Web development, especially the one that keeps the best practices in mind and focuses on coming up with a cutting edge solution that precisely meets client requirements is a tough ask. This is why even the best and the most accomplished web development companies have to battle their way through various challenges in order to build a successful web solution.
So, what are these challenges? Let’s take a look:
Web Development Challenges and Solutions
1. Requirements Keep Changing:
This is one of the problems that many developers must face especially if the client is unsure of what he wants and keeps modifying/updating his project brief. The problem here is you can’t say no to the client especially if he says he’s just realized he needs you to add a critical feature to his site. So what do you do? You say, yes of course!
Solution: But saying yes is just accepting the challenge, how do you go about satisfying the client requirement. Say yes, only if you think the requirement can be added to the ongoing process of development. The solution to this problem is learning to say no.
From the client’s perspective, you’ll need to sit with the development company and work out a comprehensive project brief that takes into considerations all your expectations and objectives from the project. Once, you’re happy with want you’ve come up with and green light project development, do not add to the requirement; it will just harm the development process.
2. Determining the App Cost
It might surprise you but sometimes even the best web developers’ falter while coming up with the right cost for a particular project. The reason is not their inexperience but the fact that it’s very difficult to fit every project within an existing costing framework. Each project has different needs, objectives, and a different audience. Also no two projects are the same with respect to the technical expertise needed to build them; this also needs to be figured into the costing.
Solution: This is a tough one, but a ball park figure is always a great idea. Work out the upper limits of the development cost and give your estimate. This shows you in a good light, because there is always the good chance that your final bill will be below your estimate. That shows you in a good light.
From the client’s perspective, it makes sense to address your budget concerns with the development company if you have some doubts about the estimate/ball park figure. However, if you have chosen a reputed development firm, it makes sense to trust their costing judgment.
Read: Why Web Designers Should Care About Typography?
3. Usability Issues
Again, the best developers fall into the trap of sacrificing usability for features, functionality and implementing the striking design visuals that designers have come up with. This gets tougher when the web application/software has complicated functionalities. The challenge is to look at the website usability from the users’ perspective and anticipate their behavior on your website.
Solution: The solution lies in defining each and every step of the development process, preferably with the use of UML (Unified Modeling Language) diagrams. Also you need to start conducting usability tests and keep improving upon them to refine your web solutions’ usability.
From the client’s perspective, it’s important to be well aware about the usability issues that might plague your site and the solutions the developers have come up with to make sure this doesn’t happen. Agree, developers have better technical know how about usability and how to go about building a usable website, but it’s important to be in on the action and not just be a bystander when it comes to usability. If you think the solution implemented by the developers has still not sorted out the usability problems, tell them that.
4. Creating a Website that can be Accessed From Mobile
Not everybody is going to access a site from their desktops or laptops. Some people will access it from their mobile and/or tablets as well. So, the challenge lies in ensuring the website is compatible with a range of devices and offers the same UX across all of them.
Solution: Use responsive web design to ensure the website renders effectively on all its target devices. Use the mobile first approach to create a site that can be accessed by target audiences using any device of their choosing including desktop, laptop, smartphone and tablets and for this be careful while hiring mobile application development companies.
5. Site Speed
One of the biggest challenges in website development is ensuring the site loads quickly, within seconds. This is a challenge because very often the website is trying to do too much in terms of visuals and functionality and this invariably has an impact on the speed of the site.
Solution: So how do you balance the functionality and visuals of the site with the need to speed up its loading? The first thing you must do is optimize all your images. You can reduce the file size of your images without compromising their quality. Secondly, zero in on a web host that promises blazing fast hosting services. Clients might have their own ideas about the web hosting services provider they want to work with, but it’s important to convince them about the fallacy of the choice, if you know that the providers don’t offer the kind of dedicated and fast hosting that your site needs. These are just some of the ways you can use to improve website speed.
To Conclude
These are not the only challenges that a web development projects encounters through its development life cycle. There will be others out there as well, but there will be a solution for each one of them. And the nature of challenges you will face depends on the project complexity. If you want to achieve a lot of things with your website, then get ready to face some challenges and here’s the thing, each challenge is a learning experience in itself. 🙂
Rightly said but the list isn’t exclusive there are other problems that can creep-in .