The importance of user experience and internal workflows when designing web applications

Web applications and UX

When we are looking for something these days, it has become only natural to quickly Google it. This is also the case when we are interested in a certain product or service. Therefore, when visiting a website, users often already have a goal in mind. He or she wants to quickly find what they clicked on the website for. Doesn't that work? Then he will have disappeared in no time and he will find the answer to his question on the following website. A good user experience, also known as the term User Experience (UX), is therefore crucial for a web application to succeed and achieve your goals as an organization.

But in addition to end users, web applications must also be well tailored to a company's internal processes. As a company, you do want your application to connect to your workflows. When designing good web applications, it is therefore important to do this with both the user experience and internal workflows in mind. We'll tell you more about that in this blog.

A user experience that makes you happy!

A good user experience is extremely important for the success of a web application. A design should not only look beautiful, but above all, it should really contribute to the goals of the application. To make your design fit in well with the user experience, there are a number of things you can take into account. These include, for example, visual design, ease of use and accessibility.

To find a good balance between the various factors you should take into account in your design, it is important to put yourself in the shoes of the target group. By looking from their perspective, you will learn to understand their needs and goals and you can then incorporate them into the design of the application.

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Matching your application with internal workflows

Besides the fact that it is very important to take the experience of the end user into account when designing your application, it is also important to take into account your company's internal workflows. This is because this way you ensure that the application also fits seamlessly with the existing processes and you therefore do not have to force it to adapt to new systems.

An example of this is an order portal that is also linked to your company's internal systems. It transmits the information immediately, so that no duplication of work has to be done. When the inventory is also checked and linked, the ordering process can be started automatically, so this application saves a lot of time and effort.

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Web applications with a well-thought-out design

So the key to a good application is to work from both the customer's perspective and current workflows while developing. Because this is how you ensure that the application ultimately meets the various goals as optimally as possible. But what does such a well-developed application ultimately look like?

Slack

A good example is Slack. Slack is a communication platform designed to streamline communication and collaboration between different teams. It is a user-friendly application that allows you to communicate effectively with different people, in different compositions, in your own time and in a clear way. For example, you can also use Slack well within teams where you work with people who live in different time zones, and you have search functions that make it very easy to search for or return certain things.

Trello

Another application that was really designed from a user perspective is Trello. Trello is a digital planning board that helps teams plan projects properly and in an organized way. The design is designed to be very user-friendly: almost everyone understands how to use this board and can therefore use it well and quickly. And even from the point of view of organizations' internal workflows, this app really shines: they have taken into account that planning and managing a project where you work with multiple people can be quite difficult and offer an intuitive solution for this.

Our Qredits application

But we at Flawless Workflow also like to develop well-thought-out web applications. Take the credit application module that we developed for Qredits as an example: For new Qredits customers, it was difficult to request the service that Qredits offers. In addition, Qredits employees themselves also involved a lot of manual work behind the checks and many validations were required to transfer the data into the right systems. When developing the credit application module, we therefore kept both the end user and the internal processes in mind, in order to create an application that works well on both sides and meets the needs and requirements of the users. For example, the new application not only develops customer user satisfaction, but also saves a lot of time on administration, provides clear long-term insights and makes use of real-time data.

Tips & tricks

To develop the perfect application, we have listed some of our methods for you:

1. Wireframing

The first tip is to use wireframing in the development process. Wireframing is making schematic drawings of the various pages and screens of an application, without taking the design into account. Creating wireframes helps you define and refine the user experience before spending a lot of time and money developing the application. This therefore reduces the chance of finding out at a later stage that something may not work quite as you had thought. So you don't have to invest unnecessary time and money into redeveloping it.

2. Prototyping & User Testing

A tip that matches this is to use Prototyping and User Testing (user testing). Prototyping is the step that follows after designing the wireframes. While creating a prototype, interactive models of the application are created that allow users to test the design and functionality. They can then provide feedback on this before the application is actually built. By doing user tests, any problems and opportunities for improvement can be identified before the application is further developed.

3. Agile working

One way of working that fits this very well is 'Agile working'. This way of working focuses on the needs and wishes of the end user and continuously collects feedback from the user, in order to be able to constantly adjust the development of, in this case, the application.

A characteristic feature of Agile working is working in short rounds of feedback. By working in short periods of time and regularly asking for feedback, you ensure that improvements can be made quickly. This way, you can continuously respond to the customer's needs with the application. This results in an end product that meets the needs well, so the chances that it will be successful are much higher than if you had not done these feedback rounds.

A successful application

In short, it is extremely important to continuously take user experience and internal workflows into account when developing an application. And that is exactly what we do at Flawless Workflow: we develop applications that include both the end user and the internal workflows. This is how we create a pleasant user experience and an application that fits well with current processes. As a result, higher effectiveness and more satisfied users.

Do you also want to develop an application? We'd love to help you out! Schedule an appointment with one of our consultants to see together what we can do for you.

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