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Is it as difficult and expensive to develop a successful trading project as it seems?

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Global computerization has made trading available to thousands of private traders and brokers. Regardless of experience and financial capabilities, any person can conduct trade transactions on almost any trading Exchange all over the world. Now the one can analyze price movement charts, make forecasts, follow all the news of the financial market, and much more in just a few clicks on a smartphone. 

If you are not so experienced in trading and are afraid to get lost in the variety of information, the market will offer you to transfer your funds into the trust management of other traders. Connect to the signals of professional market players and thereby copy all their operations without your participation. You would need to observe the trading operations and overestimate the risks. Those who prefer scalping to positional trading will be able to purchase a trading robot. Is it getting to be complicated? I agree. It is so easy to get lost in all the modern variety of trading tools, and it is even more challenging to choose the ones that would suit your trading style. Therefore, let’s start with the very beginning and get familiar with any trader’s primary tool – a trading platform.

What is a trading platform, and for what is it used?

A trading platform (or trading terminal) is software that displays market data and provides an opportunity to interact with it. It is essential to understand that any trading platform is not an Exchange itself. It’s just connected to it with a so-called ‘bridge.’ Thus, you can trade from any place in the world where the Internet is. Altamira is Custom Trading Software Development Company.

 trading platform example

In addition to its key feature, almost every trading platform has several analysis tools. From the simplest ones, like setting support and resistance levels, to more advanced ones, like, for example, Ichimoku Kinko Hyo or your custom set of tools. The most advanced platforms will also allow you to connect a trading robot or program it yourself directly.

In the era of global access to the Internet, online trading platforms and mobile trading applications are gaining more popularity. And desktop versions are mainly used for robot trading when all the positions are settled and closed automatically within a split of a second without your instant involvement. Most of the time, you would only need to keep an eye on it to exit the market when the auto-strategy starts giving adverse results. And again, it could be done from the non-desktop application.

How to pick up the right trading platform?

I’m afraid there is no correct answer to this question. Nevertheless, there are some basic universal parameters that a high-quality product should meet. Among them

  •  Security
  • Speed ​​and performance
  • Functionality and mobility

 The security of your account and transactions conducted by you should be considered as the main criterion. Be sure to read the company’s security and privacy policy. It is also essential to understand that much depends not only on the broker and how it protects you technologically but also on how you protect your access credentials.

Searching for a suitable trading terminal, you should also pay attention to its performance. No matter how well-adjusted your trading strategy is, a few seconds of delay can significantly affect the transaction’s outcome in both positive and negative directions. Some of the brokers even cover the negative balance of their customers that was caused by slippage. In such situations, you will not have to compensate for these losses on your own. But, as you understand, it doesn’t benefit both parties if the deal was closed with a significant delay. Many factors could cause slippage, but anyway, it’s crucial to minimize risks by picking up the platform with excellent performance and ensuring you have a stable internet provider.

Once you are confident with the security and performance the broker provides, it’s time to look at usability. It all depends on your preferences and needs. You might prefer a large number of instruments, while someone will not be using any trading indicators. But, regardless of any personal criteria, the platform should be convenient, intuitive, and mobile. By mobility, I mean not only the existence of a mobile application but compatibility of the terminal with different operating systems and its support in the latest official browser versions.

You should choose a platform for yourself and the conditions in which you will carry out your trading operations.

What if I don’t want to trade, can I still make money in this business?

Sure! There are many options from writing your trading strategies and robots, hosting webinars and courses to participation in brokers’ partner programs. Whatever you choose, you need a space where you would be able to show your products and promotions to potential customers. 

I am sure you will agree with me now. The best platform is the one that will attract specifically your target audience and will profitably highlight all the benefits of your products and services. If you want every detail to work for you, consider building your website or even a trading marketplace.

How to start a successful trading project?

The complexity of any project depends on its scale and goals, selected technologies, budget, and the experience of the development team in this area.

For example, let’s say you create video courses about stock exchange trading and sell them through your website. In addition to classes, you are planning to add trading strategies to the list of your products. You would like potential customers to test this strategy on a demo account with real quotes directly on your website. The development of this project will be happening in several steps. Let’s take a quick look at each of them.

Step 1 – Idea discussion and preliminary estimation of the project

At this stage, you discuss the concept of your project with a business analyst and determine goals and problems that it will help to solve. This step is significant as it allows us to understand your requirements better. So that at the later stages, you get the result that meets all your expectations and business needs. 

Getting back to the example of the trading project, we could assume that it will have the following initial structure.

  1. Attractive home page, header, footer, and, let’s say, a search field at the top of the page for more convenient navigation 
  2. Category page (where users can apply filters and sorting)
  3. Product page with the product description as well as ‘Add to cart’ button
  4. Cart page and one-step checkout
  5. Let’s not forget about User profile where your customers would be able to edit their personal information, link credit cards, view their purchased products, and earn on trading
  6. Trading terminal (developed from scratch or integrated into the platform) and its tools
    trading platform
  7. Functionality that will allow you to apply the purchased strategies on demo and real trading accounts
  8. And, finally, Static pages like ‘About us,’ ‘Terms and Conditions’ and others

The business analyst makes a high-level specification and sends it to the team for estimation. At this stage, you will already get an idea of the preliminary cost and how the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) would look like. Your business idea is getting shape. 

Project setup and development comes next.

Step 2 – Wireframe design and MVP specification

 Be ready that this step would require a maximum of your involvement as it lays a foundation for the entire project. The business analyst and the designer work on requirements and behavior for each piece of the project. They will expect to receive feedback and confirmation from you that both the specification and wireframes reflect the expected result.

 We should mention that the wireframe is not the final design. It’s only a visual addition to the project specification that answers the questions: “What?” “Where?”, and “How?”. The wireframe is a basis for future design.

It is also worth remembering that we should focus only on the previously discussed MVP. Adding new functionality will affect the budget and might not benefit the business at this stage. It’s better to start small, analyze how the MVP project would be met by the end-users, collect feedback and questions, and then decide how to improve it.

Step 3 – Design and development

First of all, the administrator and technical lead set up work environments. You get all the required accesses so you would be able to monitor how work is progressing. The team works on drawing the final designs, coding, and slicing. QA engineers test the project to make sure it works without errors and meets all the acceptance criteria listed in the specifications.

A whole process consists of small iterations (lasting from 1 to 2 weeks). At the end of each iteration, you get one finished part of your project.

Step 4 – Regression and release

 After the stage of active development, it is essential to conduct regression testing. It will help identify and fix defects that could appear when you put all the project parts together. Once the project has passed all the final checks and fixes, it is ready for release!

Step 5 – Post-release support

 Statistics show that about 90% of projects do not end with the minimum viable product release. And, perhaps, one of the most critical components of each successful project is its post-release support. You will receive feedback from users and employees of your company. And this is the right moment to improve usability and bring the ideas collected on the previous stages to life.

Also, don’t forget about performance improvement. The bottleneck of each trading project is its performance and database. Most of the trading businesses need to process vast amounts of data in a split of a second. The more active users are – the higher load on the server, and the database is. If it’s not improved continuously, your platform could one day even fall under the load. 

To prevent it, you should alternate the development of new functionality with periods of refactoring of the existing one. I guess you would agree that if users have to wait a long time for pages to be loaded or cannot close orders in a split of a second, it is not vital what interesting features were added in the latest releases.

It could also be helpful to involve marketing specialists who can highlight the weaknesses of the project from the point of users’ view, analyze their feedback and behavior on the site, and help to build effective promotion strategies.

How to increase the chances of a project’s success during development and support?

 Each project is accompanied by certain risks that cannot be avoided but can be minimized. Here are some simple tips on how to spend less but get a project of better quality.

  •  Collaborate with companies that have experience with similar projects   

The IT world is changing every day. Many new services and technologies appear on the market every year. And it is not so easy to keep an eye on all of them and stay tuned with dozens of new features.

 Working with teams with experience in your business area could significantly reduce the time spent on investigation and development. For example, did you know that not every payment system is allowed for fintech projects? Some of these non-supported payment systems are Braintree and PayPal. The experienced specialist would be able to mention it at the early stages of the project and save days or even weeks that could have been spent on integrating a system that doesn’t match.

  •   Do not make things complicated      

MVP is always a complete product with a minimum set of features. A parallel can be drawn with building a house, where MVP is a small one-story house with a door, windows, and a roof. These are the key elements the home requires to solve the primary demand – protection. As the project grows, you would supply electricity, water, and heating for the comfort of your residents. 

But if you build a house with a solid foundation, excellent expensive windows, furniture, electricity, and running water, but with no roof (or if it leaks), no one will buy this house, no matter how much effort and money were put.

 It’s all the same with the trading platform from our example above. Don’t grab onto everything at once. Do not rush to develop new functionality for paying bonuses to potential partners that you are planning to collaborate with in the future. Concentrate on key functions such as connecting a trading terminal and setting up a bridge between the terminal and the Exchange. Double-check that users face no issues with buying products and are satisfied with how they can manage purchases in their accounts. Make sure these parts of the project are stable and easy-to-use.

 A large number of features would cause a ‘wow’ effect and feed the target audience’s interest. But it does not guarantee that users come to use every feature. Always remember that the successful product is a result of successfully implemented and quality MVPs.

  • Avoid last-moment changes         

 Nothing harms projects as much as a change in requirements before release. It’s not related to a couple of minimal visual corrections but changing the whole logic of how the feature should work. It’s also about making a large number of small adjustments right before release (even if each particular one is minor). 

communication of customer with developers

These changes influence the project’s budget because they require additional costs for investigation, re-planning, extra development, design changes, and amendments to the specification.

Such situations are especially dangerous if there is a tight deadline or budget. Each change is the increase in the scope of work. It means that something will have to be sacrificed on the next stages to be ready by the announced date and to stay within the budget. That’s why it’s better to collect all the ideas and decisions and get back to them at the end of MVP development or after the release.

  •   Give feedback and share as many details as possible

It will help avoid misunderstandings and, as a result, additional costs for corrections at the later stages.

  •   Do not skip demo calls

Such an approach provides an opportunity to see the whole project, give feedback, and discuss all the team’s questions in real-time. If possible, join every demo call.

  •  Keep everybody together         

 If your project is already running and you have a team of professionals working for it, that’s great. We would love to meet your team. But it might also cause some difficulties, slow down development, and cause more expenses. The bottleneck is a difference in the timezones, lack of communication between teams, the difference in the priorities for each team, and miscommunication. It’s always beneficial to keep everybody in one place or at least one timezone. 

If, for some reason, development or design has already been started by a different team, we recommend introducing regular calls. This way, all the teams can discuss questions that arise, synchronize on the releases, and understand each other’s processes. The teams should be able to communicate directly as if they were in the same office.

  • Every project is associated with risks     

 In some cases, you cannot avoid risks, but they should be worked on. An experienced team of specialists can keep you updated about all the potential risks and minimize them on every stage of the project. So, don’t be afraid of them!

FAQ

A trading platform, often known as an online trading platform, is a software used to execute transactions within the financial markets. The digital solution enables an individual to place orders for stocks, options, and various other investments through a financial intermediary such as a bank, broker, or exchange.
You can do this based on the following parameters that a high-quality product should meet:

  • The security of your account and transactions conducted by you should be the main criterion. Familiarize yourself with the company’s security and privacy policy. It is also essential to understand that much depends not only on the broker and how it protects you technologically but also on how you protect your access credentials.
  • Speed and performance. Searching for a suitable trading terminal, you should also pay attention to its performance. No matter how well-adjusted your trading strategy is, a few seconds of delay can significantly affect the transaction’s outcome in both positive and negative directions.
  • Functionality and mobility. It all depends on your preferences and needs. You might prefer a large number of instruments, while someone will not be using any trading indicators. But, regardless of any personal criteria, the platform should be convenient, intuitive, and mobile. By mobility, I mean not only the existence of a mobile application but compatibility of the terminal with different operating systems and its support in the latest official browser versions.

The complexity of any project depends on its scale and goals, selected technologies, budget, and the experience of the development team in this area. But there are five steps you should path to build an online trading platform:
1. Idea discussion and preliminary estimation of the project
2. Wireframe design and MVP specification
3. Design and development
4. Regression and release
5. Post-release support
The more detailed answer you will find in this article.

Well, I hope you enjoyed reading this article, and it was helpful for you. If you have any questions about how to develop and launch your trading project, what technologies to use, and what to start with or if you have any other ideas in mind – contact us and get a free estimation of your project!

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