Technological advancements are constantly being developed, and data science is one of the recent technological advancements of the present digital age. Data dependency by industries and organizations has opened new ways for data extraction and analysis of meaningful data for a specific purpose. Websites used to be built based on feedback from focus groups, results of surveys, but the advent of big data analysis has been used to create better functioning websites.
What is data science;
Data science is the study and analysis of data to gain insights and gather the information that can be used by companies organizations for the development of effective strategies. Through the analysis of data over time, trends are identified, and suggestions are made to stakeholders to facilitate new market opportunities, reduce costs, stay in the competitive circle of the industry, and improve efficiency.
Large amounts of data is generated daily in areas of social media, mobile advertising, and website personalization due to the rapid advancement in technology. Both private and government institutions have realized the need for data science so they can remain relevant by adapting to a new environment so as not to fall behind the competition.
Impact of data science/big data on web development.
Big data are the millions of data available for analysis. This data can be analyzed to target a particular area of interest, delivering accurate data that is applicable in a particular industry or organization. Either through the development of software or web app, big data impacts the future of web development in various ways, some of which are written below.
- Faster web development-In the earlier days of web development, developers designed the page layout based on their creativity and guessing user's preference, but it’s no longer the same now. Nowadays, the use of advanced analytical tools for analyzing huge data volumes, these analyses generate precise suggestions about specific functions and features that are preferred by users. Big data analysis also helps to adjust to the ever-changing demand of end-users.
- Automated Update- With technological advancement in big data analysis, machine learning will make web apps smart enough to update themselves at set intervals to constantly meet the demands of the user as his preference changes.
- Reduction in cost- With big data analysis, predictions can be made as to the quantity of stock needed to fulfill a customer's order. This can only be done if your business is manufacturing or product stocking.
- Custom user experience: Big data helps web developers identify user experience shortcomings, allowing for creative insight for the creation of a better and more interactive design. AI allows developers to monitor users' preferences easily and make appropriate adjustments to accommodate these user preferences.
- Traffic analysis: Visual appeal is a great concern when working on effective web design. With traffic analysis tools, relevant information such as the number of page views, average duration per visit, and more can be used to boost the productivity and functionality of your website and also compare your website’s traffic with that of your competitor.
- Virtual Assistance:With data analysis, the feature of a virtual assistant can be added to your website. This virtual assistant feature remembers the user’s preference, by studying time usage, patterns, and lifestyle of users and automatically continue from where a user stops, or show you your most visited websites or pages for easy and fast navigation.
Learning data analytics as a tool for web development.
Data analytics can either be learned online or offline, but here, we’ll focus on online learning resources.
- Applied computing series - Code with Google: Learning AI and machine learning through Google allow learners to customize their user experience with the use of videos, tutorials, interactive sessions, and examples of sample code.
- Harvard University data science certificate: This online course from Harvard includes data analysis, data management, data sampling, and several other facets of data science. Four certificate courses must be completed for a student to get graduate credits.
- Master of Information and Data Science (MIDS) - UC Berkeley School of Information: This course is offered online as well as through live classes. This course is designed for professionals who need to advance their knowledge of using web analytics to solve complicated problems.
Other good sources of learning data analytics are:
- The open-source data masters
- Data science weekly
- FiveThirtyEight
- Simply Statistics
Learn Web Development.
Web development, having been incorporated into data analytic, becomes more than just an ordinary website. Data analysis is used to determine the website entrails to conform to the user's preferences.
To learn web development, the first step is to learn coding languages. The easiest coding language to learn is JavaScript. JavaScript is the program used to build web applications and is the program that runs on any web browser. Javascript is used for both front end and back end development, allowing you as a learner to be able to write full-stack coding. Below I have outlined some online resources to learn web development.
- The complete developer course 2.0 - This course starts with fundamentals and is perfect for anyone who is starting to learn web development from scratch. With constant practice, you’ll be able to make good use of PHP7, jQuery, Twitter Bootstrap, and MySQL 5.
- The Web developer Bootcamp - This course is very detailed and effective, with the use of HTML, CSS, Node, and more to learn web development. It’s the only web development beginner course that covers NodeJS in its curriculum.
- The complete Fullstack web developer course- When you learn web development, you can either specialize in front-end or back-end coding, but a lot of people prefer to go full-stack. This is the best Fullstack web development course to learn. It covers a lot of resources and coding languages, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Ajax, PHP, and MySQL. With all these resources put together, you can build any website you want on a scale of your choice.
- The complete web developer Bootcamp -At the end of this course, you should have your portfolio and learn web development with the use of HTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery, Ruby, Rails, Git, E-commerce with stripe, servers, bootstrap, databases, and more. Having learned these resources, you’ll be able to construct any website and also have jobs lining up