SaaS stands for Software as a Service, which is simply a cloud-based application accessible via a smartphone (mobile app) or web interface (web app). SaaS applications have been developed since around the beginning of the 21st century. Among top SaaS companies that we are well familiar with are Dropbox, Slack, Google Drive, and others.

**Customers like SaaS** because they just work. They are easy to set up, you don't have to install anything in order to use the software. There's a very little risk of data loss due to hardware failures or operational errors.

**Investors like SaaS** because its economics look much more attractive than selling software licenses. Revenues from SaaS companies are typically regular and easy to predict so business management is easier with them.

SaaS startups are turning into a mainstream in the software development industry. In this article, I will examine the following topics:
- Why SaaS startups are so popular today.
- SaaS platform benefits for the customer.
- Unique SaaS ideas for 2022.
- Ways to brainstorm your own SaaS ideas.
- Ways to validate SaaS startup ideas.
- Recommendations for building MVP for SaaS platform.

## Why SaaS startups are so popular today

Pricing models on the subscription basis are increasingly adopted by the companies to satisfy their IT needs, despite limited IT budgets. That's especially relevant for small and medium businesses. Yet, established enterprises don't look down on Software as a Service either. Rather, they embrace an enterprise grade SaaS business model to meet diverse needs with agile, modern solutions.

In fact, SaaS adoption is growing across all industries as it facilitates business management significantly. Here are some stats about SaaS companies today:
- Currently, the SaaS market is growing by 18% each year.
- One or more SaaS products are used by 99% of organizations in 2022.
- Nearly 78% of small businesses already use SaaS software.
- The adoption rate of SaaS in the healthcare niche is 20% per year.
- 70% of CIOs claim that agility and scalability are two of the top motivators for using Software as a Service.

## SaaS platform benefits for the customers

SaaS companies provide the following benefits to customers:
- **SaaS software delivers higher strategic value versus on-premise software deployments.** By utilizing a SaaS model, software deployment time is reduced from several weeks to a few minutes.
- **Enterprise SaaS solutions provide users with a wide range of options to get the job done.** Therefore, organizations are experiencing a higher level of employee engagement thanks to feature-rich SaaS products designed to improve user experience for their customers.
- **SaaS companies are capable of pushing feature updates, bug fixes, and security updates on the fly.** With on-premise deployments, these revisions once had to pass through several layers of organizational protocols and governance.

As a result of successful SaaS adoption, enterprises and software vendors have become more capable of delivering the necessary functionalities and features to the end users, resulting in increased popularity of SaaS startups compared to on-premise software development. SaaS companies are constantly working on extending their software capabilities for the end consumers.

## 7 unique SaaS ideas for 2022

You might think that the best SaaS ideas are already there and running, but in reality, tech world is far from being perfect yet. There is always something useful you can invent and that can later be found among top SaaS tools in the industry. Here are a few startup ideas to consider:

## Ways to brainstorm your own SaaS business ideas

To generate your own SaaS startup ideas you should follow these rules:

- Find people's problems you can solve, rather than SaaS ideas. It is only relevant, though, if the product is not about entertainment in B2C business model.
- You should consider the demand and growth rate of your future SaaS product. It's important that people use your service and bring you revenue for months, not just occasionally. You should make sure your main focus is not just keeping your product alive. You should focus on building a fast growing SaaS product where the retention of existing customers is a must.
- Don't invent something entirely new. You aren't big enough to create a market from scratch for your SaaS startups. Find something in your niche that lacks useful features, is based on outdated technology, or that could simply be improved with some additional services.
- Find the right keywords. Your SaaS startups can be promoted via social media and social engagement like video Ads, but if you have good keywords with volume and fair competition, then why not to use them in your SEO strategy?

Below are provided some proven methods of finding business ideas for SaaS startups.

### The Job Search method

Examine job offers in a particular industry. Pay attention to job descriptions. Determine if there are some routines performed by the employees on a regular basis and if you can help them reduce the time and effort spent on that.

As a final step, check if there are related keywords with the sufficient volume. It will tell you if people feel the problem and actively look for the ways to optimize their tasks. If not, then your main traffic source to promote your product is going to be paid social ads, especially in the beginning.

### The App Store method

Choose an app store (Apple, Google Play, Salesforce, Chrome, Shopify, etc), select the category, and sort results by ratings. You should analyse 1-star reviews of the top apps in a category. You will see that people discuss their problems there. Based on this information, you can compose a list of problems and turn it into the best SaaS startup idea.

### The What-they're-using-Excel-for method

Research what people use Excel spreadsheets for. You can take advantage of public surveys to do this. Many competing approaches might be available to solve the problem, some of which involve employee time and paper, others involving spreadsheets, while there may be some that involve one of several competing software solutions, none of which has a dominant market share.

### The Meat Grinder method

According to the Meat Grinder approach (by [Tyler Tringas](https://tylertringas.com/business-ideas-meat-grinder/)), you should come up with five business ideas for SaaS startups every day. This part should be basically effortless. A successful business idea is a result of running hundreds of ideas through the meat grinder of questions. There's an active effort to find holes in the idea and stress test it. Beat it up, try to find the ways to discard it, and move to the next one. In brainstorming, the quantity is more important than quality.

The worst thing you can do is stick to seemingly the best SaaS idea, which is actually fatally flawed, talk about it with your friends for decades and never actually getting to the one that you could have actually built and launched to bring a growing SaaS product to life.

## Ways to validate SaaS startup ideas

There are 2 proven ways to validate your best SaaS idea before the development begins:

- Ask your potential clients about that by creating a questionnaire on Reddit, Facebook groups, or forums.
- Create a simple landing page for gathering pre-orders for your software product. You should run an Ad campaign to quickly collect about 100 pre-orders, either free or paid. Based on the conversion rate you can determine the viability of your idea.

## Recommendations for building and launching MVP SaaS Platform

MVP stands for Minimal Viable Product. It isn't necessary to develop a full-fledged product before you understand how marketing is going to work for you if you do something larger than a micro SaaS. There are 3 reasons for building MVP for your SaaS startups:

- You will obtain additional proof of concept for your startup ideas.
- You will get market experience with feedback from your users before scaling the MVP to a fully-functional SaaS product. It is evident that a final product with the preliminary created MVP and client feedback will differ from the one created without the MVP.
- You will be able to create a product website with blog content that will index early.

Moreover, MVP is an essential part of a lean startup business model. It is stated in this methodology that there are several repeating cycles of improvement in the IT product development process. Here is a list of primary recommendations for building MVP for your SaaS startups:

- You should focus on building the core, and get it out there as quickly as possible.
- Make it budget-friendly.
- The MVP should provide the possibility to collect potential users' opinions, and what they want to see in the final product.
- Focus on your users. Nobody cares about your quota, your payroll, bounce rate of your SaaS startups, etc. No one. Only the problem you solve for them matters.

To validate your MVP, there are 2 methods available:

**Method 1.** Create a landing page for your SaaS business and take advantage of paid traffic to generate leads for your SaaS startups. You should be aware that a paid search and social traffic require completely different strategies for your marketing, including Ad content, landing page content, targeting, social media, and some other aspects.

**Method 2.** Use the websites from this list below, they are solely focused on getting exposure for a product on its initial stages:

- Product Hunt
- Indie Hackers
- Hacker News (Show HN)
- BetaPage
- BetaList
- SaaS Hub

The second method I do not consider reliable for promoting SaaS companies, because you need to rely too much on the audience of those services. With the paid traffic and even SEO you have a higher level of control over your strategy. For the majority of top SaaS companies, when a product is already sustained, the main traffic source is SEO, and they make an additional boost by paid campaigns. There are also offline methods of promoting SaaS startups through personal meetings, which are especially relevant for corporate solutions.

## Building top SaaS startups: Final Thoughts

SaaS business appears to be very attractive for startup companies: ease of entry, flexible pricing, and great accessibility are the key reasons why users choose web-based tools and services over traditional software. Though SaaS software development is brighter than ever, there are many challenges and pitfalls to overcome.

Among these problems is the increased demand for proper high-tech knowledge. To create fast-growing SaaS startups, you need a software development team that is proficient in web development and has experience building scalable cloud-based solutions. Also, it will be a benefit if your development team has a track record of building successful SaaS startups that bring revenue and also provide outstanding technical support. EcDev Studio is experienced in building high-performing SaaS products that are successful on the market and follow high standards in security, data integrity, UI/UX, speed, scalability, and other important factors. 

SaaS business model description, unique SaaS ideas, ways to validate the idea, and suggestions for building an MVP.

thumbnail_Frame 60.jpg

Frame 60.jpg

7 awesome SaaS ideas for a product in 2022

This article does not attempt to describe project management theory from books, but rather enlists my key project management techniques and principles based on years of practice.

#### 1. The more risks identified at the planning stage the better

Apart from affecting budget resources and reputation, risks can even lead to project death. An effective project management technique will help you detect all the major risks at the early stages when you only start building a project model.

Imagine you are responsible for developing a high-load system that supports 5,000 users, but you don't have the right team member who can handle such complex projects. For sure, it is a risk as you might fail to find the right fit in time or a newcomer will fail you in the long run.

Or you need to enable data synchronization between your data storage and a few other 3-rd party platforms. So what exactly needs to be done within the scope of this project? First of all, writing code that will do the necessary synchronization. But what about data integrity, big data support, automatic scaling, automatic process retrieval after the downtime, and finally finding the right tools and ways of testing all the above-mentioned project activities? Does it mean extra time estimates and the risks to be taken into account? For sure, yes. Will every developer consider it at the project initiation stage? From my experience, no.

I will not copy all the risk types from this reliable [article](https://www.simplilearn.com/common-project-risks-article), but please take them into account when analyzing the project scope for your next project and creating your project plan.

#### 2. Predict and prevent problems during development

When the development process is on and running, a few problems might evolve: a lack of understanding of how to implement an appropriate technical solution, repository mess, server configuration instability, no data backups, certain team-specific issues, such as low performance of one or few developers.

In such cases, the owner might fail to (or be unwilling to) discover these issues on the project. Or may know about them, but do nothing. Yet, all the best project management techniques will tell you it's worth reacting to them in a timely manner.

Any working environment will only get healthier if you keep things organized. Everything that could possibly go wrong, will go wrong. So what's the point in ignoring the problems if they show up later anyway?

Lastly, even if you understand the customer requirements well despite hazy specifications, you cannot expect your project team to be on the same page as you are. To achieve the project goal more efficiently, all the specifications need to be well-detailed during the team meetings so that any misunderstandings are settled before they occur.

#### 3. Visualize progress to see the whole picture, use appropriate project management tools

On multiple projects, progress visualization is an important project management technique that allows you to immediately see project progress, spot any dependent tasks and plan other important tasks. In a project management methodology, the most popular ways of visual representation are Kanban Board and Gantt chart. Some key details are provided below:

##### Kanban board

Kanban itself is a project management methodology with its own rules. It is well described in this [article](https://kanbanize.com/kanban-resources/getting-started/what-is-kanban). I will talk about its visual aspect only, from the perspective of understanding the project workflow. In Kanban Boards, you have different statuses (columns) and a set of tasks in each column, which are moved from left to right systematically, upon changing statuses.

##### The key things you can see in Kanban Boards:
- It helps create a detailed plan, make predictions, and conduct risk management by setting specific statuses for certain project tasks (e.g. Code review).
- Easier workflow health tracking. Another helpful project management technique is making sure there are no large amount of tasks in one specific to-do column, while other columns have much fewer. Ensuring a balanced amount of tasks in each column leads to good workflow health.
- In most project management software, you will find user icons next to all the tasks in a project board to show people's involvement (see picture below).

![ecdev kanban board.jpg](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/3/kanban_5688eb4374.jpg)

The huge benefit of the Kanban Board is that a project manager does not need to spend time on maintaining it throughout the entire project life cycle, unlike the Gantt Chart that I am describing below.

##### Gantt chart

If you need a reliable way to calculate the valid completion date of specific manageable tasks within one project, a Gantt chart is the ideal solution. It is one of the oldest project management techniques and was originally used in the Waterfall technique, but it can be easily used in Agile, let's say for visualizing sprints and tracking project progress.

![ecdev gantt chart](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/3/gant_88fc06d9f6.jpg)

For you as a project manager, the smartest advantage of Gantt charts is seeing the exact project timeline for any task. However, it requires spending additional resources on chart maintenance, as you have to constantly reestimate each task separately.

#### 4. Always be aware of priorities, approaches and current problems

Throughout your project life cycle, reconsider task priorities occasionally, discuss approaches with the team (about delivery strategy, server infrastructure, technology, etc), assist the team in resolving current problems, or make necessary allocations for needed project activities. This project management technique will help you avoid a bunch of popular problems that usually occur on the project.

#### 5. Split the responsibilities correctly to avoid demotivation among the team

If project managers assign more complex projects to a developer than his skills level allows him to accomplish at the moment, it is normal and will contribute to his experience growth. But if all the tasks related to e.g. administration, automation or infrastructure are assigned to a web developer, then you should expect his demotivation about the job he is doing.

In project management, to ensure a balanced work breakdown structure, the above-listed types of tasks should be assigned to other team members, such as an IT administrator, DevOps expert and an infrastructure expert correspondingly. In addition, it is always better to assign new employees (who you trust) to those smaller tasks than exploit your current team member. If there are no trusted people available, then the problem lies more in recruiting than project management. My recommendation is to start cultivating friendly relationships with experts in different fields. It is highly useful to be able to have specific/untypical tasks done within a project schedule just because you have the right people at hand and can assign those smaller tasks to them.

#### 6. React immediately in critical situations

Project managers should never hope for luck. If the problem occurred, it cannot be ignored or postponed for later. Technical problems can be resolved by lead developers or tech leads. However, everything related to organization problems, planning, decision making, etc., should be a subject of prompt intervention by the management staff.

#### 7. Work with the budget carefully

When working on any project tasks, whether big or small, respect your client's budget and inform in advance if you feel that one task requires more resources than you estimated initially or if there are certain unplanned task dependencies. It is always a winning project management technique to agree on all the time estimates initially with your client than "surprise" them later.

#### 8. Be a superhero project manager - grow your soft skills

To manage the project successfully and achieve smooth project completion, the importance of soft skills cannot be underestimated. I mean communication, empathy, stress-resistance, leadership, and others.

Let's say you have difficulty getting some precise details from the client. This is because he is not a technician at all, or just explaining to you some real case scenarios in a specific domain like fintech. However, you don't understand them, no matter how much research you put into them. Or your whole team overworks to demonstrate the best delivery they can, but the client complains that your work is slow anyway.

A skilled project manager should be able to resolve these and many other unique challenges in an elegant way, so both parties are left happy with the result. By implementing tried and tested project management techniques that are proven to work, you will contribute to not just your current project's success, but will also get you more confidence when working on each next project. 








There are many ways to organize project management, but to increase the efficiency there are specific principles and techniques for that.

thumbnail_news 6.jpg

news 6.jpg

8 ultimate project management techniques and principles

When you run a startup, you definitely can't risk wasting your time or budget. Your specs have to be followed, and things need to go as planned. There is no room for pitfalls or failures. So it's only obvious that the choice of a software development company needs to be made with the utmost caution.

Fortunately, Ukraine is a reliable outsourcing destination for hiring software developers for startups. This article will give you an in-depth look into:

- Why you should hire Ukrainian developers
- How to hire software developers in Ukraine

#### Why is Ukraine a good fit for software development outsourcing?
There are countless reasons that make Ukraine one of the best places in the world to outsource your software development. Before I dig deeper into the details, here’s a short list of the top reasons for hiring Ukrainian developers:
- **More dollar-for-dollar value** - A Ukrainian software development agency can provide the same quality services you can expect from an EU- or US-based firm at a much lower rate.
- **Intellectual property protection** - Ukraine respects intellectual property rights across the globe. This means you won’t need to worry about your software development partner lifting proprietary code.
- **Dedicated team** - Ukrainian developers are known for burning the midnight oil to meet strict deadlines. If you have a problem, rest assured that they will quickly solve it.
- **Top-tier talent** - Ukrainian software development and IT industry are exploding right now, and the market is packed with highly educated Ukrainian programmers ready to help you with the web and mobile development.
- **Staggered time schedules (for US clients)** - Ukrainian working hours take place while you’re fast asleep. So if you make a request past sunset, your development company could have it delivered by morning.

These are just a handful of reasons why you might want to outsource software development to a Ukrainian company. There are many more that I will address.

#### Engineering and Mentality in Ukraine
What is undeniably true about Ukrainian developers is their positive mindset and determination.
In fact, Ukrainians have earned a strong reputation as hard workers. It’s their tenacity that makes them well-suitable for custom software development positions. This is a role that requires them to constantly invent innovative digital solutions to stay one step ahead of their competition and become top software developers in Ukraine.

#### Resourcefulness
Ukrainians are also known for their passion and resourcefulness: two essential qualities you want to get when outsourcing software development. Meeting strict deadlines often takes a level of ingenuity that only comes from a truly dedicated service provider.

#### Responsible Teams
Another core trait associated with Ukrainians is their strong sense of responsibility. Software developers in Ukraine will treat your project as if it’s their own. They want to do their job right and will take any steps necessary to build world class software products that will make your project successful.

#### Communication and English proficiency
A major benefit of outsourcing software development to technology companies in Ukraine is that about 70% of Ukrainian developers have an intermediate to upper-intermediate level of English proficiency.

Strong communication is a key in project management, so it’s important to have a dedicated team with a firm grasp of English in your corner.
![Software development team in Ukraine](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/5/6/Frame_56_f0269e1919.jpg)
With such a high level of English proficiency, you won’t need to worry about miscommunications when dealing with software developers in Ukraine. 

#### Ukraine is a hub for software development companies
From 2015 to 2017, the number of Ukrainian software developers grew from 74k to 166k. In 2020, it reached as many as 166k. Yearly, this number grows on average by 30k of new specialists, who are usually the graduates from Ukrainian tech universities.

With the largest number of C++ and Unity 3D developers and the second-largest number of JavaScript developers, it's no wonder why Ukraine is listed among "Top 10 Countries with the Best Software Developers in the World" (source: HackerRank). Yet, the variety of programming languages in this talent pool is much bigger.

Giants and global corporations like Microsoft, Samsung, and Oracle have already discovered the tech talent of Ukrainian developers and thus keep hiring them on an ongoing basis. In fact, companies of different sizes often feel lucky to have found a great development team for a long-term partnership at a fair cost.

#### IT market and development costs in Ukraine
The average rate of skilled software developers in Ukraine of middle-to-senior levels varies from $40 to $50 per hour, depending on the technology stack and technical expertise. Lower rates (e.g. $30 per hour) are relevant to mostly junior developers, they can be a part of an experienced software development team in a startup, but not to be its skeleton.

#### Potential risks when hiring a software development company for a startup
Below are some specific risks that startups might face when hiring software developers. These insights are based on real-life stories that the clients have shared with my team.

- Inappropriate or faulty tech decisions made by software developers, insufficient technical skills, low-quality of deliveries and quality assurance.
- Product performance issues. Delivered website or web application is either slow or unstable upon high traffic load.
- Security issues. The delivered product (or any of its components) comes with vulnerabilities like XSS or Insecure Deserialization.
- The delivered software is poorly usable and imbalanced/outdated in terms of UI/UX.
- The delivered software fails to meet expectations. Developers demonstrate a poor understanding of business goals, no respect for the mission, and are not committed to the idea of building a successful startup.
- Software developer doesn't meet the timeline or budget constraints.

The above-listed issues can be relevant to any country, and they are mostly caused by ineffective check-up of soft and hard skills.

The ways how EcDev Studio prevents the above problems can be read in my separate [article](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/blog/how-ecdev-studio-prevents-six-most-common-problems-in-software-outsourcing/).

#### How to hire a Ukrainian software developer for your startup? 
As said above, Ukrainian software developers have earned an excellent reputation for providing quality and affordably priced services for their partners all over the world. It is important to verify your Ukrainian development team before hiring them, so you can expect best-in-class solutions.

Yet, it does not necessarily mean that the hiring process is a 1-day job. Once you’re ready to hire Ukrainian software developers, these are the steps you should take when building relationships with the outsourcing companies and looking for the reliable candidate:
1. Evaluate the local IT industry market.
2. Analyze your potential vendor's portfolio.
3. Check the reviews and compliances.
4. Set up a call with the vendor and evaluate their soft skills.
5. Evaluate the hard skills.
6. Get involved in the engagement process.
7. Agree on the estimation, delivery plan, and payments.
8. Sign the contract and get your software development process started.

#### How Can EcDev Studio Help with Your Software Development?
We will provide you with a one-on-one consultation regarding your startup so we can understand what tech approach is the most suitable for your software projects. This will also be a decisive factor in planning your budget and time constraints. Our goal is to provide premium-quality custom software development services, and in-depth analysis is the first step in this process.

After we understand the scope of the project and all the planning processes are done, we assemble a team of dedicated developers who are perfectly qualified to build your product based on your software concepts and specifications. Rest assured that our engineers are highly vetted and deliver reliable, well-tested solutions.

#### Hiring a Ukrainian software developer: Final Thoughts
The choice of the right software development company is a crucial step toward bringing your software idea to life. You want your future product to thrive and bring value to your clients — not die on the vine. That's what we focus on when building our company values.

Software development is like rowing a boat with a team. Either everyone works together, or you’ll spin in circles and never reach your destination.

For your startup, you’ll need to pick capable performers who can deliver complex custom software development solutions so you can surpass your competitors. Working with software developers in Ukraine is a winning strategy, and that's what millions of success stories can prove.

If you’re looking for a highly productive software development firm, contact us for a free consultation.

Tips and guideline of hiring Ukrainian developers, potential risks described.

thumbnail_Frame 47.jpg

Frame 47.jpg

How to hire a developer for startups in Ukraine

In the following list are 6 common problems and the well-tested solutions offered by EcDev Studio for each of them.


#### Conclusion
These are only common problems but not the entire list of problems that can happen. Some cases are easier to prevent, some not. My point is that we understand the IT outsourcing market, its common problems and work hard to prevent most of them for our clients.

There are common problems in software outsourcing. You have more chances to prevent them if you know about those problems.

thumbnail_Frame 43.jpg

Frame 43.jpg

How EcDev Studio prevents 6 most common problems in software outsourcing

In my world, people that pay for quality services should get quality results, and any commercial services should be upscale. That’s why with the business that I run, I take every step possible to ensure that our clients receive a high-end service. That's especially relevant to hiring remote developers in order to succeed with software projects.

I've seen people try to save pennies on services only to realize that, in the end, they wasted their time and money by receiving an uninspiring product. On the other hand, I've also seen people pay top dollar for a service or product that provided no tangible value to the buyer. There are many examples when companies hire remote software developers but the main goal of those developers is to just check enough boxes to get paid.

That’s why I want to offer my insights on how to help you find a quality service. You'll also get a better understanding of when to cut a service provider if they fail to deliver.

The success of an entire business can depend on the relationship with your software development team. If you have a truly good business plan and strategy, your goals are still at risk if, for example, your in-house or remote team is not involved enough or lacks analytical or communication skills.

Below, I will describe 5 common issues business managers encounter when hiring remote or in-house developers, and then tips on how to avoid such issues. If you see something similar throughout your collaboration, you need to take action to prevent further risks.

## Potential issues when hiring remote developers

#### 1. Insufficient skills
The remote developer or team can have poor technical skills, limited understanding of development processes, and make faulty decisions which harm the development process and lead to the overall low quality of the delivery. Usually, this situation creates a need for a customer to spend significant time testing and reporting obvious bugs. Meanwhile, the development process is better organized when a customer only suggests improvements (such as UI tweaks, new use cases, etc.) but does not perform QA testing work which is what a remote development team is responsible for. In order to hire developers, the candidates should not only pass the technical interview but also complete a coding challenge of decent difficulty.

#### 2. Bad communication

Ideally, when a team of software developers works on a particular project there is a productive environment, high motivation, professional communication.  But exceptions happen, and here are the precise examples:

- Lack of interest. Reluctance to productively discuss an actual problem during remote working. Instead, the developer is doing some lower-prioritized tasks and postponing the problem discussion for later.
- Logically incorrect sentences, language, and communication barriers of remote employees. It causes difficulties when trying to understand the pressing issues or explain them.
- Aptitude to criticize teammates/customers instead of resolving mistakes. It is rather a personal characteristic, not a communication problem. Btw, the experienced hiring manager would spot this in the screening process.
- Delayed responses. It belongs to the issues with culture fit and dependability. During the hiring process, this can be determined with specific questions in the interview process.

There also exist etiquette problems, such as interruptions during voice calls, personal criticism, lack of respect, raising the voice while communicating. Etiquette problems of both in-house and remote teams are the most critical and should be avoided at the very beginning when hiring remote workers. Ensure there are no such issues before you hire remote developers. I'll tell you more about that below.

#### 3. Insufficient understanding of the requirements
Small interest in understanding the requirements, reluctance to think and analyze out of the boundaries, reluctance to think like a customer or see particular cases from the end-user perspective.

Apart from motivation problems mentioned above, software engineers can also lack soft skills or technical expertise which makes it difficult to understand project requirements in detail.

#### 4. Attempts to make poor deliveries
It is a common and well-known issue when a developer either knowingly or mistakenly delivers an unfinished or wrongly done job and hopes it to be enough to get approved. If you are going to hire developers consider giving them a complex test, and see I they will try to deliver a poor result instead of researching a task deeper.

#### 5. No respect for customer's business
It happens when remote developers work on particular tasks but have very little interest in what the final plan or business objectives are. It is fine if your developers deliver tasks based on your precise specifications. But your engineers should be team players who care about common success, for maximum efficiency.

## How to avoid the above listed problems when hiring remote software developers

Hiring remote developers, or in-house teams is a highly responsible activity because you either move forward growing your startup or keep struggling with the technical or other issues. I will describe how we at EcDev Studio hire engineers and build talented teams.

The first thing we do when we hire software developers is review their resumes, where we check how responsible the candidate is when searching for a job (resume accuracy, informativeness of the details, overall openness, etc), and also check actual skills with the experience in the resume.

The next step is soft skills and language proficiency check. During the first interview round, we check the developer candidate for the culture fit, dependability, emotional intelligence, communication skills, problem-solving attitude, perseverance, leadership qualities, English language. Many companies either skip this step or do it unprofessionally, but to hire remote developers and do well, a soft skills assessment is necessary. The short but great guide to checking soft skills is by this authoritative [article](https://sprockets.ai/interview-questions-to-evaluate-soft-skills/).

![soft skill ecdev](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/6/small_skill_8c711133a1.svg)

Next comes the hard skills check, which is a pretty straightforward step in hiring remote developers.

Finally, a 2-month evaluation period starts where the newcomer gets a deep drive into work ethics, and the company-established rules and gets a chance to prove themself as a credible team player. The goal is to give a higher complexity task in this period to either identify the talented developer with high technical skills or drop the underperforming developer in the early stage. A probationary period is a good and proven practice in software development, especially when hiring remote talents.

Tech companies usually spend some time in order to hire remote developers successfully, sometimes it can take weeks to close particular positions. If to do things right it's definitely possible to hire a developer or team and avoid the problems listed in this article.

## The biggest trap in hiring remote developers

What do you think is the biggest trap? To hire a low-performing developer with poor hard skills? Or maybe to hire a developer who communicates badly? But what if you hired somebody who delivers and communicates, and you even see the results constantly (e.g. new web flows delivered), but you feel something is still wrong you don't know what. You see new flows getting developed but their page speed is average, the developer is telling you there are no technical capabilities to make it higher, you trust them and say "Okay, I understand". Read further.

Later after 6 months of a relationship, you decided to give him a more complex task e.g. 5 out of 10 complexity, while in the past he did only easy tasks (e.g. 3/10 complexity). You see developer fails and you fire him away. Let's say later you were lucky to hire somebody truly proficient.

Upon seeing how a skilled developer got your complex tasks done, optimized speed to the utmost, you became amazed at how it could be done. Finally, the new developer makes a code review of your previous engineer and concludes there is a ton of poor code that needs refactoring.

So what is the biggest trap? That's when you hire remote developers guessing you evaluated them well but in fact, the developer is burnt out, they have a junior level with low growing capabilities and poor motivation. Finally, it results in wasted months of time and corresponding expenses, which were possible to prevent in the beginning.

What is the difference between professional hiring managers and amateurish ones? It is the ability to professionally evaluate soft and hard skills, and give the complex (10 out of 10) test at the beginning to properly identify the real capabilities of the developer candidate.

Here in the EcDev Studio team are only such talented developers who passed the evaluation, and we proudly call them vetted experts.

There is a specific set of rules to follow when hiring remote developers, to avoid a lot of known issues.

thumbnail_2.jpg

2.jpg

How to hire remote developers and do well

When you make decisions about a technical stack, you should take into account the relevance of a particular technology for your business goals, development costs and risks associated with further support. For example, if you need to build a custom ecommerce store for retail, you can choose between Woocommerce and Magento platforms. Magento has more built-in features, however it will be more costly in development. Also, due to market peculiarities, there is a risk failing to find good Magento developers when needed (it could become an issue during further maintenance).

If you consider using CMS (like Wordpress, Drupal, Magento, etc) I recommend to stay away from the use of ready themes and page builders. Only custom theme and custom clean markup without auto-generated excessive code. Otherwise, you risk to have significant issues with site performance and bad maintainability. Websites that we delivered on Wordpress ([https://picupmedia.com/](https://picupmedia.com/), [ https://www.sammamishmortgage.com/](https://www.sammamishmortgage.com/)) have excellent load speed mostly because they are custom-made (without the use of ready themes and page builders)

If you consider using back-end frameworks, the most popular are Django, Express, Laravel and Spring. In front-end, the popular ones are React library and frameworks Angular, Vue.js.

As mentioned above, instant site speed is a must. Significant performance indicator is TTFB value (time to first byte). In CMS-based sites, the only way to avoid delays is the proper use of server-side caching, where the entire back-end including DB queries and page generation will be cached. Also a proper cache update mechanism should be implemented based on both schedule and content updates by the admin. In framework-based websites, it's easier to achieve the low TTFB. In many cases, it's enough to follow standard coding practices and have the proper configuration of NGinx or Apache.

Avoid the use of shared web hostings (like GoDaddy or Hostgator). You should use only reliable cloud servers like AWS, Google Cloud or Digital Ocean. Of course, you will need the qualified staff to set things up on a clean Linux server, but for sure, you can't let such a detail as web hosting prevent you from fulfilling your business goals.

Use cloud infrastructure whenever possible. For example, if your website is equipped with a search feature with autocomplete functionality, you can integrate AWS Elasticsearch and achieve immediate search results or auto-suggestions on your website. Use AWS S3 to store the big-sized files, rather than utilizing the space on your servers.

Use CDN (content-delivery network) like Cloudflare or Amazon Cloudfront. It allows your heavy content (e.g. images, videos) to get distributed across multiple servers in different countries so you reduce the distance latency and thus heavy content will load for your visitors almost immediately. Cloudflare Pro plan can also store entire HTML output in multiple locations, not only heavy content like images or videos.

Recommendations regarding technology choice to organize web development correctly.

thumbnail_Frame 44.jpg

Frame 44.jpg

The importance of right technology choice in web development

A couple of years ago, we started working with an Australian company, a supplier of B2B services for the jewelry industry. Their idea was simple: provide retouching services for jewelry product photos so they look professional.

The company initially came to us with a small website and small client flow. Today, the company is widely successful and scaled up to provide its services worldwide.

I’m going to tell you some mistakes that were made early on, but could have positioned this business for its current success much sooner, if solved earlier.

Read on to find out if you’re following the best practices.
#### Problem 1: The website was incredibly slow and defective
It's great that our client decided to change their website developer, but why do companies like this wait for so long? In most cases, a client doesn’t have benchmarks set which can inform them if their website is functioning properly or not. Instead, they hope for the best outcome.

If you have a buggy site that runs at a snail's pace and your developer can’t resolve this after multiple attempts, they most probably lack the technical skills needed to complete this task. This is usually a strong indicator that you should terminate the contract with the developer and start looking for a new one.

Don’t fall into the trap of hoping that problems will get resolved on their own. You need to be proactive and intervene.
#### Problem 2: The website was poorly designed and complicated to use
Too often, web design is an afterthought. In the case of my client, the company’s website was too difficult to navigate and use. That's because the website was not created with the user experience in mind.

The result? A lot of lost visitors who could have been potential buyers left the site without giving it a second thought.

First impressions are important so you should take your time finding a designer who can deliver a website that drives engagement and motivates visitors to take action. Carefully vet your talent to ensure they can craft a site that provides the best user experience possible.
#### Problem 3: Having an ineffective sales funnel was a problem for the company
This is a problem for tens of thousands of businesses across the globe — not just our client. Business owners expect visitors to buy products or services from their website, but visitors lack the motivation to even scroll down and continue reading.

An effective sales funnel builds a chain of user actions to smoothly warm up interests instead of expecting clients to buy on the first visit.

Our client implemented a sales funnel that incorporates warming leads, and their sales saw an immediate jump. Yes, it’s more complicated, but the rewards are much greater.
#### Problem 4. The company picked the wrong web hosting service
I’m going to write an extended post on this area later. For now, I’ll just say that choosing shared web hosting (the cheapest one) is one of the most common mistakes that businesses make. Unfortunately, selecting the wrong host can hamper a business ability to execute their planned goals.

Many business owners use WordPress-based websites and use WP-managed web hosting (e.g., WPEngine, SiteGround, etc). This hosting type is faster but it’s too expensive to host several websites under the same account. The ideal hosting is to use cloud server instances (e.g., AWS EC2 or Digital Ocean) with a custom configuration.

Setting up cloud server instances requires a one-time expense for a DevOps expert to configure everything properly. But after setting it up, it only costs about $40 per month to have strong hardware, host unlimited amounts of websites, and maintain higher speed than with other hosting types I mentioned earlier.

I have more content in the pipeline that I’ll continue to release in the near future. Follow this blog to receive upcoming insights on how to cut down on waste.
