Insights

Today I have revamped a my blog design. The new design is attractive, mobile friendly and more informative. Cover photo of this article hosts the new design of the website.

But wait, what’s wrong with the old design ?

After using the old design for year and half I have found many drawbacks of the old design.In simple words It was not impressing the customer who have landed on my website. Below are the few things which every consultant like me must have in their website.

Have a vision: Have a vision for your website.Just having blog don’t get more customers. Vision of my website is to introduce myself & my service to my customer.

Today I have launched a brand new design for  my personal site. This new website design which you have landed on is more mobile friendly and loads fast.This is more attractive than the former one.

 

The latest trend in software architecture design is to implement REST API. This is a first step to make the “internet of things” possible. If you wonder what is internet of things then give a thought to your imaginations.

“Say you are coming back from your client meeting in a cab and you are hungry. You visit the restaurant website from your Smartphone and place the order. Your bank paid the restaurant on your consent. Mean while, you get an e-mail from your client and you need a print-out of it. So you send a request to your office printer to get it printed. Now you reached the office and pay the driver via your bank with single tap and then head towards your cubical and see both the print out and food is ready on your table “. Wow! That’s a great experience.

You had this wonderful experience because everything – your printer, bank account, and restaurant is online. They can speak to each other! This is called internet of things. You can connect the between devices, services and more seamlessly.

Now, do want your app to be part of “Internet of Things”? If your answer is YES in a corner of your mind then your app must be built on REST API. Technically REST API is a one of the means to achieve it. Using REST API, restaurant can speak to your bank and your smart phone can speak to the printer at your office.

Today I got a chance to talk in one of the PHP Meet up . My presentation was about “REST API Best Practices & Implementing it in codeigniter”. Below is the presentation and few pictures of the same.

Last few days ago, some interesting question popped up in one of the Linked-In group related to travel. This question came from someone who organize itinerary for his customers. The author of that question wants to include local market visit as a part of the itinerary.

The author writes the outcome of this idea in the description of the question. He states this idea will help the travelers to get a chance to learn about the culture of the place, habits of the people. The traveler would enjoy learning new things and this will turn out to be valuable time spend as a part of their itinerary. That’s interesting idea…isn’t it?

The above expected outcome really seems conveying. However, practically there are many risk tied up with that idea. The primary risk is the customer experience – which is the major factor for long terms reputation of the company or service. Yes, at first glance of idea – one may feel that it would be a best customer experience…But, not. Read on to know why?

Customer experience would be good in terms of new culture, habits and more. However, you are not guaranteed with how local people of the place behave with your customer. If some misunderstanding happens between the local people & your customer, then bad impacts are carried out easily than the good ones. The misunderstanding may happen because of lack of open-mindedness on both the side. This is one among many points which came out of discussion. Further, these experience turns out to be bad memories, which no one likes to have it as a take away of the trip.

Today Google changed it’s doodle specially for me to wish for my birthday….When I click on the doodle, it took me straight to my Google+ page…this is something I liked & hence this post…

Travel industry has seen significant growth in different branches from last few years. Experts in travel industry have recognized different service sectors and positioned their business accordingly in the market. Package Tours, cab Rental, Customized Group Tours, Train and Bus Booking are few major sectors which are being operated by the different business.

As all the above mentioned sectors are different by its operation no single business has dominance on all of them. Business problems, targeted customer, operation nature and business laws are not similar. Added to this, single business cannot dominate all the regions of world. Even if they do so they have to operate differently in different regions. Due to this huge diversity need for technology has risen. Experts in technology coined this sector of market as “Travel Technology”.

By definition, travel industry must concentrate on the core business problems like booking availability, tour pricing, connected trains and flights, traveler safety etc. However, in practice that is not just enough. Any traveler will check hotels and restaurants facilities before opting to travel and this has made travel industry to tie up with the hotels and restaurants to provide end-to-end solution. Travel industry banks on the technology to know the available hotels and restaurants in a region and vacant rooms at any point of time. Hence Travel Technology is defined as an application of information technology in travel, tourism and hospitality.

On the other hand, sector like cab rental has a completely different business problems depending upon their market they serve. Cab rental business serves a common people in a city which is generally termed as city taxi. Also few cab rental business provide cab service to IT/BPO companies which are being used as transport facility for employees. Both of these business models have different operation modes. Technology can help to organize, schedule and monitor the cabs.

Last few days ago I got a request from a client to develop a website just like naukari.com. My first reaction for that was “yes! I can develop a job portal for you”. Then he replied “I want it exactly like a naukari.com”. So after that I requested him to give me the list of requirements. He said “I need all the features of naukari.com”. He just wanted me to clone the website! Realizing this I happen to explain him why this doesn’t work. Today I am writing a blog about the same.

Cloning a famous website will not help you to establish the business. The straight forward reason for this is that a person who wants to clone a website generally does not have a domain knowledge in which he is trying to establish the business. Want to realize this? -read the above paragraph again wearing the hat as my client. Read his replies and think of his approach to build a business.

We term such a kind of business as “me too business “.  Mostly these kinds of businesses build all the features of a famous website without knowing the reason for that. In fact one thing these people fail to understand is the big websites found today were not big from day one. They started small, studied the market, established in market, found a problem to solve, built a product/business which solves the problem and adds the business value. That’s the right path to walk on.

The other reason that makes the “me too business” to fail is their lack of understanding of problem. These kinds of businesses try to solve the same problem what already existing website without understanding the depth of the problem. Building a product is not about giving many features; it’s about solving a real-time problem. In fact the software itself is worth nothing if it doesn’t solve the problem to the fullest extent. It’s not the software makes the product, the approach taken to solve a problem does.

Today one of my readers asked me following question via e-mail.

 “Which is the world’s best PHP framework in these days which have all the features, fast, robust, everything and developer using that can develop very good web application.

Second i want to know what is better for a web application using any frame work to develop it or just start it from scratch using PHP. Because some suggest that direct codes writing is better than using any framework.”

I choose to answer it here:

Here is post about one more session in mobile developer summit today. The title of this post is the also the name of session – The other side of usability. In one word it’s all about optimizing the apps for speed.

Here is the key takeaway :

1. Apps response time is crucial element to engage the users. Speed bottleneck can easily make the first time user to abandon the apps  and finally uninstall.
2. The wait loader can easily give bad impression about the apps. Hence avoid it wherever possible.
3. Load the text content first and then load the images. You can download the images in bulk in a single HTTP request
4. Do layout optimization. Avoid over drawing UI elements
5. Identify the bottlenecks and fix them. Below are the few way to identify the bottleneck…
   • Hallway usability testing
   • Competitor Analysis
   • Start using the apps yourself
   • User comments an feedback

This sessions had a good showcase on how the apps can be improved. The speaker shows the different version of an example app, improving it on next higher version.