Category: Technology

How to Make a Progressive Web App from your Existing Website?

Posted on by Emily White

Progressive web apps have had a great impact on the web development industry. A progressive web app offers many benefits including an app-like interface, responsive structure, fast-performance, and many more.

Therefore, progressive web app development services have become a prominent choice for those who run their businesses online. Due to this, website owners are now willing to convert their existing website into progressive web apps.

The process of converting an existing website to a PWA can be completed in three steps that are as follows:

Get secure HTTPS connection for your site

Progressive web apps are fully secure as they work with HTTPS connections. Hence, to transform your site into a PWA, you need to ensure that it is served via HTTPS protocol.

After doing so, your users will be able to access your site via HTTPS connection. Make a quick switch of your site to HTTPS connection. It is strongly recommended to get an SSL certificate for this.

Here is the method to accomplish this task:

You can easily find many free SSL certificates like LetsEncrypt or many premium certificates for your site.

You can add the certificate to your site if you have root access or running the site on your server.

If you don’t have root access or the site is running on a different server, then you can approach your web host to provide SSL certificates.

Build your manifest file

Every PWA has a manifest file which is a simple JSON file containing all the data related to the progressive web app. To convert your site to a PWA, you need to create a manifest.json file.

The file will hold information like scope, name, start_url, description, short_name, images, display, etc This file is used by web browsers to determine how your app needs to be displayed as well as saved on the home screen.

You need to add the below link in your <head> tag after creating the file. It will link your PWA to the file.

<link rel=”manifest” href=”/manifest.json”>

After successful validation of your app by the Manifest section in the Development Tools Application Tab of Chrome browser, you will get a “Add to home screen” link.

A progressive web app uses varied images that are of different sizes. You will need to configure the app manifest file to include different images for your application.

If you are not sure what kind of images you need, you can utilize online image generator tools that can help you generate the right images and create a manifest file.

Build a service worker

This is an essential component of a PWA. It is a file written in JavaScript and placed in the app’s root. After the installation in the supported browsers, a service worker helps a PWA to intercept and respond to network requests differently.

The key role of a service worker is to cache the static content that will allow a progressive web app to run offline. To create a service worker, you first need to register it.

You can determine whether a browser supports service workers or not by trying to register it. If a browser supports it, a service worker will be generated. So, you will get a JSON file in that case.

After the creation of the service worker, you need to generate the files for your service worker. There are some shell commands to do this.

You can find these shell commands on the internet and enter them to create the required files for the service worker of your PWA.

After finishing these steps, you will get a PWA that will work as per your expectations. You can deploy this and take advantage of it to make more sales or increase your business.

Though developing a progressive web app is a straightforward process, you can do this only when you have experience in web development. If you don’t dabble in coding then you can also seek help from a Progressive web app development company.

Wrapping up

Progressive web apps have become an essential solution for businesses especially eCommerce stores. A PWA is designed to provide a better experience to web and mobile users.

Since these apps can run in a separate browser window they seem like real mobile or web applications but they are just websites at the core.

A PWA can be installed on a desktop or mobile devices like native desktop or mobile applications. Converting your existing website into PWA leads to huge business growth.

With a progressive web app, you can offer your customers a seamless web and mobile web experience and attract more customers.

Many reputed companies now offer dedicated PWA development services and you can also hire experienced developers to create more advanced progressive web applications.

Learn How To Create An IOS App Development

Posted on by Sameer Mehta

Apple’s App Store had 2.184 million apps and games in 2022, an increase of 21.4% on the previous year. (source: businessofapps.com).

Newbies in the field of app development prefer to be iOS app developers for the following reasons:

  • Highly developed standards and practices
  • Better income/app revenues
  • Tech-savvy user base
  • Quality UX/UI
  • Safer enterprise development
  • Cloud integration/iCloud
  • Swift 5 and Swift Libraries
  • Faster migration to IoT apps

In 2023, Apple will open its latest store in the Battersea district of London, United Kingdom, adding to its 526 stores across 26 countries and regions.

But all that glory demands great efforts and for aspiring iOS app developers to taste the success promised by Apple’s growing tech fiefdom, a strong foundation must be laid in the form of solid practice and hands-on approach to coding and development.

If you’ve made it this far, we’d like to assume that you have some workable knowledge of the iOS app ecosystem. Even if you don’t, it’s not too late to get started.

Concept Idea and Research

A killer idea starts with identifying a problem or need. Create an app sketch with its components and dive into the market research process.

With thousands of apps being launched in the Apple Store daily, it’s likely that your idea may already have live applications. Develop strategies to incorporate new elements in your app that no other existing app offers.

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Get suggestions from friends and/or app developers at the ideation stage to understand the user and expert feedback. If the stars align on all of the above, you have a winning app waiting to be made.

Technical Requirements

Get a Mac and an iPhone/iPad.

If that’s too much of an investment in new devices, get a couple of used pieces. Even if you don’t want to immediately purchase an iPhone/iPad, you can develop your app on the iOS simulator.

Install Xcode

Xcode is a free Integrated Development Environment that provides SDK (Software Development Kit) for Apple users. It’s used by beginners and experienced programmers.

You can start learning from a beginner’s manual. Start with your coding, debugging, configuring elements, and storyboard creation. You will need Xcode as it’s the only official tool for creating iOS apps and frankly, the only one you need.

Learn Programming

While you’re learning how to code for the iOS platform on Xcode, you could start learning Objective C, the old school program for C-based functions, and C APIs. However, Swift, Apple’s new open-source language is easier to learn and read, and almost all apps on Apple Store are migrating to Swift.

Learning both sides by side will give you unique advantages.

In fact, SwiftUI, a user interface framework, is Apple’s attempt to simplify coding even further (low code) where numerous lines of codes can be managed in simplified workflows and at a faster speed.

Even though it’s slated to be the future for app development, if you’re designing now, you need to learn UIKIT as existing codebases use it and it’s well supported since it’s been around for ten years.

Mock-ups and wireframes

Mock-ups are visual representations of your app while a wire-frame is the (un-clickable) structure of the app in black and white with simple lines and boxes.

There are dozens of helpful prototyping and mock-up tools available for iOS apps that offer easy to use drag and drop, shared user functionalities, let you add annotations and interactive mock-up designs with which the potential customers can interact.

App design

Below are the major factors you need to consider for your app design: one page should take you 4-5 days, longer if you’re a complete beginner.

  • Choosing the right artboard size as per screen sizes of different devices
  • Measuring the size of elements in points correctly
  • Figuring out page layout design, colors, themes, and styling by using sketch templates, including status bar, nav bar, tab bar, home screen indicator, etc.
  • Incorporating navigation and search within different pages
  • Text boxes, table views, buttons, content formatting, touch controls, resolution, alignment, distortion
  • Typography, caption styling, squircle, dark mode guidelines

Even as a beginner, if your strengths lie in development or programming, you can certainly think about outsourcing the design to a specialist.

While creating the actual UX/UI design, you’ll have to familiarize yourself thoroughly with Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines that let developers maintain standardized design and development rules for macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

App development

This is divided into front-end and back-end development, the former for UX /UI, the latter for the app’s function with the server. Free online tutorials are widely available for every aspect of iOS app programming.

Understanding architectural design patterns for iOS should be on a developer’s radar for organized modules and seamless code with fewer bugs. One of the main functions of app architectures is to make code testability simpler.

Four common architectures are

MVC – Model View Controller, most commonly used architecture with View, Controller, Model Components

MVP – an improvement adds another main component- Presenter

MVVM – an evolved and trending architecture, Model-View-View Model

VIPER – is a clean architecture for iOS so that is simple and well suited for large projects.

As a beginner, you could consider starting with MVC and MVP and then upgrade to more complex architecture patterns.

It’s also recommended that you work in sprints (Agile Methodologies), dividing work into portions and then reviewing it for corrections before moving on.

Testing the app and deployment

Apple offers TestFlight Beta Testing before you release your app on the Apple Store. As a developer, you can invite testers to test builds and give feedback.

You’ll need to test your app to see if:

  • It installs quickly
  • Doesn’t crash too frequently
  • Launches all screens as expected
  • Is compatible with different iOS devices
  • Is secure and doesn’t leak data and information
  • It supports landscape and portrait modes
  • If it can go on sleep mode or send push notifications

You can actually test the app manually on a device or try open-source test automation frameworks. Make the required corrections and debug after testing.

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If all’s well, you can apply to publish your app on the Apple Store. An annually renewable developer’s account costs $99.

However, you’ll have to comply with Apple’s restrictions on App Store Review Guidelines before your app can be published. For codesharing, version controlling and project collaboration, publish your code on GitHub.

Upgrades and Maintenance

You’ll have to consistently monitor app usage on analytics platforms, fix bugs and other issues as and when they arise, add new features and updates, and provide support for new and diverse hardware.

If you don’t update your app often, it loses its relevance and appears dead. The better the user experience, the less the uninstalls. In the long run, you can start to monetize your app (in case if you launch it as a free app in the beginning).

Even before getting started, it’s necessary that you scour the internet for research on the tutorials and guides and get advice from experts or experienced developers who can guide you practically throughout the process.

Finally, patience and perseverance will be your best allies as an app developer.

How To Launch Your SaaS Product With a Bang? The Checklist

Posted on by Kallala

You have a SaaS idea, and your developers have enough courage to deliver it. But you also have to remember, the market you are willing to enter with your SaaS business is likely to be populated by other SaaS companies. And those are more established and better-funded than yours.

So, standing out in the competition, you have to understand how you can fit your idea and business into the overall picture that makes you different and unique.

I have shared my 8-steps SaaS Development idea that could help even the most desperate entrepreneur.

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If you’ve applied this framework, you can validate your idea and even have some pre-orders in your bank account.

As you are launching your product at the web market, you’re probably not rich enough to run off to the Bahamas directly.

But you have enough fuel to push your product to the next milestone of your startup journey i.e. building and launching the real product.

Here I come with the pre-launch checklist and I am going to discuss:

  • How to create a Go-To Marketing Roadmap
  • Build a successful landing page
  • Start conversations with your pre-launch audiences
  • Get traffic to your landing page

So, let’s get rocking!

1. The Go-To Marketing Roadmap

Here is the Go-To Marketing Roadmap (GTMR) that must be followed before launching the SaaS products.

Go-To Marketing RoadmapThe Go-To Marketing Roadmap which includes the Pre-launch marketing stage
Source: Encharge

The above GTMR can be used for launching the New SaaS products as well as launching new features and releases.

The main purpose of the GTMR is to:

  • To Provide an actionable plan of action that shows the possible ways of SaaS product development and marketing are likely to evolve.
  • To align your product development team and marketing team.
  • It helps to prioritize the marketing activities and provides a general continuity of purpose.

The Out Come of GTMR:

So, what can you produce through this roadmap?

Well, there are both quantitative and qualitative goals that you are in control of. While it is difficult to forecast the outcome but still it will give the outputs or the opportunity to be disciplined and achieve your goals.

2. Build a successful landing page

Actually, it depends.

The landing page depends on “how far are you with your SaaS product development?” On whether you have to show any screens, and whether you’ve to validate your idea or not.

Here I could tell you that letters matter more than pixels.

The main motto is “How” you can communicate the story and the “Why” your product can have a way of a bigger impact for a customer. You must consider your pre-launch success more than the look of your page.

Still, to increase the conversion rates, the landing page design must inspire trust. And forget the quick, unpolished landing pages.

Ideally, by the time you launch your SaaS, you’d have both a raving email list and people that have passed the walled test.

So, the target customer can easily understand what your product is all about.

I’ve worked with the team at AndolaSoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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Clear CTA

A single and clear call-to-action immediately visible above the fold

Yes, you can use only a single call-to-action (CTA) on your SaaS landing page.

Whatever goal you set for the landing page, it’s important to have it mentioned in your Go-To Marketing Roadmap.

Next thing – putting the landing page together.

3. Start a conversation with your pre-launch audience

There is just one last thing you need to do before you start marketing your SaaS product.

And this is to set-up basic Welcome email automation that you got from your pre-launching marketing.

The main goal of this workflow is to start the conversation with your potential audience.

It’s also an opportunity to learn more about your subscribers.

On the conversation, you can use the following terms like:

  • We would love to learn more about you
  • Click “reply” to this email and let us know
  • What you are currently looking more?
  • What is the biggest challenge you are facing in your business?

And finish by setting-up the presumption for the following follow-ups like:

  • I am going to despatch one or two weekly updates with content about SaaS marketing, automation, and marketing news.

However, engaging first communication with the new subscribers or visitors’ expectations is vital. So getting them excited is the key.

4. Focus to get traffic at your landing page

It’s time to put our growth hacking tricks on and get some return with it!

Now you have the product landing page up and running.

Now it’s the part “driving traffic to your landing page and growing your list of sign up, orders whichever is your goal.

Many SaaS businesses have managed to gain hundreds or thousands of valid web traffic, so they must be doing something right.

And why do they generally?

Content Marketing: Start writing on Medium (the content marketing site) by using of “how-to” guides that are specific to the pain points of the targeted audience.

Social Media Promotion: Create audiences on Facebook/LinkedIn that match with your product’s interests. And post/boost articles on the Facebook page to reach these audiences.

Do Webinar: Do few webinars with describing the pain point solving pieces of stuff of the SaaS product and promote the same webinar on different social media platforms.

SEO: An obvious advice to do so. You should cover the basics and optimize the SaaS landing (website) page.

Warping up

There you have it! Now you have everything you need to create a successful pre-launch marketing campaign. Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments.

Hope you enjoyed reading this and already have some tactical tips for your SaaS launching road map!

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5 Mistakes That Can Destroy Your Magento Store’s Success

Posted on by Alex Husar

So you’ve gone the extra mile to help your potential customers reach your store, and they’re here. Terrific! But why do so many of them leave without making a purchase? And that’s after all the effort and resources that you’ve put in.

With our extensive expertise in eCommerce and years of hands-on Magento development services, we’ve identified the key factors that may be hindering your conversion rates. It’s time to address these issues head-on and revitalize your store’s performance.

On this page, we’ve gathered the main reasons why your conversion rates aren’t as good as you want them to be as well. Plus, we give recommendations on how to make things right.

Why are the Conversion Rates of your Magento Store Poor?

There are many ways to explain why your Magento conversion rates aren’t skyrocketing, but we’ve brought it down to the five most common ones that we’ve encountered multiple times when working with this stores.

1. Unoptimized Store Speed

If page load time is slow, your store’s performance isn’t great. Yes, you can have the prettiest design in the world but don’t ever forget that people hate to wait. They will leave your store in about 8 out of 10 cases if they get impatient with page loading.

According to HostingTribunal, “a 1-second delay eats away 7% of the coveted conversion rate.” Therefore, getting the best of your store’s speed should be among your priorities at all times.

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Giving a couple of pointers on what to pay attention to in order to make your Magento store faster:

  • review your images(whether they are optimized not only in terms of image weight);
  • make use of nitty-gritty features like Lazy Image Loading;
  • get rid of unneeded data and logs;
  • narrow down the use of your plugins to the ones you actually need;
  • get your hands on caching tools like Varnish.

For optimal store speed acceleration and consequent Magento conversion rate optimization, of course, it’s better to turn to Magento development pros who’ll help fuel up the website to reach its best speed results.

2. Your Store Isn’t User-Friendly

Your Store Isnt User Friendly

Navigation should be intuitive. End of story. Your clients have to have every opportunity of shopping with ease. They shouldn’t be wasting their time on attempts to find something on the store or wrestling with the question of how to do something (for example, how to zoom in on a product image, close a pop-up, or try to click on an “unreachable” option from the droplist).

As stated earlier, time counts. And this goes beyond how quickly pages load. It’s all about the full picture in general, you don’t want customers to get frustrated and hit the exit site “X”. If things are “easy-breezy”, people are more likely to buy.

Is your store really mobile friendly? Check out the current statistics on eCommerce purchases made using mobile devices that were gathered by OuterBox.

The recent increase is already an evident change in user behavior. Hence, if it isn’t as simple to buy something on your store using your smartphone or tablet as it is from your desktop, you’re in trouble.

Regardless of mobile or desktop, user experience is key. Try to analyze how users navigate your store and think of ways to make things better.

Consulting professional UX/UI designers on the matter can be a good recommendation in this scenario. They’ll not only help to move things around but to actually enhance your page layouts for perception convenience.

As a result, this can for sure boost your Magento conversion rate.

3. Inefficient Checkout Process

Another thing that greatly explains why the conversion rate of your Magento store is far from perfect is that the store’s cart and checkout aren’t optimized.

As a rule, the major reasons for cart abandonment can be narrowed down to:

  • Non-transparent pricing and large additional costs that come to light only when attempting to purchase the product.
    The lack of opportunity to make the purchase without registering on the website.
  • The checkout procedure is just too lengthy and complex.

That said, mentioning some ways you can solve the cart abandonment problem are:

Be clear about the extra costs:

This regards all the add-ons for shipping, delivery, taxes, just to name a few). Consider lining out what the price is made up of right on the first step of the checkout so that the visible calculation omits unnecessary questions and lives up to client expectations.

Add the functionality of the Guest Checkout to your Magento store:

Moreover, you can add the feature of Social Login, allowing users to access your store via social media channels like Facebook or Google.

As such, many shoppers don’t want to register and leave their contact details because they simply don’t wish to receive email send-outs or just because they don’t trust you yet.

Without obligatory registration, more clients will finalize their purchase journey since they’ll be asked for their email address maximum.

Rework the steps of your checkout:

Recently, numerous store owners have shifted to a one-step checkout layout as, right from the start, it gives the customer the impression that they won’t be wasting their time going through multiple time-consuming steps to complete the purchase.

4. Your Store Seems Untrustworthy

Especially relevant in the case with first-time visitors to your store, you must make sure that the store is a secure environment.

When you come to think of it, for most people, leaving their personal or credit card details on an unknown store is a tricky question. Usually, there’s a lot of hesitation on the line.

Mentioning other ways to improve the conversion rate in your Magento store, you should make use of the security badges. At the least, this way you’ll have a visual confirmation that your store is secure, for example, this can be put on a checkout page.

Plus, a good way to make your customer feel more comfortable when using your website is by providing multiple ways to get in touch with you. An example of this could be adding a chat plugin to your store. For instance, Magento LiveChat is available free of charge.

Go even further by running your store’s security scans so that you’re sure that there are no vulnerabilities or hazards threatening neither your store nor the data on your clients that you must safeguard.

5. Inconvenient Payment Options

You’d be surprised to find out how many clients you might have already lost because of the seemingly ridiculous lack of payment method options. The world of eCommerce, in general, has been built on the grounds of “the convenience of shopping”.

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It’s its underlying premise. Paving the ground for your potential shoppers and assisting them in quickly finding exactly what they need is vital, but so is giving them the chance to pay the way they want to.

A scarce or unsuitable choice of payment options is yet one more core reason why your Magento store doesn’t convert the way it should.

Furthermore, when your potential customer has spent more than enough time on selecting and putting items in their cart and doesn’t find a method to pay in, this kills their shopping experience. And you know what? They most likely won’t ever return to your store again.

To avoid such an unpleasant situation, acquire the best available payment methods combo with a lot of variety that’ll suit not only your needs but those of your clients as well. If out-of-the-box Magento functionality doesn’t cater to your necessities, there are plugins and extensions on the official Magento Marketplace.

Available for free or on a paid basis, these can solve the problem and are a good starting point.

Summing up, reaching the best possible conversion rates is among the main aims of every business. Apart from what was mentioned above, there are other things you can try doing in order to brighten up the conversion picture: make shopping more personalized by granting product offerings or get your hands on retargeting and remarketing.

Just as with most spheres, eCommerce has its own best practices for growing conversions, and at times even a couple of simple tweaks can really change the game!

How to Capture the Opportunity after 59 Mobile Apps Banned in India

Posted on by Ajay Sahoo

Last week the Government of India did announce to ban 59 mobile applications as the government said these mobile apps were engaged in activities that were prejudicial to the sovereignty, integrity, and defense of the nation.

The list includes TikTok, UCBrowser, WeChat, CamScanner, etc and these apps are quite popular and have been widely used in India and in other countries as well.

Ever since the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown that followed has changed the way many professionals work.

Technology has played a pivotal role — be it work from home or online classes or digital payments.

Same time, certain IT experts feel this may be the best and ideal opportunity for the Startups, particularly from India, to develop and deliver the alternative apps to shine.

What Entrepreneurs are Saying After the Ban:

Shortly after the announcement, Debjani Ghosh, NASSCOM’s president took to Twitter to laud the decision and encourage India’s start-ups to fill the void in the app ecosystem. Her tweet was accompanied by numerous entrepreneurs including PayTM founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who was also welcomed by the move.

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Debjani Ghosh, president of NASSCOM, feels that it is the right time for the government and industry to focus on building for the Indian movement. She tweeted –

How This is an Opportunity:

From the last 10 years, India’s tech start-ups have been struggling to compete with the digital offerings with foreign companies which is typically backed by heavy volumes of funding, and capable of undertaking relentless and wide-scale marketing campaigns.

According to experts, India’s tech start-up ecosystem has struggled to secure the same levels of investments that the foreign-backed firms receive. And coupled with the lack of institutional support for the Indian government as well.

The popular mobile apps like TikTok, UCBrowser, Vigo, and other apps, many of which come pre-installed on smartphone manufactures and sold by foreign-based companies in India such as Huawei, Xiaomi, ZTE, etc.

What We Can Achieve:

The whole thing is actually about data privacy. There no connection to the Indo-China Border conflict issue for this banning.

So here only to focus the Indian Data-Privacy policy along with other privacy policies to launch your mobile app into the market.

Other checkpoints like features, engagement, usability must to consider for developing a new mobile app.

Obviously, if you are developing a mobile app for public entertainment or people would use the app for their entertainment your data privacy policy need to be transparent as much it can be.

Security of User Information

With that kind of information at stake, mobile app developers need to do everything they can to protect their users and clients.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

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Some the step we can follow like:

  • Encrypt All Data
  • Be Extra Cautious With Libraries
  • Use Authorized APIs Only
  • Use High-Level Authentication
  • Deploy Tamper-Detection Technologies
  • Use the Principle of Least Privilege
  • Deploy Proper Session Handling
  • Use the Best Cryptography Tools and Techniques

The above guidelines will help to keep the mobile app secure as an oyster and keep your clients and users happy.

Conclusion

From video sharing app like TikTok to chat-based services WeChat, to eCommerce, to web browsing and gaming, the latest ban has provided a much-awated gift to the Indian digital niche, at a moment when the spirits may have been at their lowest due to Covid-19 pandemic situation.

Same time, the Indian Government also has to back the Indian startup as a wing to gain popularity. The time is ripe then, for India’s tech entrepreneurs to finally take center-stage.

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How to keep your SaaS Startup Revenue on Track

Posted on by Ajay Sahoo

After an unprecedented bull run for 11 years, SaaS businesses are faced with a lot of uncertainty as they overcome the business impact of the global pandemic.

There is no fixed path ahead. The truths of each Monday are re-calibrated by next Friday. In the current scenario, agility is critical. You must look at the right leading indicators to make decisions quickly or risk getting buried under loads of data.

While revenue metrics like LTV, CAC, NRR, and Quick Ratio are solid ways to diagnose long-term trends with respect to how the business is performing, it is important to look at the leading indicators of your revenue health, and act on them before they significantly impact growth and cash flows.

Let’s dig into some metrics you should consider.

Cash Burn

Cash burn, the rate at which companies use up their cash balance or reserves, can be impacted by both revenue (inflows) and expenditure (outflows). It’s always good to conservatively assume a higher burn rate unless your business is accelerating.

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Even though there are multiple variables impacting your revenue, the key lies in being flexible and reacting wisely from an expenditure standpoint. It’s good to plan for all outcomes, and not assume you’re going to have a V-shaped recovery.

Practice conservatism and have one to three months of a runaway. This is impactful if the current situation is going to linger longer.

If your vendors are affected, reach out. You could prepay some of these expenses and probably negotiate a discount as well. A 10 to 20% discount means cash sitting on your balance sheet, which eases your expense burdens in the future

Sales Outstanding

At Andolasoft, we are seeing the DSO ratio increasing across all our clients as end customers are slow to pay in recent months.

Sales outstanding is basically calculating the time it takes for you to collect an invoice. This metric is one of the few things you can control.

If you received payment in 20 days pre-crisis, depending on the business you’re collecting from, it might take 30 to 40 days moving forward.

This could have a huge impact on your working capital. When forecasting for the next three to six months, take a closer look at the day sales outstanding ratio.

Accounts Receivables Aging Report

Given that most customers might be freezing their budgets, you may want to close payments on your receivables sooner than later.

On the other side, we’re also seeing businesses with stronger cashflow positions offering more lenient payment terms up to net-60 and net-90 days to build a stronger rapport with their customers.

A real-time accounts receivable aging report lets you see how much money your customers have paid, any outstanding payments, and current debt.

Aging reports help identify customers who aren’t paying, which makes it easier for you to reach out and negotiate payment terms.

Lifetime Value

The next thing you need to focus on is your growth sustainability. Growth should never come at the cost of profitability.

If you acquire a customer with a higher customer acquisition cost (CAC) and low lifetime value (LTV), it means you’re scaling but not profitably.

One way to balance growth and profitability is by the rule of 40. If your growth rate plus EBITDA equals 40%, it means you’re growing profitably.

In this scenario, you should ensure you’re bringing in the right kind of customers and make sure that your retention is high.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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The advantage of an LTV metric is that it gives you an idea of your customers’ quality. It also shows how well you’re able to retain them, which in turn, helps your team prioritize the accounts that are more likely to last longer than a free-trial period.

Total Credit Notes

Finally, you should be closely watching the leakage points in your revenue cycle.

The total credit notes report shows you the impact of credits and refunds you’ve offered to customers. While churn is bad news in itself, full refunds are even worse as they impact cash already in the bank.

I see some businesses restructuring their refund policies to only offer credits at this time, but it might have a significant hit on the brand. An option can be setting up internal policies, to look into the merits of each refund, then process it on a case-by-case basis.

On the other hand, acquisition teams are starting to use more coupons and discounts to close more deals.

While discounts are a great way to retain customers and continue running the sales machine, you need to watch its impact on revenue and ensure you are reporting on monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and leakages correctly.

This way, you wouldn’t be pushed to a scenario where sales continues to close seemingly big numbers, but with all the heavy discounts you don’t even see its impact downstream on total MRR.

Everything you knew about growing a startup or SaaS business has been upended. You’ll be faced with making tough decisions and your commitment will definitely be tested.

But with a clear understanding of your startup’s health and how your finances are changing on a daily basis, you can navigate these choppy waters.

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