To change or not to change? If you are still reluctant to switch to the ASP.NET MVC framework, this blog will help you by describing how your organization can benefit from MVC. Namely, make your operations more efficient, your applications more attractive and your developers and users better off
Change is the only constant in life. The same goes for the field of Web development, where new technologies and best design practices are continually changing the perspective and paradigm of how applications are built and experienced. Once upon a time, we looked at static web content, clicked on shopping carts and read press articles online. Fast forward a decade and poof! PWA, AMP, SPA, AI, ML, IoT, bots and other emerging technologies are essential elements of the life of web developers.
While it is crucial for decision makers to become familiar with all these trends and buzzwords, it is just as essential to focus on the basics that keep you ahead of the game. Namely, speed, performance, productivity and, finally, the user experience. Hence the need for the type of technology that creates better experiences and does it even faster and smarter.
Welcome MVC, also known as the standard web development framework.
This blog explores how the MVC framework can add value to your business, improve your mastery of your website, and help your marketers and developers do what they do with more focus and control. We’re going to flip the coin a few times and talk about both the technology benefits, but no less importantly the benefits for those who grow our business – our users.
Superior Performance
Speed can make or break the user experience of your website and, ultimately, your bottom line. But don’t take our word for it. The Financial Times puts it best: “Site speed has a negative impact on a user’s session depth, no matter how late … The data suggests, in terms of user experience and financial impact, that ‘There are clear and much-appreciated advantages of the site even faster. ”
How does MVC help? Simply put, MVC helps in optimizing website performance. One of the main differentiating factors when working with MVC is that, unlike older technologies like web forms, you have full control over HTML output. This ultimately means that you have clean markup without additional tags or scripts that would make the pages heavy and slow. Scripts can be minified and bundled with other assets and front-end files. Ultimately, you decide what is rendered on a page and how. In addition, MVC is a lightweight framework that does not use View State and thus reduces the bandwidth of each request.
How does MVC translate into faster page speeds and therefore better traffic and more conversions? The simple answer is that by loading only the necessary content, the MVC page translates into better responsiveness AND a higher Google page speed score. And that naturally brings us to the next topic: search engine optimization.
SEO-Friendly
Speed can have different dimensions. In addition to having a positive effect on user experience and conversions, good page load times (courtesy of MVC) also affect website ranking with search engines.
SEO, meet MVC. Clear HTML output with a clear semantic content structure means better accessibility, including options for narrator and read modes, faster load times due to less HTML code and script clutter. This naturally leads to better indexability and therefore higher ranking in search engines, resulting in brand awareness and more sales opportunities.
Additionally, MVC supports rich routing capabilities, so site URLs are not only manageable and human readable, but also optimized for search engines. Once URLs really mean something meaningful, people will understand them, click them, and remember them. The same goes for search engines: RankBrain will know that the URL is relevant to someone’s search and will place it higher in the search results. Talking about business means making your site and its content findable and accessible, and bringing more valuable perspectives to meet your marketing and demand generation KPIs and facilitate the passage of prospects through the sales funnel.
Frontend Flexibility
The sad truth is that sometimes web development standards change faster than they can be used appropriately. As apps moved from the desktop to the web, mobile, native apps, and any imaginable channel, front-end developers have struggled to catch up and create equally modern and seamless experiences. Guess what: no one likes the outdated designs, the rigid user interface, the limited interactivity and the fact of being unable to access and correctly display what they want on the device and the channel they want.
Enter MVC. MVC represents the natural evolution of web technology to be extremely dynamic and flexible, so that it can understand better and more interactive experiences to meet user expectations. With older technologies, developers had to take care not only of business logic, but also of setting up responsive rules for pages on different screen sizes and ensuring that the application frontend would work perfectly with logic and rules. On the other hand, MVC is by design a mobile first, based on conventions and reactive by default, regardless of the frontend framework with which you choose to work, whether it is Bootstrap or Semantic UI, for example. And, with fine granularity and control over markup, developers have total control over client-side functionality of pages, that is, interactivity and attractiveness.
With MVC, developers can not only choose the front-end framework but also integrate with any other third-party system or JavaScript libraries. In addition, frontend developers can modify models on the go and without coding, which saves time, effort and nerves for everyone. They can easily try out experiences with the latest trends in order to improve website performance, HTML output and user experience. It is also much easier to adhere to various accessibility standards and requirements, so that your website can be enjoyed by a wide range of audiences. Having a dynamic and feature-rich website will help you positively establish your business in the web world and with target audiences.
Faster Development
What drives productivity? Well, for starters, be quick, efficient, and control what you do. How does MVC help? Two words: agility and agility.
With its architecture of separation of concerns, MVC offers support for rapid and parallel development on design and functionality. Front-end developers can freely create and style the application and modify the HTML design or output without having to wait or have the knowledge to change the business logic of the backend. This gives developers and designers more freedom and control, and makes the development process significantly more efficient. Editing part of the pages occurs without having to rebuild the entire project and changing a piece of code (no need to change everything) is no longer a bottleneck.
That’s not all. Once you’ve set up your presentation layer or business logic, you can reuse the components in other projects and applications and combine them as needed without having to implement these components from scratch. Which, in the end, means rapid, lean and agile development – both on the frontend and the backend. This benefit is especially valuable for developing web applications that need to be supported by large teams of developers and for web designers who want better control over application behavior.
You know what else is fast? Learn how to create and style applications with MVC. You don’t need the technical knowledge behind proprietary technology, such as .NET, to get HTML markup. The MVC model is an excellent architecture, whatever language you use for development. Learning curve, goodbye.
Boost Business Value
Without a doubt, rapid development and low code translate into lower costs. Rapid development, facilitated by MVC, means faster time to market. Lower expenses and a lower learning curve, even more.
There is another no less important asset: better talents. When looking for a new team member, keep in mind that there are fewer and fewer developers trained and working with older technologies, such as web forms. There is no shortage of experienced backend and frontend developers who choose to work with .NET and MVC, as MVC does not require in-depth knowledge of proprietary technology. On the contrary – people who know MVC can easily choose another front-end framework such as JavaScript and CSS. As a current and modern technology and framework, you will invest in a platform that will continue to evolve and be relevant because of its similarity to HTML and because Microsoft relies on MVC technology to complement the future of. NET. The end is near for legacy technologies, such as web forms. Switching to MVC allows you to make a long-term contribution and maintain your competitive advantage.
Going back to operational efficiency, saving time means saving money. Rapid development due to the separation of concerns and high testability means both speed and excellence. Reuse on multiple projects, on the other hand, says a lot about a reduced repetitive work volume and continuous efficiency. Front-end developers can easily maintain, rename and reshape the CSS and presentation layer by changing a few variables in the Bootstrap 4 file, for example.
Time is no less important to your users, so having a fast and fast site with which they can easily find and interact plays a huge role in healthier KPI performance, lower bounce rates and, ultimately, higher conversions and improved bottom line results.
Sitefinity—Bonus
What is so closely linked to Web development that one cannot thrive without the other? The answer is simple: web content management. And what web content management system allows you to leverage MVC to create complex, powerful, responsive and scalable websites, while having total control over your markup and keeping your code organized, reusable, and easy to test? The answer is even simpler – CMS Sitefinity. OK, let’s break it down and find out how Sitefinity builds on the MVC benefits we already know.
With MVC and Sitefinity, you have full control over how pages are generated, what scripts are rendered, page size and bandwidth, and HTML output. As a result, pages get the highest score for search engine robots and benchmarking tools like Google Lighthouse. On the subject of search engines, why not also mention SEO bonuses. Let’s talk about the flexibility of OpenGraph meta tags – you can change indexing and ranking positively by adding meta tags not only at the widget level, said for any News widget, but go much more granular and optimize the preview , rankings, and page and content item visits, for example, for specific news. SEO fields and descriptions are added on the go by content publishers and marketers, without the need for IT support, making content accessible and useful.
The content editing experience is fast, responsive and intuitive in the user-friendly Sitefinity user interface. Whether marketers need to quickly place an online form to capture leads, a banner, a targeted call to action, or other custom or non-personalized content on the page, they can do it effectively with MVC ready to go. Widgets jobs without having to rely on developers to make small changes.
On the other hand, developers can easily scaffold widgets and MVC models with VSIX and save them directly in the toolbox to allow parallel, test-driven development. They can easily manage the complexity of large-scale projects when working on individual components to accelerate development, testing and deployment, and more quickly market and reuse the components multiple times. With the publicly available source for all MVC widgets and with MVC examples, developers can quickly learn, reuse, and customize code according to their own needs.
Now that Sitefinity offers so many built-in MVC building blocks, your developers are able to perform all performance, SEO and accessibility optimizations in their daily activities without sacrificing productivity. They can leverage the Bootstrap 4 resource package to create beautiful, responsive mobile websites and modify templates with minimal coding using Sitefinity asset conventions.
Summing It Up
Want to keep up with the latest standards and requirements within the fast-moving CMS technology industry? Sitefinity and it’s MVC framework got you covered by providing you with:
- Flexibility over markup and page speed
- Great rankings thanks to performance and clean HTML
- Better SEO tools and content experience
- Fast development and fast go to market
- Operational efficiency on all levels
It is just that the precise control over the markup and the business logic that allow you to keep up with the pace of ever-changing customer requirements and the current trends for highly optimized user experience on all devices.
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