"As a client, think about the business goals you want the web application to achieve. At the same time, be aware of the expectations of its users. And that it won't be an easy job. Someone will have to be involved in the development for the long term."
I want the web! One like the competition's. Because it's trendy. Sexy. Cool!
This is often the task not only for web developers, designers and agencies. Mobile and "full- fledged" app developers have a similar situation. But what is the subsequent disappointment that the resulting work does not have the desired impact on the business! And who do we blame for this? Right. It's not us.
So how do I specify the development of a web application correctly? How not to break your nose and throw away a few million from the window? These are the questions that resonate through my bubble. And I've been through them myself, too. That's why I invited two people who have been successfully developing web applications for large companies to appear in front of microphones and cameras. Jakub Sodomka from SDMK Design Czech s.r.o. and Adam Karnet from WebToad s.r.o. already have a couple of websites that they themselves use quite often and could talk about customer assignments for hours. That's why I asked them:
🔸 Where are the biggest challenges in client collaboration?
🔸 How do you measure the success of a web application?
🔸 What should I prepare in advance as a contracting authority?
🔸 How do B2B and B2C differ in application development?
🔸 What is a design system and what is it good for?
HOW TO CORRECTLY SPECIFY THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WEB APPLICATION (INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT)
Martin Hurych
Hello. I'm Martin Hurych and this is another Ignition. Today we're going to take a look at how to outsource the development of your best web app, how not to get burned and how not to get something you didn't really want in the first place. To do that, I've invited two guests here, the first one is Jakub Sodomka from SDMK Design. Hi.
Jakub Sodomka
Hey.
Martin Hurych
The other is Adam Karnet from WebToad. Hi.
Adam Karnet
Hey.
What did they reveal about each other?
Martin Hurych
Both of them will represent something we call Alien Overlords and we'll get to that in a moment. But before we explain why there are two of you and we're talking about three companies, I have a question for you. Adam cooks and reads, so I was wondering, James, what have you read or eaten from him and what did you call it?
Jakub Sodomka
I've eaten tortillas from him at our offset, but I haven't read anything. Except, of course, for texts, which abound in the work process, I read nothing else.
Martin Hurych
Jakub didn't reveal anything about himself in the preparation, so snitch on him here and now.
Adam Karnet
Jakub has two shoes with him, he brought special shoes for the recording of this podcast.
How did they get to themselves and their companies?
Martin Hurych
Jakub is deadly serious today. I have introduced you here as bosses and owners of your own companies, however, I have also mentioned Alien Overlords. Come tell me how you got into those companies and what the third one, which is extra up in the air here at the moment, means to you and why it's being created.
Jakub Sodomka
As a long-time designer, I decided one day that I would not scalp myself andI'm gonna do something called a studio or an agency. So I started SDMK Design, which is somewhere in 2018, and then the other company, WebToad, was added on top of that. Because we were purely isolated to some design work, obviously it's a bit more spread out than I'm saying now. One fine day, our third colleague, Antonín Pospíšil, stepped in and after some time it became clear that we needed to create a kind of roof over these two companies. That roof should say that, although they are two companies, they have one process, one pipeline, but we will get to that.
Martin Hurych
How did you get into WebToad?
Adam Karnet
My then-partner and I started the company in college back in 2009. It was purely because web development or web applications was something we were already doing at the time. So it seemed logical to us that we would do it on our own, not do it for someone else, but that we would be the ones delivering the service.
Jakub and I met around 2017 while working on a project for an agency. Gradually, our collaboration grew to the point where we are not only doing the projects together, but also building a brand that is above us. We want it to not only provide what SDMK does, or what WebToad does, but to get other services in there that are related to what we do, whether it's online marketing, analytics, and so on.
Martin Hurych
So Alien Overlords' ambition is to cover it and be some kind of fullstack agency?
Adam Karnet
I'm terribly opposed to the word agency, it has a terribly bad ring to it these days. It's not that we just want to do it on our own, but we see what clients are looking for in the projects we work on. They come to us and say they're happy to have design and development sorted out and they need someone to sort out the analytics and metrics associated with scampering. We could have that in the portfolio of the service we're offering right now. It's not just things that are strictly web stuff, but we have partners for that who would like to help us with innovative design, business propositions, business planning. Our goal is to be able to grasp what that client is dealing with from quietly some strategic planning through execution to some long-term process that then follows.
Where are the biggest challenges in client collaboration?
Martin Hurych
You mentioned web applications and websites. I have two groups within my bubble, some of them are creating the websites and delivering them to the other group, and I see from both sides that the biggest thing that is failing is the mutual expectations. Where do you see the biggest problem from your own experience? Where are the biggest challenges when, for example, you're negotiating with a potential client what they want what you want it to look like and how much it should cost?
Jakub Sodomka
You said one magic phrase, how much it should cost, which is often the first thing clients ask you. That' sinherently very problematic because most of those clients are not prepared enough to have that question answered. The preparation to do that amount of material, the work to be able to even identify and define a price, simply has to be done. Whether the client does it on their side beforehand or whether we do it with them is then a matter for further discussion.
How do you measure the success of a web application?
Martin Hurych
I might reformat it a little bit. While the clients don't know what it's going to cost, I see dramatically different expectations on the client and supplier side. What they can agree on at the outset is that the app or the website has to be successful. So what is successful, how do you perceive what is a successful web application, what are the factors for it to be successful and what should I look out for as a client?
Adam Karnet
I think the most important thing is to know what my business goal is, what I want to achieve, because nobody goes to buy an app. I have a business goal that I want to accomplish, and the app can be one of the many ways to get there. We're not talking about mobile apps, we don't do those, but it could be a web app. I want to fulfill a business goal, I want to monetize it in some way ideally, although not all business goals will come back to me in the form of direct funding. I can buy a better perception of my brand or whatever, but I should know what it's going to bring to that business. It's terribly shocking how often it's not clear in practice when a project like this gets off the ground.
Our industry is not unique in that the expectations of the client and the supplier differ, I think that's everywhere. It's been a great experience since I've built a house, and you relate to a lot of things afterwards. The bricks and the concrete for the house, everybody has a pretty good idea of the quantity that's going to be needed. In this segment, if a client makes a general assignment and puts it in front of three different entities, one will price it at 250 thousand, another at a million and a half and another at 5 million. Basically, none of them have to be absolutely out of touch or a liar or irresponsible. There's just a huge difference in how different things can be implemented, how sustainable they are, what technologies they're on
built. It's not at all about saying the client wasn't ready because the client is doing what they know how to do, they have a business and it's up to us to help them navigate that web application development environment. We also have to confront him with some uncomfortable facts that go along with that, because there's going to be a lot of work to do on his end as well. It can be setting fairly precise business goals, securing your own capabilities, that segment can be a wilderness in there. There are an awful lot of options and it is extremely difficult to navigate them for those of us who are in that segment, let alone someone coming in from outside.
What is a web application?
Martin Hurych
So as not to confuse concepts with impressions here, let's get some idea of what a web application might mean in my bubble of technical, technology manufacturing companies.
Jakub Sodomka
The web app is a bit misleading with the name, but basically it's everything we can imagine. It can be a presentation website or an intranet, any internal application that is used for some automation, some flow of some tasks, you can really include everything under it. I guess you could say that you could also include e-commerce, which we don't really do, but generally any digital product like that can be called a web application. A mobile app serves a dedicated purpose as a standalone mobile app and is developed as such.
What should I prepare in advance as a contracting authority?
Martin Hurych
Adam, you said you needed to get clear on your business goals. I agree that a lot of people around me also have it that the competition has something, I want it too, I don't like the web anymore, so let's donew, but the assignment isn't entirely clear. So what should I, as the assignor, sort out in my head and what should I come to you with so that the discussion makes sense right from the start?
Adam Karnet
I had a meeting with a company recently, the owner came to us, it's a smaller company, but the guy came incredibly stuffed with information. He was able to explain to us in an hour meeting that he's in a segment, that segment is going to have some legislative storm and he sees what's going to happen and he wants to prepare for it unlike his competitors. He has a clear business plan of what he wants to achieve and he was able to explain his business plan to us in 30 minutes. He also added that he has no understanding of how to make a website that will have the impact on his clients that he wants, what the path is to get there, what he has to do to get there, and how much it will cost him. For us it was great because it's something you can work with.
That first input isn't about whether I want to measure metrics like this or poppy. It's about what I want to achieve and whether I can explain to those suppliers what my situation is, what my goal is, what the limits are there and what the competition is doing. It takes us an awful lot of time to become 10% oriented in your segment, but if you can give us that information like that, then we can use it and do what we can do on top of it. If that's not in the project and the project is built on us getting that insight in that segment, then it's terribly time consuming, financially consuming and the thing moves forward slowly. Even the motivation on the client's side gradually fades because things don't run the way you imagine at the beginning.
Jakub Sodomka
I would add to that that obviously some research methods and talking to customers and owners is helpful in being able to get some information out of that that we can work with. The ideal combination is, ideally, what my colleague Adam is saying here, plus you do some of that research yourself and put that data in a pile and then work with it.
Adam Karnet
You're getting a little ahead of yourself. Of course, I didn't say that user research shouldn't be in these projects. The kick-off phase of any project is just to get to the key stakeholders, get to the users or customers, find out or at least validate that those needs are actually there. What James mentioned is terribly important, but it's not the thing that should come before. That's already a part of our work that deals with some of the UX of that whole solution, the inputs, the outputs, but what I was talking about precedes all of that. That's what that client should know on their side, on top of their business needs. For a digital product, a new app, anything like that, we then we find out how their customers would react online if we offered them this or that. That's different from project to project.
How do B2B and B2C differ in app development?
Martin Hurych
How is B2C and B2B different?
Adam Karnet
Little and huge at the same time. There is no one way of looking at it and naming that difference in my opinion. It's going to depend on the product, it's going to depend on the service, it's going to depend on how large a group of companies that B2B is geared towards. Because a B2B product can paradoxically be oriented towards a lot of companies and a B2C product can be oriented towards a very narrow slice of customers.
Jakub Sodomka
I would say that in the B2C segment there may be more pressure on conversions. Often in that B2C segment there is a product or a service that needs to reach a large number of customers because until then it doesn't make business sense. It's much more complicated to market to those people through some funnel or to create a valid order, and setting those goals can be much harder to achieve when there are a large number of those customers. Conversely, in that B2B segment, it's more sometimes the more complicated things that that customer offers to their B2B customers, but doing two orders can sometimes be enough business, unlike B2C, where you have to do 50 thousand orders. There can indeed be a difference, but as Adam said here, it's project by project.
Adam Karnet
The other way to look at it is that getting that individual user to convert may be easier. I've gotmy phone in my hand, I've got my browser open, and there's this serviceor the product that I like, so I'm gonna make a decision and buy it. By contrast, in companies and large organisations, the decision process of whether I buy that service or product can involve dozens of people and different levels of that decision process. So there is no universal answer to this, whether one or the other is easier or more complex. It's going to depend terribly on the size of that audience or that pool of those people who might buy it, consume it, what it is
service and whether I'm global or local.
What should a user-friendly app look like?
Martin Hurych
What I love about it is that the divide is not B2B and B2C because a lot of people for some reason believe that B2B is business to business and the audience and listeners know that I don't profess that. I keep saying it's person to person and then what you said makes a lot of sense. You mentioned there, Adam, the importance of the user interface, user experience and so on. It's humorous, on my way here to the studio I saw this joke about how very clean Apple's basic user interface looks, how clean Google's search engine looks, and how typical enterprise applications look old fashioned. What should a good web application look like today to be clean, clear, fast and user friendly?
Adam Karnet
User interface is a terribly broad term. This is one of the things that's worth mentioning, the word design gets thrown around an awful lot, and the word design in this country tends to gravitate a lot towards visual design. But design as that verb "to design" doesn't just mean painting or visual things, it's product design, service design, process design. It's the design of that whole user experience, that user experience that ties into that product, and that's what we're always trying to explain. Let's not get hung up on what it's going to look like, let's be primarily concerned with what the user take away for feeling overall beyond what it looks like. The visuals are one subset of what all is typically addressed in that project.
Martin Hurych
Before we let Jakub speak, I would almost say that the main discussion is still about the size and color of the buttons on the landing page. Right?
Adam Karnet
The logo needs to be bigger. That's always the crucial requirement, but I understand why it's happening. Then it's horrible when you get to a position where you're designing your website and you wonder if you should actually make the logo bigger too, but then you slap yourself and say no.
Jakub Sodomka
It's terribly important to first figure out what the thing is supposed to do and how to interpret it in that digital environment, what it's supposed to do. To put it a bit more generally, to completely remove any obstacles that might lead to that. At the very least, that will help to get that user to some point where they need to go in an easier and faster way. If that path is still I can make it attractive, that maybe I'm entertained or it's visually interesting and there's a brand in it, it also meets a little bit of that emotional layer, so I'm tempted to go back and do something about it. Of course, I also have that design disability of mine, that I don't generally want to use apps that are ugly because I don't want to go back to them. Just working in some crazy spreadsheets or something where it's really over the knee is a punishment for me.
This is of course also a mobile issue, because even though we say web apps, most things have to be perfectly polished for mobile devices. The web applications are often used on a mobile device, apart from some intranets that are operated by peoplein the offices. There the pressure to make it user-friendly and find what I need is much higher. Then if it gets complicated and the user doesn't know what to press where, they probably won't go back. Of course, we're talking more about those B2C sites and it's more of an e-commerce issue as well, where once that person comes in and doesn't find out how to buy, they'll probably never come back. Then we're talking more about those applications that have to perform some task there, maybe from some work point of view, and of course there's nothing else for that user to do but to work in it because it's their work tool. But making the thing more user-friendly helps both to accomplish those tasks faster and to accomplish those goals faster.
What is an example of a great app?
Martin Hurych
Let's not say what sucks, let's try positive. What do you think is a good web app for employees?
Adam Karnet
For example, Fakturoid is great. If anyone who does Fakturoid ever hears this, I'd like to thank them because it's really great.
Martin Hurych
I have had Fakturoid for 5 years myself and I am extremely satisfied.
Jakub Sodomka
It's exactly like that and that's exactly it, simple, you find what you need, there's a data visualisation and if I need something I export it. Then there are similar other unnamed invoicing software that I've also stumbled upon in the past, and to filter an invoice there is really something. That's exactly it, once I have this negative experience and I search five times for where to find some invoice export, I'll probably start looking for another solution. This is where the bread is breaking, when these companies should be thinking about just where their water is running out from my point of view. This is the reason why these applications are tested, because these things often reveal that testing, that somewhere the user doesn't know where to download what, export what, but the reality is that many companies don't do that.
Adam Karnet
Just as the business has its goals, so does the user. Here we have a contradiction between the forged designer and me, and that is that if the app is self-loathing but easily fulfills the goal I want it to, I will use that app until the end of days. If that app is completely fancy, but I have to do an extra 7 taps here, there, close, open on every single thing in there, and it's not that straightforward process to achieve what I want to achieve, I'm not going to use that app.
Then it's about the fact that we talk about Fakturoid as a great examp and then there are people in some big corporation where they don't use Fakturoid. It's not an enterprise tool and at that point they have no choice but to use some more complex tool that has worse usability. There is a very tangible difference, but those are situations where there is no choice. The environment in which the
one moves, because I am not alone in a vacuum, my context also plays a terribly important role in this.
Jakub Sodomka
It's true. The aesthetic visual is not overpowered by the utility, ideally when it goes hand in hand.
What is a design system and what is it good for?
Martin Hurych
When I talk to you like this about what you do, I hear the design system no later than somewhere between the third and fourth sentence. What is it and what should I use it for? Why should I consider it and who should consider it?
Jakub Sodomka
That's a beautiful question. The combination of words already suggests that it will be some kind of system of using design. I'll liken it to Legos. Then if I can build my Lego product that has those bricks minimally compatible, that I'm not mixing in Seva and the Igras that don't stand on those platforms, then it starts to work. I have some one system where I use some atomic elements and patterns to some consistency even visually, that I'm using some rules for what some actions should look like, whether it's buttons or forms. It's just a small to giant
a set of design rules, but not only design rules, because the design system is ultimately a library of modules that I can then put together. You can build web applications from that, and it has a lot of benefits, whether it's
in terms of business and in terms of efficiency. It brings a lot of benefits to the product team if the company or startup finds it.
How widespread is the design system?
Martin Hurych
What you're saying is so obvious on first hearing that I would expect anyone making a web app today to have it. On the other hand, I only heard the word from you, so what's the current state of play?
Adam Karnet
I think it's a topic that's getting a lot of play now from the community that's primarily concerned with it. There are, of course, companies that have had design systems for years, they just didn't call it by that name. But it's also not easy to make such a design system scalable and sustainable. The design system doesn't just give you benefits, it also gives you constraints, which is great, but not everyone thinks so. Marketing comes along and wants to do something new, but the developers will come and say we're using this design system and it doesn't have those elements and if you want those new elements, they have to be added to the design system. It's one thing to make something disposable and it's another thing to make it reusable and sustainable. That's where the proportion of how much time and money it takes changes.
So it's not true that everyone needs a design system, that's not the case at all. A design system is something that will pay off in the long run just on the consistency of what is being done, what is being designed. If you're a larger company that has either multiple internal systems, more complex systems that evolve over time, new features added to them, new features added to them, then it's definitely something to consider. But if you're somebody who has a one-pager presentation, some one-page web presentation, then dealing with a design system beyond some typography and color palette is a bad investment. The goal isn't to go around saying whoever doesn't have a design system is doing it wrong. A design system is a tool just like a lot of other tools to achieve some business goals, we'll keep coming back to it.
Jakub Sodomka
A nice explanation is that, for example, the moment a company uses multiple apps and it behaves differently in each app, the button looks different in each app, that's where the problem really comes in. With the design system, the effort is just to unify these things. From one company, a user can use multiple applications, often within an organization, when someone comes to measure something. He enters it into a tablet, then he sits down at the computer, taps something, then he has a mobile phone for something, and then if he has those patters that he sees in all those devices, he knows how to use them and he knows what the buttons are for. He's actually doing some action that he's used to doing on that other device as well, and then of course it's beneficial. Really, there are companies that have 10, 15 apps, and then if they don't use a system like this, it can be very challenging to use those things to maintain and unify those mechanisms. Ultimately, the user suffers because they jump from one to the other and it's completely different every time and that's just problematic.
What else do I need to be aware of as a contracting authority?
Martin Hurych
Now, to go back in an arc to the beginning, we said that if I want something from you, and before I come to you, I should be clear about what it is that I am supposed to get, that is the first thing. Then we said that I should be clear about what the person I'm building it for is going to want from it, that's the second thing.
Page. Now we've talked about how it should not only look, but how it should all work to meet both sides. What else do I need to be aware of as a sponsor before I come to you?
Adam Karnet
It will be a huge amount of work for you or for you as a sponsor. Typically it's things like content, doing user research, so where do we take those users. We need to contact your customers, so who's going to give that access to those users, to those customers, who's going to pre-communicate with them? Do you have all the branding materials ready to be used on the web? What about the fonts you use in your company materials, do you own them, can we even use them that way? What about cookies, what about GDPR, what does your legal department say, we're going to have 20 forms on there pulling all sorts of personal data from people, where is that data going to be kept? It's an awful lot of stuff, some of it's small, some of it's big. We want to have articles on the site that we're going to put videos in, so who's going to produce those videos? Are you going to produce them in-house, is there a marketing company or other third party for that? Is there a long-term plan in your company for how the app will work, for example? The competition has something, and I want it too, but that's where most people don't see how much time, money, and general mental energy the competition must have already invested in it. Moreover, the competition might know that it costs millions of crowns a year to run something like this in some cases. I want it, how much it will cost to produce it is only one slice of the pie and there are many other things to take into account.
Martin Hurych
When I listened to you for a minute, it was actually a presentation of potential bottlenecks and explosions of how not to do a web app. Let's close on a positive note today. How do you do it? It's logical, and you're saying it absolutely right here, that I'm doing something that's going to be with me for a while, I need to take care of it, and it's a lot of work. So can you outline some of the benefits I'll get out of it once I have it?
Jakub Sodomka
It will meet those business objectives and that's the most important thing. But it can also fulfill other goals, like marketing and so on. We're saying there's some work to be done on the client side. There needs to be a person or multiple people doing some work around that application, around that interface or even just the presentation site. It could be content work or it could be just some other work they're doing there, but it's work. But that work doesn't necessarily have to be boring or stressful in any way, it can be quite fun, it can be quite entertaining within that content. It depends on what the project is, of course, and so on.
How to choose the right supplier?
Martin Hurych
It's my first web app, I don't look at the competition and I really want something of my own, I'm as ready as the person who came to you, however I don't understand your business. How will I know from the outside as a client that when we're done together it will do what it's supposed to do? How do you choose the right contractor?
Adam Karnet
You wouldn't know it, but then again, that segment isn't exceptional. You don't recognize it in a lot of other segments either, but I always tell people that we're talking to each other in some way, that we're interacting on some human level. We say some things, the client says some things, and you can always tell after one, two, three sessions if those things are intersecting or if there's a disparity there. You have no guarantee up front because we don't sell a product, we sell a service. We make applications tailored to the specific needs of specific clients. In software, you know a lot of products that are really sold as a boxed product, or it's a service that has maybe three tariffs or different features, and you can manage that expectation much better there. In our case,when we're doing a service, there's not much difference between us and the architect, and it's much more about the interaction between those entities than with the boxed product.
BONUS
Martin Hurych
You've prepared a bonus for us. What will we find in this bonus?
Adam Karnet
We will find more of those boogeymen we mentioned here to watch out for. It's sort of 5 things or 5 areas to watch out for when you want to build a web application. I think it's universally transferable to any application or any software. All of those things have been mentioned here in some way, so it's kind of a summary in a short text of what I need to focus on, get it straight in my head or in my company before I go to somebody.
Jakub Sodomka
Not only does the material include the patero we're talking about here, but there's a little bonus for those who download it. They can meet with me or in the future with one of my colleagues in a short online meeting to discuss what they would like to do in the future or how to approach this. That's what we offer there, the service is free of course, and we're happy to chat.
Martin Hurych
Great. Thank you for all of us and I wish you all the best.
Jakub Sodomka
Thank you.
Adam Karnet
Thank you for the invitation.
Martin Hurych
Another episode of Ignition is over. I firmly believe that you now have a better idea of what your future web application could and should look like. If that is indeed the case, we've done our job well. If that's the case, please like, comment, share where you're watching or listening, because otherwise the world won't know about us and I won't be able to invite more great guests here. Be sure to check out www.martinhurych.com/zazeh, where there's already a promised bonus below this episode at this very moment. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed and wish you success, thanks.