The last is the user tier, which is absolutely vital for the interactive and strategic elements in the application. It provides the user with a visual gateway to the business service by placing images, icons, graphics and layout elements in strategic areas of interest, most commonly, based on management research. If you'll be developing the user tier yourself, be sure to have studied your competition. The last thing you need is for your application to look exactly the same as someone else's.

4. Develop a support scheme

Being able to support and stabilize your application is very important. Define a procedure call for cases of failure, mishaps or even downtime. Give your customers the ability to contact you in the case of an emergency relating to the program.

A good example of a support scheme is a ticket tracking system. This system allows users to file cases pertaining to a support request and the support team, then makes the case track able. This means that the request is identifiable by a unique code or number. Although ticket-tracking systems are normally used by hosting companies or large scale ASP's (Application Service Providers), they still serve a valuable purpose in helping keep the application stable.

Over to You...

So there you have it - a framework from which you can begin to plan and develop your own successful Web applications.

Web applications will be around for a long time to come. As we move further on into the future, they will become less manual and more automated. This will eventually lead to new kinds of research, but for now, we can be happy with the fact that it is this that drives the Web.