Challenges of website development

WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES

Web application development is going through some major changes. Development tactics are evolving. New tools and libraries emerge on a (seemingly) daily basis.

What does this mean for business?

While these changes bring new opportunities, they also bring complexity. They bring new challenges. Businesses must address these challenges if they want successful applications.

5 Challenges Faced by the Web Design and Development Business

Talented web designers and developers who set out to start their own businesses often count on the strength of their work to carry them to success. However, many of them quickly realize that they are not as prepared to successfully scale their business and ensure healthy growth.

There are five key challenges that often present themselves to designers and developers faced with this task. Luckily, each of these challenges has a clear solution that can be implemented quickly, strengthening the business overall and increasing revenue.

CHALLENGE 1: ENDING THE ENDLESS NEW BUSINESS CYCLE

Web developers and designers striking out on their own spend a massive amount of time seeking out new customers, winning their business and delivering the final project. This leaves little room for steady, predictable income as the designer must focus all of his attention on ramping up a project before returning to an arduous new business cycle once it is completed.

Solution: Designers can tackle this issue by contracting with existing customers on an ongoing basis by providing maintenance and support services at the beginning of an engagement.

Website monitoring tools have often been seen as a technology reserved for enterprises with large IT budgets and a dedicated IT staff. However, there are a number of web monitoring tools available at prices that are more palatable to small business owners and independent web developers. These tools often offer automated features as well, decreasing the amount of human management necessary to effectively monitor websites and proactively avoid issues that may arise.

By leveraging these tools, web designers and developers can better grow their business by establishing monthly support contracts and strengthening existing client relationships.

CHALLENGE 2: ENSURING ONGOING SUPPORT AND MAINTENANCE CONTRACTS ARE PROFITABLE

The biggest danger that developers face when they begin establishing ongoing fixed-fee support contracts is pricing for much less work than they are actually expected to perform.

Solution: Designers and developers should ease into their contracts and compare the cost of support against their income. They can use a call tracking/helpdesk system to track the time expended on each request against each of their customers in order to ensure that they are not undercharging for the amount of service required by each client on a monthly basis. This also allows them to track which tasks still need to be completed, to spread the workload among other employees, or to save time by having users log the requests themselves.

CHALLENGE 3: DEMONSTRATING VALUE

In order to establish lasting business relationships and to justify monthly service costs, the developer must demonstrate an active presence in the background and highlight successes achieved or potential disasters proactively averted.

Solution: Many web monitoring solutions are equipped to generate reports that provide a client with a complete view into how their website is performing and many offer the ability to customize the branding on the report so that it appears to come directly from the developer.

Providing a standard, monthly report offers a perfect way to detail the amount of uptime and downtime experienced by a website each month, average page load times and transaction workflow completions so that the client has a complete view into how their website has been performing. This also allows the web developer to illustrate issues that the client did not know existed because they were fixed or prevented before they lead to a major site failure.

In addition, helpdesk systems are often designed to itemize the work being done so that it is easy to detail how performance was improved.

CHALLENGE 4: STANDING OUT FROM THE PACK

With potential clients having so many quality options to choose from when picking a web designer/design firm, independent developers are faced with the critical need to differentiate themselves in order to win new business.

Solution: By including website performance monitoring as an additional service provided to clients after the website has been designed and deployed, developers can demonstrate that they are a one-stop shop for their clients’ website needs from creation to future maintenance. The developer can show sample monthly reports, potential issues that all websites face and the proactive solutions that are made possible by investing in an ongoing support contract.

This also demonstrates that the developer is not only interested in churning out a new website, but also in maintaining it to support the client’s business well into the future.

CHALLENGE 5: INCREASING TIME SPENT FIXING PROBLEMS

Clients often encounter issues with their website and turn to the designer/developer to correct them, but when they check the site, it looks fine from their end. Sometimes, these issues are caused by out-of-date web servers or changes made incorrectly by the customer. Time spent detecting the source of a problem means a delay in tackling the problem itself.

Solution: Automated website monitoring solutions often allow the developers to view their clients’ websites in real time and to set alerts to notify them when potential issues begin to arise. Not only does this allow the developers to identify a problem before the customer does, in many cases it also gives them the chance to fix it before the issue has any impact on the client’s business.

By proactively fixing a problem, they can demonstrate their value by reporting that a problem was averted before it began as well as how much additional uptime was achieved by being proactive.

By keeping these additional opportunities in mind, web developers and designers can turn one-time projects into recurring contracts that support the growth of their business even if their new customer pipeline is not as full as they had initially hoped. The additional service and skill set that website monitoring tools enable developers to offer can also help them to position themselves as more comprehensive providers who are heavily invested in the success of their customers’ websites and businesses.

What are they?

Today, let’s focus on the biggest web application development challenges businesses must address now (or in the near future). These are challenges that you simply can’t ignore. If your business wants to create lasting: successful applications, you must address:

1. The integration challenge

More and more, business applications live outside of the firewall. They are more diversified than in the past. For instance, a modern business might use a SaaS-based CRM system, in-house BI tools, and host their website on the cloud.

While this improves flexibility, it creates a challenge. How do you tie everything together? The challenge for web developers is no longer building every feature into an application. It’s creating an application that can integrate with other applications.

“The biggest web development challenge we see in our client projects is integration,” says Dave Todaro, President/COO of Ascendle. “The availability of a variety of cloud-hosted services is a double-edged sword. On one hand we no longer have to “roll our own” solution for things like storage, mail, recurring subscription payments, and analytics. On the other hand, we now need to integrate with the cloud services that provide this functionality. Each integration point involves understanding the API, coding, testing, and logging to troubleshoot any issues. In addition, today’s businesses are supported by multiple cloud-hosted systems. From integrating with CRM solutions to other industry-specific products, we no longer live in our own little app universe.”

2. The over-saturation challenge

Back when the App Store first rolled out, it was a golden opportunity for mobile app developers. There was little competition. Now, you’ll find roughly 1.5 million apps in the store. Less than 1% of those apps are financially successful.

The same thing has happened with web applications. The web application market is over-saturated. Users now have more options than ever before. As a developer, how will your applications stand out?

“The main concern with web application development that we face is over-saturation,” says Jason Fyk, Owner of WTF Magazine. “Facebook felt the same issue all of 2012-2014. People realized there was money to be made pushing social media traffic to websites, so tens of thousands of people jumped into the website game. This meant that it diluted the market for everyone else that had solid ideas. Now people come up with strange names, buy a domain and off they go. True sites are now struggling with traffic. Social media traffic has become pay to play. So now it comes down to having the next big idea, in order for something to successfully take off.”

3. The user experience challenge

Oversaturation brings spoiled users. With the rise of easily accessible, simple applications, user expectations have risen dramatically. They now expect the same level of simplicity they receive in the mobile apps they use every day.

The problem: If your applications don’t meet the user’s expectations, they’ll find another option. The challenge for businesses: How do you deliver web applications that meet your employee’s already high expectations?

“It used to be that you could get away with an ugly but functional web app because it was better than the alternative of pen and paper or clunky legacy app,” says Jason Siffring, Owner of Surprise Highway. “Now, good design is table stakes for any web app that hopes to gain traction. Users are quick to judge if your app is ugly or looks out dated.”

But, it doesn’t stop there. As explained below, you must not only create a great user experience–you must also create a great experience for other developers. If an application confuses users, or doesn’t offer simple integration for developers, it will likely fail.

“Businesses can’t afford to ship anything but a great experience, be it a mobile app for consumers or an API for developers and designers,” says Paul Bruce, API Engineer at  SmartBear Software. “Adoption is key for generating revenue and interest; bugs in production, slowness in the experience, and data safety concerns all tank a business model based on digital products very quickly.”

“Businesses shipping APIs as part of their experiences or their digital product line also face a steeper curve for adoption and monetization, in that their APIs need to be ridiculously simple to understand and use by other developers, and they have to differentiate from competitors by solving a problem that no one else solves (or at least does it way better than everyone else).”

4. The speed challenge

Human attention spans are declining. Over the last 13 years, the average attention span has dropped by 4 seconds. We now have attention spans shorter than the average goldfish.

What does this mean for developers? Users don’t have the patience for slow applications. In fact, this research found that 40% of people will abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Just three seconds!

This puts businesses in a tough spot. Users demand feature-rich applications, which typically run slower. Yet, they will abandon the application if it runs slowly. How will you meet user expectations for both features and speed?

“The biggest web app development challenge facing businesses today is keeping their web page load times under a second,” says Mike Munroe, Partner and Lead Developer at Greenfield. “A lot of businesses want rich media on their site to enhance design, but do not optimize for performance. Page load times are extremely important for end users to have a great experience, but it is also important in the eyes of Google. Google has begun to account for average page load times as a factor in how a site ranks in Google’s search index.”

5. The security challenge

Security breaches are on the rise, yet web application security isn’t improving. A recent study estimates that 96% of all web applications contain at least one “serious vulnerability.”

The fact is, application security is becoming more complex. What are the biggest risks? The OWASP Top 10 does a great job of outlining the most important threats, but it’s up to the developer to build that security into the application.

The challenge for businesses: How can you keep up to date with evolving application security threats? How can you keep each layer of your application secure?

“Securing your system at all these levels and constantly keeping it secure as you rapidly change it through agile scrum methodologies is immensely difficult,” says Benjamin Maisano, CTO of CareDox. “Are you patching your OS and frameworks regularly? Do you do code reviews and auto static and runtime code analysis? Do you proactively monitor network traffic and system logs for strange behavior? Do users create content that others interacted with? If so, are you white and black listing inputs, escaping all inputs for SQL and scripting injection attacks? Do you even know all the possible attack vectors of your system?”

6. The talent challenge

Web application development is becoming more complex. It’s evolving faster than ever. Developers need an ever-increasing, and ever-changing skillset.

The problem for businesses: Finding web developers with modern skills. How do you find developers that understand security, integration, responsive design, etc…? How do you bridge the skills gap without hiring a dozen new employees?

“Web applications take more engineering than web sites and blogs,” says Trevor Ewen, Software Engineer at Neosavvy. “There is a complete lack of senior talent for project oversight. Companies do the best they can. Inevitably, costs run high with top contractor talent, or they are unable to staff as necessary.”

7. The multi-platform challenge

When smartphones apps started taking off, the big business question was, “Native apps or mobile web apps?” Which option was best for business?

Now, that’s the wrong question.

These days, you need responsive web applications. Even if you choose not to create native apps, your web apps must still adapt to the device on which it’s viewed.

Going forward, this trend is only expanding. We’re seeing a new wave of “smart” devices, like watches, glasses, TVs, and more. How will your development efforts adapt to fit all platforms and devices?

“When developing new applications, businesses should consider the wide variety of devices they may be used on,” says Fernando Aramendi, Partner at Devartis. “Beyond cross-browser compatibility, screen sizes, ratios and pixel density vary between devices. Without careful thought, the user experience will be impaired and, in some cases, features could break.”

The Web development challenge

Ten years ago, the Internet was far less complex and prevalent than it is today. Back then, Firefox and Internet Explorer had over 90% of the market, and websites virtually dropped support for anything else. Windows XP was by far the most common operating system for several years, as Vista didn’t take off as expected. These factors meant that it was much easier to develop websites. Incredibly, one of the only questions that site designers and developers needed to discuss was, “What screen resolution are we designing this for, is it going to be 800 or 1024 pixels wide?”

Here are 7 of the most common problems that plague web developers and some ways to overcome them:

Usability: - web developers are often so involved in a project that they can’t anticipate how real users will interact with the site. Because of this, tasks may be harder to accomplish than anticipated, and users may not be able to find the information they need.

Solution – Begin with the end in mind. Use UML diagrams to model use cases and lay out every step of the process. During the design phase and in every stage thereafter, ask users to test the site using real-world tasks and take notes on any changes that need to be made.

Accessibility: - It’s estimated that around 10-20% of the population in most countries has some type of disability. If accessibility isn’t a priority, your site may be unusable for a large part of your audience.

Solution – Study and implement accessibility best practices. Wherever possible, allow people to make their own decisions regarding font sizes and color schemes. Provide information to help people understand and navigate your site.

Cross-browser compatibility: - making your website work across all browsers and versions is easier said than done.

Solution – Find workarounds. If you create a cool transition in HTML5, be sure that the site will still render in non-HTML5 compatible browsers. Test your site often to make sure that changes are usable in all browsers.

Mobile traffic: - Mobile traffic is set to outstrip desktop traffic by 2015. If you are not optimizing for mobile users, you could be losing users and sales.

Solution – Use responsive web design to serve the right version of the page to the right users. Think about what information your mobile users are looking for and deliver it quickly.

Site speed: - Nearly half of users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less, and they tend to abandon sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load.

Solution – Load only what you need. Use external style sheets and JavaScript files and be sure to serve only what’s needed. Optimize your images for the web, and check for redirect issues.

Security: - If your users can’t trust that their information is secure, they won’t use your site.

Solution – Be proactive. Use secure connections to submit and transfer data. Monitor inbound and outbound traffic for threats.

Trying to do everything at once –Many web developers don’t spend enough time on the beginning stages of a web project and go straight into implementation. This can lead to problems, as new requirements are discovered or brought up later.

Use an iterative process. Start with discovery, planning, wire framing, and designing and get as many of the details and potential problems nailed down as you can before moving on.

The front end challenge

Fast forward to 2011, now when developing a site, we are faced with many more challenges. Firstly, we have to cater for five different browsers, each achieving more than 10% of the market share, and three operating systems (still all Windows) with a huge market share. We now also have to cater for vastly disparate download speeds, ranging from broadband to mobile connections. When establishing screen resolutions, the biggest category is now known as ‘Other’, which means non-standard resolutions – either very small or very large. This makes developing and testing websites much more difficult and so far I have only covered the challenges that focus on building a website’s front end!

The back end challenge

When creating the back end of a website, the technology has become equally as complex. For example, linking to external feeds such as Facebook, Twitter and other social networks didn’t exist ten years ago. Now they are prolific. At least a dozen vendors are required to cater for the numerous functions needed by the modern website. These include content management, community, analytics, video, CRM, social media, content moderation, translation, data feeds, search, personalization, email newsletters, mobile SMS, content delivery network, digital asset management. This list keeps growing, and it doesn’t even include the non-functional aspects of the website. The growth of the Internet has meant that more users visit sites in spikier traffic patterns, demanding more complex hosting solutions. End users need sites to be available 24 hours a day, which means that brands must pay close attention to hosting service level agreements. All these requirements mean that the demands of a typical website creation outweigh the capabilities of most internal development teams.

Solving the headache (Front End and Back End)

When creating a new website we advocate using a complete Platform as a Service (PaaS) model, using best of breed, off-the-shelf components. PaaS is attracting a lot of interest at the moment, and we believe it is the future of the super brand website development. Brands are quickly realizing it’s much more efficient to run a single platform which all their sites are developed on rather than creating bespoke solutions per site. The PaaS approach means no more internal fighting between marketing, development and IT teams, because all departments can use a common platform which provides benefits to each of them. Marketing can have more customer insight rather than multiple user databases. IT teams can focus on their core business – letting the Digital Media PaaS provider to concentrate on the website. IT departments no longer have to worry about the overheads of multiple development and testing environments or about upgrades and patches of a dozen vendors. There are also other advantages to this approach. The PaaS provider can suggest best practices across a number of clients, which internal IT divisions are usually unable to access, or have little interest in, such as content, moderation and digital media trends. The PaaS provider will be responsible for a proactive technology and feature roadmap to ensure the brand’s digital media plans are future proofed. PaaS will be even more critical as digital media becomes more complex – once tablet computing settles down, expect TV apps to take off.  This means that the number of devices websites must cater for won’t consolidate in the short term, they will multiply – making the near future even more complex.