Have you used Grammarly?
The online editing app has risen to the occasion for hundreds and thousands of enterprises, organizations, and individuals, helping them communicate better.
Grammarly works like a charm, is simple, and does the job it was intended to do. No bells and whistles there. The amount of complexity reduced by the web app is one of the main reasons for its rising popularity.
Grammarly is not alone
There are many other web apps laced with attractive features. These apps are platform and browser agnostic, which makes them twice more appealing.
Coffee-giant Starbucks for instance, has a brilliant Progressive Web App (PWA) that customers can order coffee online. The interface is like the native mobile app of the brand, and offers them a seamless experience.
Image Source: https://app.starbucks.com/
Like every good web app design, Starbucks and Grammarly web apps are unobtrusive. By keeping things simple, they could entrench the users’ minds. That’s the power of simple interfaces across web apps.
Let’s understand this in depth.
The Undeniable Benefits of Progressive Web Apps
With its progressive web app, carmaker BMW increased its CTR rates by 40% and tripled its conversion rates.
Similarly, Twitter increased per page sessions by 60% and saw a 70% increase in Tweets. All thanks to its progressive web app.
So, what exactly are Progressive Web Apps (PWA)?
A progressive web also commonly known as PWA “is a website that looks and behaves as it if is a mobile app.” The biggest advantage of a progressive app is that it can leverage native mobile device features. Users can purchase and download software locally without visiting the app store or downloading the app.
They are easy to install, responsive designed, can be linked, easy to discover, network linked, and most importantly, super secure.
A progressive web app isn’t the only type out there, but all apps have one thing in common. It will help your business or service—immediately or in the long run.
Types Of Web Applications
While there are many types of web apps, the most common ones are:
Static Web Apps
Also known as stationary or flat web pages, a “static web app is any web application that can be delivered directly to an end user’s browser without any server-side alteration of the HTML, CSS, or JavaScript content.”
This means is it loads on the user’s browser exactly as they are stored on the web server. Pages like these only contain static information. So, while users can access and read the information, they can’t modify or interact with it.
Most companies use static web apps when they are certain that specific information will no longer undergo changes or modifications. One of the biggest advantages of a static web app is that it’s quick and easy to develop. From a ranking perspective, it’s a big win as they load faster, which means search engines can rank them quicker too.
Dynamic Web Apps
If you’re new to the UI world, here’s what you need to know. In the most basic sense of the word, it’s the opposite of static web apps. Instead, a dynamic web app “can change its content, appearance, and functionality in response to user input, system events, and information.”
This type of web app is made of three components—the database, which is the backend, user or client-side components, and front-end components. One can change the functionality of elements without rewriting or modifying parts of their codebase.
The most significant advantage of a web app like this one is that developers can create adaptable applications based on user behavior and others external factors that affect the usability of the web app.
Single-Page Apps
You may be surprised, but you’re using single-page apps extensively, every day. Don’t believe us? Well, you use Gmail and Google Maps every day, don’t you? A single-page app works within a browser and doesn’t require the user to reload the page. It eliminates the extra wait time by removing page reloads. It’s one web page that single-handedly loads all other pages and content.
Not only are these pages easy to debug with chrome, but they are also fast, and the development isn’t rocket science. The developer isn’t required to write code to render pages on the server. As the developer can reuse the same backend code for both web and native mobile applications, most clients prefer to stick to this style of a web app.
No matter which type of web app you choose to create an impact for your business, there are a few standard things that you can’t rule out with any web app.
At the heart of all great UI is the ease of usability. The primary thing to focus on is simplifying any web user interface.
That said, here’s what you need to keep in mind when designing a web app.
Helpful Tips to Design Web Apps
Requirements engineering
Also referred to as “requirement analysis”, it is the number one crucial step in defining user expectations. Break the requirements down to a bare minimum. Starting with a mountain of information will get you nowhere, and that’s where the problems begin.
Keep eliminating clutter until you’ve simplified it to the point of no more possible elimination. What you have left now is the solution the users want. Surveys, interviews, and one-on-one sessions are a few productive ways to gather your users’ best and most valuable insights. Remember that users will have varied opinions, and not all opinions could lead to a viable solution.
Web app development approach
The web app development process is more or less the same across platforms. It begins with collecting data, planning, designing, populating content, coding, testing, and deployment. But the approach you take to follow the process can be the only defining factor between an excellent app and a mediocre one.
Depending on your working style, you can choose between different approaches like waterfall, Lean IT, Scrum, Agile, Kanban, and more.
Design keeping mobile devices in mind
The experience of using a web app for some services feels more convenient on a personal computer than on a smartphone or a mobile device. But we must not discount the fact that more and more people are more comfortable using their mobile devices.
Users now expect seamless omnichannel experiences. If they’ve started a process on a computer, they might switch and wish to complete it on their phones. So, ensure that the web app you’re creating is easy to navigate and loads on all devices without hiccups.
Functionality
You must be thinking, why talk about functionality when it’s the sole task of building a web app in the first place? But when glancing over the big picture, we tend to forget the more minor challenges that may later become the most significant issues in the app interface.
Check the web app to ensure that there aren’t any broken links and that it loads quickly. The longer the loading time, the more drop-offs. Is the web app secure? If it is, does the web interface give the user a sense of how safe it is? Aesthetic usability is a big player when it comes to security features. Are there any operational issues that no team member is aware of?
*SEO-Friendly Code
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One of the simplest ways (and we’re talking about simplifying interfaces) is to keep your web app SEO-optimized, whether developing new pages or revamping old ones. Some CMS services like WordPress come with their own plug-ins, which help simplify the process.
Conclusion
The success of a web app or a website interface doesn’t always depend on heavy-duty design and development. Sometimes it’s about getting to the root of the problem and starting with something small, almost something simple. Understanding the basics of the problem is what will eliminate quite a few hurdles in the long run. Excessive elements, features a user may not even look at, negative brand positioning, and baseless promotional efforts won’t help amplify a web app. Nailing what the user wants will.
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