What are the Most Commonly Faced Challenges of Web Development?

Having a website is pivotal to the success of running a business in the present times. Users can find you, learn more about you, interact with you, and make purchases on your website. And it all starts with the web development or the development of your site. But what exactly is web development? Web development initiatives come with their own set of unique challenges. You might encounter several challenges, ranging from improved user experience to quicker loading times and increased responsiveness. To address these issues, we have created an exhaustive list of challenges of web development as well as effective solutions to tackle them.

What is Web Development?

Web development, commonly referred to as website development, describes the actions involved in developing, creating, and managing websites and web applications used to access information online through a browser. However, it might also involve database management, web development, and web design. 

Web development and the task of creating the features and functionality of apps are closely related. Development often refers to the process of actually building these things. Consider all the websites you have visited over the years. Web developers created those pages, ensuring they worked properly and provided a smooth user experience. Web developers accomplish this by producing lines of code in various computer languages, which vary based on the activities they are carrying out and the interfaces they are operating on. 

Programming languages such as HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), JavaScript, and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), are the fundamental tools used in web development. The creation of sites that would otherwise need to be done from scratch by writing code is made easier by a number of additional tools that are used to manage or ease the process. These include, among others, WordPress, Drupal, TYPO3, and Adobe Experience Manager, as well as a number of other content management systems (CMS).

The web development landscape is constantly changing to meet the ever-evolving market demands. Successful business owners are now developing value-driven solutions that produce extraordinary experiences. We cannot, however, dispute the difficulty of ensuring excellent quality throughout all user interactions.

What are the Major Web Development Challenges?

Depending on the needs particular to a certain organisation, every web development project has a unique set of problems. Whether they are design or architecture-related, these problems require concrete answers. Here are some common web development challenges that you need to keep an eye out for:

1. Browser compatibility

Hands down, browser compatibility, is one of the biggest challenges of web development for any business. Ensure the websites are compatible with the internet’s current browsers and gadgets with various screen sizes. Due to legacy browsers’ inability to support current features, security measures, and layouts, this step becomes essential. Maintaining website browser compatibility should be a top priority, primarily if you work with legacy browsers like Internet Explorer or others.

Along with the inherent limitations of legacy browsers, you will need to deal with certain common concerns, like:

• Doctype error: A doctype error is one of the fundamental codes that older browsers check before processing. If the code is missing, these browsers cannot display the website and perform poorly. 
• HTML/CSS validation: HTML/CSS validation can be a real challenge for website developers because different browsers interpret HTML/CSS code differently. Reset the stylesheet to assist the website switch to the default browser style to address this problem.
• Layout difference: Different browsers support different design layouts, resulting in layout differences.  Due to this inconsistent UX, webpages display differently depending on the layout compatibility with browsers.

2. Web development process

One of the major issues that businesses encounter is creating a web development process that is consistent and simple to maintain. Some businesses fail because they are unable to adhere to a predefined strategy. They frequently experiment with various methods, which can temporarily satisfy their needs but are certain to bring unforeseen risks in the future. As a result, maintenance tasks become more complex and time-consuming, and the time to market keeps increasing. 

Many businesses prioritise micromanagement over streamlining the stages of development. They adopt ill-defined tactics to expedite the process but fail to recognise its detrimental effects. This causes a plethora of problems with web development that necessitate frequent shifting and revision. But how to overcome this web development challenge? 

• Use effective software approaches: You must use well-known software development approaches like Agile, Scrum, XP, etc. With this, your team will be able to work in short sprints and finish assigned tasks within the specified deadline. Additionally, it becomes simple to view project progress in real-time. 
• Hire talented web developers: Another thing you can do to overcome this challenge is to hire passionate developers who fit your project. This strategy is a game-changer as these developers are skilled and experienced in creating, carrying out, and enhancing web development frameworks. They are well aware of certain implementations and the effects they have. This can hasten the website development process, improve teamwork, and make it easier for you to launch your project promptly. 
• Follow a roadmap: Additionally, you ought to adhere to a set procedure that emphasises consistency and ongoing development. To meet various criteria, all developers must cooperate while taking an individualised approach.

3. Security

Security is one of the most alarming challenges for businesses with a significant internet presence. In light of ever-increasing cyber-attacks, securing your application to safeguard sensitive and confidential data is crucial. These cyberattacks include security setup errors, cross-site scripting, weak authentication and access control, injection, XML external entities, and more. 

Businesses struggle to counter these attacks, resulting in data malfunction, inadequate user authentication, phishing, and other app vulnerabilities. These problems might be more damaging if your application handles sensitive user information like payment information, contact information, or personal documents. Because of this, it’s essential to review and tighten up your apps’ security continuously.

Wondering how to do that? A website or app can be made more secure in a variety of ways:

• Consider possible security mechanisms: Make sure the web developer takes into account every possible security mechanism when working on your website. 
• Strengthen your website security: Another thing you must do to strengthen the security of your website is back it up with SSL certificates to provide secure, private information flow between clients and servers (HTTP over SSL). In this approach, data is encrypted before transmission and decrypted after reception by both the server and the client. 
• Use multi-factor authentication: To further secure accounts, using multi-factor authentication is an excellent solution. In order to access their accounts and prove their identity, users would need to go through a series of steps. Another crucial step is to pick a secure web host. Along with employing Rootkit Scanner, this host should also offer Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), frequent security updates and file backup to a remote server.

4. Design and UI

Design and UI are the backbones of any web development project, as engaging design is commonly the first thing that draws the viewer in. However, it is really challenging to provide exciting user experiences. It ranks among the most challenging problems in web design that programmers have to deal with nowadays. 

It all comes down to enhancing engagement and offering straightforward yet effective user interfaces that establish enduring relationships with your target audience. It is crucial to emphasise visual attractiveness that easily connects with your user base. Your primary focus should be to make the app accessible and simple to use. But how to achieve this? 

• Research: You must employ guerrilla research and online surveys to develop user-centric designs. You ought to be familiar with a variety of user-related topics, such as user touchpoints, issues users experience, location, gender, devices used, age, interests, and preferences. 
• Ensure hassle-free navigation: Smooth navigation is another crucial aspect you must focus on. Seamless navigation must be facilitated by all of the built-in features and functionalities. 
• Assist the users: Developers must ensure they receive all the guidance and assistance needed to operate the app. Some criteria to take into account include card-style design, full-screen navigation, and placing commonly used operations at the bottom of the screen.

5. Scalability

Scalability is crucial while developing a web application. It aids in expanding or decreasing system capacity by utilising online assets. It facilitates customer interaction while also assisting in user acquisition for businesses.

Scalability is connected to how your web application expands over time. It is a long-term strategy where you begin with a fundamental company model and have the plan to grow in the future. For instance, after using a skincare blog for a while and attracting a sizable amount of traffic, you might decide to turn it into an eCommerce platform. 

But how to deal with this web development challenge?

• Add more servers: Scalability is another one of the prominent web development challenges that necessitates balancing the server’s load because it is not about the system performance or bandwidth. Consequently, you must add more servers to keep things balanced as traffic grows. As a result, your programme must be able to accommodate the needs of numerous users simultaneously. 
• Use cloud platforms: One thing you can do is use the vertical and horizontal scalability possibilities of cloud computing in your business. To easily manage a growing load, it can investigate well-known cloud platforms and solutions like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, DigitalOcean, IBM Cloud, etc. 
• Use distributed systems: You need to use distributed systems like Microservices, distributed caching solutions and shared database design when standard n-tier architecture is insufficient for your scaling demands. You can scale to hundreds of millions of people with these technologies.

Keep an eye out for these common web development challenges to get the most out of your site or app. And don’t forget to keep updating and reoptimising it to help your site rank higher in search and produce better results for your business. 

Team EMB

Our team of expert writers is committed to bringing insights on topics ranging in the fields of technology, marketing, and business. With a wide-reaching range of services on our platform, we help businesses achieve digital transformation end-to-end.