Difference Between A Website And A Web Application

This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Cess

Hello everyone! 💙

In this article I will write about the difference between a website and a web application (web app).

How can you tell the key differences between a website and a web app ? since both the website and the web app are almost similar to each other as both are accessible from your web browsers.

let's get started 💃

What is a Website?

A website is a page or collection of pages on the World Wide Web (www) that contains specific information which was all provided by one person or entity and traces back to a common Uniform Resource Locator (URL).

Examples of websites are:

• www.goggle.com

• www.cnn.com

• www.msn.com

A website can be accessed on different range of devices such as desktops, laptops and smartphones.

Website is hosted on a single or multiple web server. It is accessible via a network like the Internet or a private local area network via IP address.

Websites are dedicated to a particular topic such as gaming, education, sports and dating websites or a variety of purposes such as Blogs.

The main elements of a website are Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript

The first page you see when you open a website is called a Home page or a 'start page' or 'index page'. before the site’s sub pages eg the about page.

I know you are wondering if every first page you open when visiting a website is the homepage? no is not, is also possible for you to begin from a different page other than the home page when you visit a website in cases when you click on a blog article to read

The homepage are connected to websites sub pages by hyperlinks.

A hyperlink is an element in an HTML document that links to either another portion of the document or to another document altogether. On webpages, hyperlinks are usually colored purple or blue and are sometimes underlined.

Features Of a Website

• Quality Web Contents:

Quality web Content is the most important element of any website. Contents on a website should be clear and relevant to the needs of your users.

• Easy to Use:

A good website must be easy to use. Having a website that's easy to navigate will make it easier for users to find what they are searching for on the website. A website with a frustrating user experience makes it difficult for visitors to find the content that they’re searching for and the user might end up leaving that website for a website with a better user experience

• Accessible to all users:

A user-friendly website should be accessible to everyone including the blind, disabled or the elderly.

• Fast load times:

Websites should be able to load within 4-6 seconds for good usability. If your website takes more than 4-6 seconds to load, it is probably too slow and will result to visitors visiting other websites

• Responsiveness:

Your website must carry a responsive design so it is optimized for both mobile and desktop devices. A good website should look great on all types of smartphones, tablets, desktops and laptops.

Benefits Of a Website?

• Showcase your products and services to wider audience:

Websites are accessible by anyone with a good connection from anywhere in the world even in remote locations so by getting a website it makes it possible for anyone in the world to find and patronize your business. A website can help you gain customers outside the geographic reach of your marketing efforts and can also help you increase your customer base by selling online if you have products that can easily be sold online.

• Around-The-Clock Availability:

Owning a Website provides your customers with around-the-clock availability in terms of access to your products. Customers can see what products or services you sell , your prices, your location at any time of the day via visiting your website.

• Establish Trust and Credibility:

Without a website people may doubt the legitimacy of your business, Question if your business is real or not. Having a website is a great opportunity to make a good impression and will also provide the information they are looking for and also give your business credibility.

What is a web application?

A web application is a computer program that utilizes web browsers and web technologies to perform tasks over the internet. Demand for web apps is increasing because they do not require download all you need to do is access the web app through a web browser such as goggle chrome.

Web applications are websites with functionality and interactive elements. web applications like Gmail, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. are all dynamic, and built for user engagement.

The Main element of web Apps are: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; additionally programming languages such as Ruby and PHP

Web applications can be designed for a wide variety of users and can be used by anyone; from an organization to an individual for numerous reasons.

Examples of commonly used Web applications are Gmail, photoshop, YouTube, online calculators, e-commerce shops.

The above mentioned examples have a web application that you can access via a link and a mobile application that you can download from stores.

Benefits Of a Web App

• Web apps don’t need to be installed because they are internet enabled apps that can be used on the web browser: web apps allows you to showcase your products and services without asking users to install the app on their phones.

• Not limited: Web apps are not limited to only few browsers because any browser can support opening the web app. They can be accessed through multiple web browsers regardless of the operating system.

• Web applications are always up to date because updates are applied centrally. No need to remind users to update their applications.

• Web applications don’t require approval from the mobile app store to function.

• All users can access the same version so it eliminates any compatibility issues

Features Of a Web Application

• Web apps are cloud based and scalable:

  web apps such as goggle, twitter, facebook and instagram are
  cloud optimized and scalable.

Scalability is the idea of a system in which every application
or piece of infrastructure can be expanded to handle increased
load.

You can serve more customers from an application given the same
hardware, further reducing the need to invest in servers and
hosting infrastructure. Having a scalable web application
ensures that your web app can scale up to handle loads such as
increase in traffic from web visitors and not crash.

• Security: People don’t feel comfortable when sharing personal informations so It is essential to have a secure authentication for your web app, secure authentications such as password encryptions, using ssl encryptions to secure credit card transactions, data transfer and logins, asking the user security questions when the user resets her password is a must.

web apps such as E-commerce sites are targets for hackers due to immense value of the information that goes through them, such as credit card numbers. It is vital that you protect yourself and your customers.

• Speed: The data processing of your web app should take place easily and without affecting the loading speed.

• Compatible Across Platforms: All web apps should be able to work across any platform.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN A WEBSITE AND A WEB APP

1. USER INTERACTION

A website provides visual & text content which user can view and read, but not affect it 's functioning.

In a web application, the user cannot only read the page content but can also manipulate the data on the page. example of a web application interactivity is an online banking application that performs transactions based on a customer’s input. Another example is the E-commerce online stores like Amazon that allows visitors to search through the catalog and buy the items they are searching for.

2.
CREATED FOR

A website mostly consists of static content which means that a website is publicly accessible to all the web visitors.

A web application is designed for interaction with the end user. This means that you need the required credentials to be able to access any data on the web application

3.
AUTHENTICATION

Authentication is the security process that allows users to verify their identities in order to gain access to their personal accounts on a website. User accounts must be secured to prevent unauthorized access and leakage of sensitive data.

Authentication is not obligatory for informational websites like blogs for example. The user may ask to register to get regular updates or access additional informations that are not available for unregistered web visitors. For example, reading articles online from a blog or a news website doesn't require registration but if you want to leave comments on the blog post or the news website, you will have to login to leave comments.

Web applications need authentication, as they offer a much larger scope of options than websites. When you register to facebook or twitter or any of the social media platforms, you create an account and get a unique identification number. The system warns you if your login and password are weak. If you leave them unchanged, hackers may reach your account and steal your information, as well as irritate other users with junk emails under your name.

4.
DEPLOYMENT

for websites, you just need to update the HTML code to carry out small changes on the website, it never requires a full re-compilation and deployment.

All changes for web application require the entire project to be re-compiled and deployed.

CONCLUSION

Now that you have a clearer understanding of the differences between websites and web applications, it will be easier for you to understand which online solution suits your business needs when choosing between a website and a web app.

If you want your web page to display mostly some information choose a website. If you need interaction with users and additional functionality, such as the ability to make transactions online choose a web app.

If you have any questions about the differences between a website and a web application, you can leave them in the comments section below and I'll be happy to answer every single one.

That's all for today! 😁 You reached the end of the article 😍

This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Cess