We all need to agree that when it comes to technology, things are unpredictable. Whether you’re a startup enabler, entrepreneur or developer you need to keep yourself updated for two reasons:
#1. To sharpen your knowledge.
#2. To cherish your business in this competitive world.
Similarly, new trends keep coming on web application development every year. And this time its turn of single page application for web apps.
Some of us still get confused about what is a single page application, hence I’ve provided a glimpse on it.
Brief on Single Page Application
To understand SPA lets first go to the past. There was a time where the server would reload the whole page whenever users request some part of the data. It used to result in heavy loading.
Now, with the help of the single page application, this problem was completely solved. SPAs as its name suggests, never reload the whole page, only the requested data gets updated.
To make it more clear, when you go for the one-page website, the server will load the whole page in intail time. Later, the server sends the requested data in the form of JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). Thus, the page never gets wiped away but it will be filled with the new information. The principle to build a web app remains the same but the components change.
Popular Examples SPA,
Many of us use single page web apps in their routine but might not be aware of it. Here are a few biggest platform built with SPA,
● Facebook
● Pinterest
● Linkedin
● Airbnb
● Twitter
● Gmail
One thing you should remember here that all these platforms are built with different single page application framework.
To understand better, here is a pictorial representation of single page application.
How Single Page Web Apps Enhance User Experience?
So whats that key thing which provides a better user engagement to the single page web apps?
Here is the answer. As the whole page gets reload only once, the loading speed automatically increases. And as per the Google Research, it shows a good impact on the business and sales, if the page takes approximately 0.2 seconds to load. It is possible to achieve this loading speed with the help of the single page application.
SPAs give an impeccable experience to the users with easy Navigations, innovative layouts and adaptive to different mobile screen sizes. Let us have a look at some of the major benefits of SPAs and how they help to enhance the user experience.
Pros of Single Page Application
● All the data consist under a single location on the client’s side, that’s one HTML file. Its makes the debugging or upgrading much easier for the developers.
● Another point to note here is SPAs can effectively cache the local data. Thus when a user is having poor connectivity, the local data gets synchronised with the server. But it is only possible when connection allows.
● Single page application provides a liner experience that gives uninterrupted and easy scrolling.
● The debugging is with easy Chrome for single page web apps as you can examine the page components, the network associated with it and much more.
We can thanks here to the frameworks like Angular.js, Ember.js, React.js, Backbone.js etc. In short, single page web apps provide a space to the user in a simple and workable fashion. All these points ultimately enhance the user experience.
Why launch Single Page Web Apps in 2020?
Many of the eCommerce brands launch their platform with single page application as it comes with lesser interruption. Users can do their shopping seamlessly which ultimately leads to more sales. And it is not only convenient for the user experience but even provides relaxation to the developers in coding and deploying.
And it is the phase where everyone is so busy with their daily routine. Hence they expect to have faster navigation and seamless experience while browsing your platform. With SPAs, load delays are almost eradicated, so you can expect a better user engagement.
For instance, you are going through a web app to buy a smartphone, you almost went through 15 pages while surfing. Every time a new page gets loaded and approximate time a page takes to load is 10 seconds. To calculate the time you just spent in waiting for a page to load. It is where SPAs works like a miracle.
I guess, now the whole picture is clear in your mind. You exactly got the idea of why single page application in the future.
When To Avoid Using Single Page Application?
When your focus is on SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you must avoid using single page application. Its comes with poor SEO optimization. The main reason for it is that the URL does not change as various pages here do not have a unique URL address.
Search bots cannot scan such pages hence it becomes hard to optimize. In comparison to the traditional page, single page application is less secure due to XSS (Cross-Site Scripting).
Another thing is a memory leak of javascript, which may lead a powerful system to slow down.
Thus, have a look at what your business is all about and then decide whether to go for single page application or not.
Summing It Up
I guess, still, a question will be rolling in your mind. When to use single page application?
Straight to the point, if you want an excellent user engagement between your application and them, single page web apps is the best choice. To offer the best real-time experience to the users, web apps like Google-Maps use single page application.
Whenever users tap on the place markers they get the information as they move from one place to another.
In short, it is a good option if you’re planning to build a dynamic platform. Again it is one of the types of web apps which is in trend. Choose the one which suits best to your platform.