Websites are usually thought of as free-standing, providing information about a company's products or services.

However, for some businesses, a website is a customer's information resource—a place where the customer finds information, uploads files, checks on the status of orders and more.

Expanding Your Website

Let's say you run a printing comany, and you have an internal system for checking in printing orders and tracking a customer's job from the front desk to the shipping dock.

But you don't want customers calling about their order status. What you need is an easy way for customers to just go to your website, login and check on an order, whenever they want to.

A custom website application to somehow connect your internal job tracking system with your website is exactly what you need.

Security Considerations

In this case, we want to make sure we don't create any security issues by connecting an internal network with a public website.

One approach would be to write a small program that simply uploads a simple database file to the website every couple of hours that lists your current job numbers and the current status of the job.

How do Website Applications Work?

Using our above example, we could use some PHP  code within the website, to let customers look up their job by their job or customer number.

Programming code is used "behind" website pages to do everything from run shopping carts to sending form information.

In this case, some PHP code could be used to let a customer enter their job number in a form page on the website, then see the results.

If the customer doesn't know their job number, the system could be expanded to include a customer login, so that the customer could first use their email address and a password, then see a list of current projects and the status of each.

Creating Project Requirements

Just about any kind of website application can be created and built, but they all start with writing down project goals and then detailing what the application must do.

Programmers need to know in detail what an application needs to do, and the technical framework they need to work withing.

Before anything is created, some time must be spent to understand the full scope of the website application, what systems are impacted, what programming language is appropriate and so forth.

Complicated website applications will have more complex project requirements and technical specifications.

Determining Website Application Costs

Typically a project will include initial consulting, all documentation and specifications, actual programming, testing, debugging, training with client and actual integration. Even a simple project will have a number of steps and can easily take a few hours to create, build and test.

Having a Requirements Document will make it easier to determine the actual cost to buid a custom website application.

Finding a Website Developer

While there are many website designers who are capable of creating a great looking website, website applications usually require several skill sets, ranging from requirements gathering and documentation to programming and website integration.

Depending on your project, you may be able to use one person to complete your application. On the other hand, very large projects may require a team of website programmers, developers and a project manager to bring it all together.