Website or web app: how to tell which one your business is asking for

A website is something people read. It's your pages: what you do, where you are, why someone should trust you and how to get in touch. Everyone who visits sees the same thing, and the whole point is to get found and turn a visitor into an enquiry.

A web app is something people use. They log in, put information in, get something back and come back to do it again. It shows different things to different people, because it's working with their data: their jobs, their orders, their documents, their numbers.

The easiest way I can put it: your website is the shop window, and a web app is the stock book and the till behind the counter.

Both run in a web browser and both can live on your own web address, which is why they get mixed up. It's about the job. Is this thing meant to tell people about you, or is it meant to do a task for you, your staff or your customers? Answer that honestly and you'll know what to ask for.

A web app earns its place by doing a job that would otherwise be done by hand. A few examples of the kind of thing I mean:

• A customer area where clients log in, upload documents and see where their job is up to.
• A job sheet your staff fill in on their phones, which lands straight in the office instead of on a crumpled bit of paper.
• A quote calculator that works out a price from the options a customer picks.
• A dashboard that pulls your sales, bookings and enquiries into one screen.

The ones your customers use, like a customer area, bookings or accounts, are what I build as web apps. Tools for you and your staff, like that job sheet or dashboard, come under custom software.

The common thread is that a web app does something. It takes information in, does something useful with it and saves someone a job.

You won't wake up one morning knowing you need a web app. It shows up as small, annoying jobs that keep coming back. Have a look at whether any of these sound familiar:

• You copy the same details from an email into a spreadsheet, then into an invoice, then into your calendar.
• There's one spreadsheet that the whole business depends on, and only one person really understands it.
• Staff fill in paper forms that someone types up later.
• You spend time digging through emails to tell someone where their job is up to.
• You use an off-the-shelf tool that does nearly everything, except the one bit you need, so you work around it every day.

Every one of those is a process that could be tidied up. Sometimes the fix is a full web app. Sometimes it's smaller than that: two tools you already use, connected so the information moves on its own.

The giveaway is repetition. If it happens every day or every week, and it's the same steps each time, it can probably be built or automated.

You don't have to jump straight to a big custom build. I'd start with the smallest thing that takes the job off your plate.

You can get a long way by connecting the tools you already use, so information moves between them on its own. That's what my business automation work does, and it can be the right size to start at.

Here's the order I'd go in:

• Pick the one job that wastes the most of your time.
• Write down every step of it, as it happens now.
• Automate the boring part, using the tools you've already got where possible.
• Use it for a while and see what still gets in the way.
• Only then decide whether you need a proper web app.

You might find the small fix is enough.

Don't build an app for a problem you haven't written down. If you can't explain the job in a few lines, nobody can build it for you.

Web app vs website: which should I build first?
If you haven't got a website yet, start there. It's how people find you and get in touch. A web app earns its place later, once there's a repeating job in the business that's worth saving time on.

Is a web app the same as a mobile app?
No. A web app runs in a web browser, on a phone or a computer, so there's nothing to download from an app store. A mobile app is installed on the phone itself. I build web apps only, not App Store apps.

Can a web app sit alongside my existing website?
Yes. It can live on your own web address, as a login area or on its own part of your domain, while your website carries on doing its job.

Do I need custom code, or can no-code tools do it?
It depends on the job. Connecting tools you already use can go a long way. When the job needs more than off-the-shelf tools can do, it's a custom build.

If you're not sure which one you need, message me and tell me the job you want off your plate.