What Is A Single Page Application (SPA) And How Can It Help Businesses?

Companies that are looking to boost engagement with their customers (and potential customers) need to make sure that they offer a smooth experience for individuals visiting their website. This is more important than ever before, especially with people accessing the Internet everywhere via portable devices.

Back in the earlier days of the Internet, a static website might have been sufficient for presenting information. But for best results today, you’ll want to offer content to people with an SPA, or Single Page Application.

How can an SPA help you improve your business? A single-page application is an application that dynamically rewrites the current web page with new data from a web server instead of loading an entirely new page.

Major examples of businesses using SPAs include Facebook and Google, which only need to load parts of a web page to present new information on demand to users.

Here are some ways a single-page application can help businesses:

Increase Responsiveness and Speed

You can count on your page loading faster, because single-page applications load all needed JavaScript, CSS and HTML resources immediately when someone visits the site.

As someone scrolls through your page, the JavaScript allows data to present dynamically after it’s already been downloaded in the background — so even if there are issues with a person’s Internet connection after the page loads, it will continue to work properly.

Improve User Experience

You’ll want to provide the best user experience (also called UX) to visitors. This includes respecting the fact that people’s phones and laptops may be running low on battery power. An SPA reduces power requirements, since only part of the page needs to reload in response to a user.

You’ll find that it’s easier for people to navigate a single-page application, since they aren’t constantly experiencing page reloads.

Consider how when you click a message in your Gmail account, you see the note immediately, without having to wait for the entire page to refresh. That’s the sort of convenience your users will want and demand when visiting your site.

Enable Cross-Platform Compatibilities

Ideally, your site will only deliver the code that’s needed to render a page on a person’s browser. For example, single-page applications developed with AngularJS automatically split code so the page will load correctly and quickly no matter what platform is being used to access it.

Someone using an Android smartphone, an iPhone or a Windows desktop computer should have the same kind of experience when you offer a single-application website. That’s the kind of consistency people expect these days, often beginning an Internet search with their phone only to pick it up later with a laptop, for example.

Harness the Power of Single-Page Application Websites

With so many businesses engaging customers with single-page applications, it makes sense for you to explore using this approach to website development too. You’ll be keeping up with industry best practices and will also be encouraging visitors to stick around, rather than visiting a competitor.

After all, the faster your site loads on a person’s smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer, and the more responsive it is, the more you can engage with customers.

Guest post from Hotwire Networks, a shared hosting & web development company founded in 1999.