Creating a scalable web application requires exploring your application, discovering what you can create, choose what to optimize and track scaling as it happens. But before all this, you require planning architecture, selecting a framework, estimating the time-to-market and potential growth plan. You also need to assess load testing and quality coding. Plus, selecting apt hardware to bide unforeseen calamities, choosing partners, and resolving third-party integration problems in chances of downtime and failures are crucial; scaling an application is a multi-factor mission. Let's assess the various factors, benefits, and challenges that play along!