Why We Only Build Web Apps

The way big businesses engage with markets online has been evolving since the beginning of online marketing. Naturally smaller businesses' approach to online marketing is going to be behind the tech giants, but that gap seems to be opening instead of closing even though the tools are more accessable today. I want to help change that. My suggestion: build something that can grow with you and won’t get in the way of your business.

The difference between websites and web apps

Websites are a set of interconnected web pages. They don’t need Javascript programming but support it for adding interactivity. The fundamental structure of websites remains the same as it has since the 90s.

Web apps take a different approach. Instead of loading seperate documents for each page, they deliver a Javascript application that displays the content in a more powerful way. It does everything websites do but also improves performance and user experience. With web apps you really get the best of both worlds.

While websites still do what they are intended to do and can serve a business well, the problem is that they are limited. Web apps have limits too (like push notifications on iPhone), but they are much more versatile than websites, sitting much closer to the abilities of native apps (like you install from the app store) than websites.

If your business wants to implement features like these, there really isn’t a choice:

• client accounts
• chats
• games
• user generated content
• dynamic content based on user preferences
• integrate with a CRM or APIs

Web apps give you complete control over what each individual user sees, like how Facebook and Instagram feeds are different for each user. It’s also worth mentioning that web apps are super fast. The frameworks are designed to handle much more difficult tasks while maintaining good performance, so for most businesses the performance is overkill. This really benefits SEO.

What should I use?

Our suggestion is to start with a web app with just the features you need. You’ll get better performance, better data collection, and when you want to add features later you won’t have to start over. Your business will have a slick repository of code that works for you, automating what you want to automate and engaging with your customers the way you want. This puts you in control of your content and allows some independence from the platforms we can’t control (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X) while still allowing you to play nicely with them.

Another great perk, you can share that repository with any developer in the world in a secure way. If you find someone who does slick animated graphics (or any other niche), you can have them submit a pull request to your repository. Let your agent look it over and with just a few keystrokes they can deploy it live to your website, no sharing passwords necessary.

The tradeoffs

The only real potential tradeoffs are initial cost and availability of people who can work on it. Web apps aren’t something that can be built and managed by your average local Wordpress designer. To build a web app well a developer needs to understand how websites work at their core and how their framework works, on top of all the skills a Wordpress designer has.

Fortunately making the equivalent of a Wordpress website is trivial for the folks who have taken the time to acquire these skills, and you aren't limited to expensive plugins and a slow platform. Plus, developers that are fantastic with these modern tools are abundantly available across the globe and in many cases willing to work for less than you might expect. Building a web app may be marginally more expensive, but the performance and feature options just aren’t available to traditional websites.

How we keep the cost of web apps low

Our agency was built around the principle of enabling businesses to embrace the potential of the internet, so we offer packages to compete with even the most cost effective website design agencies. We have a few tricks up our sleeve to manage this.

1. Web apps are modular, meaning we can quickly copy common parts from our library to make most of your web app very quickly, where other tools make you work through the whole process manually each time. We don’t charge for building these reusable parts, just the time it takes to implement them. Wordpress agencies can’t really reuse parts the way we can and have to charge for configuring everything. Instead of adapting one big template to fit your needs, we can combine several smaller components to quickly build out exactly what you need.
2. Web apps are built in code, and the tools for writing and collaborating on code are much more developed than most website tools. Letting one person work on design while another writes content and another sets up backend data handling is simple. Coding tools (like Git and GitHub) were developed to allow thousands of developers to work on a single project together, so collaborating within a small agency is trivial.
3. We use these same technologies to streamline our workflow. If we find part of our process is too clunky or slow, we just write some code to automate or streamline it. Good luck keeping up Wordpress designers!

Web apps can grow in stages

We really do enjoy building tools that help businesses. You don’t have to adapt your business to work within the bounds the website builder supports. We build exactly what you need and make a tool that works with your business the way you want it to. You can start out as small and simple as you want and roll out additional features as you want.

Here’s an example

1. Start with a basic brochure website
   1. Branding
   2. Products
   3. About
   4. Contact Form
   5. Insane performance
2. When you’re ready upgrade to a content website (still could do this with a website)
   1. Maximize SEO
   2. Generate organic traffic
   3. Libs & data modeling
3. Add a Client Platform (difficult for a website to do)
   1. Invoicing
   2. Job history
   3. CRM, Project management
   4. Integrated card payments
4. Make it a full Engagement platform (outside website territory)
   1. Users, usernames, and comments
   2. User generated content
5. Make it a full Social platform
   1. Share and collaborate on projects from the planning phase on
   2. Let users interact with each other and share their projects, get ideas and feedback from other users
   3. Let users post reviews and share their experiences

Future proof your digital marketing

All in all web apps give you flexibility to adapt and take advantage of whatever the future may bring. We choose to build them because we want to close that gap between what big tech companies do with their online assets and what the businesses we actually love do with theirs. We want to level the playing field. We want to modernize your business and build you an asset that will work tirelessly for you day in and day out. We want to give you a tool that can grow with your company and its needs, without hitting limits.