Digitization is absorbing more and more areas of daily life. Stock trading is no exception. Today, investment projects are not only for narrow-focused firms. Thanks to trading platforms, everyone can easily invest and earn money. According to Statista, the age of trading apps users varies from 18 to 60+ years. It proves the raised interest in such services and their hasty growth. This article will look at what a trading app is, the most popular services, and how to build your own trading platform.
What Is Trading App?
A trading app is an online mechanism that allows you to buy and sell stocks through your laptop or smartphone. Such apps may add value to specialized brokerage firms or be developed as independent services aimed at a wide range of customers. Today trading software is trendy and has many users around the world. Its action principle is somewhat similar to the eCommerce store. Like you can buy a shirt or sneakers online, you can trade securities and make money from good investments.
Here are just a few benefits that users get from online trading:
Easy access. Anyone can download the app and start trading. Installation and registration take just a few minutes. It is much easier and faster than offline trading, which involves going to a specialized company, consulting with a broker, and deciding about a particular investment.
Cost savings. For both users and brokers, a trader app is a money-saving tool. While the former ones do not need to spend for intermediaries, the latter save on office maintenance.
High flexibility. A trading app allows placing trading orders anytime, anywhere. The user can run the app at non-working hours or while on vacation and fully control the investment activity.
Fewer mistakes. Working with the securities market without intermediaries, users minimize the chance of errors during trading. Thus, they are one step ahead of offline traders.
Ongoing monitoring. With constant access to the stock trading app, users stay updated about any changes and timely adjust their trading strategies.
Examples Of Best Trading Apps
Let’s review trading apps that are currently most in demand. We’ll take a deeper insight into their distinctive features and see which ones you might want to borrow for your project.
Robinhood
Here comes the queen of the trading platforms. The Robinhood’s popularity is hard to argue with. The app has about 13 million users and is actively used in many countries around the world. Its idea of free stock trading has become a benchmark for similar fintech apps. The free version also offers access to ETFs and bitcoins. If you want to work with mutual funds, you should upgrade to a paid plan.
Strengths
- ability to work with fractional shares
- user-friendly interface
- cryptocurrency support
Weaknesses
- no way to work with retirement accounts
- inability to invest in funds and bonds
- customer care needs improvements
Acorns
A striking feature of the app is that it can make decisions on its own and requires minimal user involvement. In essence, Acorns is a robo-advisor that chooses the best investment strategy based on the user’s spending habits and available budget. It can also round the spent sums to the nearest dollar and use them for further investments. You need to pay only $1 per month to use the app, and you can start trading with only $5 at hand.
Strengths
- hands-off investment experience
- support of retirement accounts
- low price
Weaknesses
- limited investment portfolio
- absence of tax strategy
- mandatory monthly fee
E-Trade
E-Trade was the first service that brought online trading to the world. Until now, it remains one of the best trading apps with a variety of features and a handy interface. With E-Trade, users can invest and trade stocks, access exchange-traded funds, and work with mutual funds. The highlight of the app is its educational tools that help novices traders start their investment path.
Strengths
- risk assessment tool
- futures ladder instrument
- no commission for stock trades
Weaknesses
- high fees for some products
- no way to integrate with a bank
- slightly off usability
Essential Features Of Trading App
As you can see, each trading app has its punch line. Some attract with their super friendly interface, others — with an extended investment portfolio, still others — with built-in smart tools. To gain users’ attention, you need something that sets you apart from others. The winning bid can be found by studying your business nature and understanding the goals you aim to achieve. Nevertheless, the basis of the trading project will be made of more or less standard features, which we will consider below.
1.Sign Up. Users start their journey from account creation and authorization. It is essential to make these steps fast and straightforward so that potential customers do not lose their enthusiasm to interact with the app. Don’t forget to establish a secure checkout using passwords and biometrics. It will enhance app protection and grow brand confidence.
2.Personal account. Here, the user should be able to add, edit, and delete personal data, enable or disable notifications, and adjust trading-related settings. You need to implement the transaction tracking and quotes monitoring features to let users see a real-time picture of their activity.
3.Trading tools. This will be the core of your stock trading platform. First of all, you should make a precise mechanism for placing orders and monitoring funds move. Also, it is necessary to take care of different investment tools with manual and automatic modes.
4.Deposits. This feature aims to keep users updated about long-term and short-terms deposits and their statuses. The users would appreciate it if you let them access real-time data with minimum effort.
5.Search. Enable users to look for active stocks and see their current rates. It will add value to the investment decisions and help benefit from using your custom trading software.
6.Analytics. Be sure to add valuable insights to your app. Help users evaluate the correctness of their decisions with detailed reports and easy-to-use visual diagrams.
7.Push Notifications. The alerts would inform users about stocks’ up or down rates, dividends, transfers, earnings, and more. With this feature, the main thing is not to overdo and give users an easy way to adjust the content and frequency of messages received.
8.Newsfeed. This feature is helpful for both novices and experienced traders. It helps be abreast of global and local trends and make cleverer investment moves.
Five Steps To Develop Trading App
If you want to enter upon trading software development, it’s time to list the steps to take during this path. Of course, some changes may occur along the line; however, the overall journey will look like this.
1.Choose platform and features
Trading software solutions may be web or mobile-based. Also, you can opt for a two-in-one variant when the functions available in a web app are fully or partially repeated in a mobile app. We always recommend starting with less and proceed to more advanced functionality later. This strategy allows you to test the app in the real world and understand where to move further.
Besides, you do not need to immediately spend a lot of money on a project, which may turn out to be unprofitable.
2.Define tech stack
Trading software tech stack will directly depend on the chosen platforms and features. You will need to work on a backend, a frontend (for a web app), a mobile client (for a mobile app), and choose an infrastructure for your project. At Softensy, we prefer Java for backend development. A frontend is often implemented on Angular and React.js. For the mobile part, we mainly use native technologies: Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android. As for the infrastructure, we recommend deploying the trading platform in the cloud to let users launch it anytime and from any device. Based on our experience, AWS is best suited for this purpose.
3.Decide on third-party integrations
An important point here is linking with specialized third-party services that open access to the stock market data stream and allow you to receive stock quotes, commodities, indices, currencies in real-time. On previous trading platform development projects, we worked with Yahoo Finance, Zira, and Twelve Data. We have a well-oiled mechanism of integration with their APIs and are convinced of their safety and reliability.
4.Create organic design
Fintech apps and trading platforms do not tolerate bells and whistles in design. The very essence of such software is rather complex, so in design, it is necessary to strive for maximum ergonomics and clarity. Make sure the user’s journey is quick and easy, and each subsequent step is very straightforward. Avoid flashy colors, but use visual trading technology to give users better insights into their investment activities.
5.Test and deploy
Trading app developers and testers must ensure the app is ready for heavy loads and security holes are firmly patched. You need to play all possible scenarios, apply load and stress testing, and check the app on different devices. One tool that can help you verify the correctness of algorithms is Sailfish. It is designed especially for brokerage apps and offers a full-fledged toolset for auto testing.
Building Trading Platform With Softensy
Custom trading software is now in demand, so you are on the right track if you want to make one. At Softensy, we have vast experience and fintech development. For many years, we have been working on baking solutions, investment projects, and trading tools. If you are looking for a trusted team, get in touch with our experts. We provide consultation for free, so you can decide if you want to proceed further.
This article was originally published at Softensy.
