In web development, design and programming merge more and more as mobile, internet delivery, and data technologies advance. While keeping in mind the continual blurring of traditional technology lines (programming, design, hardware, PC, big data, etc.), here are some development trends to watch in the coming years.

1. Continued Development of Web-Based Programming - One of Info World's hot topics for the year, technological advancements have made it practical to create fully functional apps to be delivered via a web-browser. This reduces OS specific programming costs, and the marketing issues faced with various app marketplaces.
2. Big Enterprise Goes Open - "Just one day after Big Data firm Pivotal Software Inc. revamped its business model and open sourced core technologies," Microsoft Azure announced an open source integration to be used on Linux. Microsoft follows Google's Android which is leading the way. Today, watch for innovative ways open source technologies are going to be integrated with enterprise systems.
3. Data Management - With the last holiday season's queuing issues, data speed in web development is once again a significant issue.
4. Simplified Designs - With mobile development increasingly using websites over apps, web based applications need to be simple and easy to use. Modern trends are to use less color, less images and longer pages to produce aesthetically pleasing, minimalist designs.
5. Agile Development - According to TechRadar, a trend continuing to grow in 2015 is agile development processes. In the past, software development teams spent intense amounts of time building the foundations of their programs, then they worked on the functional aspects. With so much open source or cheap programming frameworks available, programming and design teams are using agile to cheaply and efficiently produce programs.
6. Smart Production Will Slow - With high-turnover technological products already integrated in the mobile-web driven world, new "smart" products will slow as they are worked into long-lived product cycles, according to Web Designer Depot.
7. Increasing Screen Diversity - As companies are releasing watches, glasses, and more wearable technology, interfaces are getting increasingly complex. Web development will increasingly use Responsive Design to optimize across multiple platforms.
8. Single Page Applications - To reduce screen problems, to manage data, and to simplify the user experience, single page web applications will become more common.
9. Data Processing on the Front End - Web applications have traditionally done most of their processing via servers. As more content is delivered via browser based programs, responsive programming languages take away the heavy lifting from the server and rely on each user's processing capabilities. This presents businesses the opportunity to develop large systems without extensive server presences.
10. Images are Big - When Grace and Lace appeared on ABC's Shark Tank, none of the sharks could believe a company could have pulled in as much money as they did off socks, with minimal advertising. Until the owner said her photograph was one of the most shared pictures on Pinterest. One well-done image can make a company, and with high definition screens the standard for mobile technology, expect high quality images to continue to be a part of web design and development.
11. Continued Use of Games - Many apps have been using the functionality, feel, and reward/consequence aspects of the gaming universe, even when creating serious commercial software. With online gaming itself becoming a huge industry, organizations will continue to use the feel of games to increase marketing of their web programs.
12. Cloud Infrastructure - The cloud is not just changing the way we access data, it is changing the way we think about information and business processes. Web design and development will include increasingly more powerful apps as high speed fiber connections, cloud hosting services, and colocation providers bring big data closer to consumers. These data processes will change the way businesses access data: employees anywhere, management everywhere, and systems available for any constituent.

We offer web development, creative processes, app management and software engineering services using Agile processes. Please contact us for more information about keeping your web development current. 

Wanting an app is easy. In an increasingly mobile-dominated digital environment, it makes perfect sense to reach your potential customers through more ways than one, and a mobile app seems like a perfect solution. The more practical aspects of mobile app development, though, require more thought and planning. We'd love to help! If you want an app but don't know where to start, here are three things you should know before building your first mobile app.

1) Know Your Customers

Any effective marketing-related effort has to begin with your audience, and the process of developing a mobile app is no different. Before you even begin your app development process, you should know everything you can about your potential customers' behavior on mobile devices.

What is their preferred operating system? Would they really prefer an app over a more simple solution like a responsive website that adjusts its design based on their preference? How receptive would they be to the concept of native web apps or extensions that they can use without leaving their browser?

All of these are questions for which you should at least be able to make an educated guess on the answer. Getting that answer can involve surveys and even informal focus groups with your current customers, while you can glean some of the information (such as your customers' preferred mobile devices and operating systems) with a look at your analytics accounts.

2) Know Your Goal

Once you know what your customers want and need, it's time to figure out just what you want to accomplish with your app. This is, of course, intimately connected to the first question: knowing your customers will give you a better idea of what they expect from a mobile app.

But at the same time, pointing out the necessity of knowing your potential app's goal is worth its own point. Your app could function as a brand awareness-builder, a brand loyalty helper with an integrated reward system, or incorporate ecommerce capabilities.

Of course, there are many more possible directions for your app to go in, each of them requiring a different approach to get to the finished product. Establishing a singular goal and developing your app with that goal in mind will go a long way toward getting a polished and effective app that helps attract and retain customers.

3) Know Your Developer

Trust us when we say this: any app developer you work with will appreciate their clients coming in with answers to the first two points in this blog post. But at the same time, they'll be glad to help you figure out the direction of your app. Of course, that's where the similarities of app developers end.

As you may have noticed when you browsed through our website and past blog post, we are firm believers in the "agile" development process. That means breaking up a project such as your app into several different parts that can be developed at once, allowing for increased testing times and cost-effectiveness.

Of course, not every developer subscribes to this methodology. Others prefer a more traditional "waterfall" development process in which an app (or website) is developed in a more linear, step-by-step process. Understanding your developer's philosophy when it comes to app development is crucial to finding a partner that fits your needs.

If you're thinking about adding to your company's digital presence with a mobile app, you've made the first important step. Congratulations! Following the three above steps will help ensure that the rest of the process will go as smoothly as that initial decision. And if you need any additional help throughout your planning process, don't hesitate to contact us!