We’re currently witnessing significant changes in the world order. Economic turmoil, political decisions, and social shifts are leading to changes in financial behavior. People prefer to invest in stocks of more established companies as they’re believed to be less risky. Nowadays, most investors do this online via apps or special software like TradingView. The demand for such solutions is also increasing, so developing your own tool could be a good return on investment. Read on to learn how to create well-functioning, high-quality trading apps like TradingView.
What Is TradingView and Why It’s So Popular
TradingView is a technical analysis platform that provides comprehensive charts and allows trading. It’s valued and loved by over 30 million users for its social networking feature. The platform connects investors, traders, and educators, allowing them to communicate and share ideas. TradingView offers a wide range of features – e.g., comprehensive charts, financial news and updates, technical analysis, etc. Its financial instruments include stocks, currencies, indices, forex, futures, bonds, and even cryptocurrencies. The platform’s functionality is available via the website, desktop app, or mobile app (for both Android and iOS devices).
Must-Have Features of a Good Platform for Traders
All this must’ve got you thinking – how hard is it actually to develop apps like TradingView? Just like with most things, planning is the key to success. Developing good stock market software is not a problem if you have the right skill set and resources. Bringing it to the market and making users like it is the main challenge. That’s why now we will explore some of the key features without which your potential users will most likely not even consider using your stock market website.
Technical analysis
It’s the core feature of TradingView that attracts users to the platform. In a nutshell, the main goal of technical analysis is to use past market data to make more accurate predictions about future market movements. In this way, it helps traders identify patterns and trends in past market data and make more informed investment decisions. Technical analysis can also be used to set trade triggers, such as when an asset reaches a certain price or when an indicator reaches a certain level. Therefore, it’s important that your solution is equipped with technical analysis functionality. It may include, for example, multiple technical indicators and their charts; chart search, view, and management; order management; simulators for testing market behavior; backtesting; etc.
Updateable index filters
Make sure that your customers can filter and monitor their portfolios and index without extra effort whenever they need it. If traders can’t access this information easily and quickly, they’re more likely to switch to a different solution.
Trading functionality
Not every stock market website provides trading functionality, but it’s a good idea to implement it. This will make a lot of sense – users who are interested in the markets will most likely want to invest, all in one place.
Turning your website into a stock trading platform is not hard, all you need to do is integrate it with any third-party trading platform. This is a very common practice amongst market players of all sizes, including TradingView – the platform is integrated with ForexTrader APIs to allow users with ForexTrader accounts to trade through TradingView.
Money transfer
This feature might seem intuitive for a trading solution to have, but it is crucial to implement it properly. The very least users can expect when coming to a new platform is for their payments to be secure, quick, and flawlessly functioning. Nobody wants the payment to get stuck when they need to short-sell urgently, so make sure your solution has a simple, secure, well-functioning money transfer flow.
Real-time charts and quotes
To make timely, data-driven investment decisions, traders use charts and quotes. Obviously, they need to have them available in real-time as even a millisecond counts when it comes to trading. To enable instant charts and quotes streaming, you can integrate your platform with news and stock websites (e.g., CNBC, MarketWatch, Insider, etc.).
Financial forecast and analysis
Stock markets don’t exist in a vacuum, they are included and affected by political and economic events. Hence, to enable users to make informed decisions and provide them with actionable market insights, financial forecast and analysis feature is a must.
Push notifications
Smart, customizable notifications are a must for a good trading solution. They not only alert users about changes in the market that can affect their strategies, portfolios, and investment decisions. Notifications are also a great marketing tool that can help you increase user engagement and cross-sell other tools and services.
How to Develop Software Like TradingView in Four Steps
Developing software like TradingView requires an in-depth understanding of financial software ins and outs, as well as strong technical skills, preparation, and planning. Before you get started, ask yourself – do you want to build more of a trading solution, or a stock market website? Consider both options and decide which one meets your needs. You can also consider the development of a platform like TradingView that would be available via a website, a desktop app, and mobile apps. Now, let’s dive deeper into the process of developing a trading solution.
Step 1. Shape the concept
A good place to start would be creating the concept in your mind and developing your idea into the set of functionalities and values that the app will give its users. After you’ve gained at least a basic outline of the project, you can move on to different user journeys based on your audience. Think about it from the perspective of your customer – what do they expect to see, and what tasks do they want to complete with your solution? At this stage, it’s advisable to conduct a discovery phase.
Step 2. Consider regulation & compliance issues in your target market
This often underestimated step might potentially bring you a lot of problems in the future, so it’s important to get it done before the product is launched. Study the laws and regulations that are relevant, and make sure your platform is authorized by the country you are trading shares with. You will most likely need a license from the country of operation, as well as a confirmation that the product complies with financial services regulations and AML policies. Make sure your web and mobile apps comply with financial services compliance regulations that will track your activities.
Step 3. Create an MVP and test the hypothesis
Most likely, at that stage, you will also start developing the first versions of prototypes, designing the interface, and describing the flow in more detail. The key rule that you should follow at this stage – keep it simple. There is no need to overcomplicate things, the MVP should be clear, concise, and understandable at a first glance since its primary functions are to test hypotheses, gather user feedback, and enable cheap and quick improvements to your idea. Keep in mind the following points:
• Always think about users: their overall experience, support services, and intuitiveness of UI. This will help you to finalize the features and implement only those, which are absolutely crucial. Don’t try to create a product for everyone.
• No matter how excited you and your team are about launching the product, make sure there is a market fit and a strong demand for your solution. To this end, you may implement some unique features and offer your users exclusive offerings unavailable within other products.
Step 4. Move on to the development phase
All the preparatory work is now done, all the research is complete, and you must be excited about building the product. At this stage, the main question is whether to do it in-house or hire an outsourcing team.
The first option will give you complete control over the development process, as well as a faster speed of iterations and changes. However, developing your app in-house will also most likely end up being more costly than hiring an outsource development team.
As for outsourcing development, this is a great way to free up your time and take all the hassle of building the product off your shoulders. Therefore, if your budget allows – it’s always worth trusting work to professionals. A common stereotype is that outsourcing projects result in lower quality and less control. However, if the team is chosen carefully and understands what their client needs, the result will be astonishing. You will have your app ready without worrying about its development, but rather prioritizing more important tasks.
How Much Does It Cost to Develop Software Like TradingView?
If you’re thinking about developing platforms like TradingView and making them a success – the main piece of advice from us is to create a user-friendly service. When you’re dealing with users’ money there is no room for failure. Everything should function well, be transparent, and simple-to-use. This helps companies gain trust and credibility among the audience.
To provide them with such experience, we recommend investing time into choosing the right team that will understand your needs and develops high-quality products. The cost for such an outsourcing team will vary depending on the functionality, design complexity, number of integrations, and many other factors. As such, it’s quite hard to give an exact estimate of how much it costs to develop such software. However, a very basic-level stock market solution without trading functionality will cost around $40,000+. Development of a fully-featured platform that allows trading starts from $80.000. Our specialists will be happy to provide you with a free estimate of your project implementation – contact us for more information.
Summary
As you can see, the development of a stock trading platform is a task that requires a lot of preparation and planning, and will probably take quite a long time. The success and the speed of development will likely be determined by the right technical stack, as well as the professionalism of the development team. The key thing to remember while creating the platform is that it will be used by thousands of users. Thus, the UI should meet the audience’s standards. As such, goals and business strategies must come first if you want to create trading software that stands out in the market.
As a trusted software development company, Itexus has gained a lot of experience in developing trading apps and platforms. With a brilliant team of business analysts, developers, software architects, project managers, designers, and other specialists, we can turn your idea into a reliable and efficient solution that will help you win the loyalty of users and successfully compete in the market. Have an idea for a trading solution? Contact us, we’ll be happy to bring it to life.