In this day and age of online, digitally networked and connected world, it is imperative for any business or service provider – small or large – to have a website of their own. While this is not something that many are unaware of, there are some important points vis-a-vis websites that a lot of commercial entities fail to realise.
Many people think that the only primary uses of a website are for marketing and promotion, and as an online store front, to sell their products and/or services via eCommerce. As a matter of fact, with a well thought out and carefully evolved plan, a website can be put to various other productive and beneficial uses too. For example, many customer support related tasks can be made available via a website. Companies that ship products can provide web-based shipment tracking/delivery functionality via their sites too. Also, companies with traveling, tele-commuting and/or remote employees can have an employee portal/login facility on their site to allow such employees to handle various job functions remotely.
In order to make a variety of such features and functionalities available via a website, varying amounts of website programming work needs to be performed. Many people make the mistake of thinking that website designing and programming are the same. This could not be farther from the truth, as website designing and coding, although closely related, are to substantially different tasks, requiring widely and vastly differing skill sets.
Likewise, people who are not professionally involved with the information technology industry often tend to think that coding computer and web applications are both one and the same thing. In reality, the concepts and practices of website programming are substantially different from those of computer programming.
Thus, one would do well to be very clear about this: web designing is not equal to web programming which, in turn, is not equal to computer programming.
While it is not uncommon to find a single agency or generalist service provider offering all of the above services (i.e. web designing, web programming and computer programming) under the same roof, it might be more beneficial to get a specialist to handle a specific task, especially when the task/project at hand is an involved one.
Some of the key points of distinction between coding computer apps and web apps are as follows:
Web programming
- Needs to account for different browsers, as the users could be accessing a site with any browser – this is not an issue so far as plain computer programming is concerned
- Should ideally be optimised for faster performance and response as the site is always accessed via the Internet – this, again, is usually not an issue in case of routine computer/application programming
- Must provide for very strict security measures since a web site is accessible to any one in the world with an Internet connection. This, once again, is not so much of an issue with routine computer programming because the software / applications would usually be running either directly on a PC or on a private network, both of which are much more secure as compared to the Internet and the World Wide Web
- A business user who is planning to create a web presence for his/her business would do well to take the above mentioned points, ideas and concepts in to consideration while making strategic decisions.