Modern technology allows us to design and program great projects. With greater possibilities for digital interaction, two main variants have emerged. In this post we will explain the difference between Web App and Website.
What makes them different?
The main difference between a web app and a website is that the website is used to display information, and a web app is used to interact with the user.
We know that today, most websites will also interact somehow with the visitors. Some movement may occur when you place you mouse over an element, text can get larger or smaller, or even content can appear / disappear. However, web apps will usually generate or transform data for the user. The interaction is not only composed by visual or structural dynamics.
For a simple example, lets compare two projects. The requirement for Project 1 is to display the end user summaries of a given set of movies. Project 2 needs to give the end user the solution to simple multiplications.
So for Project 1 we will first need to get the scope of the project, how many movie summaries will be available for display. If it was a small number, for example 5, we could just display them all in one page. The user will enter the page and find 5 movie summaries. Is that a website? Or is it a web application? This example is clearly a website as no information is processed or transformed.
Now lets say there are not 5 movies but 15. It might be better to store the information in a database and display an initial dropdown select option for the user to choose a movie. Then the selected movie’s summary appears in the screen. Keeping the other 14 summaries hidden. Is this enough interaction to be considered a web app? For many developers, this interaction is enough to be considered a web app. For us, this is not enough as there is no data manipulation.
For Project 2 we also need to define the scope before programming. Lets say the requirement is only to show the results of 2×2, 4×4 and 6×6. It would be efficient to just write down and simply display “2×2=4, 4×4=16, 6×6= 36”. This would of course be a website as it is only displaying fixed information.
Now… lets say it needs to display the result between any two numbers multiplied! It would be impossible to write all the equations, and not very user friendly. So we build a simple calculator, where the user can input two numbers and the solution of the multiplication will be displayed. Now this is a web app! It is for sure a very simple web application but it works and manipulates dynamic data.
What can I do with a Web Application?
Processing information opens a new world of possibilities! We have developed, for example, a cloud based real estate CRM. Where the end-user are real estate firms that want to manage their property inventory, store leads, follow up with prospects, generate monthly reports, or maybe even assign the properties to their sales team. All that is possible with a web app we developed!
Web Applications can also evolve into more powerful tools. The Real Estate CRM we developed, also works as a headless CMS. The information about the properties is displayed in the firm’s website, mobile app, multiple listing sites and even a catalog presented in an iPad on their office.
We have helped so many businesses to get rid of excel reports by developing dynamic cloud-based applications. Now the required information is available 24/7 and accessible even from a mobile device.
Web applications are perfect for small, medium and big businesses for internal data processing. Web apps can also be a stand alone business as we can see from Amazon, Facebook, Twitter…
