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All you have is 0.05 seconds to capture users’ attention and form an opinion about your business.
That is why you need a brand-forward enterprise web solution. Not only does it support your online presence, but it’s also an important asset for your internal operations. Since enterprise web solutions go beyond the regular CMS-based websites, they will be aligned straight with your business processes and help you run day-to-day tasks smoothly and flexibly.
In this post, we’ll shed light on the importance of enterprise web application development and help you answer the nagging question – ‘Does your enterprise need it?’ Let’s get into it.
A Short Primer On Enterprise Website
An enterprise website is both customer and business-centric. Essentially, it is a collection of web pages with a single domain name that is specifically developed for groups, organizations, or ventures. The latter provides high-level services to rake in greater revenue figures.
The main differentiator of enterprise web development is that it includes a variety of features and tools. This functionality has to cover the comprehensive requirements of various stakeholders. Also, enterprise web solutions boast a unique Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system which is used for content management.
A Few Words On Enterprise Web Application
Each department needs work-appropriate software solutions to tackle everyday challenges. And that’s what an enterprise web application is. It is a web-based application that can effectively respond to resolve the operational challenges of companies. Enterprise web applications can either target internal operations like resource planning or include a suite of customer-facing services like CRMs.
What Makes Enterprise Software Development Different?
And we also have enterprise software development which can be defined as building an application or platform for internal use within an organization. Enterprise Software Development is an umbrella term, and often includes various functions such as order fulfillment, online payment processing, accounting, and others. Also, all enterprise software has to be built in the context of a specific business goal.
Difference between Enterprise Website, Web App and Software
An enterprise website is an online space that defines the main mission of a company and serves as a point of contact for external communication. At the same time, an enterprise web application is a full-fledged application that automates, streamlines, and analyzes business- and customer-facing operations.
Finally, the software assists large companies in handling specific business operations within a given department or organization. Since the agenda of enterprise web application development and software overlaps, they’re usually used interchangeably.
Why Is Enterprise Web Development Important?
Every successful company is building its online presence. In particular, enterprise web development provides an indispensable global channel for vocalizing a business’ value proposition to its target audience. Websites for businesses are a valuable tool for promoting products, services, and unique vision.
Also, as COVID-19 has triggered the digital turning point, web presence is becoming a given for ensuring business continuity.
Apart from increasing customer acquisition and brand awareness, enterprise web development streamlines and brings internal operations online as well. These span a gamut of activities like order management or consulting professional web development services.
The Importance Of Enterprise Website
Now that we’ve highlighted the importance of enterprise web services, let’s go over the main benefits you can reap with enterprise web development.
Benefits of an Enterprise Website
- Global Reach
Digital presence blurs geographical borders and allows you to grow your business beyond its physical location. Thus, you don’t have to spend a lot of money on promoting your business in new markets, one website can cover it all.
- Ultimate Communication Channel
A robust digital presence allows you to stay in sync with your customers. A company’s website showcases your company’s services and products and establishes a positive image for the customers. Since it’s accessible 24/7, a website establishes an ongoing contact with your clients and updates them about upcoming events and important updates.
- Increased Business Efficiency
A unified website also augurs optimized processes across departments and eliminates gaps within your organization. Since all processes are visible, management processes become easier and more streamlined with an enterprise website.
- Branding And Marketing
While businesses go to great lengths to establish their brand, your company’s website can become an all-in-one branding tool. By using innovative features, you can increase the visibility of your brand and create the desired perception of your organization.
Core Features of a Successful Website Enterprise
An enterprise website reflects the personality of your company in the virtual continuum. Therefore, it should be a great vehicle to further promote your brand and grow your authority. Let’s unpack the must-have set of features that help you stand out from the pack.
- Scalability
Scalability is the ability of a website to handle spikes in users and loads, whether it’s a gradual or sudden increase. At the same time, the website structure and end-user activities should remain intact.
A successful enterprise web application needs to seamlessly adjust to increasing workloads and accommodate persistent performance. Otherwise, once the threshold is crossed, it will simply fail to function as intended.
- Exceptional web design
Leading enterprise web applications excel in both form and function. According to Top Design Firms, half of the consumers believe that website design is vital to a business’s overall brand. That suggests companies should keep their website design (top of the mind to satisfy consumers’ expectations and amplify their brand identity. Therefore, it’s important to be visually appealing, user-friendly, and professional-looking.
- Responsive development
Responsive design is an acknowledged standard in the digital space. The rise in mobile devices is what secured this trend into the future and made it one of the core Google-ranking factors. In plain words, a responsive website responds and resizes according to the device that is used to view it. Whether it’s a smartphone or a monitor, your enterprise web application should cater to all kinds of users and deliver a great user experience across multiple devices.
- Strong and clear value proposition
A well-performing enterprise website should deliver clarity of messaging. A clear value proposition helps your business avoid being unrelatable and lets the users know the value you bring. Website copy and design is what crystallizes your message and reinforces your marketing efforts.
- Smart functionality
With the stakes so high, a growing number of companies are investing in cutting-edge technology to gain a competitive edge. This trend also takes the form of sophisticated website features. Chatbots, voice search optimization, and motion UI can take your digital presence to another level and become an accessible and aesthetic touchpoint between your business and your customers.
- High-end security
Robust security infrastructure is essential to protect your business and brand reputation. Without proactive security measures, you risk losing funds and sensitive business information. Therefore, the right CMS, add-ons, access levels, and regular backups should become your regimen.
- Performance analysis
Finally, your enterprise website should include the analytics and demographics feature. The latter helps businesses analyze their performance and find improvement areas. Prominent examples of analytics include the number of visitors, conversion rate, and lead generation.
Why You Need Enterprise Web Application
Enterprise web application or software development is a given for large businesses since it boosts productivity and business functionality. Companies have a perennial need for enterprise web applications, whether for internal use or the benefit of their customers.
Such software is complex because it must integrate with existing enterprise applications and be deployed on the internet, intranet, or corporate networks while meeting stringent security requirements.
Successful and effective enterprise-level web applications automate routine processes and/or provide clear value to the end-user.
With that in mind, let us share other benefits of these solutions and defining characteristics of enterprise web development.
Benefits of Web Apps for Enterprises
- Increased productivity
Under the conditions of remote work practices, stable connection and coordinated workflow are what matter the most. Enterprise web services help promote seamless communication across various departments and external operations. Moreover, your employees can access confidential corporate data in the offline mode as well.
- Reduced technical complexity
An increasing number of high-level companies struggle to embrace new technologies. Due to the lack of training and system incompatibility, ready-made solutions fail to satisfy current business needs. Enterprise web applications eliminate these issues by uniting the functionality of several existing applications into a single and easy-to-use interface.
- Reduced costs
Cost-effectiveness is a central focus in businesses. An enterprise app is built to add automation in repetitive processes, thus saving operational costs. Moreover, web apps function within a single operating system and a server, which makes them more affordable and accessible for multiple groups of users.
- Higher levels of security
With desktop-based software, your data is prone to cyber threats and data leaks. Also, in case of malfunction, you’ll have to re-installed software on a new device, which may incur additional costs.
An enterprise web-based application, on the other hand, stores data in the cloud. It means that your data is distributed across the redundant servers, which improves security measures.
- Interoperability of data
Web applications unite all existing systems into one comprehensive solution. With proper credentials, you can log in to the systems from any device, thus always staying on top of major updates.
Undeniable Characteristics for Enterprise Web App Development
With the range of benefits so valuable, let’s have a closer look at the development of enterprise web applications. In particular, we’ll focus on the most important elements that you must have in your web app.
- Scalability
Just like your website, an application should be able to sustain increasing loads. By making it scalable, you will ensure smooth performance under any circumstances. Also, scalable architecture is cost-efficient since you won’t need to remake it when the user count skips to a great number.
- Security
According to studies, over 90% of web applications have exploitable security flaws or weaknesses. Therefore, security is of utmost importance for any large-scale solution. To ensure the safety of your private sensitive data, make sure that the tech provider maintains security standards already during web app development.
- Cost control
Determining the costs of web application development can be tricky. Given the large scope of project tasks and complexity of enterprise software, rigorous budgeting is important for both vendors and companies. Ideally, your development team should stick to the initial developing budget until the project is delivered.
- Bespoke functionality
All business software is created with a specific business need in mind. Whether it’s a content management system or ERP solution, company-oriented software should cater to your business needs. Only customized web application functions exactly how you want them to, which can, in turn, facilitate your business processes.
- Great performance
Application performance can either make or break your internal and customer experience. Not to mention the hefty cost outages bring. Thus, according to Gartner, the average cost of IT downtime is $5,600 per minute. To avoid data and monetary losses from unplanned outages, make sure your large-scale solution can maintain uninterrupted performance, availability, and user experience.
How To Build an Enterprise Web Application
Enterprise web development is a puzzle where every piece complements each other. This vast complexity involves a spectrum of challenges – from third-party CDNs to API connections. Just a single vulnerable point or unsuitable framework can take a toll on an application’s performance.
Therefore, your development team should carefully select every technology to deliver a steady baseline of performance.
Here’s what it takes to create an enterprise web application.
Resilient Tech Stack
Enterprise web development boils down to constructing client-facing and server-facing functionality. The client-facing part, also known as the front-end, refers to everything you see on screen,i.e. app interface. The server-facing component or the back-end is limited to coding.
- Front-end development
Front-end development requires the type of code that will fuel your application and will be accountable for the look and feel of your software.
Specifically, the following technological stack makes up this side of your application:
- Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Cascade Style Sheets (CSS) – create the actual content of the page and make the design or style of the application, including the layout, visual effects, and others.
- JavaScript and JavaScript libraries – power the general interactivity of the solution.
- Web frameworks such as Angular, React, etc. – implement core and additional functionality.
2. Back-end Development
Back-end code communicates the database information to a browser. It enables the inner workings of your application and ensures your front-end works as intended.
Java 8 is considered to be the time-tested standard for back-end app development thanks to its versatility and stability.
Below, we’ve listed the most popular Java Enterprise Edition frameworks:
- Hibernate – lightweight ORM framework that simplifies the development of Java applications in terms of database interaction.
- Spring – Spring Boot and Spring Cloud for best infrastructure support.
- Apache Struts2 – open-source MVC framework for crafting elegant, modern Java web applications.
The following technologies augur well for enterprise-grade databases:
- MySQL
- Redis
- PostgreSQL
- MSSQL
- MongoDB
The Optimum Cloud Service
Cloud infrastructure is a popular option for running business applications. By bringing your business apps to the cloud, you make them more accessible. Cloud services also grant instant and secure access to corporate information. In this regard, Amazon Web Service is the best option to consider. Organizations turn to AWS for their exceptional product suite, unlimited server capacity, and affordability.
Also, AWS offers reliable security measures that aim to keep your data intact. With 12 data centers scattered across the globe, AWS has got your data in expert hands.
The Right Web Application Framework
Web app frameworks are a collection of technologies for creating dynamic websites, network applications, services, or resources.
Frameworks as a whole lay the ground for initiating a software development project with pre-set configurations. They also help developers structure your app-building around foundational assumptions of what your project might need.
Every characteristic of your web application depends on the right choice of framework. From speed and efficiency to security and performance, frameworks render a skeleton of fully-fledged web apps.
Among other things, software development frameworks can also widen a choice of supplementary features to optimize the software development life cycle.
Suitable Web Application Lifecycle Model and Process
The software engineering lifecycle model is another important consideration that plays a pivotal role in the development process. It stands for the step-by-step process of building and delivering a custom web application. Since conventional software models fall flat to meet the evolving needs of enterprise-grade development, we recommend choosing Agile.
It is a world-known standard in the software world that helps provide customers with high-quality products through continuous feedback, iteration, and collaboration. Agile is also change-friendly and allows for amendments during the development project.
Summary
Enterprise web development offers an unrivaled global channel to communicate a business’ value proposition to its target audience. Along with digital presence, business applications become an indispensable asset that channels a patchwork of internal data into the right channel.
We hope that this guide has equipped you with the main pointers to the enterprise software development process.
To sum up, here’s what you need to decide on:
- The right tech stack and web development framework
- The most relevant web application life cycle model.
- Application security requirements
- The main direction of the web design and UX.
