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Arpatech Website
Jan 10, 2025
Artificial Intelligence in Application Modernization: Key Benefits and Real-World Applications
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Debunking Myths About Staff Augmentation
IT staff augmentation is a successful way to bridge the gap between skills and make many projects succeed. While many businesses use it to their benefit effectively, others still rely on local talent pools, which are closely associated with long-term recruiting and high costs. They are also hesitant to consider alternative avenues that can help accelerate their project and/or improve its quality.
Different from outsourcing IT assistance, staff augmentation basically adds up a specialist to your team when you are working with a new product or technology and you are unable to provide the training and support that your employees need to succeed.
We’re going to find the truth about the major myths about staff augmentation. And, if you’re not sure if recruiting temporary help is a viable option, then read on — we’ll help you to be confident with your choice.
Reality: Absolutely wrong. In fact, in most instances, it is certainly more cost-efficient to deal with outsourced companies than to run massive IT staff augmentation. Staff augmentation also allows businesses to circumvent most direct and indirect expenses affecting in-house employees, including insurance and retirement benefits, compensation of staff, legal processes and even management of office supply. And that’s only getting a glimpse.
In fact, staff augmentation plays a tremendous role in risk and resource management, far beyond cost savings. Make sure that your IT staffing members have effective and robust hiring processes that guarantee access to the region’s top talent. It eliminates the risk of recruiting the inappropriate person for the job and provides a smooth process between sourcing and recruitment. Time savings help companies focus on their core skills to increase the product’s ultimate value.
Reality: Another commonly held belief is that you lose control over your project with staff augmentation. You hand over the keys to the castle to the company you employ for conventional outsourcing. You have very little control of the success or path that the project should follow until it is complete.
Staff augmentation is exactly what it sounds. You hire a team, if you don’t have one, which makes use of your resources and follow the action plan. Staff augmentation adds on your software team, allowing you to maintain full control over the project’s course and development. Dedicated developer teams are on the side, and you have direct contact with the manager and developers of the project.
Reality: If you outsource a project, you’re concerned about not understanding the project’s status or speaking to developers about technical answers. You may be worried with time-zone discrepancies for outsourcing abroad, or a language barrier that makes it difficult to get the full scope of what’s going on with the project.
You have power over both the team and the project while you deal with a staff augmentation company. Your augmented developers are part of your team and are devoted to your project. All updates about your project’s progress and success go through you directly. You’re the owner, even with remote augmentation. You work with project manager and developers directly.
Reality: Most certainly, the augmented staff you employ would work remotely with you (although some contracts require their physical presence). This can actually work to your favor in today’s business setting, encourage continuous development, and give you a competitive advantage. Because of the time difference, when your local devs are still sleeping, your remote staff on the other side of the world may respond to the problem. It is also common practice to use communication and project management methods to encourage interactions with your augmented development teams.
Core cultural differences are hard to overcome, but it may increase your worries about them. Many tech professionals are big city dwellers who uphold Western values and speak excellent English in outsourcing areas such as Ukraine. In the end, it’s up to you to decide whether or not you want them on your team.
Reality: Working with new members often brings a natural worry or anxiety. Nonetheless, if it is not possible to achieve your business goals with the support of your existing staff, you can augment it. It’s less risky than assigning a totally unknown development team with full control of the project. If you want to be as sure of your success as possible and control your web project locally, with a rise in IT staff you can reduce the risks.
Reality: Unless an organization can schedule performance, meetings and monitor key performance metrics, this clearly cannot be true. Staff augmentation teams are prepared to assimilate in no time in new environments and transform themselves into the project or organization’s structure and procedures for which they work. Physical distances are not a problem anymore. Staff augmentation can benefit your business remotely. It’s all about breaking virtual constraints in the IT industry. Staff augmentation can benefit your business remotely.
Operating with outside people is natural to fear a little, but factoring in the benefits of staff augmentation will overshadow those worries. Nevertheless, having all important issues in writing and always using transparent and efficient communication channels is good advice.
Reality: When the project is done and the team no longer has augmented staff, who is going to provide tech support? This is one of the most forward-looking business owners’ genuine concerns. However, this aspect can be negotiated and can be addressed directly in your outsourcing contract. A reputable outsourcing company respects these issues and will provide you with a variety of solution support options.
Staff augmentation might be the right fit for the needs of your company. While this is a type of outsourcing, it offers a better way to build and maintain a project by a team of developers. Consider exploring staff augmentation while hiring or outsourcing overseas. Additionally, the team will understand more about how to incorporate new solutions and expertise of long-term internal management of everything.
Arpatech Website
Jul 15, 2020
Shopify vs Woo Commerce: Which one should you go for?
With the availability of multiple feature-rich ecommerce platforms, initiating an online store has become quite convenient. But at the same time, it is quite confusing to pick the best one. Deciding which one to go for is dependent on what you are looking for. Shopify and WooCommerce are the most renowned e-commerce platforms, allowing anyone to set up an online store and sell their products. Below, we are going to compare Shopify and WooCommerce and help you decide which one you should go for.
WooCommerce gives you the access to get hold on the most robust content management system and employ it to run an online store. It is an open-source platform where you can customize each feature of your online store.
WooCommerce is a WordPress Plugin which offers free core plugins. Apart from that various add-ons are also available out of which some are paid while others are free.
WooCommerce has multiple features to offer:
The developers of WooCommerce are familiar to the worth of design in eCommerce which is the reason they offer WordPress themes that have been specifically optimized for WooCommerce. The specialty of WooCommerce is that it is highly compatible with WordPress when comes to the rich theme selection.
WooCommerce themes proffered on Envato Market have been specifically customized for the plugin itself. Not just this, it also offers various other features like zoom in facilities, attractive sliders, bold imagery and a very receptive design and other top-level aesthetics.
Since WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, there are multiple SEO benefits to consider. WP is popular for content essentially and inhibits great SEO capabilities. So, when you place both together, you can assemble both content and information which brings the opportunity of high search engine ranking. Apart from that, WP holds blogging in an adequate and logical way along with the archives and categories which it offers.
WooCommerce facilitates its users with free basic features in the core plugins. They are the best to begin with. If you desire to magnify your online store’s prospective, you will naturally choose WooCommerce extensions.
WooCommerce provides many interesting options which allow you to raise your scale, such as selling on Facebook, instinctively record sales in QuickBooks, connect your store with MailChimp, creating repeated subscriptions and a lot more. Some add-ons are paid while others are free.
With a widespread community of users along with developers whose emphasis is to refine and extend WooCommerce through the development of themes and add-ons for it. It offers reliant ecommerce development service along with thorough documentation. Due to which it becomes convenient to find help and chances are that the solution to your problems already exist there.
Although WooCommerce has a lot of free stuff but there are some payments attached to it. For instance, for a WordPress website you need to buy your own domain name and setting up a hosting plan. The cost varies since it is all dependent on the hosting plans you prefer and the add-ons you desire to pick for your online store.
Shopify is an e-commerce platform which has brought convenience to the creation of an online store, accepting payments and managing inventories. Without the worries of handling technicalities like security, web hosting etc.
Shopify is a self-hosted solution but unlike WooCommerce, Shopify offers no free plans but the costing is manageable. This self-hosted solution makes your store ready in a matter of minutes because there is no supplementary software to install. Just like WooCommerce, there are variety of themes as well as add-ons offered by Shopify which beautifies your store.
Shopify’s main feature includes:
Although, Shopify is not that much of a feature rich like others. It provides a good collection of themes to begin with. Its themes range from free to paid. If you wish to add extra features, Envato Market provides an excellent selection of popular yet affordable Shopify themes. Its themes offer features such as zoom in facilities, quick view options, newsletter, look books, social sharing, huge-menus and a lot more than these. You have a wide variety of multipurpose themes to opt for.
Shopify development Services has devoted servers which caters purely to Shopify stores. Its overall performance in minutely better as compared to WordPress. It has integrated SEO features like image optimization, tags, alt, defining titles and product descriptions. Another plus point is that SSL certification comes with every plan of Shopify without any charges.
Shopify provides a great collection of free features. These features contain discount codes, cart recoveries, Facebook selling, the capability to offer gift cards, and lots more. Just like WooCommerce, Shopify facilitates unique add-ons which gives you the ability to cross-sell, track deliveries and others.
Shopify offers an in-depth documentation and a vibrant community. When compared, WooCommerce support comes majorly from the community, whereas Shopify has a very devoted team which is available 24/7.
Shopify offers various degrees of pricing plans ranging from lowest to highest. It also offers a 14-day free trial so you can decide whether to go for Shopify or not. All the plans include limit free products and bandwidth, a blog, free SSL certification. Domain name can be directly bought from Shopify and even you have the flexibility to connect with existing domain name. Final cost will be defined on the basis of the add-ons and features you have bought.
Both Shopify and WooCommerce are dominant eCommerce platforms. It is a very close comparison. Both are feasible choices for initiating your online store in a quick and smart way.
Apart from being easy to use and feature-rich, both platforms facilitate a number of options when it comes to visual appearance of an online store. They are suitable for a wide variety of industries and are guaranteed to make your page noticeable to the users.
Arpatech Website
Jul 9, 2020
Instagram Trends to Watch for in 2020
Instagram has been constantly evolving as a social media platform and has brought some of its peers to the ground. It’s safe to say that the platform is no longer a parochial social media app, but a comprehensive platform of growing rates of engagement.
Aesthetic trends are constantly evolving in Instagram — but what does the feed hold for 2020? The Instagram feed is about to become more creative than before, from the “no-edit edit to home-made videos and the obsessed with carousel posts.
Whether you’re a brand, business or influencer, we’re highlighting the best Instagram aesthetic trends and predictions you’re going to need to understand for 2020. To help you stay on top of those changes as a marketer, we’re touching on a few Instagram trends that defined 2019 and bringing you some trends to expect in 2020.
Instagram has, over the past couple of months, been one of the go-to video marketing platforms for video marketers. Over the next few years, having an all-new and improved IGTV platform will also cement its position. The updated IGTV platform now allows people to promote their videos across their feed. Thus, Instagram is no longer just for stills, so its video-sharing platform IGTV has evolved. It was quite a rough start for IGTV that led to slow acceptance by users, but IGTV has been improved by Instagram and is actively promoting its use across the platform.
IGTV also reflects its competitor not only with the interface look and feel, but also with how users interact with it. More users are also encouraged by Instagram to explore IGTV by getting one-minute snippets on the feed that will direct a user to the IGTV tab to start the video. As such, people are browsing more and more on the tab and it would be prudent for brands to start posting their content on it. Instead of being confined to IGTV, users can now cross-promote their IGTV videos on their feeds and have recently allowed users to share landscape or horizontal videos rather than just vertical ones.
When using IGTV, you can choose to go for a more “authentic” and “unfiltered.” You can, for example, share insightful interviews with experts, influencers, or just a scene from any of the trending events you are taking part in.
Even though some pages post updates on a daily basis, we see a shift from the post grid to stories in particular. Posts are becoming more curated more purposeful and more minimalist. They carry on an evergreen image and leave the stories with the real-time fun stuff. The reason for this is simple: there is an incredibly high engagement to stories. Postings remain for business information. On the other side, stories are intended to be a keep-tabs-on-the-brand emphasis, with dynamic stickers and swipe-to-see-more links choices.
This feature is available for personal Instagram accounts as well as business Instagram profiles, and is a brilliant way to cross-promote your content so you can attract a broader audience. Instagram also has so many great features within the stories to take full advantage of. You can make your story attractive by adding music, animated stickers, locations, polls and more.
More and more marketers have shifted their focus on story content rather than feed content, and you ought to do the same.
Modifications in Explore Tab
The Instagram Explore tab curates content and links you with posts based on your past likes and interests. It used to be generic in the past, but since interest has recently been segmented, you can now move to the Explore tab for content you are interested in.
Instagram continues to make finding new accounts easier for users to follow, which is a great thing for your brand. Every day, more than 200 million users visit the Explore page, allowing even more people to see your brand.
The content on the Explore page of each individual user is directly addressed to their app activity so you need to ensure that you are marketing properly to your customers if you are hoping to find space in the Explore section of your target customer.
For brands on many platforms, interactive content is pretty good right now; not just trends on Instagram, but the platform makes it incredibly convenient for you to jump on the bandwagon.
Instagram Stories provides functions such as polling, quizzes, questions and more to grant the followers the opportunity to interact with you and your content directly.
To incorporate interactivity in your Instagram story, open the Stories dashboard, take a picture or upload your content, then tap the stickers icon to view all your content choices.
It’s a cool way to get all the thoughts and opinions of your audience. You can add interactivity just for great entertainment, or you can use it for market research strategically and collect ideas for future products, services and launches.
Instagram no longer has anything to do with the flawless photos and hyper-curated feeds. It’s becoming more about real life, and what things really look like. 2020 is all about being real, authentic and unfiltered content.
To build a stronger connection to your audience, a high level of authenticity can go a long way. Your brand will be more directly relevant to your audience when you can showcase the good with the bad, the struggles with the wins. You can be authentic by getting creative and diverse and use untouched models in your product photography. You may also intrigue users by showing them behind-the-scene content showcasing life of a social media manager, a CEO or any other roles in your company.
You can draw inspiration from Humans of NY which is among the first of its kind and has persisted over the years due to the realistic photos of people with compelling stories. Of course, you don’t have to replicate the whole idea but you can get a clue to start a new social media campaign.
Influencers on Instagram are still a big deal– so we think it’s going to continue to be so for a while. The app places more power in them with the influencers’ growth already going strong. And followers flooding influencer DMs with “where would you get that?’’ on their OOTDs. Instagram recently announced that they are pushing out an influencer shopping option.
To make a purchase, users rely on and trust influencers to figure out the many market products and services and provide endorsement. Instagram allows influencers to tag products to encourage users to jump straight into brand product accounts.
Many influencers may have as few as 100 followers, but brands have continued to value partnerships with them as getting their message across this way is now considered more authentic. They draw more attention and respond to comments and mentions are more prospective. In fact, these influencers have origins in niches that are hard to reach. Therefore, you will broaden your advertising reach by working with them.
Arpatech Website
Jul 6, 2020
5 Python Web Development Frameworks For 2020
Frameworks play an integral role in making Python programmers’ lives’ easier: they reduce development time and allow developers to focus greatly on application logic by automating the application of unnecessary tasks.
There’s no shortage of frameworks for Python as it’s one of the top programming languages. Since different frameworks have their own unique merits and demerits, the you need to choose one based on project requirements and developer preference.
Here are 5 leading Python web development networks for 2020.
Written in Python, Django is a well-liked, widely-used, and an open-source Python web development framework that is, most of the time, accompanied by ready-to-use libraries. Some of its outstanding aspects are the routing of URLs, the template engine, authentication, database schemas migration, and an object-relational mapper, making this framework enormously fast, extensible, and flexible. Django also conforms to a number of databases and employs ORM to chart objects to tables in databases. Nevertheless, this framework helps you build any application you are seeking, from small to large web applications.
This is another open-source system, which runs on Python 3 and is considered to be the least complex to achieve as much as possible. The best aspect of this framework is that it can run on both small and large applications. Some of the main features of Pyramid include flexible verification and authorization, consent, and single-document application. The system provides adequate security measures and supervision through control documents, while the charting of URLs to code is also commendable.
If you wish to create high-security and steady web application, however, then you would do well to hire a developer from Python.
This is an open-source, widely-used web development framework, which allows the user to design things very rapidly and effectively, while supporting all acquainted working structures. With the help of SQL database, web server, and an online interface, this framework helps to reorganize the Web application development procedure. Nevertheless, with the assistance of internet browsers, Web2py also lets users change, produce and manage web applications.
One of the significant features of this system is that it employs the ticket that allows the instrument to supervise the status and the slipups. The framework has sections in made-up to handle replies, conferences, HTTP requests, and treatments.
Created as a full-stack layer, this framework is now an autonomous web framework that can work either as a full-stack frame or as a micro-frame. TurboGears is built on MVC where the controller sends the application to an assortment of the controller’s exposed actions. This framework offers all the functionality one needs during the formation of a web application in its full-stack mode.
Certified under the LGPL, this is a semantic web application framework which allows developers to build Web applications resourcefully by reusing elements and adopting the popular object-centric design ideas. Some of the key features of CubicWeb include:
Arpatech Website
Jul 1, 2020
5 SEO Hacks for Small Businesses in 2020
Small businesses are usually on a tight budget yet they want to be on the top of every relevant search result. For your website to rank on any search engine, you must perform proper SEO.
Irrespective of size, most companies find SEO a cumbersome exercise. But this becomes especially difficult when you have limited money, time, and other resources.
Great organic ranking does not happen overnight. However, there are 5 hacks you can focus on to start moving the needle for your small businesses.
You don’t necessarily need a coterie of SEO experts to monitor the performance of your website. There are many free programs out there, such as Google Analytics, that will track the performance of your website.
This tool can enable you to see which search queries and landing pages will help attract web traffic from the search results. With this information, you can tweak your SEO strategy accordingly.
Meta tags like the title tags and meta descriptions in your website’s backend are critical to update when you create web pages, as it helps search engine crawlers to recognize the web page’s content and validate you as a reliable source of information.
The title tag and meta description are there to reassure online searchers that your content is exactly what they’re looking for.
Here are some definitions to help guide you through:
Allow, interact and engage with comments on the page.
This is because it’s a great SEO opportunity, among other reasons.
Commenters often leave information that you may have missed, and post visibility increases with conversations, comments and shares.
Google’s search algorithms are all about discerning content of high quality from contents of low quality. In Google’s eyes, high-quality content is informative, authoritative and has a good reputation elsewhere on the web.
Therefore, it is important to make other sites link to your website. There are opportunities to do so but a lot of it isn’t in your reach. What you should do, however, is to embed insightful links into your content of reputable websites. This means that your content is informative, well-cited, and, therefore, of a high quality in Google’s view.
You need to monitor the accuracy of your local business data, in addition to Google My Business.
Consistency is pivotal
Data aggregators (e.g., Neustar Localeze, Factual) exchange local business information, including the name, location, and telephone number (NAP).
Make sure the NAP information is consistent and accurate for your business. Local business listings and quotations (i.e. online mentions of a business) can actually boost your local presence.
The simplest option to local directories and citations is to sign up for a service that distributes your business’s NAP information.
Arpatech Website
Jun 19, 2020
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