary?

Let’s face it: consumers are increasingly demanding mobility and accessibility from their favorite brands every year, and the use of applications on the run and even making a purchase without interrupting from business has become commonness. Companies that do not have high-quality mobile applications lose a lot compared to their competitors. Thus, the primary task of almost any business is to get and keep the consumer’s attention for so long that he would make the purchase of your product or service. For this purpose, personnel outsourcing services and mobile app developers Israel are needed.

Top Technologies Used by Mobile App Developers Israel

All the applications are created for two basic operation systems, which are Android and iOS. Each of them has its peculiarities and popular technologies used.

The operating system iOS was introduced personally by Steve Jobs and holds a leading position in the mobile device market. This system can be called the first one, which successfully developed in the smartphone market, thanks to the popularity of the iPhone, which in turn affected the growth of activity and the development of such platforms as Android and Windows Phone. The basic technology used by iOS developer Israel is Objective-C. It is a simple language designed for object-oriented programming. Objective-C, as well as C ++ is an extension of ANSI-C and has support for such features as the description of classes, methods, and properties.

Android, which is the property of Google Inc. continues to be no less popular mobile operating system. Its wide use is due to its openness to both users and developers. Here are main technologies which are commonly used by android developers Jerusalem:

Android Studio is a new and fully integrated application development environment, recently released by Google for the Android operating system. This product is designed to provide developers with new tools for creating applications, as well as provide an alternative to Eclipse, which is currently the most popular development environment;

Unity. It is almost universal graphics engine. It has its own independent development environment, those, in fact, it is a powerful tool for creating 2d and 3d applications and games.

Comparing Salaries of Dedicated App Developers Israel and Ukraine

Average programmer’s salary in Israel is $5410. For comparison, the same Ukrainian developer salary will be approximately $3350. It is reasonable to discover salaries of dedicated app developers Israel in different locations. The main cities in Israel where mobile programmers are needed are Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. PHP developer in Jerusalem earns near $3638. JavaScript developer performs his work for $5497. Average monthly salary of .Net developer constitutes $6436.

In his turn, PHP developer in Tel Aviv receives $5 037 per month. JavaScript and .Net developer salaries are $4617 and $3678 as average. We can see that prices of app developers Tel Aviv services are rather high, but they are still demanding. Talking about salaries of these specialists in Ukraine, it should be mentioned that PHP developer rate is estimated as $3422; JavaScript programmer earns $2300 and .Net engineer’s salary is approximately $1800 per month.

Choosing between App Developers Tel Aviv & Kiev

After comparing wages of programmers in these two countries, it is becoming obvious that it is no reason to pay more because high price not always mean high quality. Hiring dedicated developers in Ukraine will bring you the best possible result and you will receive an opportunity to invest saved money in your next successful project.

You can consider hiring app developers in Tel Aviv, but will benefit from choosing our team! How? Get in touch and learn more!

from Hire Mobile App Developers in Israel

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Hire Dedicated Developers in Israel

Team of Israel Developers for Hire

Correctly organized teamwork is very important nowadays both in large and small companies. The most important advantage of teamwork is that it allows avoiding mistakes. When a single person works, he may not notice a defect, miss something or does not take or into account, and the team will help make the task execution more effective; what one member of the group did not notice will be noticed by the other. The chances of avoiding mistakes are greatly increasing, and this is crucial.

In addition, the teamwork is much faster, while the energy costs are reduced; the responsibilities are distributed evenly, which avoids excessive congestion and overexertion. The rule of mutual assistance usually acts in a cohesive group. External factors do not affect the result of the work of the group as much as on single worker’s result. If necessary, the group can quickly respond to changes, find the most appropriate optimal solution for the tasks.

The thoughts, individuality, and creativity of each individual worker are also taken into account during teamwork. Everyone strives to show his abilities as best as possible, keep up with others and as a result, the working capacity of the whole team is significantly increasing.

After the employee gets used to teamwork, his communication and creative abilities also improve greatly. It is possible to say that such type of work is good not only for the company but for every individual employee. This contributes to the development of qualities that are very important in advancement on a career ladder, highlight leadership qualities and hidden potential of every staff member.

It also should be noticed that IT sphere almost always suggest a teamwork as a pledge of the successful result. Individuals rarely succeed in IT, as a rule, it is a team work for team results and goals, teamwork skills, the ability to take the initiative and responsibility for decisions made, the proper arrangement of priorities and the allocation of time and resources.

If you want to hire developers in Israel, it is necessary to know the main factors of success for teamwork:

a clear statement of goals and objectives;

correct selection of the composition of the team;

well thought-out system for the members of the team;

team members’ ability to work collectively.

Outsource Your Dedicated Team with Mobilunity

Before considering the advantages of cooperation with us (for instance, if you need to hire PHP and JavaScript developers), it will be useful to remind the benefits of outsourcing itself. The use of outsourcing frees from documentation of workers’ salaries, deductions to various funds and tax deductions, leasing costs, maintenance of office equipment, and purchase of office supplies. A full-time employee can get sick, disrupting the implementation of an important project at the most inopportune moment. Profitable outsourcing of the company’s personnel ensures that the employee will not go into decree or even discharged. The customer will acquire the knowledge and experience of the staff of highly qualified employees instead of the efforts of one or two full-time workers. The solution of secondary tasks will not distract the leadership from engaging in the main areas. Periodic costs for staff development will be minimized or the need for them will disappear.

Here are the main benefits of cooperating with Mobilunity outsourcing company:

Reduction of IT staff costs;

Improving service quality and minimizing downtime;

Predictability of IT expenditures;

High level of responsibility and guarantee to the customer;

Transparent reporting system;

A unified approach for solving all problems arising in the course of work;

Use of our professional resources;

Use of diverse production and technological resources;

Ability to maneuver the cost and timing of projects;

Convenient use of geographical resources. If this or that work costs a certain amount in your region, then in our region this cost may be lower, therefore it is more profitable to do some types of work with our help.

Salaries of Ukrainian and Israel Dedicated Team

In order to persuade you in benefits of cooperation with Ukrainian outsourcing company, it is necessary to consider how much doest it cost to hire developers in Israel comparing with the same service in Ukraine. Hiring Israel dedicated team will cost approximately $5477 for member depending from the requirements of the project and technologies used, which can include PHP, .Net, Java, Angular, Laravel, Magento, Opencart, and others.

It is also reasonable to compare developers’ salaries in different cities of Israel. For example, if you want to hire developers in Jerusalem, be ready for the next prices. PHP developer earns approximately $ 3638 in this city. JavaScript developer will ask for his work $5497 as average. Services of Net developer are the most expensive there and estimated in $6436 per month.

Wages of developers in Haifa are little different. PHP developer receives $3917 for his work. Average monthly salary of JavaScript developer is $2230. Net developer’s price is also high and consists $5597. Hiring dedicated team in Tel Aviv will cost almost the same money as in Jerusalem. For comparison, PHP developer monthly salary is $5037. JavaScript developer and .Net developer earns near $4617 and $3678 accordingly. It is easy to notice that it will be not cheap for even the most prospective project to hire developers in Tel Aviv.

Prices for IT outstaffing services from web developers Ashdod do not differ much from the all above-mentioned cities. An average rate of PHP developer is $ 4197 per month. JavaScript developer receives approximately $ 2258 in this city. Monthly salary of .Net developer is estimated in $ 4 477. We can see that prices of Israel developers for hire are rather financial consuming. It is will be interesting to discover that PHP, JavaScript and .Net developers in Kiev, Ukraine receive $3422, $2300 and $1800 accordingly as average.

Hire developers in Israel or get Ukrainian dedicated team of programmers at the adequate and all-inclusive price!

from Hire Dedicated Developers in Israel

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Our Experience of Customizing Magento by Magento Dedicated Developers of Mobilunity

One of our clients requested a web store development based on one of the popular eCommerce platforms. He had a specific preferences towards the platform to build the store on, so he was specifically looking for hiring Magento dedicated developers. We readily accepted the challenge as Mobilunity is a global provider of remote PHP, Python, C++, Java and Magento web developers for hire.

When developing a store for our client, the team had to apply some customizations and even do a bugfix for an issue encountered with URL rewrites.

Multilingual Feature Customization

The client wanted his store to be multilingual. In Magento, store views are used for localization purposes. When you create a website, one store view is created automatically for the base language. You may then create as many additional store views as you want to add languages to your site. As you fill in your store with categories and products, you may provide locale specific names on a store view level by overriding global settings.

On the storefront, customers use the Store Switcher to change the store locale based to a selected language. On the backend, URL rewrites are created for categories and products so that under each locale products and categories have the appropriate URLs.

The mechanism of multilingual site is managed by the Store module. When a customer changes store locale using the Store Switcher, the Store module looks for a corresponding rewrite for a category or product page a customer is viewing and displays the proper page in a browser.

However, our Magento dedicated developers faced a defect in the standard functionality when a URL for a product located on a third level subcategory was broken. URL rewrites for categories and products located one level higher worked fine, but not for products attached to the third level subcategories. The code change related to URL building logic was applied to fix this issue in the Store module. In particular, the original code was copied, overridden in di.xml and then modified to fix this issue as seen from the code sample below.

The original code:

if ($urlRewrite) {    $data[ActionInterface::PARAM_NAME_URL_ENCODED] = $this->urlHelper->getEncodedUrl(        $this->trimSlashInPath($this->urlBuilder->getUrl($urlRewrite->getRequestPath()))    ); }

Was replaced with the code fixing the URL building logic:

if ($urlRewrite) {    $data[ActionInterface::PARAM_NAME_URL_ENCODED] = $this->urlHelper->getEncodedUrl(        $this->trimSlashInPath($this->urlBuilder->getBaseUrl() . $urlRewrite->getRequestPath())    ); }

Besides that, the standard Magento functionality displays the entire path to the product in breadcrumbs that included all nesting levels. Still our team made additional changes for the customer to have short path in breadcrumbs containing only the category a product is attached to without displaying the entire path.

Magento Developers for Hire

If you already tried to hire dedicated Magento developer to build online stores, you probably know that creating such stores is a more difficult task after the release of Magento 2.

Even experienced Magento 1 web developers from the community face difficulties with implementing customizations required by clients due to changes in system architecture. Mobilunity possesses sufficient knowledge in Magento 2 development and customization and has Magento web developers for hire to meet any needs of your project or business.

Looking for Magento developers for hire for your store development? You are at the right place.

Contact Mobilunity today to hire dedicated Magento developer and have your store up and running!

from Our Experience of Customizing Magento by Magento Dedicated Developers of Mobilunity

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Android App Development: How to Overlay Video on a Video

Since we live in the epoque of Snapchat, Instagram and other visual social networks, lot’s of people started to get obsessed with cool and funny video effects. Many companies create corporate channels to promote their services through video content, optimizing it for better ranking. Mobile app developers wonder more and more how to overlay video on a video, what kinds of techs to use and will it be successful at all. That’s why developers of Mobilunity decided to conduct a small test the main idea of which was to record a video with effects using a mobile device, so that the process would look like this:

Firstly, you choose one animated overlay effect from the list.

Then, you click the button “Slap Me” and the chosen effect is shown on the screen.

You record the video.

Complete variant of the video can be saved on the SD card or shared with your friends on social networks

FFmpeg Library for Testing Video Overlay Effects

Our developers decided to use FFmpeg library for this test. If we need to do some transformations or changes in the video – the library has a rich number of filters to choose from. For our task we have chosen two filters – chroma key and overlay. We have tried to execute the filters in the command line on PC with Windows OS.

  First example below shows how animated overlay video influences the main video:

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -i effect.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v][1:v]overlay=eof_action=pass[out]" -map "[out]" out.mp4

In case we need to remove background color in the video effect – we can use chroma key filter. Next example shows how we can remove background color in the video and overlay effect on it:

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -i effect.mp4 -filter_complex "[1:v]chromakey=0x12da11:0.2[chromakey_res];[0:v][chromakey_res]overlay=eof_action=pass[out]" -map "[out]" out.mp4

Testing of FFmpeg Library on Android

On Windows this code works perfectly fine, but we also needed to test FFmpeg library on Android OS. We had two choices to perform this:

Build FFmpeg’s source code for Android and use NDK to write needed code on C language.

Use the library which builds the bridge between Java and native C++ libraries.

Firstly we’ve selected the former variant. We tried to build FFmpeg’s source code for Android OS. We checked out several tutorials on how to do this, but there were some issues anyway. We tried to fix these issues but got new ones instead. This is why we finally decided to select the second variant. We’ve created small project for testing, where we tried to use chromakey and overlay filters. After this testing we found out that chromakey filter doesn’t exist, but it was successfully added after month. Anyway, we had an issue with overlay filter as well. It turned out that this library doesn’t support video overlay effects, it is only capable of overlaying images on the video.

  Testing Results by Mobilunity’s Developers

Based on our research we understood that creating an application with video overlay effects takes a lot of time. Most of the applications don’t need to be written with the help of the libraries on C language. If your application performs many calculus, in this case you may consider to use such type of libraries, but you need to be very careful, because it complicates your code much and as a result you won’t be able to debug the function which was written on C language. 

We conduct different types of experiments in order to gain more experience in mobile app development and provide high quality and trendy mobile solutions to our clients. Being experts in web and mobile development, we are offering great solutions for different types of businesses, so that they could choose the best-fitting model of development, whether it’s outstaffing (dedicated teams for hire) or outsourcing an idea to Mobilunity.

Hire our remote mobile developers in order to get a top-notch app on Android or iOS.

from Android App Development: How to Overlay Video on a Video