If you’re a business owner and you’re looking to take your business online, it is important to know the difference between a website and a web application so that whichever you choose can live up to its potential. It is key to understand this because you need to know how to communicate to the web development agency that will build your business not only from the start but also help you scale to the point of reaching the success you plan to make. In order to help you differentiate between websites and web applications we’re going to discuss some things that can set them apart and we’re also going to cover the importance of planning for the long term.
The truth is that for the end user there is no difference; they simply type in your company’s URL into the browser and think nothing of it as a website or web app. Call that whatever you want but from a more technical perspective there are some distinct differences between websites and web applications websites. It largely depends on the level of interaction required by the end user. News, online magazines and blogs are mainly information websites whose primary purpose is just to convey information to the traffic of website visitors. As a general rule there is little or no interaction on the part of the visitor other than possibly submitting an email address to receive a monthly email newsletter or performing a search.
If you’re a business that does for example, building constructions or cleaning as a service who wants to convey information about the company, a home page, about page, services page, contact contact page and a few other pages of your choosing might be what you need to establish your business online.
Specifically with web applications they’re usually responsible for some form of interaction between users. Yes they’ll still be supplying information but your visitors want to do something with that information or through interaction your visitors may request a different type of information or even manipulate that data. A specific example of a website application include banking and finance application, Facebook apps, Google apps etc. one key feature of these web applications is that they mostly require authentication and because of the sensitivity of the information that they collect from the user, also require high level security infrastructure.
WordPress in its native state it’s designed to display information to visitors. From that perspective it’s clearly a website, however on the backend we have a highly customizable and extensive content management system. Several other content management systems like Square Space and Wix (to mention a few) serve similar purposes as WordPress. Many websites are actually website web application hybrids. Your business might provide all kinds of information to your users but once they register they could have access to an integrated web application that performs a specific function.
It is crutial for you the business owner to be clear about your needs. It’s important to have a clear long-term vision that can help us make sure you’re hiring the right agency. Have somebody who can really help you not only build the first iteration of your site and platform but also long term. If you anticipate needing a web application now or in the future it’s easier to bring that team right on board from the beginning to explain your goals at least on a high level. Your business might only need a simple website right to the start but if your long-term goals clearly indicate that a web application will be required at some point, that’s something you need to start planning for right now. That will ensure the process flows a lot smoother and doesn’t interrupt your business.
Servorien Network as an experienced web development agency will prioritize security of user data from the get-go but also help you prepare for the risk that we’ve dealt with dozens of times and we take pride in delivering promptly.
Let’s discuss your website projects today; you can also take a look some of our recent development at https://servorien.com/
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