Web Development Checklist: A useful Guide for Web App Development Teams!

 

With the large number of Web Development technologies surfacing to build modern-day web apps, Web App Development is getting increasingly complex and challenging. With the internet brimming with abundant web applications, users abandon and switch to other web applications in no time, if the application fails to satisfy their expectations, thereby damaging company’s brand reputation. So, for delivering a successful end-product, the organization needs to carefully execute each of these developmental and promotional stages to minimize errors, conform to business objectives, and provide a rich user experience.

However, fulfilling all the aforesaid factors becomes quite complicated and time-consuming. Hence, chances of lapses are likely; specifically, if your team is inexperienced or in a hurry to complete a project within the set timeline. Therefore, the web development team should maintain a checklist of the essential tasks; to avoid any misses.

This blog provides web development checklists that your team needs to refer to; for building a successful web application or a website. The following checklists have been created by consolidating the inputs from software-sector veterans; and will help a Web App Development Company to ensure that important action items are not neglected or overlooked.

Before we dive deeper let’s have a look at why checklists are required.

Checks for Web Development

Every web app development project must undergo the following validations to ensure the creation of a flawless website. Let’s have a look at the key checklists and understand their importance.

Design, UX and SEO checks

• Optimize your website for all kinds of devices – mobiles, tablets, laptops and desktops.
• Get rid of irrelevant images.
• Check whether the UX design has been executed as per the set standards.
• Make sure your website is free of broken links and validation errors. Broken links – the links which show an error or the “page not found” message on clicking – adversely affect the UX and also the website’s SEO score.
• Remember to include meta tags - title, description, etc. – as they improve the website’s position and boost the chances of ranking in the search engines.

Readability checks

• Cross-check the website content for any possible mistakes regarding spellings, grammar, etc. before the website’s live launch.
• Make sure that your content is unique and free of plagiarism.
• Adjust the font style to ensure that your web page is easy to read and scan; as this factor is a game-changer in terms of user retention.

Functionality and Performance checks

• Check the appearance and loading speed of your images. In case they are slower in loading or appear blurred; have this problem fixed by optimizing the image-size. Optimization of images improves performance as well as search engine rankings.
• Check the loading time of your website. If the loading time turns out to be more than 4 sec, get the issue fixed, or else it will adversely affect your viewership.
• Check your website’s rendering and performance on trending browsers such as Mozilla, Chrome, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer, etc.
• Your website’s caching should always be turned on as caching optimizes the speed of a webpage and also minimizes the server-load by minimizing scripts like JavaScript and CSS that are time-consuming. A cache plugin named ‘W3 Total Cache’ can be easily installed if WordPress is being used to build the website.
• Ensure that your web page involves effortless navigation and all the links are functional.

Security checks

• SSL (Secured Socket Layer): Possessing an SSL (Secured Socket Layer) certificate is desirable if your website gathers sensitive user-information such as personal details, credit cards/banking particulars.
• An anti-malware Plugin: The usage of anti-malware plugins helps to combat malware threats and protect a website from viruses and malware attacks.

Handy Web Development Checklists and their offerings

Now have a look at the ready-made Web development checklists recommended for your team!

Checklists related to an app’s pre-launch and post-launch

• The Essential Pre-launch Checklist for Your Website comprises functionality, design elements, cross-browser testing, content editing, and SEO.
• Website Launch Checklist by Glasgow developer offers tools for checking actions after completion, greying out items that are not applicable, and resetting the checklist to make it ready for the next project. It includes content editing, links’ testing, navigation usability, CSS and HTML validity, GDPR compliance, Communication, infrastructure, styles and scripts’ minification, compatibility, analytics, accessibility, performance, etc.
• The Essential Launch Checklist for Web Apps and Mobile Apps by Ben Cheng enables product managers to test the performance level, security, compatibility, and broken links in applications.

Checklists on Front-end performance

•  A front-end Deployment Checklist by Fred Rocha, guides on validating the markup; and checking the performance, the console for JavaScript, and many more.
• The Front-end Checklist by David Dias is a digital interactive tool wherein one has to enter the project’s URL to get a full report on areas such CSS, HTML, JavaScript, head, web fonts, images, SEO, performance, and accessibility. This check is an exhaustive one and categorizes items based on high, medium, or low priority requirements.
• Front-end Performance Checklist 2020 by Vitaly Friedman offers the following items How to get ready on planning and metrics, how to set realistic goals, define the environment, assets, build and delivery optimizations, monitoring, and testing, etc.

Checklists related to the backend server and database security

• Back-end Best Practices provides stack-agonistic guidance on the best available practices involving different back-end architectures like security, data storage solutions, app monitoring, server environments, etc. It also offers a responsibility checklist for organizing the team-tasks and a release-checklist needed at the time of launch of the app or website.
• Database Testing Checklist offers items regarding stored procedures, database integrity, field validation, transactions, security, constraints, etc.

Checklists on Cross-browser testing

• Cross-browser Testing Checklist Before Going Live includes testing on font rendering, element alignment, API connections, etc.
• Cross-browser Testing Checklist offers all items needed for testing on various browsers and OS.

Final Verdict:

Thus, comprehensive knowledge about these checklists is essential for architecting a flawless and universally acceptable web app or website for your business. Click here to know about the robust JavaScript frameworks for crafting web apps.

I hope this blog was helpful. Have you come across any roadblocks while web app development? Do share your experiences in the comments section below and let us know in case of further queries.

Progressive Web Apps: Underlying Benefits of Developing Them!

Today, the world’s leading brands are switching to progressive web apps at a fast pace. But why?

Well, let’s look at some interesting facts and figures about PWAs.

•  After creating its PWA, OLX experienced an increase in user engagement by almost 250%.
• Starbucks noticed a100% hike in the number of people who placed their orders on mobile using its PWA.
• Even the PWA of Twitter observed a boost in user engagement.

Looking at these, it is evident that PWAs are going to be the future of web development. Their extraordinary benefits and high potential make them one of the favorite choices of numerous business leaders. Moreover, progressive web apps development companies are popping up across the globe and also getting a lot of business from big players in the market.

So, this article will give you an insight into the reasons why choosing a PWA app can be a thoughtful and lucrative decision for your business. Before we dive deeper, let’s quickly run through what are progressive apps.

More about Progressive Web Apps

In 2015, an engineer at Google, Alex Russel introduced the concept of PWAs. In basic terms, a PWA is a web app having all the new-age features similar to a native mobile app. These are delivered via the internet and offer a mobile app-like experience.

Today the PWAs have modernized quite a lot. They support various features like home screen icons, splash screen, push notifications, geo-location, accessing media features from devices, background synchronization, etc. Other advanced features like payment request API for online transactions, web sign-in API using Google or social media credentials, etc. also have been added to them.

Progressive Web Apps: Top Reasons to Choose Them in 2020!

Cost-effective and Faster Time-to-market:

A PWA is a web software built for only one version of the app and deployed directly on a web server. This means that a single code is being used for Web application, iOS, or Android or for that matter any other device. Thus it saves money on developing apps for multiple platforms. All the marketing and optimization can be carried for a single app instead of the apps for different platforms. Also, PWAs are developed much faster saving a good deal of time and money and ensuring the market launch at the earliest. These apps are not connected to the app store which extends the huge benefit to many businesses. Reason being that they do not have to deploy the code separately on Android and App Store thereby also skipping the lengthy process of approvals on these stores.

Don’t take up Storage space:

The end-users tend to avoid downloading the apps that consume more space on their device. In the case of these apps, users don’t need to install or download them from an App Store or Google Play store. A click on the URL of PWA, another click to add it to the home screen and you are good to go.

Automatic Updates:

Progressive apps are updated automatically when connected to the internet and don’t need to be updated explicitly from stores of particular platforms. This saves time and data of the end-users as compared to native apps.

Better user experience during low connectivity:

If the connectivity is low, users tend to dither. PWA offers a splash page in such scenarios, the shell of the web app creates a frame that enables the user to perceive that the page has loaded. These apps with the combination of service workers provide better user experience in comparison to the native or hybrid apps during network connectivity issues. They allow the users to work efficiently even in offline mode.

High Security and Reliability:

Being a web app, a PWA is supposed to be vulnerable to threats. But astonishingly, PWAs are built using extra data security layers. They are being served over HTTPS which is encouraged by even Google for a higher level of security. This makes them highly reliable for use.

Enhanced Customer Engagement:

Last but not the least, PWAs are known for improving user engagement. They can be instantly accessed by a large number of users at any moment from any device while providing a rich experience. They provide ease in sharing as these apps can be shared and launched through the URL alone. This in turn helps the user to promote the app through SMS, email marketing, social media, online advertising, or QR codes.

Greater SEO Benefits:

Considering the SEO factor, PWAs are easy to be crawled and indexed by search engines. Consequently, they increase the chances of being searched and ranked higher on the search engines.

Over to You:

We have seen a plethora of reasons why progressive web apps development is trending in the business world. These are a cost-effective investment for the shining future of your company in this era of high competitiveness. So before your competitors make the move, you should definitely grab this opportunity. 

If you too want to leverage these amazing benefits of PWAs in your business, contact Biz4Solutions, a world-class provider of progressive web app development services. This company has 9+ years of rich experience in servicing global clients with new-age software solutions.

Contact Now!