A lot of modern technology-based business solutions are released in the form of web or cloud applications. The tendency is driven by a large number of reasons, e.g., the need for license control, transparent updates delivery, scalable back-end infrastructure, and so on.
MVP and software startup ideas necessarily presume the rapid market launch of a product. If a solution quickly achieves a significant success, company owners often start facing performance issues that come as a total surprise for them.
Luckily, web apps experts have already described most of these issues. And accumulating the performance troubleshooting experience results in the minimum number of mistakes throughout the development process.
Some most frequent pitfalls web developers should be aware of:
Third-party APIs
Third-party APIs by different providers take the first place among the issues that web development specialists face. Each third-party API is likely to slow down a web app, lead to a latency drop or performance loss. Why does this happen?
- License contract violation
Software developers appreciate API services for their availability and convenience, but there is a pitfall. As soon as API owners detect the increased server load, they will definitely check a profitable solution for compliance with license rights. The detected violations may lead to reduced productivity of an app or even stop its work.
There was a case when OCSICO’s developers freely used an API up to a point. As soon as the solution became successful, the API provider’s lawyers contacted us and demanded to solve the issues of compliance with the license agreement. One should bear in mind that API providers can intentionally turn a blind eye to minor violations, in order to demand compensation in case of commercial success. They can also propose changes to license agreement. Finally, web developers will be forced to agree to the API provider’s demands, because they are already dependent on a third-party API.
- Unpaid API calls
The solution’s success may play a trick on you in case you haven’t prepaid enough API calls. Make sure your API plan is based on the calls post-pay to ensure the continuous operation of the app.
- Third-party APIs misuse
Analysts often turn their attention to new services and challenging solutions. Quite frequently, it results in a situation when professional commercial applications are based on nonprofessional or experimental API services. The last ones may not be tailored to the heavy workload, or their support may be unexpectedly canceled.
One of our Indian customers wanted to launch a business search engine. They used a linguistic processor created by a group of students who did not expect their server to process millions of documents daily like a search giant does. The subscription cost $10 per month only and wasn’t intended for such workload.
Front-end development issues
Perceived performance is highly important for the web development process. This aspect is decisive when it comes to the user experience of an application. Nobody wants to deal with a slow loading UI.
- Uneven scrolling
Many users are not able to objectively assess the real app performance, but every single user will say the application lags if scrolling isn’t smooth.
- Frequent browser reflow
A serious HTML and JS code optimization is required to minimize browser reflow. It’s important to be careful with recalculating style and layouts since as soon as it’s done the reflow will follow and ruin the positive user experience. To avoid this, you have to group all the calculations and changes of styles the way they cause only one reflow – users will be really thankful for that.
- Unsuitable framework
Choosing a front-end framework is a complicated and, in some way, subjective process. Developers often opt for the platform they are familiar with, instead of taking the best one based on system requirements and business logic.
- No real-time debugging
Browsers have become sophisticated and functional applications similar to living organisms. Real-time debugging allows developers to accurately diagnose and localize the problem. That is why real-time analysis makes sense.
- Poor layouts
Pay attention to HTML template optimization. Do not misuse styles and evenly distribute functional elements among different layers. Interactions excess in one layer will inevitably lead to the system slowdown.
- Lack of knowledge about rendering
You should be competent in rendering processes that are going on at the level of separate elements i.e., images, video or charts, and an entire web page. Understanding the essence of these system processes helps create sophisticated multimedia web solutions.
Back-end development issues
There are no universal methods for creating high-performance solutions, but one thing is always the same – a preparatory study. A thorough research should precede every project launch and it’s often hard to do without professional help. So, it’s better to turn to web application consulting specialists to avoid possible back-end development issues.
- Wrong framework choice
Evaluate the web framework performance in an unbiased way. It will be useful to rely on comprehensive web framework benchmarks provided by this resource.
- Unpopular platforms
Use large cloud platforms like Amazon or Azure. These giants are always able to provide you with the required capacity and bandwidth, even if you haven’t optimized your web application properly.
- Saving money on DB optimization
Select the most appropriate DB and data structure. Do not scrimp on database experts. DB optimization can considerably increase the overall system performance, just as legacy data storage structure can completely ruin your project.
Conclusion
Web development has rapidly gained popularity among other development fields. Different ready-made frameworks and cloud services ease the application development process. Meanwhile, there is still a bunch of issues arising in the process of front-end and back-end development, such as wrong framework choice, frequent browser reflow, uneven scrolling, etc. But you can avoid these and other possible mistakes by studying other developers’ experience and turning to professional IT consultants and business analysts.
About the author: Helena Bogdanova is a Tech Copywriter with OCSICO. She writes about IT, mobile applications, web development, video games and more. You can contact Helena via [email protected].