Web Development Company

Most important thing before we write a single line of web code or even create a design part, is to figure out the platform approach – Mobile First or Desktop First. Even when we create responsive web applications (that run good on all screen sizes i.e mobile or desktop) it is still important to know which platform are we targeting first. Your layout, flow, iterations will first be setup according to that platform and then will be extrapolated for the other ones. Mobile first approach is pretty famous these days in case of B2C, but when it comes to creating a web app which is meant to generate large amount of content or for managing your organization the desktop can be the first priority too. Therefore, in this case, one size doesn’t fit all and its very important to know what user platform are we targeting first.

In case of Mobile First approach, we would want to have Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) that render in a blink of the eye, or also Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) that can work as good as a native mobile applications if done correctly.

Mind you, the layout and flow can be modified for different platforms even when the web page is the same as you can call different layout and elements on run time, depending upon the browser and device your web is running upon.

Unlike Mobile Apps, web apps development offers you to choose from a range of frameworks, Tech stack, libraries and also no-code or low-code frameworks. Depending upon the type of project, we can either go with a ready to use framework (Like Magento is the framework of choice when it comes down to creating Ecommerce Websites) or do a custom code or take a hybrid approach.

Technology of Choice for Custom Functional Web Apps - React.js these days is the technology of choice to create interactive responsive web applications or “Functional web applications” (the web apps that don’t just offer you the information but also do a lot of functions like A Ticket booking website, or a Q&A website, or a video streaming site etc). We are using React.js with node.js or graphql in the backend with MongoDB or MEAN Stack (Angular as front-end language, MongoDB as DB, ExpressJS and Node.

And since it is a custom web application, it is important to identify the third-party libraries and services that you need to integrate your Web App with (like a payment gateway or an account authentication library or a SSN authentication library or a Medical EHR API) and the technology they support first.

We are using react even for creating the backend Admin panel and content management systems for our mobile applications. Also, using it for project that allows users to upload incident evidence videos and sell those in a legal marketplace. React is versatile, and comes up with many ready to use libraries like redux, vue.js etc.

Python can be a great choice too if you’re looking to create a fairly complex Web Application, an App that probably pulls the data from 10 different websites or APIs and does a lot of data processing before rendering it for the front-end user.

Before React and Angular, we heavily used Laravel to create very secure web applications and also help our clients to migrate their legacy apps onto the new technology and frameworks.

These are just some examples and yours can be a very different Web App than the examples quoted above, so contact us to discuss your project and we’ll identify the technology together.

Technology of Choice for Repeated Web Applications – As mentioned above, when it comes to creating Ecommerce Web Apps, you’ve frameworks like Magento or Woocomerce (if you love wordpress) and also Laravel.

Technology of Choice for Corporate Web Applications – You can use anything here, a simple HTML site can do wonder too if it is backed up by a great design and layout. However, CMS like Wordpress (Especially for blog), Drupel and also Wix can do good job here too.

If yours is a B2C Web Application, then it is absolutely important to make the Website in a way that it is SEO ready. Here are few pointers that can be considered while making a dynamic Web App SEO ready -

• Every dynamic page (created by the users like their profile page on a social app, or the content page they post) will have the right Page Title, H1 Tags, Alt Tags automatically created.
• Every static page shall have the right on page SEO done right at the time of coding.
• The URLs are not long or gibberish, instead of follow the globally accepted SEO standards (Ref this post from Hubspot - https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33655/a-step-by-step-guide-to-flawless-on-page-seo-free-template.aspx).
• Every user generated content (pictures, images, videos, text pages) shall have automatically created Tags and keywords (if users permit you to push their content on the search engine).
• Every web page should render fast on both mobile and desktop browsers.
• The sitemap is dynamically created.
• Internal linking is made automatically for the content generated by the user or the Admin.

The websites are more prone to hacking and security threats Vs Mobile Applications. Folling are few pointers that are basic in order to secure your web application –

• Secure Database against SQL Injection.
• Use right passwords, keep your authentication system intelligent and don’t leave the passwords like “Admin123” and allow hackers to come inside.
• Keep sensitive data (like user details, financial data, account numbers etc) hidden.
• Use only tried and tested components, plugins or third-party services. You won’t know what vulnerability is being left inside a component so use only the ones you trust the most.
• Keep regular data backup, and do regular security checks.
• Use cloud providers data backup and security services.

Some of the most common mistakes that developers are prone to do while doing web application development are as follows -

• Ignoring Cross Browser Compatibility - Web Applications run differently on different browser or we may say differently on browsers with different settings. It is very important to test your web application across all desktop browsers and also on mobile device browsers physically. Both Web Tester and Developer should keep a log of issues they find across different browsers and keep on fixing those during every development sprint instead of leaving those for the final QA and testing.
• Ignoring warning Messages if your code runs - The warning messages that web developer sees while doing the code may not be stopping your code or website to run but can later on convert into real issues when you go onto the production server. It is important to solve as many warning messages as you can during the development itself and not to leave them turning into monster bugs later on.
• Using untrustworthy, unsecure plugins or frameworks. As mentioned in the beginning, web development offers thousands of different plugins or frameworks and tools to ease out your custom coding work but only a few of them are trustworthy, enjoy continuous support and are secure. Instead of just using any plugin that claims to be doing what you want them to do, you should stick with the ones that come with right reviews and are supported by a strong community.
• Avoiding Testing on real iOS and Android Devices on different browsers. It is always beneficial to test you web application across physical mobile and tablet devices along with your own machine’s browser. What you see on emulator may not work on real mobile browser and vice versa so test and fix and repeat until it is fully done.
• Not using CI/CD in case of commercial Web Applications – CI/CD eliminates a lot of time that otherwise would’ve gone into continuous development, integration and deployment using conventional ways. If time allows, it is always beneficial setting up CI/CD process for your web application development project.
• Not doing device specific layouts. As discussed, a few times above, a web developer can ignore creating specific UI for mobile devices and may try to embed all the web elements that run easily on the desktop browser onto the mobile browser rendering. Both layouts should be treated separately, and we must do the changes that are needed by a mobile device’s user specifically.
• Not optimizing for Internet Connection Strength. You must have seen that youtube video’s automatically take the size depending upon your internet connection’s strength. Especially in case of mobile, when user is roaming there can be low connectivity at times so it is important to make sure your heavy content renders perfectly fine even at low connectivity devices.