Never Make Assumptions: 5 Golden Rules for Web App Development

No matter if you are a startup company or a big enterprise, your app needs to be intuitive and customer-facing to win many hearts. However, designing a user-friendly web app for your business is not so easy. You need to be aware of the complete rules. 

In our quest for finding the best technology stacks and web app development trends, we have discovered a few golden rules of the industry. These rules we’ve found are universal and they are useful for both an enterprise and startup. And, every business should be aware of these rules.

To help you out, here’s a list of 5 golden rules for developing modern web applications.

1. Plan Your Project

Before you start coding, take your app into a planning mode. And, when laying out a new web app, who’s going to be using your app should be a priority before everything else starts. And, then comes the UX needs, design needs, coding, APIs, etc. Go step-by-step to the end result and get it arranged in a perfect way with all the features. Like, design your web application UX with the least resistance possible.

There are some more rules to consider for planning your web app development. For instance, 

1. How tech-savvy is your user base who will use your app? 
2. How long will your user want to spend on your app? 
3. In what environment will people be using your app? 
4. Decide Your Patterns

When developing your web app, or trying to write a query on your app database, you need to apply the concept of - don’t reinvent the patterns. 

The reason is all the new and latest mobile operating systems use icons to let users access their apps. And, they can’t be swapped with a different UI element because every time users need to learn a new pattern whenever they switch a device. In the end, this would mean lots of unhappy users.

Instead of this, use the same patterns you see in all the popular apps. This will help people to use your app interface easily. Your preference for patterns should be:

1. Icons (For e.g. envelope is a symbol for messages)
2. Colors (Red is for denoting errors)
3. Placing (Forward arrows & buttons are always on the right-hand side)
4. Measure Everything

“Talking to your users is important before you start app development but once you understand what they actually want, you need to measure the exact usability standards for your web app.” 

You need to do more than simply asking your users what they want. You must also understand how they use your app in every way as this way, you will understand and can measure the improvement and modification points of your app.

For analyzing your users' needs you can use analytics to know if their app usage behavior matches their words. There are many analytics tools and solutions available today that can be configured into your app in a matter of minutes. The benefit of measuring user behavior is that it will give you clear data on whether your app will be successful or not.

2. Decide on Your APIs

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are the most important part of your web app development, as they let you build smart applications by manipulating data from the other web applications. That’s why APIs must be used wisely because a developer may be using the Facebook API over a couple of years and changes in API are sudden and can impact the performance of your web app.

With API’s becoming popular in the developers' community, more and more enterprises and startups started building apps using APIs for front-end usage of data pipelines. And finally, these APIs allow for a more cohesive experience for the end users as web applications become more flexible in terms of user interfaces and experience. Overall, the APIs is a win-win strategy for developers and for the end users. 

For instance, Slack’s API Bring better functionality to your web app by integrating many other third-party applications. You can build apps for real-time updates on customer behavior, order cancellations, and new signupsWebDam API Provides different ways to enhance your digital asset management. Using WebDam APIs you can create front-end plug-ins and extensions for your specific needs.

With API like Houndify Developers can build speech-to-text web applications with voice-enabled and conversational interfaces. There are other interesting options to check out for APIs in 2019 --- Chute API, Lusha API, and Nasa API.

Brands like Amazon, Salesforce, and Flickr have been using APIs for developing their web apps and creating a loyal fan base by giving their user with a more intuitive and engaging experience.      

3. Go With the Widely Accepted Technologies

It’s true when it comes to web apps, we all love trying new things. However, trying new frameworks, languages, libraries, tools, etc. can becomes a problem when you need to carry that over into your business. 

If you develop a new business web app using a newly launched language, you take a big risk. Suppose what if that language never takes off in the market, you’ll be stuck with your application. 

However, it is fine to experiment with the latest technology, but when it’s about building business web applications, we suggest you go with the established frameworks and technologies such as ------ Ruby on Rails, Angular JS, Laravel, Express, WordPress, Django, and more. 

In a nutshell, it is always important to select a technology that is widely used and not “popular ones” or “upcoming.”  Also you can contact or hire web app developers to get your app ready on any one of the latest technologies. 

4. Check Your Coding Convention

Coding guidelines play an important role in the programming of rules and standards for your web app. You have to follow guidelines such as coding logic, formatting, indentation, folder structure, file names, file organization, file statements, functions, and naming conventions.

The steps for the coding procedure are:

Step 1

Start coding your web app with 

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

. 

Step 2

Add more functionality to your web app with Python, PHP, and Ruby.

Step 3

Align your UI planning with options:

• Click-to-edit
• Drag and drop
• Two-click delete
• Automatic saving (after any action)

Step 4

Design your “Screens”

Homepage

Logged out = Intro/Sales Page

Logged in = Your list

Login page

Settings page

Lost password page

Account activation page

Emails

Step 5

Now you have the idea in place of what you want to code and how you want to build your web app. 

Organizing your code effectively is the key to the success of your web app.    

5. Test Your Ideas

There is so much in our list of rules. Every user is different — you should ask them what they want and also test your ideas of web app development with the online surveys, A/B testing, testing for usability standards, UX, APIs, and other aspects of web app development. Or, you can test your idea of the web app with tools like ------ Zephyr, Testpad, Testlink, PractiTest, TestComplete, and Selenium.  

Final Thoughts

That’s the process. I have given here enough information to help you with your web app development. What do you think? If you have any suggestion or questions, post in the comment section. I am always looking to improve my processes and practices. Businesses must follow these guidelines listed above to reduce the risk of falling out in the competitive business space.

If you are looking to hire web app developers, I suggest you should start searching on the internet. For any queries or questions on web application development or hiring web app developers, you can post your comments in the below-given section. I will provide you with the best answers of your queries.

Finally, these 5 rules are great to start but applying them requires considerable knowledge and skill to stay ahead of your competitors.