The increasing need for digital technologies in the post-Covid-19 world shows that industries across the world are either already affected or are in the process of digital transformation. Specifically, for the finance industry, stockbrokers, investors and, lending institutions have already implemented innovative technologies to stay relevant to the changing market needs. But, with the advent of new practices and technologies such as open-banking and AI in FinTech, many people wonder how to create a stock market website that excels over the existing websites in the market.
What is a Stock Market Website, and How Does It Work?
A stock market website is an internet-based platform that assists traders and brokers trade financial commodities through an electronic medium. These websites allow traders to invest in anything, be it bonds, currencies, debentures, shares, or other financial instruments. In layman’s terms, stock market websites are e-commerce but for stock trading.
Stock market websites allow brokers to find and track their favorite stocks and invest in financial instruments. Also, the investors can use the stock market website to access and study the funds that they want to invest in. Although stock market websites don’t necessarily offer trading functionality, some websites like Trade Ideas offer complete functionality, including stock trading and, making sure that the investors never miss a trading opportunity.
Why Are Stock Marketing Websites So Popular?
Statista found that 14.1 million people in the USA are using at least one stock marketing website or app. This is due to the accessibility that the online stock marketing/trading platform brings along. Investors and brokers can sell or buy stocks from anywhere in the world. The following are the commonly known benefits of stock marketing websites:
- Enables stock trading beyond geographical boundaries. This means that any trader having an account with brokerage firms can do business via the internet, irrespective of their location.
- Streamline investor and client management. The online stock market and trading platforms also act as CRM software solutions that enable effective and efficient client data management.
- 27×7 accessibility. While stock markets don’t remain open all the time, the stock market websites will, making it possible for users to access information anytime.
- Real-time data availability. The stock market websites provide users with real-time data from the market. The websites also use artificial intelligence to help users decide the best stock for their choice, which ultimately reduces the risk of investment.
With updatable index filters, stock market websites make it easy for the customers to filter their portfolios or index to monitor them quickly. Filters reduce the time taken for a task and provide an astonishing user experience for the users.
Although it isn’t necessary for stock market websites to act as an online stock trading platform, trading functionality is worth having. This functionality is the last step in the stock trading funnel.
To enable this, the most feasible option is to integrate with a third-party trading platform. For example, TradingView doesn’t have its own trading platform; it actually has implemented APIs from ForexTrader to enable ForexTrader account holders to do trading.
Since both brokers and investors would be buying and reselling stocks on the stock trading/market platform, it is essential that the money transfer function is easy and quick. Ask your developers to build a simple yet secure payment flow and design so that the transaction data is secure.
- Real-time streaming of Charts and Quotes
In stock trading, a delay of one second can result in a loss of millions of US dollars. Stock trading is a fast process, and the brokers, as well as investors, make decisions swiftly. Hence, it will help you enable the live-streaming of charts and quotes on the home page or the top bar. To make sure that you show the right and updated information, you will have to integrate APIs from several news and stock websites such as CNBC or Insider. Although it doesn’t seem like a hard-to-implement feature, it is among the most crucial features to help users make the right financial decisions.
- Financial Forecast and Analysis
The stock markets are highly prone to global as well as local political and economic events. A shutdown of a mediocre company can potentially disrupt worldwide trading. Therefore, giving the users access to real-time financial forecasts will help them make intelligent investment decisions. Stock market websites like Trade Ideas make use of artificial intelligence to provide investors with valuable market insights.
Notifications in terms of mobile applications have indeed gone obsolete, especially when not integratedallowed with personalicustomization. But, web portals still have the same importance when it comes to notifications. You can alert users about any major changes in the market that can potentially hamper their portfolio. If you have the resources to make this feature more intelligent using AI algorithms, then go for it.
Investors track stock for a long period before investing in them; hence, if your stock market website allows them to select their favorite stocks, and show them these stocks separately, so that the investor can see any the trends quickly without even having to search specifically for them.
How to Develop a Stock Market Website – The Process
Before you decide to build your stock market website, you should ask yourself whether your business idea complies to a stock trading website or a stock market website. Also, you’ll have to think about how it would help if you develop a full-fledged cloud-based stock market/trading platform. FYI, web-based portals are more versatile and functional than static websites.
1. Know the Compliances For Your Niche
Every industry vertical has its specific as well as common regulatory compliances. FinTech compliancesrange among consumer protection, data security, money laundering, and many moresuch. Also, the regulation specifications are different for every political boundary.
2. Design the Stock Market Concept, User Journeys, and Experience
Based on the compliances, you can think about the functionalities and value that you will be offering to the investors and brokers. It will help if you rank the functionalities according to the importance.
After developing the concept, you’ll have to create different user journeys based on your assumption. There are several purposes why the user will use your website; you should know them and create separate user journeys for each use.
When you know how you want the user to interact with your stock market website, it’s time to design the wireframes and .psd. Don’t forget that investors and brokers are highly educated and have no time to waste. Therefore, it is crucial for you to design your stock market website with a minimalistic approach. You can consider the following factors while designing your stock market website:
- It is beneficial to keep the user interface and experience in mind fromsince the beginning of your website idea. It will help you to be realistic in terms of potential software features.
- When designs are ready, perform usability testing. This is the most important phase, where you’ll make sure that your website is in accordance with your initial plan.
- It is important for you to guide the UI/UX designers as they might not have experience designing FinTech software solutions. Your feedback will help them understand that you require a minimalistic design with more focus on usability.
3. Design Website/Portal Architecture and Develop the Website/portal.
Once you have the detailed requirements in your hand and the designs are ready, you can jump straight on developing your stock market website. If you’re unsure how to create a detailed requirement document, read the following article and come back: Create Product Requirement Document.
Every stock market website has three development stages – Build the Architecture, Back-end Development, and Front-end Development.
The architecture on which your stock market website is built, plays a crucial role in the entire system’s scalability and security. I will recommend you to do it on your own only if you have the expertise; otherwise, It is better to partner with a FinTech development company that knows how to create a stock trading platform.
Based on the decided architecture, the backend developers will integrate server technologies, manage the database, and develop software logic. The developers often use programming languages such as Java, PHP, Ruby, Python, Net, along Oracle and MySQL to enable smooth functioning of database and server. Back-end development takes care of sign-ins, notifications, transactions, and other features for your stock market website in layman’s terms.
Front-end development part of your stock market website deals in designing mobile and web interfaces. The front-end developers make use of programming languages such as JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. The developers are also familiar with software development frameworks like AngularJS, Bootstrap, and libraries like jQuery.
In addition to the backend and front-end developers, the development team often consists of a project manager, graphic designer, and a quality analyst (QA).
How Much Does It Cost to Create A Stock Market Website
It is impossible to tell the exact cost of stock market website development right away. However, I can give you a ballpark range between the cost mostly lies, but it will be too vague. The exact cost can only be calculated with detailed requirements and preferences. Therefore, let’s understand how to calculate the cost of a stock market website or platform development:
The cost to develop any software solution depends on the number of hours required to design and develop it. The same goes for the stock market website or platform development. The estimated time to develop different components of a stock market website is as follows:
- Environment setup and website design: 3 – 4 weeks
- Back-end development: 12 – 20 weeks
- Front-end development: 10 – 15 weeks
- Admin panel development: 2 – 5 weeks
- Testing: 1-2 weeks
- Production and final release: 1 week
This way, the total time required to develop a full-fledged stock market platform is 6 – 12 months. However, the development time can be reduced by executing tasks simultaneously if the requirements are clearly stated and are rigid.
Considering 40 hours of work every week, the total hours required to develop a stock market platform will be 1,160 – 1,880 hrs. Given the hourly rate of software development in the USA at $70, the total cost for stock market platform development will range between 80,000 – 130,000 USD.
However, if you don’t require trading functionality, the cost will be a lot lesser. Therefore, the cost for a stock market website like TradingView will range between 40,000 – 60,000 USD.
Should You Develop Your Stock Market App In-house or Not?
Now when you know how to create a stock market website, the question you would ask yourself is whether to do it in-house or outsource it to a software development company. Developing your stock market website or platform in-house will give you complete control over the development process. You can start developing your website immediately. However, for this, you need to have the required technical resources already in-house. If you don’t have them, you’ll have to spend a hefty amount of time procuring the development team and getting them on board. Also, if you develop the website in-house, the cost of development will significantly go high.
This is why most of the IT projects are outsourced. Even wWhen even companies like Adobe and Google are outsourcing most of their IT projects, there is no harm in outsourcing your stock market website development. Outsourcing FinTech software development allows you to save time and money, get access to a global pool of talent, and avoid unnecessary recruitment and management.
However, there are things you should consider before you outsource your stock market website development work to a software development company. Not every software development company is proficient in FinTech development and therefore, the company you pick should have extensive experience in developing software solutions for the banking and finance industry.