What Is a Single Page Application? Meaning, Pitfalls & Benefits

The most sustainable way to make the business successful in today’s competitive & fast-paced digital era is building user-centric websites and applications. An online platform is important for your business to get recognized among users.

To put it short, the online platform provides a seamless experience to the users and it has led businesses to dig deeper and get a new way of reaching the customers online.

That is the main reason why organizations are moving towards building a few parts of their web application with this newly emerged term “Single Page Application (SPA)”.

So, what is a single page application, and why did the need arise for SPAs?

In the past, browsers were less capable in terms of performance in comparison to today’s page. Every time you click something, a new page gets loaded from the server which makes it time-consuming. But, the same is not the case with a single-page app. It will only reload the data which the user has requested thus, the process becomes faster.

So, that’s how the single-page applications came in the picture. If you’ve got a brilliant web app idea, and you’re in search of a perfect technology to build your app, then this blog is for you.

Curious to know more about this one-page web app? Let’s deep dive into it!

What is a Single Page Application?

As the names suggests, it is a single page where all information is available on the same page. It is even known as a type of web application architecture used to manage the components of a web app.

Whenever you click something or scroll the page, only a few elements will change and the rest will remain the same. Single Page Application monitoring works in the browser and does not require any extra page load time. The SPAs only load the information that you ask for with a click. For instance, when you browse through an email, you’ll notice that every information on sidebar or header will remain as it is when you navigate through the inbox or anything such.

In technical terms, single page web applications is a design approach with HTML5 and modern browsers to shift page and UI logic from the server to browser in lesser time. It uses JavaScript, HTML and CSS to load the resources dynamically.

The thing to always remember about the SPAs is the page neither gets reloaded at any point of the process nor transforms the control to another page.

It is a win-win situation. Users don’t need to wait much for the information, and the server has to send lesser data. This approach enhances the overall user experience.

Best Single Page Application Examples

The websites mentioned below are the ones that you use in your day-to-day life. But you might not know that they are built as SPAs.

But the list does not end here, there are tons of SPA examples. So, what do you think? Why did all these huge companies decide to go with the single page application approach?

Benefits of Single Page Applications

There are immense benefits of SPAs. Let’s get through some of them.

Quick Loading Time

In single page web apps, once the page gets loaded, the server does not send any more HTML or CSS. Whereas for the traditional one, every time when new data is requested, the whole page gets reloaded.

Thus, the quick interchangeability makes single page web applications useful to the pages that need to use the same template innumerable times. According to Google Research, if a page takes more than or around 200 milliseconds to load, it has a high impact on the business and sales.

Good Caching Abilities

One of the best advantages of single page application development is that it can cache any local data efficiently. The SPA just sends one request and stores all data from the server. As there is on-going access to the data, users can even work offline. Here, the local data is synchronized with the server.

Improved User Experience

Single page web apps are amazing for creating innovative pages and providing an amazing user experience. As the users do not need to wait for the new page to load. The dynamic loading of the content gives the user a seamless experience.

Rapid Front-End Development

The SPAs let the developers build front-end development faster than before.

The main reason for it is decoupled single page application architecture. It separates the front end and back end development services. With this decoupled setup, developers can build, test and deploy the front-end independently.

Everything works here through APIs, that follow the standard rules on how to structure, exchange and recollect the data. APIs lets developers work independently and quickly.

Drawbacks of Single Page Application Architecture

Along with benefits, there come a few disadvantages too for SPAs.

Search Engine Optimization

It is a common opinion that SPAs do not have a good impression on search engine optimization. The main reason for it is single page web apps run on the javascript. The data here will be downloaded when users send a request. With all this, the URL of the page remains the same as the different pages do not have a unique URL. Further, it becomes hard to optimize for search engines as the search bots can’t scan the pages.

Google Search is now improving to optimize the SPAs page, but the developers need to make sure that the Javascript files built by them are indexed by Google. The reason is Google has its own Crawler.

Complex SPAs Comes with Issue

When you build a complex single page application, it maybe inconvenient to use because of its size. They do not perform well with such complexity. The loading time of the page may increase due to its complexity. It can give a bad experience to the user and may decrease the user engagement.

Analytics

We know that analytics tools can track the page view, just by adding a single code to the page. But the situation isn’t the same single page web apps. As the SPAs aren’t the real pages. You need to add logic for tracking and need to ensure that the analytical tool will pick a new page without the need of refreshing the page. But, it becomes a bit of a cumbersome task to add new logic to the code.

When To Use Single Page Application?

Single page web apps are an ideal choice when thinking about future web development. This architecture is a perfect choice for social networks stuff, SaaS platforms, or some close communities where SEO doesn’t matter. Though, if your project needs an effective SEO then we would suggest you go for a multi-page application.

On the other hand, if you want excellent and rich communication between your application and users, then the SPA approach is a must. With that, if you need real-time updates on the page, then single page application architecture will suit best.

So, these are some of the situations that require SPAs approach.

Now a curious question coming to your mind will be, “How to build single page applications”, right?

Let’s find the perfect answer to it!!

SEE ALSO: Why Use AngularJS?

How to Build a Single Page Application?

The two cornerstones that will help you to build a perfect single page app are tools & team. Let’s go through both of them in depth.

Single Page Application Technologies & Tools

Following are the technologies & tools you will require to make a single page application.

Javascript Frameworks

The first and foremost thing required to build a single page app is the javascript frameworks. We have already mentioned the top javascript frameworks further in this article.

Backend Technologies

When it comes to backend technology for a single page web app, you are free to choose any based on your needs. Whether it is PHP frameworks or Node.js, all of them will work well to develop a single page application.

Database

As per our experience and popularity, MongoDB and MySQL are the best choices for the database in such web apps. To put it short it will suit best for your single-page app.

AJAX

It is a necessary technology to launch single page web applications. AJAX is responsible for the client and server data exchange.

Single Page App Development Team

The most preferable option to build a single page application is to hire a whole development team. They will not only help you to create a bug-free single page app but will also come up with unique ideas for the same.

All you need to take care is about hiring a team who have experience in building such web apps and have good reviews from clients. Your single page app development team must include:

• UX/UI Designers
• Backend Developers
• Frontend Developers
• Qualitative Analyst
• Project Manager to ensure that the whole team is on the same page

Single Page Application Frameworks

If you’re thinking of building your project with SPAs, then selecting a powerful framework is important. Here I’ve listed some of the top frameworks of SPA.

• Anjular.js
• React.js
• Backbone.js
• Ember.js

Here’s a comparison table between all four frameworks to give a better idea on which framework will suit your project the best.

Above all, Anjular.js development is the best single page application framework. It is widely used to create client-side SPAs.

Quick View: Single-Page vs Multi-Page Apps

Single page application just loads the requested information while for multipage application the browser reloads and download the whole content of the page again. It is one of the major difference between multipage and single page web apps.

To give you a quick idea for both, single page application design is best when you’re targeting the user engagement and ignoring SEO. While the multipage application design will increase your scope to reach the potentials users, good for SEO optimization and stick to the traditional navigation system. In short, if you have a large company with so many products to describe, the multipage app is a good choice. And if you want a dynamic platform targeting a narrow group of users, single-page app is a choice.

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Are You Ready To Use Single Page Application In Your Project?

Everything has its pros and cons, but you need to make a decision by keeping your needs in mind. SPAs is the right choice for web application development of the future.

Startups planning to develop a product with a goal of user-engagement and increased visibility, then it is a key thing to explore the SPAs at best.

So, that was all about the single-page application and its impacts. If you’ve decided to build a single page web application but are still confused with anything, feel free to talk to our experts!!

FAQs For Single Page Application