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A Quick Payment Gateway Selection Guide For Your Online Business

Payment gateway plays a significant role in the success of an eCommerce transaction. Research shows that 50% of consumers are likely to abandon the transaction if their preferred payment gateway is not available during checkout.



Although a majority of online merchants offer multiple payment gateway options to their customers, it doesn't ensure a successful transaction or conversion. There are dozens of payment gateways available in the market. Which is why finding the right payment gateway for your business and consumers is difficult. We have covered a few factors that you must take into consideration while choosing a payment gateway for your eCommerce store.

4 Factors You Must Take Into Account While Choosing The Right Payment Gateway:

  • Does the Payment Gateway Integrate with your eCommerce platform?
    • A majority of payment gateway providers offer easy or one-click integration. But before deciding on one, you must ensure that the payment gateway supports your current version of the eCommerce platform. Some payment gateways do not have existing plugins or extensions for your platform. This involves a lot of custom development work including an enormous amount of time and resources. The best thing you can do is to have an experienced eCommerce development company to develop your store using an open-source platform that offers wide-ranging extensions or plugins. This extensions/plugins can integrate your store with popular payment gateways quickly and easily.
  • Does the Payment Gateway offer methods your target customers use?
    • From the massively popular Mastercard and Visa to other niche payment methods like Bitcoin, there are several online payment methods that are in use around the world. But each payment gateway does not support all the payment methods out there. Therefore, you need to identify the payment methods your target customers are using and choose the payment gateway that supports those methods. For instance, if you select Stripe as the payment gateway and your target customers transact a lot using PayPal, then it's a bad choice as Stripe doesn't accept PayPal payments.
  • Does the Payment Gateway promise to grow with your business?
    • A growing business requires a payment gateway to be able to keep up with it. If the user engagement of your business increases, the payment gateway must offer or launch products that enable customers to make faster payments. Stripe which is a popular payment gateway recently launched a feature for Twitter users that allows them to complete their purchase directly from a tweet without having to leave the website. By using such innovative features and platforms, you can reach out to more customers while ensuring the growth and success of your business.
  • Does the Payment Gateway promise to improve your checkout UX (user experience)?
    • A payment gateway if correctly chosen can improve your checkout process by reducing the number of steps involved and speeding up the process. If you choose to integrate the globally acclaimed service PayPal Express, you can auto-populate the information of your customers through its API and turn it into a one-click checkout. However, since checkout is the overall transaction success determinant, you must ensure that it is both seamless and easy. Customers usually return to stores that offer a fast and painless checkout process which ultimately results in enhancing your customer retention ratio.
Takeaway:
Customers love options and control in everything they do. Offering just one payment gateway may prevent you from increasing your conversions and revenue. So, keep the above-mentioned points in mind while choosing the payments gateways for your business and lower down the cart abandonment rates.

Does your eCommerce store offer multiple payment methods to customers? Which payment gateways is your store integrated with? Drop your comments below.

Ben Locke Posted on November 16th, 2016

5 Tips To Ensure Robust Security Of Your Mobile App

The increasing usage of mobile apps has opened up many opportunities for enterprises. But along with the opportunities come inherent security risks that the enterprises should never overlook or underestimate. Gartner predicts that "By 2017, 75% of mobile security breaches will result from mobile app misconfiguration.

Considering the consequences of security attacks, developers must take right measures to defend their applications against them. As no mobile device or operating system offers complete safety, a single mistake can result in critical data leakage, which can even bring down a business in no time. So, go through the following tips to prepare your mobile app for the evolving mobile app threats on the horizon.



Tips To Safeguard Apps From Mobile Security Threats:

  1. Encrypt your Source Code:
Bugs and vulnerabilities within your mobile app’s source code may lead to a security attack. With the help of malicious code, attackers often repackage the ‘Popular Apps’ into ‘Rogue Apps’ and then publish them. This can ultimately infect a million devices at any given time. This is why encrypting your app source code is important. If your application is built on a language which is easy to read, obfuscate it to make it difficult for attackers to read or interpret. However, encrypting it will assure that your source code remains inaccessible. In case of iOS, Apple already provides built-in encryption for building custom iOS application. But you can even implement other available encryption techniques in iOS to encrypt the user data.

  1. Understand Platform Specific Limitations:
If you are developing an app to work on multiple mobile operating systems, make sure you understand security features and restrictions specific to each platform. Consider various use case scenarios, password support, encryption support, and geo-location support for each operating system to control and distribute your app on the chosen platforms appropriately.

  1. Make Provisions for Data Security:
When an application accesses the confidential data of an enterprise, the unstructured information is usually stored in the device storage. Use mobile data encryption to effectively secure the data in the storage with SQLite Database Encryption Modules or file-level encryption across multiple mobile operating systems.

  1. Secure the Backend:
Most of the backend APIs (Application Programming Interface) assume that an app which has been written to access it can only interact with it. But to safeguard the app against malicious attacks, backend servers must have security measures in place. However, as API authentication and transport mechanisms differ from platform-to-platform, you must ensure that all the APIs are verified on the basis of the operating systems you choose to code for.

  1. Perform In-depth QA & Security Check:
Before deploying your application, test it against the randomly generated security scenarios. You can even take help of a hacker to identify the security backdoors within your application. Microsoft and Google put up Hackathons where hundreds and thousands of hackers participate and find out the security issues in an application for a prize money. But if you develop apps independently, you must go through the documentation in detail and if required seek help from an outsider to find out the hidden backdoors within your app.

Implementing these tips can secure your app against mobile malware and lead to end-user satisfaction driving better business prospects for you. What techniques do you implement to secure your mobile app? Share with us using the comment box below.

Ben Locke Posted on November 9th, 2016

3 Features A Great Fitness App Must Have

A global mobile health marketing report states that the mHealth app services market which was worth $4 billion approximately in 2014 is now expected to increase to $26 billion by 2017.

Existing fitness apps include a traditional bunch of features like activity tracking, diet and nutrition control, workout and exercise maintenance, etc. But will every new fitness app comprise of similar features?


Entrepreneurs / Startups who are looking to create useful fitness apps and add value to its customers need to pay extra attention in making the app slightly different. And to do that, you first need to define your direction and learn from other similar fitness apps. However, building cross platform mobile apps is the brilliant way to deliver apps faster than ever. So, let’s take a look at some features you can include while developing an engaging fitness app:

Best Features to Use In Fitness App Development:

  1. Create an account:
Health and fitness apps are about individualism. This is why most users ask for a personal account. You can enable various login options such as logging in via email or social networking sites – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram. A personal account stores user’s data and progress on a single device. This offers users the convenience to switch between devices and easily track all the activities. Also, linking to social networking sites can combine some social media functions and allow users to share their result with their friends alongside.

  1. Connect app with external devices:
Making your fitness app compatible with as many trackers as possible is really important. The wearable manufacturers and mobile platforms enable developers to link the wearable and mobile apps. Google Fit and Apple's Healthkit are the perfect examples of this. They even allow developers to use their SDKs and APIs while developing fitness apps.

  1. Integrate Geolocation:
Geolocation feature enables a developer to create walking routes for a user, track the current position, and record workouts. You can check Strava which is an excellent fitness app offering route recording to its users. However, other than some great fitness app building tools provided by Apple and Google, TomTom is a navigation and tracking hardware service provider. It offers great navigation and real-time mapping services along with APIs for you to use. Another interesting service is Nokia’s Mobile SDKs which provides a set of interfaces to create high-end native apps powered by flexible and reliable mapping platform. Sounds perfect, right?

Developing a fitness app with these features will not only help you create a great fitness app but also revolutionize the fitness world and make you a bit wealthier. Got any awesome feature ideas for building great fitness apps? Please drop them in the comments below.

Ben Locke Posted on September 19th, 2016

3 Effective Ways To Secure Your PhoneGap Mobile App

The ever-exploding use of mobile apps has made the business information more vulnerable to security hacks. While the developers leverage cross-platform technologies like PhoneGap to deliver faster apps, securing the PhoneGap/Cordova applications become more important.

As PhoneGap communicates with each OS by using different APIs, you need to secure your PhoneGap app development codes, documents, and enterprise data. Being a PhoneGap development company, you must follow the best practices mentioned below to secure your mobile app.

3 Best Practices For PhoneGap Mobile App Security:


#1 - Secure Your JavaScript: To keep your sensitive code into your app, ensure that you secure JavaScript as much as possible. As known, JavaScript is not compiled - so the best option is to obfuscate it to the extent it becomes unreadable. You must minify your JavaScript assets using Uglify before submitting your app to the app stores. You can even take it to the next level with the help of a paid service like JScrambler as it goes beyond obfuscation and offers more active protection for your JavaScript assets. While using Telerik AppBuilder, you can specify that some files exist only in debug or release configurations. Besides enabling you to manage your debug/release files, the AppBuilder IDEs also lets you automate the process with AppBuilder CLI and Grunt.

#2 - Load JavaScript Remotely: Another viable thing to do is not include your JavaScript assets in the app. Instead, you can load them remotely when the application starts:

However, this isn’t too secure as a quick scan of your source code can reveal your actual source. A better implementation would be to load the remote JavaScript through a secure API which first authenticates your user:
$.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: "https://my-remote-endpoint.com/authenticate", // authenticate your user
data: { username: username, password: password }, // use the authentication parameters that are best for you
success: function (e) {
// check for a successful authentication, and if so, load the script reference returned from your API
$.getScript(e.scriptUrl);
}
});
You can also supplement it on the server by ensuring that only mobile browsers are trying to access this API. Even though it is really easy for someone to spoof a user agent, it cannot harm to add an additional check on the server. Also, secure all your API calls when necessary.

#3 - Limit Your Exposure: Some other ways you can use to limit your exposure to security threats are:
  • Reducing the access to core Cordova plugins to only the ones your app really needs
  • Avoiding Android Gingerbread (2.3) which is considered to be the most insecure Android version
  • Using the InAppBrowser Cordova plugin that uses device’s native browser security to keep the remote content separate from the app
  • Using the PrivacyScreen plugin to hide app content while switching between apps on iOS and Android
  • Using Touch ID Cordova plugin while developing an app for iOS 8 that provides secure authentication to users

When it comes to security, nothing is full-proof. So, start with limiting your exposure and adding as much sensitive data on your secured server as possible. Work through these best practices and keep your PhoneGap app secure. Also, leave your opinions about these PhoneGap app security best practices in the comments.

Ben Locke Posted on August 26th, 2016

Why Is Drupal Development Popular Among Government Agencies?

Drupal made a huge splash when it was chosen to redesign the White House website. Today, more than 150 government websites run on Drupal. Apart from just powering government websites in the U.S., it powers the government sites of countries like Australia, Albania, Zimbabwe, and more. This makes Drupal a proven content management system (CMS) that exquisitely meets the diverse requirements of the government organizations around the globe.

But what makes Drupal popular among so many government organizations? The reason is its flexibility. Drupal is widely known for building and managing very large websites. And governments prefer Drupal development due to its capability of managing a variety of projects. However, there are a number of other factors that make Drupal a choice of CMS among government organizations. So, read through the list below

4 Factors That Make Drupal a Preferred Choice For Government Sector:

1. Cost Effective: Drupal, being an open-source platform, minimizes the initial cost of building or re-building a website. It is often considered as the most cost-effective platform. The software is free to download, use and share. This is the biggest long-term benefit for governments as they can save a huge amount for licensing websites. In addition to that, Drupal is developed by a community of 630,000+ developers and comes with thousands of free modules and extensions. Also, the users contribute and maintain the platform continuously. So, governments do not have to worry about the outdated technology issues.

2. Innovation: As Drupal is community-driven by nature, it helps government agencies to innovate through collaboration. It is essential for government agencies to share the technologies and innovations across other government bodies as they can benefit from it. This also fits well with President Obama’s words, “We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration." Perhaps, this could be one of the reasons why Drupal was chosen for re-building whitehouse.gov.

3. Security: This is another reason that makes government agencies jump onto Drupal bandwagon. Governments have recognized the superior security an open-source model can offer. With a community of more than thousand developers, the security gaps are quickly identified and remediated. It also provides other security methods like community and automated code review. This makes Drupal an obvious choice as website security is of utmost importance to any government organization.

4. Flexibility & Scalability: Drupal is highly flexible and scalable to fit into various projects. From government agencies to enterprises. Drupal can fulfill requirements of all. Name a feature you require and the Drupal community may have a module already. In case you don’t find it, you can develop and contribute it back to the community.

With all the above-listed reasons, Drupal seems to be an appealing solution for developing government websites. Since the launch of White House site, Drupal has made a special place in the government space for itself. It has also shared all the government projects on its community.

What other benefits do you think Drupal can offer for governments and enterprises? List your answers in the comments.


Ben Locke Posted on July 11th, 2016