Ready to Use UI Components

What are the advantages of using a UI component library?

Using ready-to-use UI elements from a UI component library offers a multitude of benefits for your software development project. They provide the backbone of your application's user interface, creating a smoother development process while also enhancing the end-user experience. Here are some key advantages of using these ready-made components:

• Efficiency: Ready-to-use UI components drastically speed up the development process. Instead of building every UI element from scratch, you can focus on the key differentiators and features of your software product.
• Cost-effective: Given the reduced development time, using UI elements from a UI component library can lead to significant cost savings. This is particularly beneficial for businesses needing to manage their UI designer resources wisely.
• Consistency & quality: Ready-to-use UI elements provide a consistent look and feel across your application, enhancing the user experience. These “building blocks” are also typically high-quality and well-tested, reducing the likelihood of bugs and enhancing the software's overall stability.

How customizable are ready-to-use user interface (UI) components?

Ready-to-use UI components we use offer a high degree of customization, providing web developers the flexibility to tailor them to suit your project's specific needs and brand identity. However, striking the right balance in customization is essential. Excessive customization can disrupt this consistency, leading to a disjointed user interface that might confuse users.

Your Product Leader at SoftKraft will guide you through every step of the design and planning process, including helping your team to strike the right balance of customization given your project constraints and requirements. We can advise you on what kind of customization may be simple and what kind of customization may introduce additional risks or development time. Overly customized components may become more challenging to maintain and scale. As the UI tools or libraries update, your customizations might break or require additional effort to keep them functional and up-to-date.

How will ready-to-use UI components affect the cost of my project?

Choosing to use production ready component libraries in your project does often involve some cost, as not all of these libraries are free. Many libraries such as AG Grid and Tailwind UI charge one-time fees. Others have monthly, recurring fees - such as Material UI - or cloud services models - like MapBox. And a few platforms like Ant Design are open source and free.

Our team at SoftKraft can help you weigh the costs of using a UI component library against the cost savings benefits that they can provide to your project in the long run:

• Reduced development time: The primary cost advantage of using standard components like input elements, message boxes, or search fields, comes from the reduction in development time. Instead of creating these components from scratch, our developers can leverage ready-made components, speeding up the development process and reducing the cost of your project.
• Less time spent debugging: Because these libraries provide well-tested, high-quality advanced components, we’ll spend less time dealing with bugs and issues that could arise from custom-built components.
• Maintenance costs: With custom components, the developers are solely responsible for maintaining and updating them as technology evolves. This can introduce complexities and a reliance on the software vendor that you may not want. Using well-maintained libraries ensures you're leveraging the latest best practices and security updates, potentially reducing future maintenance costs.

Read More: Web Application Development Cost Estimation

How do ready-to-use UI components fit into your web development process?

Ready-to-use user interface components fit seamlessly into our web development process and provide an efficient way for us to build beautiful, functional web apps. You can expect our web development team to follow a standard process for developing web solutions that use standard UI elements:

• Initial discovery, research & estimation: During this phase, we gather all project requirements and understand what you want to achieve. We go over your priorities, budget, timeline, and business goals. We use this information to provide guidance on how to reduce costs and speed up delivery. You’ll leave this stage with a clear project estimate that takes into account whether or not you’ve chosen to have us use production ready UI components.
• Workshops & planning: During our design workshops, we'll delve into the details of your business idea and how best to translate it into a web application. At this stage, we'll establish which ready-to-use UI components, such as navigational components, search fields, and input controls that fit into the design and functionality of your product. We rely on an intuitive customization process that allows us to tune standard components to your preferences, while still maintaining the core value of these components.
• Development sprints: We now move into implementation, translating your project requirements into user-ready software. Working in sprints, our developers will leverage the work done during the design stage, leveraging the production ready components that have been chosen. Each sprint will now include the implementation of the identified ready-to-use UI components.
• Stabilization & release process: As we perfect every area of the product during the stabilization phase, ready-to-use UI components can help ensure a smoother transition. These components have been pre-tested and are optimized for performance, which means fewer bugs and a stable product. Once user feedback confirms the product's readiness, we deploy the first version into the production environment.
• Support & aftercare After successful custom web application development we can continue to provide support. We can monitor the performance, and we are ready to fix all the issues based on the SLA or a different arrangement.

Read More: 7 Steps to Launch a Successful Web App Development Project

What technologies do you use for custom web development?

As Softkraft, we embrace modern software technologies to ensure your application will be built to last. For many custom web application development projects, we utilize Django, which is an open source development framework that is based in Python, which makes it easy to work with and maintain long term.

Python is a popular programming language that offers enhanced process control capabilities. The diverse application of the Python language is a result of the combination of features that give this language an edge over others:

• Code simplicity Python is a favorite among software developers for its strong emphasis on readability and efficiency. It is widely applied in software development in data science and web development.
• Rapid development Python lets you build more functionality with fewer lines of code. This made it popular with startups and enterprises. Django is a web application framework that takes care of many of the standard functionalities to build secure and maintainable Python web applications.
• Widely used Python has grown to become one of the top languages in the current tech landscape. Many startups and established companies like Amazon, Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, or Spotify have all trusted Python.

No other languages on the technology market give so much cost-efficient competitive advantage in enterprise web development services. Python allows cross-platform development, web apps development, statistical analysis, data manipulation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, to name a few development solutions.

For frontend development, we lean heavily on React and Vue.js. These JavaScript libraries provide the following benefits for your web application:

• Faster development: A component-based UI approach supports agile, iterative development. Components are stored in a library from which teams can access, integrate, and modify them throughout the development process.
• User interface consistency: The component library serves as a governance point for business, designers, and quality assurance teams. It can be versioned in the repository, allowing tracking of which applications use which version of the approved user interface.
• Reuse across projects: A component-based UI approach ensures your web application architecture remains up-to-date over time. It allows you to build multiple applications that adhere to the intended design principles without having to start from scratch.

What design processes and tools do you use for UI/UX design?

UI/UX design is a critical part of any front-end development or software development project. Without a great design you risk building a web app that users simply do not find appealing or usable. In fact, 25% of project failures are attributed to UX design issues!

At SoftKraft we use a standard UI/UX design process to ensure our clients have a well-designed, customer-centric product:

1. Design brief. We start the user interface design process by setting design goals. These goals will be formulated by the use of a detailed design brief, which helps to ensure all stakeholders are aligned on the goals, project scope, target, audience, and other details. During this phase, we also consider the use of ready-to-use UI components from libraries like TailwindUI, Ant V, Ant Design, and Mapbox that align with your product requirements and design preferences.
2. Market research. Depending on the scope of the project, we will either utilize your team’s own market research or conduct our own to ensure we thoroughly understand the target market, user groups, and the competition.
3. Storyboarding. We’ll create a low-fidelity visual that focuses on users and their actions, thoughts, goals, emotions, and relationships.
4. Design concept selection. Our designers create design previews or moodboards, which may include ready-to-use UI components. Including these components in the concept selection phase allows you to see how they will look and function in the final design.
5. Prototyping. At this point, wireframes and clickable design prototypes will be created to help you visualize every screen of the mobile app or web app before a single line of code is written.
6. Handover to development team. After wireframes have been finalized, the front developers will begin app development. Our designers will work hand-in-hand with the team to ensure a smooth development process.

Depending on the project, our team utilizes tools such as Figma, Sketch, Axure, and Balsamiq to develop UI/UX designs, wireframes, and mockups.

Read More:
UI Design Process - 7 Easy Steps to Make Great UIs Faster
11 Proven Ways to Create Engaging Web Application UI Designs

What are the advantages of your web development services?

Outsourcing web development services can offer a range of advantages for businesses of all sizes. Startups and enterprise customers alike can benefit from access to skilled expertise, cost-effective solutions, and flexibility that might be hard to achieve in-house.

At SoftKraft, our team doesn't just offer web development services, we offer a partnership that blends technical expertise with a passion for design and technology. Our focus is on driving your business towards its goals while providing an attractive cost-to-value ratio. Here's what sets us apart:

• Access to expertise: Outsourcing with us gives you access to a dedicated team of professionals, each with specialized experience in various aspects of web development. This includes developers and designers who have well-tested, established workflows using the latest technologies such as Python and UI component libraries like TailwindUI and Ant Design.
• Cost-efficiency: Outsourcing to Eastern Europe offers significant cost advantages compared to other regions, without compromising on quality. Furthermore, the use of ready-to-use UI components and our efficient development process allows for cost savings as it reduces the time needed for design and development. By outsourcing with us, you save on the expenses related to recruitment, training, salaries, and benefits of an in-house team, paying only for the services you need.
• Faster project delivery: At SoftKraft, we understand that time is a valuable resource. With the ability to start on your project immediately, and by leveraging ready-to-use UI components, we ensure faster delivery times for your website or web application. This approach means your product can start adding value to your business sooner than with traditional development methods.

We offer top-notch website development services to businesses globally. Our team of skilled web developers can help you create a website or web application that meets your specific needs and objectives, providing you with the numerous benefits of outsourcing. We are excited to learn more about your project! Contact us now.