Building Digital Products

Latest Episodes:

High-quality software development: is it worth the cost? Dec 02, 2021

Show notes

The founders of new digital products are mostly not technical people, so they may not fully understand what quality of the software means.

Quality development is more than just the code, it’s a more complex approach with a lot of different rules that every team member has to follow during the development process.

Let's talk about the difference between good and bad development, all the benefits you get if you care about quality from the very beginning, and how it saves you time and money in the long run.

Listen to our new podcast and find out:

- Why quality code doesn't mean a quality product;

- The difference between good and bad development;

- The role of documentation;

- Why you should let the professional test code;

- What is code verification;

- How bad MVP can lead you to technical debt;

- How to make your team much happy.

💻 Read the text version on the blog

https://linkupst.com/blog/high-quality-software-development-is-it-worth-the-cost/

Digital transformation for business: 5 tips to upgrade your company to the next level Nov 25, 2021

Show notes

Your business is not fully digitalized, but are you looking for new ways to satisfy your customers and win the market? Here’s what we can recommend — 5 tips on how you and your business can grow with technologies, software development, and digitalizing.

Check out our new podcast and find out:

How to make your own and your employees' lives easier with CRM;
Why you shouldn't be prejudiced about email marketing;
Why nudges and gamification win;
What you will gain from a community;
How you can use IoT.

💻 Read the text version on the blog

https://linkupst.com/blog/5-tips-to-upgrade-your-business-to-the-next-level/

Jay Severson on how to succeed as a business-minded chess player Nov 18, 2021

Show notes

A story of LinkUp’s client, Jay Severson, the co-founder of chess.com, the creator of other brilliant ideas, and his advice to those who are about to start their things

Jay Severson story starts with programming, which he studied both in high school and in college. Then he worked as a software engineer for several years, before his friend from college decided to start chess.com.

Then it all took off: a long journey with its ups and downs, risks and working all nights long. So what the two friends achieved, and which new idea Jay’s working on right now: let him speak for himself.

00:00 Intro

00:32 Meet Jay Severson

03:00 How to build a site with over 60 million users

08:40 Does Jay miss the time he wrote the code?

14:38 Why Jay dropped chess.com

19:28 What people do next after building a million business?

27:53 Single play experience vs party games - and how it affects on app`s profit

34:56 Three main advices for digital entrepreneurs from Jay

41:45 Short questions

42:53 Conclusion

Find Jay's Landover here 👉🏻 https://discord.gg/mv4BHpf

Also check the article about app monetization strategies - https://bit.ly/3kP7eXY

💻 Read the text version on the blog

https://linkupst.com/blog/jay-severson-on-how-to-succeed-as-a-business-minded-chess-player/

How to integrate an offshore dev team into your business Nov 11, 2021

Show notes

Describing main types of problems businesses have before starting to work with software teams, and sharing our experience about three main steps of this process.

You are running your business, and now it’s time for you to find a software team. How to work with those guys and what to expect from them? Let’s try to find out.

- Which problems current businesses face

- How new or updated software may help them

- What your cooperation will probably look like

- What are the main stages of starting this work

- What kind of hard decision you should make

💻 Read the text version on the blog

https://linkupst.com/blog/how-to-integrate-an-offshore-dev-team-into-your-business/

How Apps Make Money: 8 Proven Strategies Nov 04, 2021

Show notes

It's not a secret that app development costs a lot of time and money. But when you see how much revenue free mobile applications can generate, you understand the development expenses justify themselves.

So, how to get into the Top 200 free apps market? Usually people are willing to spend more when they have a free opportunity to try the app rather than to pay for it when they haven't opened it before. People go inside your app, they see the value, they can receive some emotion from using the app, and then they are ready to spend some money in it or on it.

When users get this pleasure from using your applications, they're actually ready to spend a few bucks on some perks that your apps give. When it comes to the app categories, the most popular one is games, making the biggest amount of money revenue. And still non game apps make good money too, a good example is Tinder, a dating application with a freemium model.

00:00 Intro

00:35 Do your free mobile applications make money? Or even, how much do they earn?

04:43 What's about app category?

09:47 Advertising

12:21 Referral marketing

14:33 Sponsorship model

16:36 Freemium

19:47 Subscription

22:44 Crowdfunding

24:26 Collecting and selling data

28:20 Four steps to approach your app and find the best way to make money out of it

💻 Read the text version on the blog

https://linkupst.com/blog/how-do-free-apps-make-money-8-proven-strategies/

App Development and Design: 4 Reasons to do at the same software house Oct 28, 2021

Show notes

Why it’s important for your designers and developers to help each other in their work and how it all helps to save you money and deliver your product to the market faster.

In the software development world, not only developers play important roles. Without clever and attractive design, people will simply not know how good the product is. Design is what gives unique user experience, holds user attention and translates the philosophy and objective of the business.

It is not as a simple task as it may seem from the first glance. But it’s less difficult and more effective if your design and development teams work within one company. And here we’ll explain why.

00:00 Intro

00:44 Meet Co-founder and CDO at LinkUp Studio - Natalia Sambir

01:49 What the digital product design is?

02:53 The case where our client suffered losses due to neglect of design

04:20 First benefit: onboarding process

06:05 Second benefit: technical background

10:03 Third benefit: level of responsibility

12:15 Fourth benefit: team flexibility

16:10 Conclusion

💻 Read the text version on the blog

https://linkupst.com/blog/4-reasons-to-design-and-develop-your-app-at-the-same-software-house/

Сreate marketplace: what technical challenges you might face Oct 21, 2021

Show notes

Marketplaces are surely a sea of great opportunities and dangerous challenges. In our previous article on the subject, we talk about what it is and how it works. But apart from the features and the types of marketplaces, there are many things you should take into account before creating one.

Like, which payment method to choose, why it’s important to synchronize all the data, and how to make business logic secure.

LinkUp Studio has worked on more than 20 marketplaces, so here’s a piece of advice based on our experience.

- Which payment method to choose

- What escrow services are

- What you should know about the laws in different countries

- What data challenges you might face

- Why it’s important to synchronize all the data

- How to engage new vendors, satisfy old vendors and make money on them all

- Why you should think about security of the business logic

💻 Read the text version on the blog

https://linkupst.com/blog/marketplace-development-what-technical-challenges-you-might-face/

What is a Marketplace: Definition, Features, Models Oct 15, 2021

Show notes

Like, which payment method to choose, why it’s important to synchronize all the data, and how to make business logic secure.

LinkUp Studio has worked on more than 20 marketplaces, so here’s a piece of advice based on our experience.

Which payment method to choose
What escrow services are
What you should know about the laws in different countries
What data challenges you might face
Why it’s important to synchronize all the data
How to engage new vendors, satisfy old vendors, and make money from them all
Why you should think about the security of the business logic

💻 Read the text version on the blog

https://linkupst.com/blog/marketplace-development-what-technical-challenges-you-might-face/

What is a QA engineer and how they help to save money Oct 07, 2021

Show notes

Does it make sense to expose the business to large losses, when you can eliminate most mistakes in advance? This is exactly what QA engineers do in digital product development.

Quality Assurance engineers are professionals who focus on improving software development processes and preventing defects.

Their job scope embraces a number of duties: analyzing and reviewing documentation, creating their own documentation, making addressability metrics to show the test coverage to the product owner, performing manual and automated testing, designing, developing, and maintaining automation scripts (like API and UI), checking the platform to find weaknesses and so on.

In this episode we talked to Taras, a chief quality officer at LinkUp Studio, to discuss:

00:00 Intro

00:54 What Taras`s work is?

03:26 Common myths about QA

05:30 What QA engineers do in project development?

06:55 Does every project needs all types of testing?

10:05 Can you test your project by your own?

14:10 Should QAs be cheaper than developers?

16:49 What is the difference between unit testing by developers and automotive testing by QA?

19:21 QA team structure

21:18 Some cases from practice

24:08 Does QA is the easiest way to start work in software development?

26:15 Conclusion

💻 Read the text version on the blog

https://linkupst.com/blog/who-are-qa-engineers-and-how-they-help-to-save-money/

Business Analysis of New Product Development Sep 30, 2021

Show notes

Business analysis is finding a solution to the business problem considering all the context like business needs, the target audience and the state of market. Business analysts are responsible for these solutions being well thought and analyzed.

The full cycle of business analysis starts with analyzing business itself, finding a solution and describing the full product specification. Specification document is a big document describing all products, all system functionality with all the details how it operates. It is a step-by-step description of what should be done to achieve the ultimate goal, namely to deliver a product that will meet the business needs and vision of the customer.

Today we talk about business analysis to find out:

00:00 Intro

00:47 What BA is?

01:14 What is specific of BA in software development?

02:16 Specification documents - what it is?

05:42 Do you really need the professional Business Analyst to write documentation?

07:15 How to check - is the documentation wrote correctly?

09:21 How does the BA workflow look like?

11:52 About cooperation between BA and designers

13:28 Why should customer pay for BA?

15:59 Some loss statistics

16:59 About BA mistakes