Designing Web Applications for Desktop

Even in this age of mobile devices, many professionals and buyers are still using desktops. Estimates say that about 50% of the users are still using desktops to visit professional websites. This makes it super important to design your web applications keeping in mind the average desktop user.

In this article, we will discuss how can we design Web Applications for Desktops, their processes, and best practices while designing Web Applications for Desktops.

Designing Web Applications for Desktop

Web Applications for Desktop

Mobile phones are a recent phenomenon, but Desktops have been around for quite a few decades now, and still, most valuable customers use their desktops for making online purchases as well as viewing websites. An estimate says that 46.51% of the global website’s traffic still comes from desktops.

This makes it super important for us to keep in mind mobile designs but never compromise the desktop view of any web applications. Instead, we would argue that a better desktop design makes it even simpler to replicate it into smaller screen devices.

How to Web Applications for Desktop?

Designing Web Applications for Desktop can be broadly divided into a three-step process:

1. User Research: The process of designing web applications for Desktops starts with user research. The designer takes detailed notes of the user research. there’s a lot of information that will be gathered so the designer has to analyze the information, understand the trend, and organize data using tools to identify trends and patterns in that data. The role of the designer is to create reports and presentations to present that complex information to other people in the team.
2. Wireframing and Prototyping: Wireframes are detailed structural sketches that illustrate a concept. A wireframe for a digital product is similar to a blueprint for a house. Wireframe clearly illustrates how the product functions and the core elements of its design.
3. Visual Designing and testing: The designer then comes up with creative and innovative design solutions. he/she designs the User Interface and creates graphics and visuals as well as establishes the interactivity with them. Along with that the interfaces are tested and iterated upon the shortcomings.

Importance of Design in Desktop Web Applications

• Better User retention: User retention is a very tricky job and is completely independent of how good the functionalities are. For desktop web applications, the attention span of the visitor is slightly higher that people using mobile devices. For better user retention design is crucial since the visitors before interacting with the functionalities of the web application first goes though the interface.
• Effective and Enjoyable interaction: Design is the way through which users can interact with any web application. User interface design is aimed at easy enjoyable and effective interactions between the users and the app. The primary goal of designing for desktops is to provide the best interaction to the user.
• Saves resources in longer run: Investing in UI/UX design is longer term, so instead of getting the UI changed every time a new feature is added, its better to have a UI/UX team that researches and comes up with the features required, design, interface etc.
• Communicate your mission: The visual elements long with text takes the major part of communication in desktop web applications. Irrespective of what help marketing provides, users have to come to your website/app to buy product/service or know about it. Here good copywriting along with great UI can create a lasting impression in the mind of the user.

Best Practices

• Consistent design and experience: The design of the web application for Desktop must be consistent to the design we have of other devices of smaller screens. This provides a better experience and a factor of relatability which user switches from one device to another.
• Contrast: setting up a proper contrast to the UI is can be obtained through organizing the, design establishing hierarchy, emphasizing a focal point and adding visual interest. It can be done by a lot of different ways – we can add contrast with color, with weight, with size of typography or even with the imagery.
• Alignment and Proximity: A proper alignment in the UI helps organize and group elements, it creates a visual rhythm of elements on the screen, Alignment and proximity brings order in unordered typography.
• Repetition: Proper use of repetition through increasing consistency, increases the user’s ability to learn and identify the pattern in our interface or layout and it also reduces confusion and helps the user guess objects in the layout properly.
• User feedback and iterating: Taking feedback from the users can provide valuable insights about the product/service and what things should be improved. In order to continuously improve the digital product/service we have to that user feedback and iterate our design.
• Hierarchy and Organization: When designing web applications for desktops, one thing that we must take care of is the fact that every application has a Unique Selling Proposition. And the design must have a clear hierarchy where that Unique Selling Proposition is highlighted and we are communication effectively with the user coming to the product app or website.

Conclusion

Designing web application for desktop is crucial for any business to get more customers and hence it also becomes crucial for designers. Estimates says that about 50% of the users are still using desktop to visit professional websites so we can’t ignore these high value customers. Make sure to remember the points we discussed in this article when designing your next desktop application or website.