All the Truth About Single Page Application

Single page application (SPA) is one of the most arguable and hottest trends that evokes completely different points of view. SPA is a web application or website that loads all the needed resources to work with the single page. Websites developed with the help of SPA look like native apps and give users feeling of simplicity.

Pros and Cons of Single Page Application

SPA has its benefits and implications, still when it comes to development of a website, single-page apps сan be the best option for your business for a variety of causes. Let us dwell upon the pros and cons of this application and review exciting single page websites that are based on SPA.

Responsiveness Stands Out

One of the strongest benefits of the single page application is responsiveness. It looks outstanding on multi-platform devices, no matter whether it is desktop or a tablet. Most of multi-page websites are responsive too, still the more complex a structure of a website is, the more difficult it is for visitors to navigate easily through it and to keep them stay on it. Single-page apps solve this problem.

Powerful Appeal for an Action

It is obvious that call-to-action on single pages may be even more effective thanks to no space limits and catchy design concepts than it is on regular websites where the space limit exists. The storytelling on a single page website motivates users to take action and makes them stay on the website.

Simplicity in Functionality

No page refresh, faster and more fluid user experience, easier structure, and ability to work offline all these make SPA a great app for your business. It perfectly suits for businesses that don’t want to overload a website with different pages, categories, and sections, but want to present its business exquisiteness via a website style and design.

SAP Pitfalls

For many experts development of a single page applications has become much easier after the release of Angular.js. Using this toolset helps to unload the server in consequence of reducing the quantity of transmitted data. It does not require constant connection with the server what simplifies the process of development even more.

SEO Implications

When you are going to develop a website, promotion and search engine optimization are the first actions to be applied after a website launch. Your website may be sophisticated and trendy but design and structure don't make any sense without SEO and leads to your website. Unfortunately, SPA makes search optimization almost impossible. According to Santiago L. Valdarrama there is a way to overcome this obstacle but it doesn’t make the working process easier:

"There's a solution to this problem commonly referred as the hashbang approach, but it means adding server side code to return a static HTML snapshot of the page to the crawler and the regular code to the browser. Setting this up correctly makes the whole SPA approach very complicated and inconvenient."

Flexible Application

According to Mobilunity leading front-end developer Aleksey Serdukov, single page application is a simple back-end with cool UI. It is universal web/mobile solution, strict logic / UI division, easy to develop, easy to expand, easy to deploy. It greatly simplifies the work with interface for both developers and users and SPA has many reasons to be considered for a business. Although SPAs are popular and are already used in Twitter and Google’s projects they cause slow loading of a webpage in case of extensive content and images.

Do you use single page website in your business? Feel free to share your experience in the comments.