Much is talked about web applications in my earlier blogs, and if you go through my blog comparing desktop applications and web applications, you will find the pros and cons of each. That apart, today I am going to explain the web application development process to impart my readers understanding on how web application projects are carried out.

Web applications are an important tool for B2B and B2C interactions for the present businesses. The whole web application development process can be divided into four phases:

1. Envisioning the scope of web application by defining it and establishing the purpose, goal, nature, and direction of the project

The first phase requires the managers and developers of the project to come together and discuss on the feasibility of the application in question and the solutions it must achieve. Scheduling; limitations, if any; and future objectives of the application will also be elucidated, and the end of this phase will be marked by a clear documentation on what this application will practically achieve.

2. Contriving a plan indentifying functional and visual specifications, technology and techniques to use, scheming out web application architecture and timelines

The second phase is laying out the flow of application development strategy. Right from scripting to time framing of the events and tasks in the project everything is planned out.

3. Developing web application

The third phase is initiation of the development work where web application structure and framework is created; data variables are established; entities and coding procedures to be used are determined; web application model, libraries, and classes are customized; and finally implementation and complete development is done.

4. Performing beta testing, establishing a successful support and stability system

The fourth and final phase is focused on testing of the application from a functional and security perspective. Any bugs are fixed. It’s also the time to address any discrepancies that may cause the application to go bad. A fully functional, stable, and secure application is the ideal end product of any web application development process. This phase is also directed towards establishing policies and procedures that end up in a successful support system.

Any website has a crucial element to be taken care of in its build-up phase which is its information architecture. If the data or content of a website is organized in a search engine friendly way, the results will be very positive from an online perspective.

Designing a site’s architecture for high ranking may be the SEO objective, but a bigger objective than that is to make it soundly usable and customer converting. The latter two have much to do with the logics of customers regarding the extent of website use.

Site structure for search:

There is a need to generate “link equity” for your site. For this, there are two types of links: on-site links, notably those in the site’s tool bar or navigation bars, and inbound links pointing at your home page. But, it is important to determine how much to link and when.

A site that is well-structured tends to focus on a single overall major theme, and from that theme branches out different pages that are continually more focused, specific, and relevant to the overarching topic of the site.

What is more, search engine crawlers will primarily tend to crawl links that are at most three or four clicks away from your homepage. Thus, you should strive to keep your most important content within those 3-4 tiers.

SEO-friendly URL structures:

Getting a site layout wherein the location of individual pages is logical and intelligible to both visitors and search engines is often best accomplished by sticking to static URLs. This will have advantages such as reduction or elimination of crawling problems associated with dynamic, parameterized URLs. You need to have a URL that’s more communicable, which means short and memorable. Also, if your most relevant keywords have been incorporated into your URL and directory structure, it will help search engines to know what your page is about, bolded keywords in the SERPs will result in potentially more clicks, and search engine ranking of a page will be benefited as your most important keywords will be included in the link anchor text. Another thing to take care is to prevent the accidental creation of infinite spaces and curb and eliminate duplicate content.

The extensive and interesting field of information architecture spans the internet and SEO to a great extent, and understanding its importance is very important to serve the actual purpose of a website, i.e. marketing and/or sales.

Twitter – the word, rather the website needs no introduction, but just to make a start, let’s do a formality. Twitter - a highly popular social networking and microblogging service which runs through a website that allows people to post 14-character messages, operated by Twitter Inc. Ever since its creation in 2006, millions of dollars have been spent funding it, but speculations have always been on as to what makes it generate revenue if not ads or other visible means of revenue generation.

TechCrunch’s explosive “Twitter records out” publishing in mid-2009 had figures of Twitter’s projected earnings for 2009 and its internal strategy, dealing with Google and Facebook, information giving indications of its monetization. Somewhere around that time, Biz Stone, a Twitter co-founder, also spoke about developing add-ons and services for businesses and professional users of Twitter with a possibility to create a revenue stream for the company, expecting to have some of them start contributing for the fourth quarter of the year 2009. However, outfocusing from the cost of paid services or revenue building from it, put forward were the “red herrings” of further expansion of the company and its user base. Ok, let’s fly over from here and land on the “income” ground!

As a part of monetization effort, Twitter made deals with Google and Microsoft. It was for Google and Bing search results to show the “tweet streams.” It’s believed Twitter made huge money from those deals.

Further, as declared in December 2009, what we get from the Twitter Blog, a feature they were beta testing was ‘Contributors’- a business-specific feature (that was a cash flow channel to Twitter!). The blog further stated this feature “to be enabling users to engage into more authentic conversations with businesses by allowing those organizations to manage multiple contributors to their account.” Allowing a contributor’s username to display in the tweet byline, it facilitated a more personalized form of communication between the business and the consumer. With corporations ready to pay money for such premium services designed by Twitter specially for them allowing them to stay in touch with their customers and raise their sales, Twitter found a way to sell its services too.

It’s in April of 2010 that we find Biz Stone coming up with a revenue generation idea introducing “Promoted Tweets.” What we get from his blog is:

“We are launching the first phase of our Promoted Tweets platform with a handful of innovative advertising partners that include Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America — with more to come. Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users.”

That’s pretty much like Twitter’s first steps into advertising, however planned in such a way that it is non-intrusive or non-frustrating to its users. Coming up as an extension to the Promoted Tweets platform was a new advertising concept named “Promoted Trends” to be put to test in June of this year allowing users to see time-, context-, and event-sensitive trends promoted by Twitter’s advertising partners. The newly released Disney/Pixar Hollywood movie Toy Story 3 seems to be the very first promotion using this new “Promoted Trends” model. So, monetization for Twitter comes up with this unusually different advertising and promotional model.

At the end point of the matter, it’s not much mystery left there how Twitter earns or plans to earn. However, commendable is the way they have devised their revenue generation models – effective and without letting the user experience go down. And, if we patiently wait, as Twitter itself has remained much patient with its monetary growth, we can expect some more excellent services and ways on the Twitter path where money would come along with keeping the user base intact, loyal, and growing.

Many businesses are using internet and networking in a great way to enhance their performance. Web based applications are a preferred platform these days when it comes to business information systems. Combining the communication capabilities of internet with the exceptional development platforms available on the World Wide Web, such an application serves a highly functional, cost effective, and secure platform to improve your business operations. It can be considered as a multi user cross-platform application that every business can make use of.

For one class of web applications, think of websites. Web software experts equip them with nice content, useful boxes and buttons, graphics, and links to make sure that they look attractive as well as become user-friendly and interactive. Web-based applications serve a good purpose in the business world. If you are looking forward to own a unique online store or manage your projects online, these applications should definitely be your consideration. Such applications are quite useful in the field of online marketing. We can see such Ecommerce websites and portals flooding the online market.

How various database design applications give easy and meaningful access to online information in different types of websites can be found by exploring educational, Ecommerce, banking, real estate, and scientific websites, and in fact many more.

The next generation of web applications, rich internet applications (RIAs), provide usability, receptiveness, and reuse of client/server applications with the operation, manageability, and accessibility of traditional web applications. RIAs are developing all types of applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, and online games. The benefit is that a surfer can connect to a website, use the software he needs, and there is no need to install anything on his own computer. These differ from other internet applications in the amount of communication interface. Through rich internet apps, one gets a superior, appealing experience that develops user satisfaction and boosts productivity, and in fact in today's scenario, a large number of companies are taking advantage of RIA technology.

Get ready to make better online venture profitability through web-based business applications designed  and developed by PLAVEB.

It can be a real challenging task to select the best web host for your website with so many important areas to consider for the same. But in the very beginning I feel an urge to tell you that don’t fall into the trap thinking that the cheapest cost is the most important consideration. This is one thing you don’t want to do as something that’s going to so much impact how your online business will go can’t be compromised with money.

Now, let me proceed with what I believe to be very important for the proper selection of a web host:

• Security - Web hosting security is of greatest importance for keeping a website protected from external factors such as virus threats or technical failures. Make sure to check out the security terms of your web host and get the best possible settings for your website security. A smart service provider, however, would always run scheduled backups and try to keep customer data as secure as possible in view of any contingencies.

• Uptime - The percentage of time your website is on the World Wide Web is crucial as that determines your availability to the visitors/customers. Apparently, it could not be 100%, but the closest the best web hosting company can guarantee you is 99.99%. Anything that ascends between 99% and 99.99% would be better, but don’t go for a web host that offers an uptime below 99%. Frequent downtimes turn off your potential customers and are simply not an indication of a good company. Another essential thing is that any maintenance done by the host on the servers/network requiring reboots or downtime should be scheduled during off peak hours and with a prior notice, except if there happens to be a sudden crisis or emergency. An ideal web host would handle a downtime without letting the customers feel dissatisfied by showing information such as “we’ll be back soon” or “under maintenance” or showing its email or phone number to contact if urgent.

• Control panel - The best web hosting companies would always have a user-friendly control panel for its clients to be able to configure their settings and go about their usual tasks without any trouble. A good control panel will allow you a good administration without any advanced technical and internet skills. cPanel and DirectAdmin are good options for a control panel. Make sure you get one of these from your web host.

• Technical support/customer service - You would surely be looking for a web host that provides efficient support in terms of availability and response. Go for a web host that provides 24x7 technical support and gives immediate response to your queries. You should really be concerned when you come across web hosts that don’t provide contact information at all, as there are many available who provide both phone and live support.

And this is not the end of it. There’s more to come in Part II…