What is a Web App
The term “web app” essentially just refers software that is running in your web browser but more specifically here, we are talking about software that is used by your company’s employees or customers to complete a specific set of tasks. Examples could be processing customer orders, analysing data from multiple sources, or collecting data in an efficient manner.
Traditionally, producing bespoke software for your business was prohibitively expensive but using web frameworks like Laravel has opened that up to be much more affordable.
Making Your Own Web App
Here are a few reason why you might like to consider adding a web app to your company’s toolkit:
Tailored To Specific Needs
The beauty of a bespoke web app is that it does what you need, not all things for all people. Whatever your goals, the web app will be built to achieve those alone and yet have enough flexibility for it can evolve over time. It’s not bogged down (visually or technically) but lots of functionality that you or 90% of other people will never need.
This has enormous benefits in the adoption of the application because the on-screen options will be so much more intuitive and it will quickly, if not instantly, feel familiar. The idea of deploying new software can scare some businesses by thoughts of training teams and onboarding new staff members but that tends to be a fear born of experiences with much larger corporate software packages and is not the case with small purposeful applications that are built with your team’s direct input.
Scalability And Flexibility
Being a web app means you’re not constrained by on-premise computer resources or access to your your local network. It’s as scalable as any other website or web app on the internet with effectively no upper limit. There are also no concerns about running it on unsupported devices because any computer or mobile that can load websites can also load your web application.
When it comes time to update the app or add new functionality, web development tends be a far more rapid development process than other software development so future ideas can be tested and rolled out faster to get them in the users hands with less fuss. And of course being a web app means all users see new versions immediately without any local app updates required.
Integration With Existing Systems
It is common for a business web app to integrate with other systems. Just about any other system with a web API can be integrated with. Whether you need to push/pull new orders into a CRM or output data content as a feed into your website, very little is off the table.
Availability And Enhanced Security
Web apps can run on your own private servers to restrict access and are typically restricted by user logins. Further restrictions such a limiting access to people on your company VPN may also be added for especially sensitive web apps.
Your web app will almost certainly be able to interface with your company’s authentication systems such as Microsoft Entra ID or Google Workspace so your IT team can control access using their existing policies and not give users another login to manage.
A web app is available 24/7, just like any other website.
Competitive Advantage
Although relatively accessible, fairly few business are yet to invest in making their own application so many still aren’t experiencing the efficiencies they can bring. In some cases where a lot of repetitive work is being done, a well thought out web app can potentially save members of staff hours of work every week so you could be taking advantage of that while competitors are still doing things in a laborious way.
For customer-facing apps, such as a trade ordering portal, the frequent task of placing repetitive orders can be made so frictionless that customers will be far less likely to look around at competitors that will cost them more time.
Case Studies
Profi UK
This application enabled our client to track their stock usage across the warehouses of multiple companies so replenishments could be automatically sent out to their customers as stocks ran low. This project actually included a web app and a mobile app that work in tandem to manage warehouse details, track stock movements/levels, and send daily replenishment orders to their pre-existing order management software.
Visit Herefordshire Directory
When building a new website for Visit Herefordshire there was a requirement for destinations and tourism providers to maintain their own business listings. We were hesitant to give so many people access to the website’s CMS for security and usability reasons, so instead we proposed and built a dedicated web app for people to manage their business’ information in a far more user friendly and minimal environment. Behind the visible web app is an API for the collected data to feed into websites for public viewing.
This has proved to be a big success for the project and has since evolved to include a county media library for all tourism providers to use.
SheerLuxe Data
A previous iteration of the SheerLuxe website held some big data in the website’s CMS. It was all necessary data for mailing list subscriptions and competition entries but a website’s database is really optimised for content rather than data so general performance was starting to suffer. When it came time to rebuild the website we took the opportunity to move this vast amount of data into a lightweight dedicated web app with an API link into the website.
This allows the new data web app to analyse the data and run reports far faster than it ever could using CMS functionality, and without any risk to the website’s performance.
eighteen73 Studio Hub
As a longstanding agency we have a lot of websites to keep track of, many with their own little idiosyncrasies to share between team members. As an aide to the entire team we run a web app that goes beyond a static source of information but also monitors our websites’ health and alerts us when issues need attention. This is an example of an app that not only saves countless hours of digging for information but also improves our service in really meaningful ways.
This particular app is very fluid and, being internal, is frequently used as a proving ground for ideas before offering them to client apps! New functionality is added on a frequent basis and it’s a testament to how flexible and rapid web apps can be.
The Process of Developing a Web App
How We Work
Every app starts with us understanding how your operations work and the problems/opportunities you would like to work on. During the discovery we’ll drill into what the web app itself can do to help and what data is will process. You’ll find that process really focuses minds on the most beneficial objectives so the final product is streamlined in all the right ways.
Next we’ll wireframe some ideas and, alongside your IT team, get into the details of how the integrations with your other systems will work.
During the subsequent development phase we’ll typically share frequent and testable progress with a core team in your company so there’s constant input and feedback throughout.
This will lead into final testing a rollout phase. Depending on the app’s purpose, it’s sometimes advantageous to have a limited rollout to a few trusted employees or clients for feedback before a wider rollout happens.
Technology We Use
Almost all of the web apps we build lend themselves to the Laravel PHP Framework, often with Filament acting as a dashboard for management where necessary. This makes the applications scalable, secure, and quick to add the most common functionality so we can concentrate efforts on what’s unique and special about them.
Testing And Deployment
Our developers build functional tests directly into the web app’s code and they’re run automatically whenever code changes are made. If any test fails, the app’s deployment is automatically blocked until it’s resolved.
Human testing is also has an important place to validate the user experience and catch any mistakes/misunderstandings in functionality. This is done throughout the development lifecycle, ideally with a increasing number of participants as the project progresses towards completion.
When all testing is done we have an automated workflow to safely deploy new versions with zero downtime. And even after an app has been deployed we link it into our error tracking software so we can be alerted of unexpected issues that people find in the wild.
Ongoing Support And Maintenance
We go into every project with the hope of forming a long term relationship, and in fact many companies that we’ve build web apps for have been customers for years. We’ll always be on hand to keep the app up-to-date with security updates when needed, and hopefully keep working with you to add extra functionality when you have new ideas.
Interested?
If this has got you thinking about a web app that could streamline some operations in your company we’d love to talk to you about your ideas.