How Data Science is Transforming Web Development

A billion hours ago, modern Homo sapiens emerged.
A billion minutes ago, Christianity began.
A billion seconds ago, the IBM personal computer was released.
A billion Google searches ago was this morning.”

-Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist, December, 2013 (From the book: Work Rules by Laszlo Buck)

The last line of the above quote points at the world’s hunger for information. Information plays a huge role in our life. Information consumed by our senses helps our mind in taking decisions. But what happens when the mind is flooded with information. You get confused, irritated and scared of decision-making. This is where your computers and processors come to rescue, and this is when the term information is replaced by data.

Every minute, more than a hundred hours of video content is uploaded on YouTube. From the application stores, 50+ billion apps have already been downloaded since 2008. There are 2+ billion people signed up on social media websites. These numbers are just giving you a glimpse of the amount of data which is flowing through the optical fibers every second around the world. And now the question comes how to make this massive amount of data useful? The answer is Analytics. If you know how to play with numbers and extract the nectar of useful insights from this huge amount of data using appropriate analytical tools, then you are my friend, are a real data scientist.

Data science is helping so many businesses irrespective of them being B2B or B2C. But in this article, we are going to talk more about its role in one of the biggest B2B industries — Custom Web Development. If you are a web developer, you must not ignore the rise of data science in your profession, and if you are thinking about hiring one, even then you should know about the latest trends to supervise the development process in a better way. So, let’s discuss the role of data science in the transformation of web development:

1. Re(de)fining the Software Solutions

Not a very long time ago, web developers used to be creative with the page layouts and menu details. It was generally a guess-work. But now data science tells the web developers about the layouts and details of the competitor websites. Hence, they can propose a unique design after carefully evaluating the competition.

Also with the help of the latest analytical tools, web developers can know what the requirements of the end users are. They can suggest particular functions or features which are popular among the customers based on the analysis of consumer data. In this way, data science is assisting the developers in providing better and faster software solutions to their clients.

2. Automatic Updates

Gone are the days when updates had to be manually administered by the developers. This is the era of automation. The machine learning enabled tools to analyze consumer behavior and data available on social media platforms to come up with required updates. The websites are made self-learning so that they can improve themselves with the changing demands of the customers. It is possible only because data science is doing its job perfectly.

Although this part is still facing some challenges with creating customized solutions for different clients but, soon custom web development services will make it a piece of cake with the help of data science.

3. Customizing for end users

We have discussed until now that how web development can be customized for the clients using data science, but the real goal should be the satisfaction of end users. And satisfaction is a dependent variable of personalization. To create a personalized product for the users, you need to know them, and in this regard, data science is actually helping web developers.

The spending habits, interest areas, preferred websites, geographical location, age, and gender, etc. all this information of the end users are used to create algorithmic models which can predict the consumer’s alignment towards your web apps. Using these models, you can not only give the user a personalized experience on the website but also strategically place your ads targeting specific customer segments, thus, creating a win-win situation for both buyer and seller.

4. Changing Hot-Skills

Apart from changing the way the web is being designed by the developers, data science is influencing the transformation of web development in one more way, i.e., by revolutionizing the job market. With ever-changing needs of the industry, a custom web development company wants employees equipped with the skills of using the latest data and analytics tools.

The developers looking for jobs today are expected to have knowledge of tools like python and google analytics. They are asked about their proficiency in creating AI and ML programs in their interviews. Therefore, to stay relevant, one has to stay updated.

5. Customer’s expectations

Do you get irritated when the Uber’s driver call you to ask about your pick-up location when it can be easily tracked by the GPS and clearly displayed on his device’s screen? Won’t you feel uncomfortable if you misspell something while typing on your messenger and autocorrect stops helping? And don’t you feel nice when you buy a phone online and the web app suggests your latest phone covers for it?

Well, if the answer is yes, then you are becoming dependent on data science too. Don’t worry; it’s not only you. Customers worldwide like extra help provided by businesses. And this dependency on data will soon make the use of data science a hygiene factor in web development.

Conclusion

Although it’s called Data Science, using it nothing less than an art. It requires expertise and dedication to develop a web app which completely harnesses the potential of data science.

Data science is a vast field. It is responsible for AI, machine learning, big data, and analytics, etc. This also drives technologies such as the Internet of Things and AR/VR. Hence, when all the modern buzzwords of business are somewhere related to data and its science, it needs absolute ignorance to neglect the role of data science in the development of websites and web apps.