From large enterprises to small and medium enterprises, all are inclined to create a web application to allow the target audience to access their online destination effortlessly. If you are looking to hire web application development services anytime soon, this blog is a must-read. Here, we will explore some of the crucial features that your web application should have. We will divide the blog into two aspects: technical components and features.
Technical components of a web application
service worker
Service worker facilitates offline working mode and background synchronization. It paves the way for application shell or interface caching so that the application loads instantly during repeat visits. Relevant dynamic content like images, shopping cart, chat history, payment, etc. It can be loaded later when the connection is reestablished.
Web Application Manifest
A web application manifest (a JSON file) gives your application an interface appearance similar to that of a mobile application. With it, you can control the way your web application will be displayed to the visitor. Typically, the display features a full screen mode without a visible URL bar. The file is a privileged location for web application metadata. You can also define a home screen along with a theme color for the address bar.
Transport Layer Security or TLS
Web applications take advantage of the TLS or Transport Layer Security protocols. It is the standard for robust and secure data exchange between two applications. Data integrity requires installing an SSL certificate on the server and serving websites over HTTPS.
Essential features in a web application
1. Serverless Cloud Architecture
Serverless technology is revolutionizing the field of software development. This allows data to be accessed with minimal or no hardware restrictions. It has extensive benefits over traditional local systems. Therefore, an increasing number of companies are using cloud technologies to create web applications.
Adopting a cloud-based architecture gives businesses a break from the complexity of setting up or managing complex servers. In addition, it offers security, flexibility and scalability suitable for a web application.
2. Mobile-first interface
Gone are the days of the traditional belief that people access a website from a desktop or laptop.
A web application must be ready to receive people coming from smartphones or tablets. A responsive UI design is no longer a luxury but a necessity. With the rise of IoT, a web application can be accessed from other devices such as wearables, refrigerators, or smart TVs. A dynamic web design created with a mobile-first interface is lightweight and can fit on any screen size.
3. Push Notification
Push notification is no longer exclusive to mobile applications. This is great news for businesses as they don't need to launch a mobile app or wait for people to install it on their phone. Users can also receive push notifications from web applications. These greatly improve user engagement.
Plus, the process is quick and simple. With a one-click opt-in feature, users can enable push notifications. These look like an installed mobile app and do not require the browser to run in the background.
4. Chat
These days, integrating a live chat or chatbot has become essential. People don't usually call a company or send an email. If they can't find something in the web app, they prefer to ask via the built-in chat feature.
Remember, if their queries go unanswered, they may not engage with your business and may simply bounce.
To avoid this, it is best to integrate a chat feature into your web application. You can even integrate your business WhatsApp (or any other messenger you use) so people can contact you instantly.
5. Search Engine Optimization
Without search engine support, your website will not be visible to a wider audience and will affect the amount of traffic you receive. If you don't want that, make sure your web application is optimized for search engines. Here is a detailed guide to an effective SEO strategy.
- Site navigation should be logical and allow search engines to crawl and index.
- Use schema.org metadata that is relevant to the content of the web page. It will improve your appearance on the SERP (search engine results page).
- Place scripts outside of the HTML document. If JavaScript and CSS are not externalized, they can add several extra lines of code in the HYML document, which will make crawling slower.
- Web pages should not use chunked identifiers as Google will simply ignore them.
- Block pages that you do not want to be crawled or indexed.
- Implementing the image alt attribute is a must.
- Provide canonical tags when serving content from different sources to avoid duplication.
- Follow the W3C standard which focuses on writing semantic markup. This is great for SEO.
You can also hire SEO services after creating the web application to improve your ranking in the SERP.
6 Analysis
With built-in analytics, you can gain insight into user behavior patterns and web application performance. You can track all the data and optimize the web app for better engagement and higher conversions.
You can find out which elements are driving the most engagement and where people are bouncing. Based on the insights, strategize your next move.
As you can understand, the term “essential” depends on what your competitors offer, what customers expect, etc. We hope the blog has given you a detailed insight into the features and components of a web application. Implement these and thank us later!
