6 Common Challenges in Web Application Development
Web development is a phenomenon that is exponentially increasing every year. And with this increase, there come a lot of new trends that further enhance the capability of web applications. It takes proper planning, idealization, and a well-lead route to come up with a bespoke application that is not only problem-solving but also market competitive.
Chances are that you already have a web application for your business and chances are that it’s not up to the market standards and is not performing to its full capacity. These things get exposed with time and with these, development issues also get exposed. Having said earlier, coming up with a competitive web application takes a lot.
In this article, I’ll be discussing some challenges that almost every company faces when they are in the process of getting a web application developed. But, smart are those companies that overcome these challenges during the development stage so that they don’t have to do things over again from the scratch.
So, let’s get straight into it.
6 Challenges in Web Application Development
1. Not Following a Standardized Development Process:
To be able to develop a trend-setting web application, you must be following a standardized development process. For example, if you are having a team of 7 developers that means, there are 7 different mindsets are working on the same project and obviously, their processes and work style will be different from each other.
This brings the conflict of interest between the team members that directly impact the project in a negative manner. What successful companies do is, follow a set of standardized procedures and agile development approaches that don’t bring conflict of interest within the team and the only way out is to follow those procedures to get the project completed.
One thing to keep in mind, it takes months and even years to set up such processes and standards that are equally practical and modern. And you cannot dictate your team what to do and what to not, instead the modern development culture encourages company owners to include their team of developers while making a decision regarding development process and practices. It’s all about following a set of defined procedures as a team to get the best results.
2. Security and Stability:
This particular point can be considered both as a challenge and a trend in web application development. We all know cyber-attacks have continued to threaten the internet world from the beginning and it has always remained a top priority of IT experts to come up with more secure and stable software products that are less vulnerable to security threats. This present age is very strange and confusing as the digital world is both safe and threatened at the same moment.
Coming up with a super-fast and problem-solving web application would be of no use if your web app is not secure and stable. No matter how fast and functional a web application is, if it’s vulnerable to security threats, all of your efforts will go in vain.
Moreover, the latest Google updates for developers stress the development of more secure digital products on the internet. Before getting straight into the development stage, you must lay out a plan of how your app will perform against potential hack attempts and cyber-attacks. What sources will you be using to make your digital presence secure for you and your customers? Try to look for answers to all such questions and come up with the right solution.
3. Minimizing the Talent Gap:
The development of web applications is becoming more technical. It’s changing more rapidly than ever. Developers need a constantly increasing and changing know-how.
The problem for companies: Finding modern web developers. Sure, developers have to keep their existing systems but they are often out of date. The skills you need for the development of a modern web app do not always match your ability to keep your business running.
So in this situation, you’ll probably have a couple of solutions, these are:
Go for Development Tools: The demand for web applications is so much in-demand that the availability of existing resources is not enough to cater to those demands. So, what you can do is to for modern development tools to make you rely less on human resources. We have seen a rise in the usage of less-code programming tools in the previous few years. And I guess it’s the more calculated and futuristic approach in such times.
Staff Training Initiatives: Or what you can do is to have a proper staff training culture within your organization to make them aware of various development techniques, handling complex tasks, and getting more things done in less time. Although this is a long-term strategy if you do it right, it pays off.
4. Speed:
It would not be wrong to say that having super-fast and speedy web applications is a thing that everyone loves. But as far as the developers’ end is concerned, they are being put under more pressure of providing functional and fast applications, and that too in a quick turnaround.
To tackle this challenge in web app development, you can consider the following options (whatever suits you best):
Expand your Developing Team: This is the most traditional approach by any organization to expand their team of developers to get the projects done quickly with enormous speed and performance.
Rely on Different Tools to Enhance the Human Effort: We’ve seen significant growth in low-code software development in the last couple of years. The whole “do more with less” challenge is one of the driving forces of this growth. Low-code tools help your existing team create 50-80 percent web applications faster.
These tools serve the process of getting applications in a quick turnaround and with maximum performance in the following ways:
Reduce the Coding Input: By requiring you to write fewer lines of code, these development tools help you in developing a fast, performance-oriented application in a matter of time. They are the best fit for organizations that cannot go on to hire bigger dev teams.
Less Testing: Since low code tools create templates and components that are pre-tested, test times are reduced dramatically.
But in the end, it’s you who’ll be deciding which option works for you. But one thing is for sure that the development of fast and performance-oriented web applications is so in demand and this trend is only growing and getting better.
5. Keep a Balance between Features and Simplicity:
Every organization tends to have web applications with more features to offer to their customers but the key they miss is to keep a balance between features and simplicity. Although, the world of web applications has progressed a lot of simplicity of web applications is a factor that has remained quite the same.
The problem is if your apps do not meet user requirements, they will find another alternative. This means you have lost customers when you build applications for customers. You will begin to deal with Shadow IT problems if you build employee applications.
Again this problem has a couple of solutions you can consider. These are the two scenarios that you need to think about from consumers’ perspective:
Who will be using this app: You need to define your target customers very well before taking a dig into app development. For you, your application would be perfect in terms of both speed and feature-richness. But, what if customers don’t see it that way? That’s a possibility. This is why the tendency of users to uninstall/stop using an application is increasing. Because that app doesn’t serve its purpose anymore.
The best way to overcome these challenges is to let your app be used. Let it betested by a group of people from your target audience. You can take their reviews, and accept the feedback.
How this app will be used: Don’t lose track of your ultimate goal to provide an excellent user experience. To achieve this objective, you must approach user development. Ask questions such as: How is this going to be used? What is the objective of the user?
6. Integration:
An application’s integration with third-party resources adds to its compatibility and performance. For example, if you are anticipating an e-commerce based web application, you need to integrate it with third-party payment resources. This is a challenge for you because it is an external factor and cannot be fully controlled by you.
So, what you have to do is to find utility in it for your company and your customers. Because they are the people who’ll be using your company’s web applications.
Here’s the list of some renowned e-commerce web applications you can consider following:
- Alibaba
- Amazon
- Walmart
- eBay
Wrap up:
These are only 6 of the many challenges that arise during a web application development process. The list can surely go long. These are the most searched problems over the internet. Also, these are most common in the majority of web app development projects.