If you need a doctor, lawyer, hairdresser or caterer for your wedding, how do you usually search for the right people?

It is good to have recommendations from friends and family, but what if you are new to a city and have no acquaintances? Or what if all the recommended specialists are not available for a long period? Or you just want to compare prices and services?

For these and other reasons, a catalog of companies with their contacts and reviews would come in handy in your selection process.

On the other side, each service is represented with hundreds, thousands or even millions of entrepreneurs, so businesses struggle for their place to be displayed in as many places as possible to find clients. That’s why the creation of business directories has become a neat solution that is helpful for both clients and companies. Quite a number of such online catalogs have successfully functioned for years.

So, is it worth it to enter this competitive business? If your answer is ‘yes’, let’s find out all the secrets of business directory website development!

Continue reading “How to Develop a Business Directory Website Like Yelp”

A college education is getting more expensive each year (prices increased by 3.5% in the last 10 years) and not all school graduates can afford to study in the universities of their dreams. Not only this, but many adults need to constantly upgrade their skills or get a degree but cannot quit their job to attend classes. For them and many other categories of people who want to study, distant online education is a perfect way to obtain knowledge and a diploma.

The term “eLearning” was first mentioned in 1999 at the CBT systems seminar describing online lessons. Since that time, eLearning gradually evolved into the concept of MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses), giving people from all over the world the chance to study disciplines of world-class universities and even obtain bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

The best way to organize online courses is to use the power of eLearning platforms. The first “stars” that influenced this sphere and come to mind when we talk about eLearning are definitely Coursera, Udemy, Udacity, and edX. By now, there are more than 50 MOOC platforms functioning in 23 countries around the world.

Is it worth it to build a website like Coursera? And how do you do this? Is there any difference in building a website like Udemy and Coursera?
Let’s research together!

Continue reading “How to Build an eLearning Platform like Coursera (or Udemy)?”

Let me guess what brought you here… Is it your addiction to spreadsheets that you know is unhealthy? Or, perhaps, is it having to switch between 100+ apps that you use to run your company? Or, maybe your current ERP system is driving you crazy?

Either way, we hear ya! We’ve seen it with our clients, and we are also a small business ourselves which means we share a lot of your pains.

When done right, ERP can become a great reliever and springboard for your company’s growth. But the question is which route to go: buying an off-the-shelf solution or building a custom one. It seems there are tons of ready-to-use ERP solutions for businesses of all shapes and sizes, so why would you want to develop your own system?

It turns out there are a number of serious reasons to consider custom development. Let’s take a look at them.

Continue reading “Should You Build a Custom ERP for Small Business?”

Do not fall victim to the stereotype that it is impossible to start your own tech startup without a tech co-founder who rules the development process. There are thousands of examples of successful entrepreneurs who reached the top without a tech-savvy partner.
We are going to show you the way out!

Watch out! After reading this you will not be able to use the excuse that you did not build a tech company because you didn’t have a tech co-founder!

Continue reading “How to Build a Tech Startup without a Technical Co-founder”

Visual content is a powerful tool used by marketers and bloggers. It can increase audience engagement, brand awareness, and click-through-rate on websites.

No blog, advertisement banner, or landing page now can go on without high-resolution catchy images or videos. But hiring a photographer or graphic designer for every campaign is expensive and time-consuming. That’s why it was a brilliant idea to create a global storage of royalty-free photos, videos, vectors, and music, and make them available for instant download at a cost of only a few dollars. Shutterstock is one of the most famous communities of visual content contributors in the world.

Taking into account the incrementally growing interest in visuals for the years to come, why not to build the website like Shutterstock?

Here below, we are going to outline new business opportunities for the microstock industry. You will learn about features necessary to create a website similar to Shutterstock so that people love it.

Continue reading “How to Start a Stock Photography Website like Shutterstock?”

Gartner says 55%-75% of ERP projects fail.

As if that is not enough, I’ll also add that a failure of an ERP project is not something companies can just shake off and carry on. ERP projects are usually so serious in their nature, that their failure can cause a major setback for the entire company, or even its death.

To give you an idea of how epic such a fail can be, here is an example. Vodafone decided to consolidate its CRMs into one of Oracle’s cloud platforms and got part of the customer accounts messed up. This resulted in major losses for the company, plus a £4.6 million fine.

Of course the bigger the company, the more massive the wreck. Luckily, most of us won’t get a chance of such a blow-up, just because we are not at that scale. Nonetheless, an ERP project that’s gone bad can suck the life out of any company regardless its size.

How does such a bright-sided and well-intentioned endeavor, as ERP system development, ends up in such a debacle?

Continue reading “How to Develop a Custom ERP Software: 8 Step Guide for the Business Owner”

Probably, you have already read umpteen blogs and books on how to build a SaaS business. Or, maybe you’ve gone further and conducted some smoke tests to validate your SaaS startup idea with real customers. So now you need to find a development team to convert your idea into a product that you could market.

We all know (at least in theory) that to build or renovate a house, we would need to create a concept, scope of work, make a design, calculate the budget, find builders, buy necessary materials, arrange and monitor building process, and so on. Now imagine that creating a SaaS application is the same as building a house with its specific steps to follow.

This guide is for those who are going to move from theory to practice and want to understand what steps to do next! We propose you to follow us and peek into the development kitchen to get a better understanding on how it all works! Ready to start this journey?

Continue reading “How to Develop a SaaS Application [Complete Guide]”

In our daily life, we inevitably bump into the necessity to repair, fix or rebuild something in our home, garden, or office. Mostly, we try to search for technicians recommended by our friends but not always it is possible to find the exact specialist only by word of mouth.

As a rule, individual technicians cannot afford to have a separate website, but still, need to be represented on the web. That’s why they may find it very comfortable to register on one of the “Human As A Service” (“HaaS”) platforms to generate leads for them. Some of the representatives of such platforms are Homeadvisor, Mybuilder, Airtasker, Amazon Home Services, NoCowboys, to name a few.

HomeAdvisor built the largest tradesmen international employee website that connects homeowners with specialists in home repair, remodeling, and home improvement. That is why we selected this platform for today’s overview to look at its functionalities and unveil the secret of their success.

Hoping you’ll find it useful to learn how to build a HomeAdvisor type website!

Continue reading “How to Build a Tradesmen Website Like HomeAdvisor”

86% of clients would pay an extra $25 for the option to have Jake (Gerard Butler) from Geostorm come and fix their equipment   choose a convenient time for a technician to visit them.
The increase in customer satisfaction can bring a revenue lift of up to 15% while lowering the operational costs by as much as 20%.

Today, personalization, quality of service, and moderate cost are three whales that support user expectations. If you can provide the balance among all these components, you are at the top. But it is easier said than done, as from many field service companies the automation of their routine operations is still a great challenge.

At what stage should I start using Field Service App? What size of a company does it suit and how do I choose the right app for my use? Is it necessary to build a field service app or can I solve my issues with a ready-made solution? Is it possible to shorten my appointment windows, increase the level of personalization and quality of services, and reduce operational costs with the help of technologies? Probably these and some other questions brought you to this article.

Let’s find out the answers!

Continue reading “How to Build a Field Service App”

Robots will never displace humans in the ability to be empathic and passionate. And actually, we do not need them to do this. Let’s save emotions for humans and delegate routine work of systematization, search and calculation to computers, while we focus on extraordinary tasks that need all our involvement, communication talent, analytical abilities, and understanding of feelings.

Charity and nonprofit organizations, on the one hand, work to appeal to people’s real feelings (caused by their needs and deeds) and, on the other hand, need to complete the quite ordinary tasks of collecting donations, keeping documentation, sending out emails. Here we’ll discuss how automation can improve nonprofit.

Are you tired of routine in your charity organization? Ready to change it?

Continue reading “How Nonprofits Can Benefit From Automation”

“Hi, Kevin! How are you doing? We are glad to inform you that your room is ready for check-in! Just confirm upon arrival and receive mobile key access directly to your room! We hope that you enjoy your stay in our hotel.”

If your hotel management system sends out confirmations like this, you are on trend!
If not, read this article for further insight and to find out more about hotel industry opportunities to help enhance your services and teach you how to create a hotel management system.

Continue reading “How to Develop a Custom Hotel Management System”

88% of planners expect their attendees to consider mobile event apps as critical to their event experience.

This is understandable, because being stuck with a bag full of paper handouts, trying to figure out where to go next isn’t exactly the picture of an ideal conference experience, is it?!

Nowadays, when we have floods of invitations to all kinds of events, we can be really picky. A lot of factors weigh in our decision, including the conference app, or lack thereof.

That is why many conference organizers now view event apps as not only an option to improve the overall attendee experience, but also as an important competitive advantage. But how to make an event app capable of that?

Continue reading “How to Make a Conference App That Adds Value to Your Event”

If we asked you to rate the service level during your previous stay at a hotel, how many stars would you give it, between one to five? Were there any delays at check-in or check-out, problems with payment or providing special services, were the personnel polite and well-organized? Did you feel cared for as a guest, with a level of personalized treatment?

A hotel is a large living organism, each part of which should function coherently with the others in order to provide top service. Like in the body, where the brain gives out commands and gets feedback from organs and muscles, any hotel department should also be controlled by a single system.

As a hotelier, you must be aware that even the slightest disorder in synchronization of information or personnel actions can lead to loss of guests’ trust and satisfaction.

One of the challenges with modern hotels is the process of keeping the establishment’s information on paper or in Excel files. With so many ready-to-use software options, and the ability to create a custom solution, hotel management has become easy and productive like never before. You just need to choose the right tool.

Are you puzzled about how to do this? Keep reading, and let’s shed some light on this question!

Continue reading “How to Choose the Right Hotel Management Software”

Let me confess, I almost never go out for dinner at a restaurant without checking the rating of the establishment on TripAdvisor or Google. How about you?

The same goes for booking a hotel room for a vacation, buying a car, looking for a physician, or hiring a tradesman. Nobody wants to have a bad experience and waste time and money on unverified services or goods.

“85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations” – Bright Local.

These statistics and your personal experience should bring you to the conclusion that a web review service is in high demand now and can be a driving link in creating a chain between customers and businesses.

Isn’t it time to start thinking about creating your own review website?

Continue reading “How to Build a Review Website?”

When launching your business, and with only 10-15 customers on your roster, to start, you are surely able to remember all tasks and interactions with each of them. But, as the number of customers reaches several hundreds or thousands (including contacts, leads, prospects, affiliates, and partners) you’ll need accurate data storage and processing with quick access to all necessary information.

There are many types of software known as CRM systems that cope with customer relationship management and can be used to substitute Excel files and heavy paperwork.

Continue reading “How Much Does It Cost to Develop Custom CRM Software?”

Ready or not, GDPR is here to change the way we view privacy. And, unless you want to pay multimillion euro fines, you’ve got to take it seriously!

Of course, there is a silver lining and not everything is that bad. The new regulation has introduced very good privacy protection practices that will bring a lot of value to your users. So, whenever you feel intimidated, just remember that GDPR legislates common sense!

In this article, we deconstruct GDPR from the point of view of the impact it will have on the development of your website/web app. We did our best to extract the practical steps for making your website GDPR compliant.

Continue reading “How Does GDPR Change the Way Your Website is Developed?”

“Good ideas can come from anywhere: 92% of the creators of the best creative solutions come from different countries than the country from which the brief originates.” – eYeka State of Crowdsourcing Report.

Some challenges just need a collective mind, in order to solve them, and some tasks need to be delegated to someone who has better competencies in the specific area. Some projects are better for brainstorming across as many people as possible, too.

It’s no wonder that, with the development of the internet, it has become inevitable that people have started to delegate jobs to others via specialized platforms. To top it off, we have also now recognized the 12th anniversary of crowdsourcing as a social, business, and technical phenomenon.

Continue reading “How to Build Your Own Crowdsourcing Platform”

There are a lot of small and medium-sized enterprises owning or renting spare rooms that stay idle even though they are still being paid for on a regular basis. At the same time, many freelancers, start-ups, event-managers, and entrepreneurs are searching for an inexpensive workspace that does not require a lot of the hassle that comes with contracts and administrative costs, and could be rented on demand.

Why not connect these two groups of people to help each other? Looks like an idea for a start-up, doesn’t it?

Continue reading “How to Build a Website Like Airbnb for Commercial Real Estate?”

“95% of our energy should be spent on generating income. If I am spending that time typing in stuff, adjusting stuff, organizing stuff and only 5% of time on generating income, then I am in trouble!” Kris McCullough, a thought leader in real estate business, owner of KSA

When it is just you and a couple of clients, it might be easy to concentrate on the core activities 95% of the time. But as your client base grows and you add more and more people to the team, administrative and organizational tasks start to take over.

That’s the time when agents turn to business tools like real estate CRM and marketing automation software.

Continue reading “How to Automate a Real Estate Business Using Custom CRM Software”

“Where can I get new leads?” – the question that probably worries every entrepreneur.

There are a lot of marketing solutions for this, but today, we’ll share with you a technology that will cope with this and many other painful tasks using programming.

From the title, you have already deduced that we’ll talk about “web scraping.” So, let’s cut to the chase and dive in at once!

Continue reading “4 Ways Your Business Can Benefit from Web Scraping”