There is a unique set of problems for every web development project to overcome. In any case, strong solutions are needed to address these problems that are either design- or architecture-related.

The International Hockey Federation (FIH) was confronted with several difficulties throughout the 2018 Hockey World Cup; for example:

  • Increasing user interest and participation
  • Creating a user-friendly experience
  • Adaptable design to handle high traffic loads.
  • Optimization of costs

An initial need for FIH was to have a platform that could enable dynamic content development and provide real-time updates during matches without compromising the architecture.

It also employed an Enterprise Web Content Management (EWCM) platform at the front end that had increased expenses and dependencies. To save money and reduce vendor reliance, the FIH moved to a Headless CMS. The system served more than 100,000 people a day.

Varied businesses have different business complexity and prospects. Thus the web development issues they face might vary widely, necessitating customized solutions. The following sections will address some of the most pressing issues in web development and possible solutions.

Top Web Development Difficulties and Solutions

#1. Browser compatibility

For web developers, browser and platform compatibility is often one of the most difficult issues. Because of this, you must ensure that the websites are compatible with all of the current browsers and devices on the internet.

As a result of browsers that don’t support the latest features, security measures, and layouts, this step is critical. Internet Explorer is a well-known example of a legacy browser that makes web development difficult. Due to poor performance, Microsoft has declared that its services will be phased off on June 15, 2022.

Why is it so difficult to use IE?

  • It isn’t compatible with the latest Javascript standards.
  • Several contemporary CSS attributes are incompatible with it.
  • When compared to other browsers, its speed is slower.

Consequently, you’ll have to put in additional work to make your website compatible with these browsers, which is no small feat. For older browsers like IE or others, make sure your website is compatible with all browsers on the market. Legacy browser difficulties aren’t the only ones to contend with while using an older web browser version.

Doctype error: A doctype code is one of the fundamental codes older browsers check before displaying—a lack of coding results in a poor user experience and sluggish performance.

Validation of HTML/CSS code: Different browsers view the HTML/CSS code differently, which may be difficult for website creators.

Different browsers have different design layouts available. Consequently, websites display differently depending on the layout compatibility of the browsers, resulting in an inconsistent user experience.

Solution

These errors may be fixed by following the proper procedures

  • Handling doctype errors: Add!
  • DTD HTML Document Type Specification

In order to assist the website return to its default browser look while validating HTML and CSS, a reset stylesheet is applied. Floats, CSS grids, and Flexbox may be used to counteract layout discrepancies.

When it comes to cross-browser compatibility, comprehensive testing is required, and it might be stressful for your staff. To that end, here is a list of options for you:

  • Avoid concurrently testing your website on multiple browsers. Switch browsers every two or three days to get the most accurate results.
  • Writing browser-specific native code might cause major cross-browser compatibility concerns.
  • If your website’s user interface (UI) isn’t optimized, it might still lead to a poor user experience (UX). A well-designed user interface is important since visitors interact with your website.

#2. User experience

Creating new user experiences necessitates integrating UI and UX design from the outset. However, in order to produce a dependable website user experience, the design process and the desired output must be aligned.

In addition, having several teams makes coordinating web design and front-end development much more difficult. What a user expects from a website’s UX design is one of the most crucial difficulties web development businesses face.

Even though many companies undertake user research to understand their customers’ needs better, it may not be viable for every company to do so.

In addition to the need for front-end development, a responsive design also necessitates UI compliance with various device and browser screen sizes.

Many developers have a major issue in adapting the UI to each browser’s screen size, ranging from mobile devices to tablets to smart TVs.

In the first quarter of 2021, 54.8 percent of the world’s website traffic will come from mobile devices, according to Statista. It may be a challenge for web development teams to ensure that features are responsive and that mobile devices can navigate the website without a hitch.

Another key problem is developing a user-centric design capable of improving user experience.

There was a disruption in Berlin’s neighborhoods when Airbnb implemented a User-Centric Design (UCD). The hosts could get additional information about how their visitors would want to rent their property by using this user-centric design. That finally became an important selling point for Airbnb as a consequence.

Because of it, rules like Zweckentfremdungsverbot were put in place. In the event of an Airbnb ban, a landlord may face penalties of up to €100,000 for renting out an entire apartment. The severe limits were put in place because of a lack of housing for local inhabitants that Airbnb monopolized.

This all boils down to the need to create a user-centric design that is both profitable and sensitive to regional differences. So, while developing the interface, you must consider all of the aspects that affect the user, both internal and external.

Solution

When it comes to User-Centric Design, thorough research into user location, market demand, and current consumer pain points is a must.

Despite everything, it is not enough. Creating a user-centered design requires a significant amount of research and creativity. Fortunately, there are various ways to speed up the process of doing user-centered design research.

Online surveys are a great way to learn about your customers’ needs by having them complete a series of questions.

For web development teams needing rapid validation of concepts via in-person surveys, guerilla research is a great option. Allow teams to come up with many designs and compare them to see which one works best.

It is possible to develop user-friendly websites and improve client journeys by identifying pain areas based on research data. Using this method, you may better understand how people interact with your interface at various stages in the user’s journey and make adjustments to improve the overall user experience.

An excellent example of this is Twitter Bootstrap, a free, open-source, CSS-based front-end framework for creating mobile-first webpages. With Bootstrap, responsive design templates, grids, and so forth are included.

Additionally, frameworks like Angular and React may be used for component-based UI design. You can utilize material design components with Angular, but React comes pre-packaged with plenty of ready-to-use user interface components.

In order to create an optimal and user-centric design, several web development frameworks may be used in your work. As a result, choosing the correct framework for the best user experience is crucial, as some frameworks are not platform-specific.

#3. Speed and performance.

Developing a website that loads quickly is an essential challenge for every web development firm. According to Neil Patel, users want a site to load in two seconds, which isn’t a simple task given the number of items that are rendered with each click.

You must thus examine many website performance criteria in order to guarantee quicker loading times and responsiveness of the website. Website performance may be measured using a variety of tools, like :

  • Uptrends
  • Sematext
  • Google’s Web.Dev
  • GTmetrix
  • Uptime
  • Dareboost

The Web. Dev by Google, based on Lighthouse, is one of the most used tools for checking website performance. As defined by Google, the basic web vitals are a set of measures that may be used to evaluate a website’s performance.

Google has classified these as the most important aspects of the Web.

The website’s core content should load in less than 2.5 seconds, measured by the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). According to Google, your website’s primary content should load in 2.5 seconds or less.

There should be no more than ten milliseconds of delay between a user’s input and the website’s representation of that input, measured by First Input Delay (FID). In other words, fewer than 10 milliseconds must elapse between the moment a user inputs data and the time it appears on the screen.

This is a performance parameter for websites that assesses the visual stability of the layout shift delay, which should not exceed 0.1 seconds. CLS As a consequence of increased CLS, the user experience on the Web may degrade.

It doesn’t matter if you accidentally click the “purchase now” button on an e-commerce site and end yourself checking out unwanted goods.

FCP measures how long it takes for a page to load before the content is seen. The loading speed of an application may be used to estimate FCP’s performance.

  • Good: = 1.8s
  • Improvements are needed in the range of 1.8s to 3s.
  • Unsatisfactory: > 3s

An audit of a URL on the Web, for instance, was performed using a development tool by us. Performance metrics including FCP, time to interactivity, speed index, and more are included in the report. It takes 13.3 seconds for a user to engage with the system. As with CLS and LCP, they don’t meet the industry’s acknowledged criteria.

The picture aspect ratio and HTTPS use are two additional ways that Web. Dev tool assesses accessibility in addition to speed. If the website isn’t mobile-friendly or has issues with browsers, it will also be checked for SEO best practices.

Various user interface aspects are used to evaluate accessibility. The page’s semantic structure is jeopardized since the headed components are not arranged in a logical order.

Conversion rates may be boosted by making your websites load faster and more responsive. However, there are a plethora of factors at play to ensure improved performance and speed.

Solution

It is difficult to guarantee the speed of a website without optimizing various aspects such as content, navigational buttons, interface layers, and so on—here are a few pointers from the pros on how to make your website as efficient as possible.

Reduce the number of declarations and operators in the code to make it smaller. It is also possible to load JS(Javascript) as the body of the head> tag, which keeps the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) code small. This makes it possible for material that has been downloaded from the user’s browser to be shown immediately.

Keep the picture size to a minimum so that web pages load more quickly. JPEG or WEBP formats are good choices if image quality is a priority. WordPress users may also use image-optimization tools, such as:

  • Imagify
  • Image Optimizer for Small Pixels
  • WordPress Optimum
  • Optimizer for Images
  • Smushing your WordPress posts with WP Smush
  • TinyPNG

Avoid using too many plugins for features like avatars, profile tools, or website metrics since they slow down the site.

In terms of search engine rankings, high-performance websites and faster loading times may help. It makes your website more visible and attracts more customers. But the necessity for scalability may also be a significant concern, given the enormous traffic volume.

#4. Website scaling

Scalability is key when building large websites for 10 users per minute or 100 visitors per minute. However, it is important to note that the scalability of a website is not only about increasing the number of servers. The website’s current design may make scalability difficult for development teams.

Every online project, according to Paul King, a data scientist who has worked with the likes of Facebook, Quora, and Uber, has four primary issues when expanding, such as

It’s tough to discover the information you’re looking for when there’s a lot of it.

The difficulty of supplying the same data to several consumers simultaneously is known as concurrency.

Difficulty displaying current data and keeping it consistent for users

Speed issue: An issue with a website’s ability to handle a larger number of transactions per second.

Solution

The architecture of both a scalable website’s front- and back-end is critical. The capacity of your web servers to handle several requests at once is directly tied to the scalability of your back-end, which helps to minimize performance and concurrency issues.

A React-based component-driven design was also implemented to increase front-end performance. The separation of functions afforded by a headless design also removed any concerns with consistency.

#5 – Security

When half of the online apps are prone to increased vulnerabilities, websites must be secure. In addition, the number of cyberattacks has grown dramatically in recent years, with just 5% of business data being secured against threats.

There are a lot of threats to fight when it comes to securing your website. For example, unfiltered data might lead to injection issues in a SQL server, browser, or LDAP server. A hacker may infiltrate the browser with command functions that corrupt it, resulting in data loss.

Authentication problems on the website are yet another source of security risk for the website in question. Because of authentication difficulties, data vulnerabilities and identity theft might result from specific session hijacking.

In addition, the Open Web Application Security Project has a long list of security issues (OWASP). Included in this list are:

  • Access Control System Failed
  • Failures in the cryptography
  • Injection
  • Unsafe design
  • Misconfiguration of security
  • Components that are old and vulnerable.
  • Failure to identify or authenticate the user.
  • Failures in the integrity of software and data
  • Failures in the recording and monitoring of security information
  • Request tampering on the server-side

Solution

Filtering input data might be difficult. However, a sophisticated method can be used to filter out harmful inputs. Using a framework with such security features is the best method to cope with a faulty authentication system.

With Django’s pre-built authentication mechanisms, web development may be easier by protecting the site against cross-site request forgery and SQL injections.

Users’ financial information may be encrypted using AES (256 bits and up) or RSA (2048 bits and up) standards if you’re building an eCommerce website. Extra security for user data transfer is provided by certain payment gateway APIs.

#6: Third-party integrations.

Payment processors aren’t the only third parties that may be integrated into websites. Integrations allow you to add a wide range of additional features to your website.

Google Maps API integration is required for a basic feature like viewing maps from your website. Third-party integrations provide a wide variety of possibilities, from social networking to features like multi-language support.

Integrating them safely with your website’s modifications is the problem. To put it another way, APIs that have been out of date for some time provide a risk since they might open the door to unexpected problems.

Third-party service providers and your website’s architecture use different technologies. Custom APIs may be used to overcome these discrepancies. However, this may be difficult if your website is built using a monolithic design.

Solution

For API difficulties, the easiest way to fix them is to make sure the structure of your website matches that of third-party service providers. You may get the whole picture of what modifications are needed in your application’s design and code with service providers.

Your website’s architecture must also be updated to match any API code changes since this will ensure that the site continues to run smoothly. The performance and development costs of a website may be reduced by doing frequent maintenance and updates on the website’s code.

#7. Support and maintenance

Website upkeep is akin to the “Behind The Scenes (BTS)” of your website’s development. The true problem arises when your website goes live. Web sites that don’t respond or have security vulnerabilities are only some of the challenges after the launch.

Updating outdated APIs or the website’s core code may be time-consuming and difficult. Additionally, maintaining the website with minimal downtime is a demanding task.

Different dependencies between functions might contribute to downtime throughout this procedure. This is more common in websites with a monolithic architecture, where services and functions are closely intertwined.

Solution

The need for monitoring becomes clear when dealing with maintenance issues. You must keep an eye on the stability of your website at all times to guarantee that any problems that develop may be fixed quickly. Having a web architecture with minimum dependencies is also necessary for better uptime during an update.

Using a microservices design may help reduce a website’s reliance on its many functionalities. All of the components may be updated separately without affecting the rest of the system. As a result, the website’s functioning will not be affected while being updated.

Microservices design has several major advantages, such as:

  • Services that can be updated and maintained independently.
  • Data management becomes more efficient when each service has its own unique data model.
  • A decrease in website downtime and a rise in website latency
  • Independent services provide web development teams with more freedom and flexibility to do their work.
  • With distinct services, it’s easy to increase resources to handle high loads.

Conclusion

In addition to websites, web development encompasses creating web applications and other web-based services. There are many more issues to contend with while building a website than just the obvious ones: implementing scalability, security, usability, and speed. As a result, each firm has its own set of problems. It takes a lot of web development skills to develop solid solutions for such unusual problems.