A guide on trading software development: why should you be invested?

Everybody can get into the world of trading and investment these days. You don’t have to be a Wall Street blue-collar to extract some value out of good deals on the market. Business investment, cryptocurrency trading, even NFTs - all of that can be traded by average people with pockets big and small. 

What is your value here? You can be the middle-man between the traders and the market, and to do that, you will need your own trading software. How do you make money out of trading software development and how can you make it right with a reliable custom software development partner? Let’s see the connection between software development and trading and how you can profit from it.

A quick market overview

Software development and trading have become deeply interconnected in the past decades. According to Fortune Business Insights, the estimated market value of automated stock trading software currently sits at around $8.6 B and is projected to grow up to $12.16 B by 2028. As value investment becomes accessible to more and more people, it is natural that more heads turn towards custom trading software development. More so, the use of analytical algorithms helps people make better investment decisions, which further boosts the popularity of stock trading software development. A variety of features offered by modern trading system development software makes trading not just accessible but simple and convenient.

Value investing is not the only feature offered by modern trading software development companies. The research by Markets and Markets points to the increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies. The cryptocurrency market could go through a period of significant growth in the following years with a 7.1% CAGR and growing to $2.2 B by 2026 in the US alone.

As more and more people get into trading and investing, the demand for high-quality, responsive, intuitive, and fair trading platforms increases. But what is your value in custom trading software development? 

How does trading software development make money for your business?

Trading system development software is an investment in its own right, so what do you put your money in and how do you get a return on your investment? There are several ways to extract monetary value from stock trading software development:

1. Transactions: if you ever used any type of trading platform, you have probably noticed that the platform takes a small fraction of money for each transaction in and out of the market. This model is called payment for order flow. This payment could be really small, something around 0.01% of the order, so the trader does not feel that transaction charge. While it might be small, imagine you have tens of thousands of traders issuing hundreds of thousands of orders daily. Some payments would be as low as just a couple of cents, some would yield a couple of bucks, and some would give you hundreds of dollars, depending on the order size. That is just one of the ways software development and trading can benefit your business.
2. Fees and interests: apart from small charges for order flow, trading platforms also charge fees for putting money in and out of the platform itself. Whenever a trader puts money on the trading platform account or withdraws the money, the platform may charge its interest. In most cases, the platforms only charge fees or interest from withdrawals. So, you can make money from withdrawals too, making stock market software development a lucrative endeavor.
3. Subscriptions: in many cases, trading platforms use a Freemium model. This means that you have the basic version of the app - the one that contains most of the essential features an average user might need. You also have a premium version of the application available to subscribed users. A premium app might give users access to analytical tools, automatic order fills, and more. The Freemium model is another strategy that yields profit for a trading software development company.
4. In-app advertisement: this is rather straightforward. If you want, you can place some advertisements on your application. However, you must remember that ads might annoy users, so that is something you need to consider.

Monetization opportunities here are fairly straightforward, and you can choose any strategy you want to advance your business interests. Making money while helping people make money is a fair and transparent monetization model that offers a considerable return on investment. With such an abundance of monetization venues, stock market software developers can generate ROI quickly.

The essential aspects of trading software development

Most trading platforms have several common aspects and features, and if you plan to develop one yourself, you need to take all of those into account. You might come up with some unique features too, improve the regular formula, and make your product more attractive to the audiences. If you work with experienced stock market software developers, they can also bring some fresh ideas to the table. Here are some of the important aspects of trading software development to keep in mind.

Feature richness

The most important aspect of a successful trading software development project is keeping all the needs of the users in mind. You have to think through all the features they would need throughout their investment and trading journey:

• Profile dashboard: to get into stock market software development, you must be client-oriented. Your trading tool must contain a special profile menu and a fully customizable dashboard that contains all the information about users’ balance, their activity, and any essential info they would need.
• Portfolio management: your users need to have a 360-view of their portfolio, which stocks or currencies they bought, and what the current value of their portfolio is.
• Newsfeed: you might also add a newsfeed feature containing information about all the recent market trends, forecasts, and analytics. This might not be the most critical feature for software development and trading, but it is good to have if you want to keep your clients well-informed.
• Transaction history: users need to have a full history of their transactions throughout the years of trading. Giving your clients a full overview of their trading history is a vital feature for trading software development companies, but it is also data-heavy.
• Custom search and filters: this feature is essential for comfortable navigation across potential investment opportunities. Your clients might want to filter out the available stocks by industries, growth rates, or any other essential search criteria. The same goes for cryptocurrency trading.
• Tips and guides: trading software has to be intuitive but trading and investment are quite complex venues in their own right. An informed user is the user who makes the most lucrative decisions, which means more transaction interest for you. So, tips and guides on making a good investment could be valuable features for many beginner traders.

The first iteration of your trading app can be quite basic. You can launch it and add new features as you go. That is what a regular trading software development company does and there’s nothing wrong with such an approach. After that, you can add new features to your product with every new iteration, and your custom trading software partner will help you with that.

Intuitive UI and UX

To attract as many users as possible, you have to make your application’s UI and UX design intuitive and friendly. User experience is one of the critical aspects of stock trading software development to consider. Most people who come into the world of trading and investment get spooked by the complexity of all the charts, candlestick patterns, numbers, and everything happening on the screen. 

To an average person who does not have much of a trading background, all of this might feel overwhelming, and many drop the idea of getting into trading because of that. The goal of trading software development experts here is to make the user feel confident in their actions, explain everything, and provide all the information they might need to grasp the basics of trading fast. 

Many trading software development companies offer two types of interfaces: simplified and advanced. The first one is intended for newcomers and the second one is for people who already have a solid understanding of trading as a whole. Developing two different interfaces might take longer and cost more, but it can result in a steadier influx of new users on your platform.

For advanced traders, you might not need all the extensive UI features to explain everything that happens on the screen, but you still need to create a satisfying user experience. If you go for a freemium model, you can create an advanced interface for the paid subscription users and power it up with analytical tools, prediction models, and more AI and machine learning features.

Security of personal data and assets

Security is arguably the most important feature of trading software development companies or any company that deals with personal data and money. Blockchain technology offers nearly unmatched security of assets for cryptocurrency traders, but the trading platform itself has to comply with the rules of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FIRA) and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). Depending on the location, you will need to comply with several local regulations such as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK.

Additional features to keep in mind

There are many more important features that you need to consider throughout the trading software development process:

• Scalability: any type of software that might become subject to changes and growth in the foreseeable future has to be ready for scaling. A scalable and flexible software allows you to change and expand your scope of operations down the line;
• Interoperability: make sure your application works on different types of devices, different operating systems, screen sizes, and so on. An expert trading software development company will help you build an app that works on all types of devices;
• Accessibility features: you have to keep in mind the needs of different audiences and make your product user-friendly to all categories of people

Where do you start and how do you develop trading software?

The development process for trading software can be quite a challenge for companies that do not have the necessary experience. However, working with a reliable custom software development partner can give you a strong edge and help you get your development process going much faster. N-iX is the partner that can help you develop a secure, high-performance, and reliable trading platform. Our team builds PCI DSS-compliant solutions and ensures the security of personal data and assets for trading software users.

Here’s how the trading software development process looks from the perspective of an experienced development team:

Product discovery

First, we need to clarify all of your ideas and requirements during the product discovery. You might have a general idea of your future product or you might have a precise and detailed development plan - all of that must be validated for feasibility. It is essential to discuss all of your ideas before we get to the product design stage. That way we will know exactly what the product would look like, which of your ideas can be implemented, and which would bring the most value to your business. The product discovery may include the following steps:

• Research and ideation: we need to do thorough research to create the best possible trading solution. This includes competitor research as well so that we know what types of features the competitors offer, what they do right, and what they do wrong. Together, we will come up with the idea for the product and make it perfect for your clients;
• Idea validation: we also have to understand whether the ideas are feasible considering your budget and time constraints;
• Design: with all the requirements gathered and ideas validated, we can come up with a product design. This may include mockups, a detailed plan for the product implementation, a list of all the primary and secondary features, technologies that are going to be used, and other aspects of the product’s functioning and appearance.

Project starter

Our software architects will gather a core development team and scale it up as needed. The stock market software development company needs to stay agile and adapt to the changing market.

• Our engineers will map out the software development life cycle (SDLC) for the project taking your desired deadline and budget into account;
• We will set up the development process with the industry’s best practices in mind: code quality, code review, security, CI/CD, documentation, disaster recovery, and more.

Development and testing

After defining the SDLC and an optimal team structure, we will move forward with the development and testing. Yes, we believe that testing cannot be an afterthought and that it has to occur in parallel to the development itself. Our experts will apply the best methodology to deliver the expected results on time and with respect to your budget:

• We use agile methodology to achieve the intended results faster and make the necessary iterations as we go;
• Our trading software development experts apply the latest tech stack and test frameworks giving you a secure and efficient full-cycle SDLC;
• We automate the testing process to skip tedious and often unreliable manual testing without compromising the quality of the final product.

Release and maintenance

Nearing the final stages of the development cycle, a stock market software development company will prepare and gather all the documentation and get your product ready for the market launch. Reliable trading software development companies will run all the necessary tests to make sure your product is secure, functions as intended, and has the potential for scalability. During this stage, we will:

• Formulate a release strategy;
• Make final adjustments to the SLA;
• Run release tests: scalability, performance, accessibility, and security.

Reliable partnership for post-launch support 

The N-iX team can also support your product throughout its lifecycle. Any product requires updates and improvements, and you will also need a team of experts who’d be able to react fast in case anything needs twitching or fixing. A professional trading software development company will help you with:

• Production support;
• Operations support;
• Validation of product setup or adjustment of product configurations.

Final thoughts

Trading and investment are good ways for people to increase their financial wealth, save up some money as a part of their retirement plan, or even get rich fast by making a couple of really good deals. For trading software development companies, it is also a way to advance their business interests and generate monetary gains. As much as with any type of investment, you want to be sure your trading platform is going to bring returns.

To make sure you get the expected ROI, you have to be sure your trading software is top-notch, and that is where you need full confidence in your technology partner. N-iX is a trading software development company ready to help you achieve that goal and develop a platform that will turn out to be a great investment on your part.