7 Challenges In Web Application Development And How To Address Them In 2022!

With the exponential growth of the internet, more and more businesses are shifting their focus towards web application development. 

Surprisingly, there are more than 1,916,670,000 websites on the internet at present, growing at a rate of ~7,242 new websites every day. (Source: Internet Live Stats)

Image Source: Internetlivestats

But as said: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Building a web application from scratch is a monumental task and requires hard work and determination. It is the foundation of your business, and you need to get it right. 

So, don’t get disheartened if things get tough. You may come across several challenges in web development, especially when you are new to the industry.

But what’s important is how well you can overcome these challenges. 

Here is a list of seven major obstacles that web developers face in their journey and tips on how to solve them. 

Let’s begin the discussion!

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7 Most Common Challenges In Web Development & Tips To Solve Them

There are many web development challenges, but the seven most common ones are:

1. Understanding What Users Want

Users are your customers, and you need to understand their needs—or hire someone who does. It’s possible to develop a product without understanding your users, but it’s not likely to be a perfect one.

If you build a product without a clear vision of what your users want, you will most likely end up with a product no one wants. So, how do you go about getting to know your customers?

How to address it:

When developing practical, reliable web applications for millions of internet users, you can’t just walk up to their doors and ask them what they want. Most people don’t like talking to salespeople, even if they’re interested in buying something.

To find out what your users need, you need to do proper market research. Here are some methods you can use to get valuable insights into what your users want:

1. Use various marketing tools such as Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, etc., to understand your users’ behavior.
2. Survey your customers (e.g., ask them to take a survey using Google forms)
3. Speak to your existing customers. Try to find out why they’re buying your product and what other problems could be solved for them. For instance, 85% of shoppers say product information and pictures are essential when choosing a retailer or brand. (Source: Google/Ipsos) 
4. Watch people using similar ones to your product.
5. Hire a consulting firm with experience in this area.

You should have a document with valuable information on what your users want when you’re done. Once you know that, go ahead and develop a product that meets their requirements—and you should see increased sales as a result!

2. Getting The Right Technology Stack In Place

Choosing a technology stack is never easy. There are so many different frameworks, platforms, and languages out there; it can be overwhelming. You want to go with something that’s tried and tested, but you also want it to be the best fit for your project.

According to Statista, the global information technology (IT) industry will spend approximately 5.3 trillion US dollars in 2022. Asia, with 31%, is also expected to be a significant contributor to the global information technology industry.

Image Source: Statista

It’s easy to get stuck trying to choose a technology stack—but it’s essential to choose one. You want to make sure you pick a stack that will help your product grow and scale in the future, not something that might soon become obsolete.

How to address it:

When trying to choose a technology platform for your web application development, look at these points:

1. How big is the community around the platform? If you go with WordPress, millions of active users are out there, so it’s much easier to find help.

Image Source: Envisagedigital

2. When considering what languages to use, you need to consider compatibility. You want to go with something that can work well with your existing team and is easy to find developers for.
3. How will the technology stack affect future scalability? If you choose a language that’s not good for handling large datasets, it could become a problem later.
4. Look at your future product roadmap, and try to find ways that the stack can help you achieve what you want.

When choosing a technology platform for your web application development, consider these factors because they’ll help you make an informed decision. Weigh up all of the different options available to you; talk about them with other developers, and try to figure out what would work best.

3. Securing Application From Being Hacked 

Web application security affects every business, and it’s not easy to come up with a full-proof way of keeping everything secure. Hacks are getting more sophisticated and more challenging to detect every day.

As per Statista report, the United States shares a maximum global web application attack traffic originating from IP addresses. 

Image Source: Statista

Every business needs to ensure that its application is not hacked by providing security. This includes ensuring that all user accounts are protected and that sensitive data is encrypted.

How to address it:

Every company will have to deal with a hacker attack at some point. While these are unfortunately becoming more common, there are a few essential practices you can use to lock down your applications and reduce your chances of being hacked.

Here are some things you can do to make your web application more secure against would-be hackers:

1. First, your software development lifecycle (SDLC) must be tightly integrated with your threat modeling process.
2. Set up user accounts properly—crazy as it may sound, you need to make sure you pick a strong password for your users. Something easy to remember is not going to be strong enough.
3. Don’t forget about multi-factor authentication—this is an excellent way to add an extra layer of security to your users’ accounts.
4. SSL certificates are another excellent way to ensure data is encrypted.
5. For websites, HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) is a great way to force encrypted connections, which will help you avoid certain types of attacks.

Securing a web application from being hacked isn’t easy, but taking the right precautions can help you stay protected. Moreover, the above list includes some of the most effective methods, and they all protect you in different ways.

4. Meeting Performance Standards 

Any business that requires a website or an app to facilitate interactions with clients or customers has one major concern in common: meeting performance standards. This holds for individuals since you may want to create your site without sacrificing aesthetics and user experience for loading speeds.

For most applications, page load times are a primary user experience. This is why companies need to consider performance standards and ensure that their web applications meet them.

As per GoodFirms survey, 88.5% of web designers believe that a slow loading page is a top reason visitors leave a website.

Image Source: GoodFirms

How to address it:

During the development process, it’s essential to continually check your page load times and ensure that the site meets performance standards set by your company.

Here are some of the practical and most common ways to do this:

1. Use instrumentation tools like Page Speed Insights ( made by Google) or WebPagetest. These tools provide real-time feedback and allow you to check your application’s speed.
2. Load testing is another great way of finding out how fast your app or website can load and whether any critical performance bottlenecks need addressing.
3. Another essential thing you need to consider is using a CDN (content delivery network) to speed up load times. This is especially useful for static content like images, CSS, and JavaScript files—CDNs help reduce the overall loading time of these files by caching them on servers worldwide.
4. Monitor the response time of your customers’ HTTP requests—if you have a distributed application, this can be especially useful.
5. Utilize caching in your application—this is another way to ensure that your site loads quickly, and it’s also effortless for developers to implement.

5. Rolling Out New Features Efficiently 

Companies must quickly roll out new features and updates to their websites in today’s fast-paced business environment. If they don’t do this, they can lose customers and miss out on opportunities with competitors.

Unfortunately, many businesses struggle with efficiently rolling out new features to their sites. It’s not easy finding a balance between releasing new, improved features and making sure the site isn’t adversely affected by them.

How to address it:

Fortunately, there are several different ways to ensure that you can roll out new features without negatively affecting your site speed or performance:

1. Test the update across a variety of browsers and devices. This will help you find compatibility issues before going live with the update, saving a lot of time and resources.
2. Use A/B testing to ensure that the new, improved feature isn’t just an improvement for some users but everyone.
3. Use a configuration management tool such as Puppet or Chef to ensure a smooth and efficient release process.
4. Utilize a web application firewall (WAF) to monitor traffic and help you determine when new features adversely affect your site speed.

6. Improving The Speed Of Development  

High-end applications can take years to build, not because they’re complicated, but because the development process involves a lot of back and forth. Between design, development, and testing can take a substantial amount of time to release an application.

Unfortunately, this is one of the biggest productivity killers in the industry—the amount of time and money it takes to simply release a new application can turn many businesses off from even starting projects.

How to address it:

Luckily, there are several ways to improve speed in your development process so that you can build new applications quickly and efficiently.

1. Utilize DevOps processes. These are designed to improve the speed of your development process by automating several different tasks.
2. Implement a continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) platform. This is yet another way to improve your development process, allowing for the faster and more efficient release of new features and updates to existing apps.
3. Automate as many processes as possible. This helps improve speed and efficiency by eliminating the need to spend time on manual tasks, which is a huge bottleneck in development.
4. Improve collaboration across teams. This can help reduce the number of issues that come up in development, and it also improves the speed of your overall app release process.

7. Finding Out The Right Talent For Developing a Product

A successful development team requires the right talent and finding the right people can be time-consuming and difficult. Hiring is a task that takes up more of your time than you’d like, but if you do it incorrectly or inefficiently, it hurts your entire development process.

How to address it:

There are many ways to find the right people to fill your development team.

1. Find the right recruiting agency. These agencies specialize in finding people for your unique needs, and they can help you find the best talent quickly and efficiently.
2. Utilize LinkedIn as a resource. This is a great way to find professionals in your industry, but you must know how to use LinkedIn effectively.
3. Use referrals as a resource. Referencing a current employee or past hire is a great way to gauge talent and skill before bringing that person onto your development staff.
4. Participate in local meetups and tech events. This is an excellent way to find local talent and potential team members for your development partner.
5. Attend (or host) coding boot camps. These are short programs that teach specific development skills, and they’re fast becoming the go-to option for finding new talent quickly.

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Conclusion

These are some of the biggest challenges you might face regarding your web application development process. Each one is crucial to address as it can affect the success of a project, and even worse, it can quickly slow down your development team.

But these challenges aren’t insurmountable. By using the right technologies, partnering with the top website development company, and continuously improving your processes, you can overcome these challenges and have a successful web application development process.