What makes a successful web application?

I was thinking about the criteria for website success recently. With web applications, it may depend on your objectives. Perhaps you want to establish an active community or even make some money from your lovingly-crafted 'web app'. However, one possible measure of success is whether the application has been sold to another company. That's certainly the case with two web applications that were described last night at the second £5 Apps meeting in Brighton.

Firstly, Alan Newman from Sensible Development described the history of Effeffelle which is a fantasy football league (FFL, geddit?) web application built in Java. This was an interesting tale of dot.com boom and bust. The game has a high user loyalty but it was perhaps surprising with such a successful website idea that the application is currently offline whilst 'real work' takes precedence. However, the application has been 'white-labelled' for at least one other company.

Secondly, Raj Anand from Kwiqq described the story behind the socal network website builder software that Kwiqq sells to its clients. The history of Kwiqq is much shorter because the company is only a few months old. The whole idea behind Kwiqq started as a true £5 App with Raj working on it in evenings and weekends. The motto here seemed to be enthusiasm, enthusiasm and more enthusiasm. It was also refreshing to hear that initial inexperience is not necessarily a barrier to success (and funding!)

I have attended both £5 App meetings so far and, it there is one thing that's true, it is that the story behind each application comes with different lessons to be learned. Oh, and lots of coding...

Thanks to Ian and John for organising the event - and for providing beer and cake - and Hobo Internet for the elegant Regency townhouse venue.