Congratulations! Your app is a hit and you’ve just reached a million subscribers. You’re all set and ecstatic that your business is growing.
Except that you don’t know if your app will be able to sustain the sudden windfall of subscribers.
What if it crashes? Will the entire application have to be rebuilt?
How do you rapidly scale the app to accommodate new users?
The obvious answer would be to hire front-end developers. However, before you go on to hire developers, it is important to understand that scalability isn’t just a function but a set of practices or tweaks that can be made to the codebase so as to increase its speed and performance without hindering the functionality or the user experience.
This blog covers some of the best practices commonly used by industry experts to build scalable front-ends.
Understanding Scalability
The scalability of an app refers to its ability to grow and adapt to changes in demand. Scalability is of two types- Horizontal and vertical scalability.
- Horizontal scalability – This refers to adding more nodes and machines. For instance, an additional server could be a solution if you want to enhance your app’s ability to handle more traffic.
- Vertical scalability – This means adding more power to the system to handle additional users like upgrading CPUs, increasing memory, etc.
Importance of Scalability
Before we talk about the set of principles to follow to build a scalable front-end, it is important to understand why it is necessary for businesses to build a scalable app in the first place:-
- Customer acquisition costs are at a minimum when you have a system that can handle a heavy workload.
- Scalability allows you to add more features seamlessly to enhance the user experience without hindering its performance.
- Scalability increases the reliability of an app and keeps maintenance costs at a minimum.
Key Principles of building scalable front-ends
Separation of Concerns
This process breaks down the different layers in the application into smaller units or sections, and each section pertains to a separate concern or feature.
This process of organizing components, modules, and widgets thereby increases code reusability, reducing code duplication and ease of testing and deployment.
This makes the entire system more stable and easier to maintain. When you hire front-end developers, make sure the person understands this software design principle.
Scalable logging
Monitoring of logs has become more complicated with distributed computing systems and logs scattered across multiple systems. When logged codes serve single processes, it becomes exhausting for developers to access them in times of need.
A centralized logging system sends logs to the external server, and there they are merged and stored in a centralized logging system, making it easy for developers to access information a lot quicker.
Single Responsibility Principle
This essentially means that each class should have just one responsibility or one single purpose. This means fewer bug changes and easier to scan, perceive and modify the code without breaking the complete application.
Caching
Every website has HTML and JavaScript elements like files, images, videos, etc. Caching is when these files are stored in temporary storage, and the web browser renders them whenever a web page is reloaded. With most of the content stored in a cache, the page load time is reduced drastically.
Here are some other benefits of caching that developers experience:-
- Less bandwidth is required to load content
- Speedy navigation
- Improved user experience and ability to handle more traffic
Component state management
This makes the state of an app visible in the form of data structures. You know exactly where your data is. Component state management gives you a point-in-time snapshot of where the data is, and this makes your development faster.
Hooks, effects, and contexts are some of the tools that React developers use. Therefore, knowledge of component statement management tools is another important skill to screen when you hire front-end developers.
Changelogs
A changelog, as the name suggests, is a document of all the changes and modifications that were are up to the app in every release or update, like the introduction of new features, bug fixes, etc.
In addition, while it is important to understand where the current version of your app came from, keeping a changelog helps keep all team members on the same page.
Finally, another major advantage of keeping a changelog is that when a new member comes on board, he won’t have to waste time playing catch-up and can get a start with the development process sooner.
Version Control Systems
This tracks and monitors changes made to the code over a period of time. This is especially true for projects which have a number of developers and designers working on the project at the same time, and there is a need to manage multiple versions and components.
This enables faster and smoother deployment as everyone has access to changes made to the code.
Performance measuring
Performance measuring is an important part of app development as it gives valuable insights into what’s working and what isn’t, changes needed, etc. Here are the three main areas that need monitoring:-
- First contentful paint – Firstly, it is what the users see on the screen while images and other elements of your site load up.
- Speed Index – Secondly, this is the time it takes for the visible content of a web page to show up on the screen while functions still load in the background. Needless to say, the lower the time taken, the better the user experience.
- Time to interact – Finally, a user-centric metric that measures how quickly users can interact with the page. If the page is slow to respond, visitors can get out and may decide to leave the page.
Wrapping up…
It is a tough market, and when an app is out in the market, it is up to compete with giants commanding significant market shares.
A scalable app increases your competitiveness in the market. A growing user base can put unnecessary pressure on the app, thereby either in the form of increasing traffic, number of interactions on the site, or larger volumes of data, slowing down its performance or causing it to crash eventually.
The principles mentioned above aren’t a up with rules but a set of best practices that can help optimize your app and enhance its functionalities to achieve higher usability, maintainability, and reliability.
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