In some respects websites are dumb. That’s not a reflection on the quality of the content or the intelligence of the people or company running it. Rather, it’s a response to the limited ways people can interact with the common website. Traditionally it just sits there, full of probably wonderful but wholly immovable and unresponsive content, waiting to be read like a newspaper and discarded once the reader has taken what they wanted from it.

And we all know the direction newspaper sales are heading in.

That’s why we talk about web application development rather than websites. A business and its customers can reap so much more from the exchange of information, ideas, products and services in the digital space than a traditional website can offer.

Movember has grasped this difference, and the opportunities that spring from having web application development that is primarily designed for interaction. Participants can register online, share photos of their burgeoning facial hair, connect with others inside and outside the application to encourage donations and build a Mospace page of their very own.

In a completely different sector, Saasu has taken full-service accounting online with web application development that offers key activities including invoicing, purchasing, inventory, statements and reports. The basic package is free, with add on products and services available at reasonable rates. This progressive payment system allows businesses to only purchase the services they require.

We’re experiencing two levels of web application development at present. In the first, more simplistic level a two-way conversation is being held, possibly between buyer and seller, client and service provider or talker and listener. These can be, generally speaking, a somewhat basic digital extension of a real-world, bricks and mortar organisation.

In the second, more complex iteration of web application development we find entities that only exist online, and live or die by the response to their web applications. Finely-tuned and highly strategic, these web applications are showing the way.

Dean Mehmet