How to Create Your First Web App?

Whether you are a web developer or going to hire one for your first web project, here are some tips that can help you get started in this realm. These will be some general tips; hence, you can apply them everywhere irrespective of the web technologies you are planning to use. Also, these tips are aptly suitable for budget projects having a range of around $5,000.

So let’s now take a look into these tips...

Important Tips for Web App Development

Data Processing: Any simple or even complex web application needs to process data. You can segregate this data processing part into three in the following way:

• Receiving data from users
• Processing data and determining their role
• Giving results to users

Since all web apps function like this, it will be better to segregate the main features of your application considering these data relationships. The factors you would now need to take into account are: 1) how to build the app 2) how user data have to be processed and presented in the app 3) what features to incorporate first and 4) which web technologies and services you need to use to begin with.

You may find it little difficult in the beginning. However, the more you start thinking in this direction, the easier will be your job. To get started, you can first focus on other web applications and their data processing needs. This practice will help you in your conceptualization and developing phase.

Favorite UIs and Web Apps: If you come across any inspiring web apps, do make sure to keep track on all the components they have used, starting from color scheme to design to features, etc. This will create a collection of user interfaces and designs for you and you can refer to them for ideas while developing your own app.

Simple 1.0 Version: It is always better to begin by incorporating core features in your first app. Try to keep your first version as simple as possible. By doing this, you can get a quick validation for your idea and that too at cost-friendly rates. Also, this method will enable you to understand your users’ requirement. It will become easy for you to understand whether a particular feature is required or not.

Value Proposition of Web App: More than the design of your application, you need to focus on its function, how it behaves. For this, you have to select reliable frameworks like HTML/CSS or Skeleton, Twitter Bootstrap, and Foundation while working on the front end interface. These technologies help you in finishing your design and development task faster, leaving you ample time to check out the behavior of your web app. Once your app idea is validated, you can very well invest your resources on its design.

Third-Party APIs: Choose your APIs carefully. The reason is sometimes companies put restrictions on the use of their APIs by adding or altering terms and conditions. Due to this, the growth of your web app may suffer. In order to stay away from this situation as far as possible, you need to pick a nice and reliable third party API. With good APIs, you can easily access the data of external web services. APIs can facilitate documentation process and offer wrappers for various programming languages such as PHP, Java, Python, Ruby, etc.

Ideal Web Services: Even if you can afford spending lot of money in your first app, do restrict yourself to a budget. Nowadays, a good number of web services are available online which can be used for free or at nominal rates. Some of these include Amazon S3, Stripe, Heroku, Google Analytics and SendGrid. Amazon S3 helps in collecting images and other types of content, while Stripe takes care of payments. SendGrid is good for managing transactional emails and Google Analytics offers powerful web analytic solutions.

When you find your app is working fine, you can go for higher web services as replacement to scale up your business. However, just remember that even these services will come handy when your business grows.

Idea Execution: Over and above all other factors, you need to focus on the execution part to achieve success in your endeavor. Just because it’s your first application, you cannot expect to cash in on the factor “first”. Hence, instead of channelizing your full energy into getting non-disclosure documents in order, be careful about the execution part. The success or failure of any idea depends on its execution more than anything else.

It can be concluded that these handful tips can drive you to build successful applications not just for the first time but every time. The only thing is that you need to keep them in mind while getting started with your project, regardless of the fact whether it’s your personal investment or a client’s requirement.