If you want to succeed in web development, it’s important to abide by the industry’s best practices. But what exactly are best practices and why must they be followed? In this guide, you’ll gain a better understanding of best practices including the top ten web development practices to follow to become a successful Web Developer.
What Are Best Practices?
Best Practices are a set of guidelines universally accepted across an industry that standardize the most efficient way to reach a specific outcome. The specific methodologies, processes, and techniques that make up best practices are designed to improve workflow by eliminating complications and barriers to project completion.
Best practices aren’t just found in web development; they’re used extensively in a variety of fields including project management, software engineering, manufacturing, higher education, health and human services, agriculture, human resource management, and the nonprofit sector. In some cases, best practices may be formal regulations established by an external governing body but in many industries, like web development, they’re far less formal. Organizations can also create their own set of best practices for employees to follow.
Why Follow Best Practices?
There are countless reasons why professionals follow the best practices that have been established in their industry. The primary reason is that best practices offer a framework for success, helping them complete tasks better, faster, and more efficiently while encountering fewer problems and mistakes. Best practices aren’t just created arbitrarily—they’ve typically been proven through years of trial and error. By following best practices, developers can simplify their jobs, save time, boost efficiency, improve decision-making, and minimize the risk of failure.
Succeeding in Web Development: Top 10 Best Practices
To become an accomplished Web Developer, it’s essential to follow the industry’s best practices. They are:
1. Plan Your Project with Purpose
One of the best practices Web Developers should adopt is clearly defining the purpose of the project and making a plan to achieve it before they begin programming. While it may be tempting to just dive in and start coding, it’s important to know exactly what your goal is first. If you launch into writing code without a clear target in mind, you’ll likely end up having to rewrite the code in order to correct mistakes and realign your work with the project goals, which will waste valuable time and energy.
After defining the overarching goal of the project, take some time to create a plan to reach that goal. You can do this by breaking the entire project down into small, manageable steps then defining a timeline for each task so you can have the entire project completed by the designated deadline. While pre-planning may feel like a waste of time, it’s most certainly not; by taking time to plan, you’ll have a step-by-step outline to follow that will enable you to work efficiently, stay organized, minimize errors, and keep the project on track.
2. Stick to What Works
Once you start working on a project, make sure that you follow common conventions that have been proven to work instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. Clients and users have certain expectations when they visit websites. For example, they expect that the company logo will be in the upper left-hand corner and that clicking on it will redirect them to the homepage. They also expect the navigation menu to remain consistent throughout the website; if you change it from page to page in an effort to be creative, visitors are likely to become confused.
Though working as a Web Developer does require a combination of technical and creative skills, you’ll primarily rely on the former when working on websites for clients. There’s no need to try an unconventional approach if there’s already a proven solution available. Creativity and imagination have their place in web development, but they’re mostly used to help you develop novel solutions when faced with challenging problems. If you want to push the boundaries and try something new, save it for your own projects; for clients, the best practice is to stick to what works.
3. Keep Your Code Clear and Concise
Another widely-accepted web development best practice is to keep your code clear and concise. Each line of code you write should serve a necessary and clearly-defined purpose, like adding a required feature to a website or solving a particular problem. This should be done as clearly and efficiently as possible without engaging in excessive coding.
It can be easy to fall into the over-coding trap by writing far more code than what you actually need, but developers should avoid this at all costs. Code that’s overly long and complex is more likely to contain bugs that will require a significant amount of time and attention to fix. This kind of excessive code will also make it more challenging for other members of your team to understand, edit, and maintain your code.
To remain transparent and further assist other team members, you should also get into the habit of commenting on your code to explain the purpose of each snippet and why it works. This will also help your coding stay concise since you have to provide an explanation for its existence.
4. Focus On User Experience
To succeed in your job as a Web Developer, it’s also highly recommended that you work with the end-user in mind. The first step towards this goal is to understand the target market. Who will be using the website? How will it be used? What will make the user happy?
The whole point of the website is to serve the end-user, so it’s important for you to understand the audience then create something they’ll enjoy interacting with. If the user is pleased with what they encounter, they’re more likely to stay on the site longer and interact with pages that generate revenue for your client. That, in essence, is the definition of success in web development—providing the best possible experience for those who visit the site. If the end-user is satisfied, the client will be also which makes all of your efforts worthwhile.
One way to ensure the end-user is captivated by what you create is to generate a mockup of the website first then put it in front of an audience to test the design. If you receive feedback indicating that the site is cluttered, hard to navigate, or difficult to use in any way, you can make improvements to the mockup and resubmit it for additional feedback before you start coding. While mockup testing may seem time-consuming, it’s far more efficient to test the design and alter it in response to feedback than having to recode an entire website.
5. Ensure Compatibility With Multiple Devices
It used to be that most users viewed websites from their desktop computers, but those days are long gone. With the explosion of mobile technology, users can now access the Internet from a variety of devices including smartphones, tablets, laptops, gaming consoles, e-readers, wristwatches, and smart TVs, just to name a few. All of these devices have different form factors, screen sizes, and resolutions; as a Web Developer following best practices, it’s your job to create a responsive website to ensure users can view the site correctly regardless of what device they’re using.
6. Regard High Performance As A Necessity
When working on a website, it’s important to remember this essential best practice: high performance is not an option. Website visitors expect pages to load quickly and have little patience for slow sites. The current rule of thumb is that a webpage should load within 2 seconds; any longer and you’re likely to lose the visitor—they’ll head to the competition’s website instead.
This best practice is especially true on larger websites with high traffic volume. While the site may work perfectly when you first create it, how will it do once it’s deployed and countless users start accessing it at the same time? To avoid a significant drop in the site’s performance, make sure you optimize the database for heavy traffic, remove any nonessential functions that may slow the site down, and take additional measures to optimize performance. Then you’ll have a fast, reliable website that’s capable of handling heavy traffic loads.
7. Create an Accessible Website
When creating a website, you must consider the various needs of those who will ultimately be visiting the site, including those with hearing, sight, or other impairments. There are currently more than one billion people in the world with some sort of disability; if your website is inaccessible to that demographic, you’re essentially preventing 15% of the earth’s population from fully using your site.
Though many major websites aren’t currently optimized for accessibility, that is rapidly changing; the industry now recognizes the need to be more inclusive and remove barriers that prevent disabled users from accessing and utilizing websites. A few of the changes that can be made to accommodate disabled users include adding ALT text to images so screen readers can describe them, using headers to provide a clear organizational structure that’s easy for screen readers to follow, and choosing a color palette that can be distinguished by those with color blindness.
8. Implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategies
Another best practice for those working in web development is to implement search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. The purpose of SEO is to help a website rank higher in search engine results which drives more traffic to the site. Optimizing a company’s website raises their visibility online, making SEO a critical element to their success. If search engines are unable to find the site or don’t understand its purpose, then the website won’t be found by those who need it most.
Keep in mind that Web Developers aren’t responsible for optimizing the entire website—that’s somebody else’s job. However, developers do need to be aware of SEO principles and how to apply them during the early phases of development. For example, developers should create crawlable site structures, predefine page URLs, and use target keywords in titles, tags, and content. SEO is also improved by managing errors in the code, using redirects when moving content around, increasing page loading time, and optimizing the site for mobile users.
9. Include Social Media Integration
It’s also essential for Web Developers to make websites that include social media integration. Social media is a powerful tool that can help companies establish their brand, become an authority in their field, and increase their customer base; it’s these types of benefits that make social media an absolute necessity for any business regardless of industry.
Websites without social media integration are missing out on a huge opportunity; there are currently more than four billion people on social media—that’s over half the world’s population! Web Developers can help their clients leverage the power of social media by providing links to the company’s social media accounts including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. They can also make pages on the client’s website shareable; users should be able to post pages from the website directly to their own social media accounts with just a simple click of a button.
10. Make Website Security A High Priority
Another best practice that Web Developers must always follow is to make website security a high priority. Though the number of data breaches has declined in the past couple of years, it continues to be a serious problem that Web Developers must address in order to protect their clients.
If a website you build lacks sufficient security measures, sensitive information could be exposed, causing your client to lose a considerable amount of time and money. A data breach of this kind would also severely damage your client’s reputation and reduce their standing in the community. Web Developers can offer protection by encrypting data, using exception management, implementing HTTPS, and applying authentication, role management, and access control, just to name a few security measures.
How to Learn Web Development Best Practices
Would you like to learn web development best practices and have an opportunity to apply them? The best way to do this is by enrolling in web development classes in your area or online. Though it is possible to learn these practices on your own, it requires a lot more time and self-discipline compared to taking web development classes. Taking classes provides you with built-in structure and accountability to keep you on track. Plus with their in-depth curriculum, you’ll receive a comprehensive education instead of trying to piece together a study plan on your own from various sources. You can even take web development classes live online if you prefer learning from home.
Another way to learn best practices is to enroll in a web development bootcamp. With their compressed schedules and broad skills-based curriculum, bootcamps are the best choice for those who want to pursue a career in front end, back end, or full stack development. Depending upon your location, you may be able to find a web development bootcamp in your area. If there are none available, a viable alternative would be enrolling in a web development bootcamp live online. This option combines the expert instruction and live feedback of an in-person class with the convenience of learning online.