Single Page Applications for Mobile App Development

4 min readJan 9, 2023

As smartphone users, we’ve all interacted with single-page applications knowingly or unknowingly. The experience of using a SPA can be a refreshing change of pace from traditional multi-page browser-based apps. Gmail, Netflix, PayPal, Facebook, and Instagram are some of the most commonly and popularly used examples of single-page applications. They all have two things in common, firstly they are built to be functional, and secondly, they are extremely fast.

Single-page applications are designed keeping speed in mind, particularly the initial load time, and minimal page reload time.

The primary goal of SP applications is to increase the time of engagement. As application speeds directly correlate to bounce rates and other engagement metrics. Single-page applications are designed to retain users for as long as they can, which is necessary to provide a satisfying experience.

What is A Single Page Application?

A SPA application involves a single main page that continuously interacts with the users by dynamically rewriting the current page rather than loading new or different pages from a server.

A Single Page Application will only rewrite the content on the current page in response to user actions.

The dynamic loading of content on single-page web applications creates a naturally fluid user experience. This makes the applications feel like they are native desktop or mobile applications in nature.

Role Of SPAs In Mobile App Development

Single Page Applications can transition smoothly and easily into mobile apps because all of the data is delivered at once. Single-page applications are suited or ideal for scrolling. This makes them an ideal starting point for developing mobile apps.

As we know how addictive scrolling can be, users don’t want to hop to different screens. It’s much easier and more comfortable for a user to get all the content and information from a single page itself with an infinite scroll.

What is a Multi-Page Application?

A multi-page Application is a traditional web application, in which a new page is requested from the server to display when data is exchanged back and forth. The amount of content a multi-page application can carry is enormous. Therefore, MPAs are generally multi-level deep with a considerable number of links and intricate UIs.

Single-Page Apps vs. Multi-Page Apps

Mobile development has a variety of techniques that one can choose from. Usually, reactive rendering by the use of CSS media queries provides a good solution.

These techniques follow traditional Web development, where each page is focused on a specific task. In a standard app, there will be a page devoted to the list of items, another page to view details or data, and perhaps more pages to edit specific items.

Single Page Application (SPA) approaches development differently. SPA consists of a single view page that handles everything. A SPA page can contain all the presentation markup required by the application. The view visible to the user is determined by the manipulation of the Document Object Model (DOM).

SPA benefits include less network bandwidth and faster navigation. The supporting navigation and JavaScript libraries only have to be transmitted once. Additionally, on-page navigation provides faster navigation as the second benefit. Unlike server-side development, SPA development is primarily done on the client side.

SPA’s growing prevalence does not make it the perfect web development choice for your next project. Choosing between single-page applications vs multi-page applications depends on your business requirements

Advantages Of Using Single-Page Applications

Single-page applications are considerably faster as almost all of the resources, including HTML, CSS, and Scripts, are loaded at once while the data is transmitted back and forth. Following are some of the benefits of building single-page applications for your business:

Quicker Loading Times: A SPA’s full-page loads quicker than a traditional web application, as it only has to load a page on the first request generated. Whereas on the other hand, traditional web apps are obligated to load pages at every request, which considerably takes more time.
Seamless User Experience: SPAs can deliver a desktop app/mobile app-like experience. Users do not have to wait for a new page to load, as only the content changes and not the page, making the experience an enjoyable one.
Build Feature-rich Apps With Ease: An SPA-type app makes it easy to add advanced features. So, it is rather easier to build a ‘content editing’ web app with real-time analysis using SPA development. Doing the same with traditional web app development practices requires a total page reload to perform content analysis.
Consume Less Bandwidth: SPAs consume less bandwidth since they only load web pages once. Besides that, SPAs can also do well in areas having slow internet connections. Therefore, it is convenient for everyone to use, regardless of their internet speed.

Conclusion

In the current scenario of mobile app development, single-page applications have found their special place. App companies seeking the fastest, lightest code deployments possible seek out these single-page apps as a way to keep users actively engaged on their websites.

Concurrently, companies need to be wise in considering both the complexity of their application and the strategy needed to draw in new users. These two aspects will be the key determinants of whether or not a single-page application is right for your use case.