Is React Suitable for Your Project?

Learn Why You Should Hire React Developers for Your Next Web Project

In this day and age, users are very demanding when it comes to performance. Websites must load in the blink of an eye and respond to any user action immediately. This spurred developers to search for ways to satisfy these demands of the Internet audience. Over the past decade, a good many JavaScript libraries and frameworks have been introduced in an attempt to boost website performance and interactivity.

Some have failed to stand the test of time and are now dead and buried. Others have taken off and are being used by web developers across the globe. One of these survivors is React.js, an advanced JavaScript front-end library — Mark Zuckerberg’s company’s brainchild.

We’ve already discussed the benefits of React for businesses in a previous post. Here is a quick recap.

Why Use React

• React’s documentation is very detailed and deals with every aspect of using this library. 
• React is favored by some leading world’s companies, including eBay and Adobe. Knowing this, the team frequently rolls out well-tested updates. 
• React.js has its mobile “offspring” – React Native. It allows developers to build a single app for iOS and Android simultaneously by just using React and JavaScript. This saves money and time, since you only need to hire React developers instead of two separate native mobile development teams. 
• The library is extremely popular these days. Thus, you can easily find experts to build a website with React. 

Thanks to these and other strengths, more companies are choosing React.js for their web projects. That being said, is React a one-size-fits-all solution? After all, there are so many different types of websites, such as portfolios, galleries, media sites, business directories, blogs, and a host of others. Can React cater to all of them? The answer is, “Yes, for almost all.” For some, though, React is the best option hands down.

Let’s take a look at the most common situations when you might consider using React over other alternatives.

#1: You Are Going to Build Another Facebook

If your ambitions extend as far as to giving the world a new social network like Facebook or Instagram, React.js is just the right tool for the purpose. Social network users expect their words and actions, such as giving a like or dislike, to be reflected without delay.

With the standard old-school approach, every user action equals one request to a server. This is followed by an entire page reload, which steals valuable time and slows down the site. React’s “specialty,” by contrast, is building Single Page Applications (SPAs).

The beauty of an SPA is that once the main JavaScript file is loaded from a server to a client, all the action takes place in the browser. There’s no need to re-render every element on a page. React watches out for any modifications and updates only the page components that have changed. This is possible thanks to the Virtual DOM, a feature that React developers love.

#2: You Need a Visual Data Management Tool to Analyze Your Business KPIs

Any business, whether big or small, accumulates a lot of data related to its activity. How many coats have customers purchased this month? What has been the most active customer target group? What cities have brought the largest revenue? There are lots and lots of data to keep track of.

The best way to do this is to gather these numbers into one centralized location and present them in a visual, easily digestible way as a dashboard. React is the best fit to handle this kind of task. Data on a dashboard may need to be modified almost every millisecond.

One of the main advantages of React is that it can effectively deal with data updates without having to reload the entire dashboard every time something changes. These are the key features that allow React developers to achieve this:

• Virtual DOM. Only the elements that have received new inputs are re-rendered. This speeds up the updating process so that users can watch changes in real time.
• Server-side rendering. Without getting overly technical, let’s say that React developers can execute identical JS code on the host and in a browser. This excludes the blank page issue during dashboard loading and operation stages.

#3: You Need to Build a Mobile App to Accompany Your Website Fast

Nowadays, it’s customary to have a mobile app to complement a website, and this is particularly true for eCommerce stores. There are several ways to achieve this:

• You can build two separate native apps for Android and iOS. This is an expensive and time-consuming option.
• You can build a hybrid app by using the standard web technologies (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript).
• You can build an app to work on both iOS and Android by using mobile frameworks like React Native.

React and React Native are related like elder and younger brothers. The latter makes use of the React.js library. Thus, a React developer who knows JavaScript can quickly get to grips with React Native.

React Native certainly has its own specific features. For instance, it uses no HTML. However, it follows the same architectural principles as its elder brother. As a result, you can quickly have a mobile app that is almost indistinguishable from an Android or iOS app.

#4: You Want to Sell Products Online

You might also be already selling merchandise on the Internet. You can take the React.js library, add it to your site, and start building components — one of the most attractive features of React. In a nutshell, components represent chunks of code that are almost completely self-contained. This is similar to apartments in an apartment block.

There are three main benefits that online store owners can reap by using React components:

1. If one component falls out of order, the ones remaining will keep on working just fine. This is a weak spot of many traditional websites and web applications. Once something goes wrong on one part of a site like that, its entire work is disrupted.
2. React developers can take a ready-made component and port it to another site or app. Just imagine how much it speeds up the development process! A site literally turns into a building toy. If necessary, you can tweak an available React component to suit your specific business needs.
3. Components can promptly react to changes that occur in their specific area of responsibility. For example, a component that encapsulates a form may display different notifications to different users, depending on whether the form has been accepted or rejected without having to reload the entire page.

To sum up, React components contribute to speedy development of online stores and their smooth, fast operation. All these benefits of React can give you a considerable edge over competitors.

When to Use React.js in General?

• You may want to hire React developers if you’re planning to have a complex user interface. That’s when standard tools and methods are unable to handle the task successfully. Thanks to its easy-to-plug-in components, React will allow you to create any site structure regardless of its complexity.
• You should also consider hiring a React development team when your website is highly interactive, that is when there’s a lot going on. For example, buttons are enabled or disabled depending on users’ responses, form fields are displayed or hidden away for individual users, navigation items are highlighted or greyed out, and so on.
• Choose React when you have frequently updated data that you need to see in real time. React uses virtual DOM and server-side rendering to ensure that users never see a blank page.
• React is also preferable when you need to assemble a site quickly. This can be an MVP, for instance, to validate a hypothesis. A React development team can achieve this by adding ready-made components to an existing site.
• React is great for ambitious businesses that are planning to expand their activities in the future. They may have only simple, static sites at the moment. When they start to grow, they can use React to add new features and make their sites more complex and interactive for higher engagement with the target audience.

What Is React Used for

Conclusion

Are you still on the fence about whether to select React for your next web project? Talk to our React development team. We know all the ins and outs of this advanced technology and can help you resolve all your doubts.