As a programmer, you would know exactly what technical skills you should learn to have a steep career growth. But are these technical skills enough? Of course not!

Professional and soft skills might not have a direct impact on your learning, but they do impact any programmer’s career significantly. Unfortunately, such non-programming skills are often overlooked by programmers.

Today, being skilled in your programming niche is not enough. To survive and thrive, you also need to develop strong relationships with people and build your personal brand with the help of digital marketing. Both of these are not possible without learning professional skills.

In this article, let’s look at some of the essential non-programming skills that you need to possess as a modern programmer.

1. Communication

As a programmer, you can only be as good as your communication skills. Without the ability to communicate your thoughts and listen to others, your success will be limited. Communication doesn’t just refer to a good command of your language. There’s a lot more to it.

In your day-to-day life, you’ll have to interact with clients, fellow-programmers, program analysts, solution architects, managers, stakeholders, and the list is endless. If you are not able to express your thought process and opinions in the right manner, there might be a lot of misunderstandings.

Lack of communication skills might lead to the development of wrong solutions, and your voice might get lost amongst the crowd. Hence, good communication skills will always help you to progress a couple of steps further than the other programmers.

Good listening skills are also an essential part of communication. With good listening skills, you will be able to understand and grasp what your peers have to say, and you’ll be respected more in your workplace.

2. Openness

In your career as a programmer, you would have faced many challenges and situations where hiding somethings might seem to be the better solution. You’d also have faced situations where you found yourself hesitating to put across a point.

As a programmer, an important skill to develop is being open about your thought process with others at your workplace, while being polite. Not expressing yourself and holding back on things may lead to unnecessary conflicts and misconceptions.

Also, not being open about things can seem right at the moment, but might lead to disastrous consequences later on.

Hence, always know what level of transparency is expected from you at your workplace or with your clients. And, try to stick to it no matter what. To start with, being open might be a little difficult for you, especially if you are an introvert. But, over time, it’ll become an easy habit.

3. Empathy

Empathy is also a must-have skill for modern programmers. This is because, as a developer, you are at the core of building any design. Hence, working with empathy can prove to be helpful to develop applications that encourage inclusivity and user-friendliness.

It is easy to get caught up in your own programming world. But, when you are developing a piece of code, try to empathize with the users and think from their point of view.

For instance, if you are a SuperOffice CRM developer, you ought to give thought to the usability of the tool and how the target audience would be impacted by your code. How user-friendly is the design you are implementing? Is there a better way to go about it?

You should also think about accessibility. Accessibility and inclusivity are things that can be inculcated right from the development stage. Empathizing with disabled people will help you develop more thoughtful and sought-after applications.

Empathy is also needed when you are working with your clients, your peers, your managers, and other people who are involved in your work. Just thinking about why they do what they do, can help you make better decisions and have harmony at your workplace.

4. Leadership

As a programmer, you’ll be faced with various situations where leading other developers and team members would be essential. As your career progresses, you’ll have to take up some leadership roles in your workplace. Hence, leadership is also an essential skill to acquire as a programmer.

Right from guiding fellow-developers, training others in your expertise, sharing your opinions, to reviewing other developers’ codes, leadership skills play a role in every step of your career. Hence, you should start focusing on developing leadership skills right from the initial stages of your programming career.

Patience, confidence, decision making, self-awareness, interpersonal skills, integrity, are a few of the skills that will help you emerge as a good leader.

Final Thoughts

Remember that these non-programming, but essential know-hows are necessary for the growth of your career as a successful programmer. These skills will brilliantly complement your technical skills and give you the much-needed nudge in the right direction.

It is also good to have in mind that practice makes perfect. Unlike technical skills, these professional skills cannot be perfected with the help of courses and training.

You have to be self-aware and practice these skills every single day. And, over time, these will essentially become a part of who you are. So, take inspiration from the ideas in this article and work towards making these a part of your programming life.

Managing finances can be cumbersome for a business operation manager or personnel. To ease out the process of managing accounting data, businesses can integrate accounting applications into their business ecosystem.

But do you actually think that just managing accounting data is enough? Businesses need to look beyond accounting applications and think about avenues that can help them in extracting much out of this accounting information with Salesforce QuickBooks Integration.

Salesforce and QuickBooks have been one of the most popular cloud computing software managing customer and accounting information respectively.

From small-scale business to enterprises, QuickBooks has been the most preferred online accounting software to track sales, create and send invoices, and know-how your business is doing at any time.

On the other hand, Salesforce CRM moves deals faster by tracking customer information and interactions in one place.

But still, businesses don’t have much idea about integrating Salesforce and QuickBooks together. Data Synchronization can help your business in syncing data from QuickBooks to Salesforce but still many of you must be integrating data manually consuming your time and efforts.

The manual way of data integration seems tedious and time-consuming as it can lead to data duplicity and synchronization errors while integrating data from QuickBooks to Salesforce.

Why you should consider Salesforce and QuickBooks Integration?

For Accounting businesses, Salesforce and QuickBooks Integration not only help in data synchronization but it will also help in converting opportunities into leads within Salesforce CRM.

It helps in automating business processes, improved productivity, and optimized manual data integration to save business incurring cost and time.

When you integrate Salesforce CRM with your accounting software, you can easily import and sync data, customer’s information from QuickBooks to Salesforce to achieve overall business visibility within Salesforce CRM.

Key Activities which you can achieve when you integrate Salesforce and QuickBooks together are:

• Synchronize QuickBooks accounting data at Salesforce CRM end to avail CRM benefits
• Synchronization of Categories from QuickBooks to Salesforce
• Customers synchronization as Accounts and Contacts at Salesforce end
• Orders and Products synchronization to manage products and Inventory
• Provides unified Salesforce platform to manage both QuickBooks and CRM data
• Salesforce Centric configuration concept to avail hassle-free environment
• Users concept to track placed Orders and their info
• Interactive design with the user interface at Salesforce end adding on effective data utilization

How to integrate Salesforce and QuickBooks together?

Salesforce and QuickBooks Integration can ensure business data consistency and integrity. With real-time and bidirectional data sync, you need not wait for long hours to sync data from QuickBooks to Salesforce and vice-versa.

But what are some of the different ways to integrate Salesforce and QuickBooks together?

Custom Integration:

Intuit, the company that owns QuickBooks, has released its own SDK, a collection of protocols for integration. This can be used to create a custom solution to integrate your products.

Customization would obviously cost more as you would have to hire dedicated Salesforce developers. This way is most useful for those who are heavily dependent on Salesforce and QuickBooks and have many fields to sync.

Third-Party Integrations:

There are several third-party applications also popularly known as QuickBooks connector that helps in integrating QuickBooks and Salesforce together to sync data thereby providing a single shared view of data without the need to switch between these two platforms.

You can explore more about these third-party applications from Salesforce AppExchange, which acts as a repository for third-party applications for Salesforce integrated products.

You can find numerous applications on AppExchange integrating Salesforce and QuickBooks together, some of the popular applications which you can explore are eShopSync for QuickBooks, DBSync, Workato, and Zapier.

These are some of the popular applications when it comes to integrating Salesforce and QuickBooks together. But here’s a pro tip, if you are looking out for an application you must look forward to your business ecosystem before you go ahead to purchase the paid version of the application.

To ensure this, you must always explore the free-trial versions, which gives you an environment to try out the application first-hand before making your final choice.

What are the benefits of integrating Salesforce and QuickBooks together?

Integrating Quickbooks and Salesforce not only helps businesses to sync and import data from Quickbooks to Salesforce, but there is much more which you can achieve from Salesforce QuickBooks Integration:

Benefits of Salesforce and QuickBooks Integration are:

• Helps in optimizing integration time as the data flow is bidirectional
• Your in-house sales team accesses an in-depth analysis of the sales pattern within Salesforce.
• You can also go through the balance sheet and can also check for open balances and credit limits from within Salesforce.
• It will also help in tracking each and every customer information and history in detail with the help of Salesforce.
• With the help of Salesforce, you can easily analyze sales histories for each prospect or customer.
• Helps in Reducing Redundant Data Errors

Conclusion:

Data Synchronization via Salesforce QuickBooks Integration allows you to access data from these two distinguished platforms in a single shared view so that you don’t have to switch between applications to access data.

So, data synchronization is a must for business as they not only can access data from one single point of view but they can also access data within Salesforce CRM which helps them in converting opportunities and estimates into leads taking business revenues to a new high.

With this exploration guide on Salesforce QuickBooks Integration, you are now all set to take your business to the next level.

What comes to your mind when you hear digital marketing? Search engines? Social media? Mobile apps? Email? Or websites? These are the high-level digital channels out there via which marketers endorse their brands, goods, and services.

If you take a look at the stats, in 2019, mobile devices, excluding tablets, created about half of all website traffic worldwide.

It is also said that 63.57% of the companies are actively investing their time in SEO.

There are more than 80 million small businesses that use Facebook’s free business tools. And most of the content that marketers create is for different social media channels and company websites.

It is well understood that a company needs to take the digital marketing path to remain in the competition and to succeed in this day and age.

But since a lot of questions are still asked about digital marketing – this article will answer who, why, and how of digital marketing.

Who is a digital marketer?

A digital marketer is someone who implements marketing strategies using an electronic device or the internet. Digital marketers use digital channels, including search engines, email, social media, and other websites to connect with existing and prospective customers.

Who can use digital marketing?

Any business, big or small, should adopt some aspects of digital marketing in order to stay competitive. In fact, so many businesses out there are using digital marketing.

The worldwide digital marketing spend was estimated to be $290–310 billion in 2019, and it is anticipated to reach around $330–340 billion in 2020.

Since there are so many options out there, you can experiment with different marketing strategies on a budget and implement those that best suit your business.

For instance, a business-to-business (B2B) needs to attract and convert quality leads through your business site and digital channels. Thus, B2B digital marketing will mainly focus on online lead generation for the salespeople. Business-focused social channels such as LinkedIn are best suited for B2Bs.

Business-to-consumer (B2C) companies, on the other hand, will need to attract people via their digital marketing efforts to their website and convert them into customers without having to speak to a salesperson.

Thus, their focus will be on making the customer’s journey as fast and great as possible, from the moment a buyer lands on their site to the moment that they buy a product or service. B2C companies have to use stronger calls-to-action (CTAs).

Social channels like Instagram and Pinterest are more suitable for B2C companies.

Why should you implement digital marketing?

If your business doesn’t have an online presence in this digital world, it will be hard for you to compete and grow your business. 

Here are some crucial reasons why you should implement digital marketing:

• Global reach: If you have a website, you will be able to find new markets and trade internationally without having to invest much.
• Lower cost: Digital marketing will incur lower costs than traditional marketing, provided you have proper planning and have a well-targeted campaign to reach the right audience.
• Track and measure results: By using web analytics and other online metric tools, businesses can analyze their marketing efforts. Having detailed information about how customers engage with your site or responding to your ads will help you breach any loopholes in your strategies.
• Personalization: People feel frustrated when they receive irrelevant emails or read irrelevant website content. They engage better with personalized content. 91% of customers say they are more likely to buy from brands that deliver offers and recommendations relevant to them. Linking your customer database to your site can help you to offer targeted offers.
• Improved conversion rates: Since digital marketing can be seamless and instantaneous, unlike traditional marketing, you will see enhanced conversion rates.

How to create a digital marketing strategy?

From personas to selecting the right tools, there are several things that can determine your digital marketing strategy’s success. Here’s the initial work you need to do to ensure your digital marketing strategy is successful:

• Create customer personas: Buyer personas can be created by surveying and contacting your pre-defined target group. Online tools such as MakeMyPersona can help you with it.
• Define your goals: Without defined goals, your digital marketing strategy won’t work. Also, make sure that those goals are suitable and measurable.
• Focus on blogging: Creating high-quality content is crucial for any digital marketing strategy. And blogging is an excellent way to create high-quality content. It will help you bring more traffic to your website, reinforce social media presence, give a competitive edge, and rank you high on search engines. Outsource your work to an SEO agency for the best results.
• Automate marketing: The leading marketing automation platforms can take your digital marketing strategy to the next level. They will make it easier to automate activities such as email marketing, content marketing, lead generation, and so on. 
• Focus on building a mobile-optimized site: With the number of mobile phone users increasing daily, there is no reason why you should not be building a mobile-optimized site. Focus on page speed, site design, and various other SEO practices to offer the best experience to your site visitors. Also, ensure to review your mobile responsive design and email templates. You have to implement only the latest methods and deliver only relevant and latest data.
• Make yourself easily accessible to customers: If you connect the right way with your audience, your business will automatically grow. To ensure that your customers are not making an effort to communicate with you, avoid asking for irrelevant data on your landing pages and making call-to-actions clearly visible on the website.

Wrapping-Up

Digital marketing is something your business cannot avoid in this digital era. Thus, you need to be aware of the latest trends and strategies of digital marketing and how to implement them.

You can always refer to this article to eliminate any doubt about who, why, and how of digital marketing. Also, make sure that you are incorporating some digital marketing strategies so that you can gain a competitive edge and grow your business.

Today, the eCommerce industry is saturated with hundreds of options, each trying to have a piece of this lucrative pie. But, only a few have cracked the code of running a successful eCommerce store.

Amid the cut-throat competition, you have to develop out-of-the-box strategies to rise above your competitors and make your store the preferred shopping destination for the customers.

If you feel like you’re drowning in the sea of sheer competition, or don’t have the heart to compete with multinational companies holding onto huge ad spends, think again.

What can you do that hasn’t been done before? What is the most inexpensive way to beat your rivals? The answer lies in your link building strategy.

After all, it’s a crucial aspect of SEO. Experts believe that link building can contribute 50% to your SEO success.

Sit down and take a moment to read this blog. I’ve compiled a guide to help your eCommerce link building campaign get off the ground.

1. Set the bar high

You’ve got to understand that link building is all about offering value to the target audience so that at the end of the day, someone will link back to you.

So what do you have in mind?

• In-depth information

Blogging is the easiest way to get backlinks. According to HubSpot, businesses with blogs are getting 97% more backlinks than those without it.

Content full of fluff is not going to get you anywhere. But you already knew that, right?So, provide additional value through interviews, quotes from industry experts, citing research statistics, etc. The most important advice- keep information current.

More importantly, identify trending topics and products. As soon as you find something, contribute to or create content around it ASAP. You can get links by answering questions on forums and Q&A networks.

• Onboard visually appealing content

KISSmetrics has a secret to share. Photos can get you 53% more likes, 104% more comments, and 84% more clicks on links than text-based posts. Sure, visuals are a great way to enhance engagement.

But stock photos are boring. How about investing in custom-made images to make them more unique? Remember, leveraging image SEO can increase organic traffic to your website and earn links over time. Image search comprises 27% of Google searches in the US.

• Don’t forget to add videos

Many eCommerce brands don’t understand the true potential of video marketing. With over 3 billion searches per month, YouTube is the second largest search engine – bigger than Bing, Yahoo!, Ask, and AOL combined.

Have you considered promoting your brand through video? You can attract quality links by producing tutorials, instructional videos, how-to guides, and much more. And since video content is more popular than text, you have a better chance of acquiring links.

Sephora got over 1,000 backlinks to their video section. Consider embedding videos on your shop page or including them in your blog. After all, it’s a great way to boost SERP rankings.

2. Email outreach

Link building via email requires developing a relationship with customers. Even though acquiring links through email outreach can be time-consuming, it is a useful strategy to secure more leads.

Most link building relationships start by sending a cold email to a prospective customer. However, an average cold email has only a 15.22% chance of getting opened. Yikes!

You need to backtrack and try a smother approach. Start with your contacts and people who have a positive attitude towards your product.

I recommend using a two-step process. In the first email, introduce yourself with a personalized email. A link prospect will want to see your credentials, so mention one of your best blogs. Showcase how you can bring value to their audience.

Present your pitch in the second email. Make it attractive for the link prospects and convince them how they benefit from your offer. In this way, you can demonstrate the mutual benefits of publishing content on their blog.

3. Get social

Everyone knows the quickest way to reach your target audience is through social media exposure. You can easily amplify impact and extend reach, primarily through an influencer campaign.

The comments and social shares convince people that you’re valuable and famous, and therefore link-worthy.

Remember that you need to reach out on all your social media networks. However, you may need to publish content multiple times to get more engagement.

But there’s something else you can do as well.

You can create sponsored accounts just like ASOS did for selected influencers and established fashion bloggers. They posted pictures wearing branded outfits and offered fashion tips. Customers were inspired to “buy the look” by clicking on the targeted links.

4. Consider brand ambassadorship

One of the easiest and most effective ways to get links is to get people talking about your e-commerce brand, whether that’s by meeting people, guest blogging, contributing to charities, engaging on social media, or gifting giveaways.

Ann Smarty, the founder of Viral Content Bee, claims she got links to her site by building many connections. But don’t confuse influencer marketing with a brand ambassador program.

Influencers are contributors, motivated by what they receive in return, often money or discounts.

On the other hand, brand ambassadors are unpaid loyal customers. Their passion for a brand is what drives them to tell others, whether through word-of-mouth (WOM), reviews, user-generated content (UGC), etc. It helps generate more traffic and sales to your eCommerce site.

More importantly, as your ambassadors mention your eCommerce store in their videos, social media posts, and blogs, you’re getting precious backlinks. Yeah!

But remember, it all begins with developing a strong relationship with your customers and maintaining that relationship. I bet you didn’t know happy customers could be part of your link building campaign.

Ready to give it a try?

Link building is a process that requires extensive research and expertise to get results. Therefore, hiring the services of a reputed link building agency will ease the job for you. The agency will bring their expertise to the table and curate a link building strategy for your e-commerce store to earn maximum leads.

However, e-commerce stores have hundreds of product pages, and doing link building for an e-commerce store can be an overwhelming task even for a reputed SEO company.

So, if you’re an SEO company who is finding it tough to deal with the burden of e-commerce link building, you can reach out to a white label SEO company and delegate some of your link building tasks to them.

For example, Growth Proton provides whitelabel SEO services in Delaware; similarly, various other SEO companies provide area-specific link building services. You can acquire the services of these companies to do link building for your client in some states and ease the burden off your shoulders.

They can create high-quality, industry-relevant content that can significantly improve the customer acquisition rate of your client.

Final word

It requires considerable effort and hard work to run a successful eCommerce store. You need customers to keep coming back to your website. For this, you have to be there, not only in people’s minds but also at the top of Google search results.

You’ll be surprised to learn that human psychology can be used to sell your products and build backlinks. With content that is unique, relevant to your audience, and evokes a strong emotional reaction, you’re off to a good start.

If you are running a company then there are maximum chances that you must be outsourcing many of your business operations. In the modern era, outsourcing has become a new normal, especially for small and medium-sized businesses that can’t keep all their business operations in-house. You should know that there are many small and medium-sized businesses in the world and they are contributing to a very large scale to the GDP of developing countries. With the rise of small and medium-sized businesses, the popularity of outsourcing has also increased.

You should know that firms are outsourcing their many key operations and solutions like QuickBooks Enterprise hosting in order to harness the benefits of an expert without hiring one. One of the main reasons why companies are turning to outsourcing is it is proving to be cost-effective and that too without compromising on the quality of work. Hiring experts in the modern era is not only difficult but a costly affair for small and medium-sized business. And the same trend of outsourcing is being followed when it comes to app development as well.

With the rise of digital platforms, the use of apps has increased a lot and you will be surprised to know that most of the users spend their maximum time on apps while browsing the internet through their mobile phones. If you are really interested in targeting your users on the mobile platform then you will have to start using apps. But for that, you will have to choose an app development company just like you choose cloud based QuickBooks hosting provider for QB hosting. But do you really know what are the key features of an ideal app development company? Let’s find out through this blog post.

User-focused procedure

All the apps that you see in the mobile are basically user-facing platforms and this is the one thing that is common in all the apps out there. This is one of the main reasons why most of the small and medium-sized businesses always choose a company that is totally dependent upon user-focused designers. If you will succeed in choosing such an app development company then you can be sure that your app will be totally user-friendly and thus its chances of success will increase by many folds.

If you are running a small or medium-sized business then it becomes really important for you to make sure the app development company that you have chosen cares deeply about their consumers and will always prioritize their experience. If you will move on with such an approach while choosing an app development company then your chances of choosing the right company will increase.

Unparalleled tech skills

If you are choosing an app development company that doesn’t have a tech skilled workforce then it will become very difficult for you to get palpable results from your efforts. In such a case, you will not be able to make your app successful even after putting lots of effort, money, and time. The designers working in the app development company must be engrossed in the technical world and they must stay updated about the changes in the world of technology and apps. Such a workforce will allow you to make the most of the current situation and give you an impeccable app.

A good team of designers will also be using the latest tools and they must also take care of the responsiveness and overall design feature of the app in order to make it big hit on the mobile platform. So the next time you filter the available options of app development companies, make sure to go through the technical skills of the workforce in a detailed manner.

Simplicity

Yes, simplicity is the key to success when it comes to app development and the same approach should be followed by your app development company. If the app development company will try to make the app look cool by incorporating many additional features and funky colors then the result will be a far cry from your expectations. A good app development company will always try to make the UI as simple as possible because no one will be interested in browsing through a funky looking UI that is difficult to navigate.

If your app will have a very simple UI then it will succeed in making people succumb to use it. Check the past projects of the app development company and analyze where they have succeeded in maintaining simplicity or not.

Effective at what it does

This is surely going to be one of the most important characteristics that you will need to look for while choosing an app development company. The reason behind this is simple; a good company will always be very effective at what it does. Your app development company should have all the tools and platforms necessary to build a good app and they should also have many years of experience at app building. These are the few things that you will need to go through while checking the effectiveness of the app.

If you are choosing an app development company then making the right decision will be very much necessary. You will never wish to end up choosing the wrong app development company that will waste all your resources and you will sit barehanded without any app on the different mobile platforms.

It is of no matter how effective your e-commerce store may appear and function, gaining success in your online ventures highly depends on how rigorously your products are being sold to your customers. And to sell products, firstly you have to acquire the trust of your site explorer.

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What is Payment Gateway,

A payment gateway is an essential tool that assists in encouraging visitors to your store about your faithfulness. Therefore, selecting the right payment gateway is a crucial process for both e-commerce business and ERP software enterprise. Specific factors need to be examined and focused before making any decision primarily due to the absolute volume of payment processors on the market.

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How is Technology Helpful in the Evolution of Payment Gateway?

Technology expansion, the requirement for convenience, security, and regulations have all played a role in fostering a significant shift in the way we pay for any goods or services. When it comes to payment methods, we have beheld remarkable advances, from the barter system to digital payments, and have come a long way. This became a common factor in all kinds of businesses from eCommerce development companies to other sectors.

Another influence on payment methods has been an inducement to the users. Nowadays, merchants and credit card companies provide incentives to use a particular payment method. Moreover, amid all this technological evolution, a representative payment process advanced into something enormous than itself and became a chief component in offering consumers a distinctive shopping experience. There were many technological advancements that modified traditional payments repeatedly.

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Top 10 Tips to Choose Right Payment Gateway for Your Online Store

Below are some useful tips which will help you to make an intelligent decision in selecting an arrogate payment gateway for your e-commerce store.

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What if you are serving an overseas customer?

If you provide services to overseas customers, make sure that your payment gateway must manage payment through foreign credit cards.

If you provide services to overseas customers, make sure that your payment gateway must manage payment through foreign credit cards.

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Look for CMS Support

Every eCommerce CMS transpires with off the shelf payment gateway plugin. Enquire your Payment gateway if they reinforce your CMS.

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Hold an alternative of Multiple Payment Gateway

If you are starting a new venture, it creates sense to have several payment options as it may build trust in your new customer. You can add PayPal as your supplementary payment option as it is very familiar among audiences.

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Check eminence of your Payment Gateway

The prestige of your payment gateway could be reasonably handy to kick off a relationship with your potential consumer.

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Customer support

If you are not able to reach out to the payment gateways customer support over holidays, possibly you have not selected the right payment gateway for your business. Moreover, if you are sure about your technical ability, you can decide otherwise as well.

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Evaluate CoD

Cash on Delivery is a very eminent payment method for any eCommerce success in India. You can’t disregard if you want to generate your consumer franchise. The consumer will begin paying once they have a couple of constructive transactions with you.

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Select between Transaction Charges or Setup fees

If you are a traditional brand or a Startup with enormous pockets for advertising, you can select Payment Gateway with inferior transaction charges which could be as low as 2% to 3%.

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Automatic Billing Support

If the service or product you are auctioning needs a subscription, you require to select a payment gateway that permits automatic payment of recurring plans.

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Know the character of your business

Generally, most of the payment gateways support all sorts of businesses unless they evaluate your business high-risk sector business. For that, you have to learn whether your company’s business is assisted by the payment gateway or not. Few examples of high-risk sectors are Credit repair, Gambling, Debt collection, etc.

So, it’s an important step to check with your payment gateway provider and make sure that if are they able to understand the nature of your business well or not.

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Recurring billing

Recurring billing is essential for businesses that have monthly payment plans. Besides, non-profits have established profitability in recurring billing, as this functionality permits organizations to easily collect funds from repeat contributors and set up an automatic billing cycle for customers who operate on subscription.

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In what way the technology is transfiguring payments system?

Nowadays, financial transactions have also experienced elementary change. The chances provided by the occurrence of digital innovations to the traditional economic scene have assisted institutions in projecting more extensive payment abilities for better user experiences.

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Contactless or Mobile wallets

Mobile wallet payments append convenience and accuracy to the payment process. Users across European countries and other places have been using contactless cards which permits them to solely tap their cards on the payment acceptance device to pay.

While contactless cards are new to the U.S., mobile wallets such as Google pay and Apple pay also utilize contactless technology to ensure customers to use their phones to tap and pay. They also added another layer of payment security with biometrics substantiation making it a secure way to pay.

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Security and decentralization in transactions with blockchain technology

According to an online survey, cybercrime costs hastened globally by 27% with the financial services industry taking in the highest price at over $18 million per researched company. Probable, cybercrime-related destruction cost will hit $6 trillion by 2021, which provides substantial proof of an expanding need for a system that manages volumes of sensitive information productively.

As technology swiftly develops, traditional financial systems have had to tackle the rise in cyber threats. These days, cyber risks are taking more enlightened forms, spot lightening the requirement for more advanced ways to offer customers with security and clarity in their transactions. Keeping this in mind, the emergence of Blockchain technology to payment systems is transforming subsisting models by providing transparency and a robust security framework through its inflexible background. Payment gateway systems in this dissimilarity are now furnished to manage rapid and cheaper cross-border payments and settlement through automation and transparency.

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The emergence of digital currencies for globalization

Two-third of the population were conducted to have access to mobile devices, highlighting the consequences of an electronic payment system in widening the circulation of payments alternatives to communities all across the globe.

The advent of digital currencies escorted by the largest payment processing companies pursued opening the door of mobile and digital systems to different sections of the world involving the unbanked sector while accompanying globalization in various sectors.

Digital currencies were developed to present solutions to flexibility issues found in traditional payment systems and bring about simplicity in transactions. Hence, transactions are revamped to be corroborated and shielded within hours instead of days.

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The dominance of big data for enhanced customer engagement

The critical interference of Big data in the financial scene has given payment systems the grip to offer value-added services through upgraded data-based understanding. Data management can create payment systems more systematic and customized to meet up with customers’ needs by giving insights into trends and customers’ actions.

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Conclusion

Today, AI and ML-enabled payments systems are capable of offering extremely scalable models of operations for superior user satisfaction. By providing means for constructive interpretation and the anatomy of complex volumes of data, companies can reform their decision-making process to delegate improved customer engagement.

Customer retention means the world specially for SaaS companies. It is what they all need to be successful. Customer acquisition combined with customer retention is what makes SaaS companies tick. As per Groove, the prospects of selling to a new customer is lower than 5 percent. For existing customers, there is 70 percent chance of a successful sale. Existing customers mean a lot to a company in terms of value, cash inflows, and more.

Why is customer retention important?

Customer churn is important for any business. It is the reason businesses sustain. As customer churn reduces revenue consistently, it is customer retention that helps plug those holes. Customer retention is important for customer engagement. As customers are retained, they become more used to the product and become loyal. This increases their lifetime value (LTV), increases opportunities to upsell, and promotion aspects. This will also bring in more referrals word of mouth to improve customer value over time.

Customer retention helps-

• Attract investors
• Measure customer health
• Improve revenues
• Save money on marketing
• Get best feedback

7 Customer Retention Strategies for SaaS companies

Customer retention is getting your customer to engage and stay with the product or service. The strategies for customer retention in SaaS companies are necessary for their survival.

Set the right expectations

Customer expectations are simply what customers expect from the company. Why would any customer leave? Because their expectations were not met right. Make sure you set your customers expectations realistically. Do not build castles in the air. Under-promise and over-deliver. Set expectations for targets you can achieve. When you meet those expectations, customers will be satisfied.

Respond to customer needs

Keep in mind the adage that customer is king. Respond to all customer enquiries in 24 hours or 48 hours. Make it your goal to keep them updated and aware of all product updates. The faster you respond, the better they feel. Your customers deserve your immediate attention and that is important.

Accept Customer feedback

Whenever customers suggest any improvements, it is better to accept them. Make feedback a center of your strategy. You must be aware of what customer’s think of your brand. Quarterly or monthly feedback can help immensely. Acting upon the feedback is important. These issues must be addresses with less delay.

Consider a loyalty program

Loyalty programs build respect and value. Simple loyalty programs will keep customers with the company. They will stick with you when they like the program. A loyalty program needs to be effective and not complicated. Gift cards and loyalty rewards program will help users feel valued. If customers sign up for a loyalty program, the rewards will keep them from switching. In most SaaS product based companies, loyalty programs can include chances of upselling. This will encourage users to be invested with the product to get results for their patience.

Improve customer engagement

Improving customer engagement is another priority for retaining customers. Through marketing automation, you can engage your customers in a better manner. Maintain a schedule to engage with them via content, social media, mail and more will be crucial for retention. It shows users that you care for their responses and want to help them achieve their goals. Customer engagement is important for customer success as a whole. It keeps the customer invested and allows them to feel involved.

Educate the customer

Customer education means making the customer aware about the product. It refers to the company’s role in providing information and skills to the customer in using the product. A set of programs that will help your customers know how to use the product can improve engagement and boost retention. Customer education will also reduce the chances of churn as customers are aware of the positives attached with product usage.

Upgrade your product

Making sure your product is in tune with the latest advancements in technology is crucial for customer retention. If your product is not updated as per client requirements, the chances of churn are more. Integrating features that serve customer purpose is another important key to customer retention in SaaS companies. If the product is what they love, they will not churn in any manner. Customising the product as per client feedback is another way to keep them retained with the company.

Bottom Line: Service Sticks for SaaS companies

Customer retention for SaaS companies is all bout understanding the exact problems of the user and making it reduce or simple. People want to be associated with brands who help them solve their issues. The more you understand your users and their issues, the chances of them staying are more. Pick a strategy that works and stick to it. Measure your retention rates and notice how they improve. Customer retention creates a reputation for a brand and is a big asset for any organisation.

Developing a website is not so easier, especially if you do not have a qualified graphic designer, website designer, or website developer. This is the main factor for any software agency to hit success in the market.

The task of hiring the skilled designer or developer, mainly for someone who is not technically sound or originating a start-up, may appear a hard nut to crack. With an attentive approach, basic understanding, and a passion for hunting down the judicious candidate, you can rationalize your task. Another excellent alternative is to hire a development agency as hostile to assisting on one full-time individual if an extremely versatile and comprehensive skill set is needed.

How to analyze the quality of a web developer?
Once you conclude your requirement, then how do you decide whom to work with? So below are a few important guidelines to enhance your chances of choosing the right candidate.

Appraise candidates for different roles across all levels
Evaluate the coding skills of proficient developers and university talent across 30+ programming languages.

Have a look at some common skills to hire ASP.NET Software developer:

• ASP.NET
• CSS / CSS3
• HTML / HTML5
• jQuery
• JavaScript

Invite applicants for remote interviews
Organize remote pair programming interviews for shortlisted candidates and connect with each stakeholder, document, and analyze a candidate’s performance through the video interview. Let candidates choose a time when they will be available on other liabilities and focus on their interviews. To evade a barrage of back-and-forth emails, provide candidates different times to pick from in your first message.

Communicating with candidates by call creates your perspective more pleasant. But, when your approach is to schedule an interview, phone calls can create uncertainty. People may fail what was said if they were in a hurry or didn’t take notes, and also candidates may feel unbearable taking this type of call if they are at the workplace.

Determine through developer’s skills
As you know, there are three types of web developers. Front-end, Back-end, and Full-stack developers. Let’s see the difference between them below.

Front-end developers assist in making changes to the front of your website. You can hire such developers to modify the design and layout of your website marginally. Still, examine that there is a variation between a front-end developer and web designer. Web designers are more ocular creative, aiming at user experience. They design the website layout, color scheme, and other visual elements to be used.

Back-end developers are responsible for website structure, shrouded behind the front-end. You might need some specialist if you want to upgrade your website’s speed, merge third-party services into the site infrastructure, or solve technical issues.

Full-stack developers are accomplished in developing both the front and back-end of websites. Such specialists are becoming admired personalities among start-ups that have limited resources.

Stipulate your business goals
All web development projects differ from one another. Without deliberating your project size and goals, it is tough to give you straightforward advice on which web developers will perfect your project.

A simpler web project involves developing a straightforward website or incorporating additional features to the existing one. You want to develop a project from scratch, a common scenario for subsisting businesses and start-ups. You want to utilize technology that nobody in your in-house dev team has experience with.

Decide on a working model.
Depending on the entanglement and scope of your web development project, you can choose among the following models of collaboration:

The project-based model is popular among start-ups or authoritative businesses that want to execute a small web development project. This model comprises of the predefined scope of work and entrenched timeframes.

A dedicated team business model works fine if you need to execute complex functions to your websites, such as cloud storage integration or Chatbot development, but want to rescue time and costs on hiring in-house specialists.

The extended or out staff team is the best option for developing huge projects while lodging within the project’s budget.

Where to hire a web developer
Nowadays, it becomes easier than ever to find and hire a web developer.

First of all, decide whether you want to hire developers full-time, part-time, contract-based, or remotely as there are most popular platforms like LinkedIn, freelancing platforms, classified websites where you can connect with different levels of experienced developers.

To recruit a freelancer, utilize one of the following websites:

Guru website has become a job marketplace for millions of freelancers. The site incorporates various payment alternatives as per milestone, per task, or by hourly rates.

Upwork is also the most popular job marketplace for searching freelancers. The site has many primary tools, involving time tracking, automated payment per acquired milestones.

Freelancer.com is another site to track a remote worker that transpires with online chat, a milestone payment, and other useful modules.

Specify a payment paradigm

If you determine to work with a sole web developer or web development team, you will require to reimburse them a salary every month, like systematic workers. The same is crucial for both our staff and passionate team working models. 

Moreover, for a project-based working model, you can select between: 

A fixed price-paying model is the perfect alternative for compact web projects with a clear idea of work and time frame.

Time and Material is used for small, medium, or big- sized projects when the requirements of work and the time frame are not so simple to estimate. This paying model involves paying the hourly rate of individual developers depended on actual time spare on development.

Working experience
Few niches, such as eCommerce, need complex development methods both front-end and back-end, so a web development company with past work experience in the aperture of your business is an additional advantage.

The knowledge of industry-specific trends and challenges is necessary for the company you hire. It must be bold with the prospective customers’ segment and come up with creative ways to keep the site combative.

Conclusion
The task of hiring the right designer or developer, especially for someone who is not technically sound or commencing a start-up, may seem a hard nut to rupture. With a targeted perspective, basic understanding, and the intensity to chase the wise candidate, you can simplify your task.

Artificial intelligence and facial recognition both have become quite popular among industries for enhanced security. Facial recognition technology is enabling companies to track their customers in order to prevent fraud from happening. Either it’s a financial industry or online gambling industry, the applications of facial recognition are numerous. Artificial intelligence and facial recognition are not only protecting customers and companies from scams but also automating processes. There is no industry that can not benefit from the growing technology of AI and facial recognition. 

Below are the top 7 companies that are making their mark in the AI sector. So let’s dig in:

Accertify
Accertify, Inc. is a subsidiary of American express (It is a financial services corporation). Accertify provides services related to fraud prevention, chargeback fraud management, intelligence devices, and various getaway solutions to global industries. Accertify helps businesses around the world to identify and eliminate frauds pertaining to transactions that would, on the other hand, provide a frictionless experience to customers during and after onboarding. Not only this Accertify’s Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning system helps online businesses to evaluate transactional patterns to identify crimes such as account takeovers, payment fraud, etc. It also provides customized solutions to its customers. 

Shufti Pro
Shufti Pro offers an AI-based identity verification solution including KYC and AML services. It allows businesses to verify customers using: document, address, age verification followed by facial biometric authentication and ongoing AML checks to prevent money laundering activities within financial institutions. Shufti Pro’s Saas product offers a multilingual platform and the ability to perform verification from more than 3000 document types and is available in 230 countries. Recently, Shufti pro has introduced video KYC, which uses the applications of facial recognition, liveness detection, and AI to identify the real identity of individuals to prevent sams. Shufti Pro has also received BIz award 2020 in the category of best customer services. 

Gridsum
This company is a leading provider of AI-based solutions for global industries and governmental agencies in China. It also provides cloud-based big analytics solutions to its customers. It is built on the foundations of a distributed computing framework. Based on its real-time multi-dimensional correlation analysis, the company helps customers to make informed decisions after gaining new insights within their data. The goal of this company is to assist big corporations and government organizations to be more productive by making informed future decisions.

Third eye data
Third eye data, like the above-mentioned companies, also provides AI-based software designed specifically for security cameras. It offers a very versatile software with remarkable features to address various issues across networks. The third eye’s solutions are helping the retail industry in improving its services. This security product can prevent retail businesses from incidents such as theft detection and can be easily integrated with the existing CCTV systems. The company was founded in 2016 and have 11-50 employees working for it and is located in London, UK.

Data Robot
DataRobot is an AI-based platform that automates entire data science processes. It offers various core products of automated machine learning, machine learning ops, and automated time series. The products have the ability to solve complex problems and caters to all business sizes. Managed AI cloud, private AI cloud, on-premise AI cluster, and hybrid AI cloud are some of the models available for deployment. The company was founded in 2012 and has around 1000 employees onboard. Lenovo, Panasonic, and Accenture are some of their biggest clients. The company is located in Boston, USA.

Sertis
It is one of the most renowned companies working in the field of data science and AI research. It is working with some of the tech giants namely Microsft and google to build custom solutions for driving business growth. The remarkable team of engineers, data scientists, and Artificial intelligence are collaborating together to build cutting edge technologies according to each business’s needs. The focus of the company is on the technologies of machine learning, Artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and data engineering among others.

Wise AI
Wise AI specializes in KYC and smart city solutions along with providing AI-based products and services to customers and businesses alike. The goal of this company is to make lives better and easier for individuals and businesses in the ASEAN region. Their Facial recognition software offers a biometric system that analyzes facial features for identification. It can also check the liveness of individuals through liveness detection using 3D models and measure a package for it’s box dimensions.

Mobile phones have become an essential part of our daily life. However, without apps, a smartphone is nothing but a communication device. Mobile apps have brought a drastic change in the tech industry. We rely on apps on mobile apps for several things; mobile apps are available for all the sectors. 

The mobile app industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. It is also one of the most competitive sectors in the industry. The app industry is continuously growing, so companies now have to put extra effort into app development to stay in the competition. Innovative ideas and quality work are much needed. Social media integration is one such creative idea that can help you create relevancy in the respective sector.  

Importance of Social Media Integration in App development

Social media integration plays a vital role in business growth; it connects you to potential users which will result in more app downloads. Social media covers several prospects like creating engagement, creating awareness and most importantly building customer relationships. 

As a marketer, you should not miss out on social media integration on your app, whether you are a freelance developer or app development agency it is best for all. If you are still not convinced, look into the details on the benefits of social media in mobile app development.

Connectivity

The primary reason you need social media in your app is to connect with as many users as possible. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat have millions of active users daily. So when you link to these sites, you have the chance to reach out to and a massive audience. Furthermore, social media removes the location barrier and lets you reach out to users all around the world. 

Social media integration provides giant exposure, so all you have to do is utilize the platform well for advertising. You can find new users for your apps through social media. To do so think of creative ways and use it for inviting people for app download. The more audience you connect to, the more will be the chance of app download. 

Brand Awareness

No matter how much your work for developing your apps, if your app doesn’t reach the right audience, all your efforts are of no good. The mobile app market is intensely competitive. Your brand is your app that requires significant downloads to succeed. That’s possible when you reach to create awareness about your app to the potential audiences.

Social media is the best platform to create brand awareness as it helps you reach millions of people around the globe. Give recognition to your app, convince the audience that your app is genuine and useful. The more people love your app; the more app downloads will be. 

Customer Satisfaction

One of the significant roles of Social media sites is to offer communication and networking. Thus you can utilize it for voicing about your app. This is required for humanizing your app and reaching a large audience. Customer satisfaction can be achieved by amazing your app according to your audience. This will improve the download ratio. 

Improves Functionality

When you use social media integration, you improvise your app functionality. For example, Instagram has an integrated Facebook app you can log in to Instagram through your Facebook account. So if you don’t want to spend time on creating a new account. Also, you can post Instagram images on Facebook directly from the app with just a click. 

Social media integration not only improves app efficiency through numerous features like recommendations, wish lists, favorites, and more. It also tells you about your friends who have been using the same app and services. Overall social media offers credibility to the app.

Higher Conversion Rate

You can achieve a better conversation rate for your apps by increasing app visibility. With social media on the app, you can create a mailing list for engagement. Also include social media feeds, in your app can generate more engagement. Users can find their friends who can encourage them to use the app and make a purchase. 

Cost-efficient

Implementing social media for app development is not only efficient but also cost-effective. Many app development strategies come with a big price tag, while social media strategy overs big results with a suitable price tag. At times you hardly have to pay anything, you can generate high ROI without disturbing your budget.

 Allows you to collect accurate and genuine data

To make your app succeed, you will have to make your app more user-friendly. For that, you need to find out the needs and social behavior of your audience. This is where social media comes handy. 

Social media helps you fetch essential data that will help you offer better solutions to your users. You can utilize the data for collecting customer details, market search, find target groups, and more.

How to Maximize Social Media for Mobile App Development?

Maximizing social media will lead to improved performance in mobile app development. Here are a few things to follow for optimizing social media;

1. Include social media shares in your post.
2. Curate blogging content promoting your app features and usages.
3. Encourage your audience for feedbacks
4. Incorporate audios and videos in social media communication.

How to Integrate Social Media Sites to Apps?

Knowing all the benefits of social media integration in mobile app development, you might now wish to integrate it into our app. Here are some steps you should follow when incorporating social media.

While adding the Click to add the social media button on your app, make sure that it’s evident and visible. So that users and easily sync their accounts and share posts directly from the sites. 

Allow your users to login in your through their social media accounts. So they don’t have to go to a lengthy process of sign-ups. 

Conclusion

To avoid any app glitches, you will have to integrate social media correctly. So it’s better to hire a top mobile app development agency. You can let them handle the technical part while you focus on creating the best content for your users.

The use of social media apps is immensely growing. Every industry these days are incorporating social media sites. You know it’s important, to make your app succeed integrating social media is very much required.