Web Applications and Online Tools
A web application runs wherever your clients and team already are, in a browser, with nothing to install and one version to maintain.
Why the browser is usually the right place
An application that opens in a browser skips an entire category of problems. Nothing to install, no approval queue, no fleet of users sitting on last year's version. You deploy a fix once and everyone has it on their next page load. For anything used by clients or partners, that alone settles the question, because the number of people willing to install software to check an order status is close to zero.
It also means the same application works on a laptop in the office and a phone on a site visit, provided it was built that way. That last condition matters more than it sounds.
Portals move work off your inbox
A large share of the messages a business receives are requests for information it already holds. Where is my order. Can you resend that invoice. What was agreed on this project. Each one is quick to answer and each one interrupts somebody.
A client portal turns that class of question into something the customer answers themselves, at whatever hour suits them. The effect is not only fewer messages. It is a different relationship with your customers, who stop having to ask and wait for things that concern their own business.
The same applies to partners and suppliers. When they can submit and confirm data directly, you stop receiving spreadsheets that someone has to read and retype, along with the errors that step introduces.
The design question worth spending real time on is what to expose. A portal that mirrors every field in the underlying system tends to generate more questions than it answers, because internal statuses rarely mean to a customer what they mean to you. We usually map them onto a smaller set of stages a customer actually cares about, and keep the detail behind that for your team.
Bookings, registrations and forms
These look simple and are not. The difficulty is never the form itself. It is everything around it.
Availability and limits. Two people booking the last slot at the same moment is a real situation, and it needs handling in the data layer, not in the interface.
Partial completion. People abandon long forms and come back. Saving progress converts a meaningful share of those into finished submissions.
Validation that helps. Catching a wrong format at the field rather than after submission is the difference between a small correction and an abandoned request.
What happens next. A submission that lands in an inbox is only half a process. It needs to reach the right person with a status you can both see.
Speed and access are features
Users leave slow applications, and they do it before they have consciously decided to. Perceived speed comes from architecture choices made early, so we treat it as a requirement rather than a tuning phase at the end.
Accessibility deserves the same treatment. Keyboard navigation, sensible contrast and correct semantics are inexpensive when they are part of how the interface is built and awkward when they are retrofitted. They also happen to make the application better for everyone using it in a hurry.
Start with one flow
The most common way these projects go wrong is trying to cover every user and every case in the first release. It takes longer, and it launches without anyone having used it.
A better first version handles one complete flow for one group of users, in production, with real data. It tells you whether the assumption underneath the project was correct, and it gives you something to extend rather than a specification to defend.
What you get
Client portals
Somewhere your customers can check order status, documents and settlements themselves, at the hour that suits them. Most of the questions that reach your inbox are requests for information you already hold.
Partner and supplier applications
Controlled access for people outside your company to submit, confirm or update the data you would otherwise collect over email. Each party sees only their own records.
Booking and registration platforms
Availability, capacity limits, confirmations and reminders handled by the application rather than by someone maintaining a calendar by hand.
Process forms
Multi-step forms with validation, saved progress and a defined route to whoever handles the submission. Fewer incomplete requests to chase up afterwards.
Sales and service tools
Internal screens shaped around a specific job, such as preparing a quote or handling a case, instead of a general-purpose tool that half fits.
Accounts, roles and authentication
Sign-in that fits how you work, including single sign-on, magic links or passkeys, with permissions defined per role rather than per person.
How we work
- 01
Define the job the application does
We start from the specific task the user is trying to finish and the point at which the current route fails them. That framing keeps the first version narrow enough to actually ship.
- 02
Prototype the main flow
A clickable version of the central path before the backend exists. It is far cheaper to discover a confusing step here than after it is wired to real data.
- 03
Build the application and its data layer
The interface, the API and the database, developed together so the screens reflect a data model that will hold up rather than one retrofitted to the design.
- 04
Connect the systems that hold the answers
Order data, CRM records, payments, calendars. This is what separates an application that displays information from one that resolves a request.
- 05
Launch and measure real use
We watch where people drop out, what they search for and which errors they hit, then fix those before adding anything new.
Tools and technology
Where a solid open-source tool exists, we choose it over a closed one. No lock-in to a single vendor, and costs you can actually predict.
- TypeScript
- Next.js
- React
- Tailwind CSS
- Node.js
- PostgreSQL
- Supabase
- Better Auth
- Redis
- Playwright
- Stripe
- Vercel
Frequently asked questions
Related work
More services in this category
Custom Business Systems
A custom system holds the work your company already does in one place, with the statuses, rules and permissions that match how you actually operate rather than how a generic tool assumes you do.
E-commerce Systems
Online sales is more than a storefront. Most of the work sits in the processes behind it, and that is usually where the manual handling and the errors accumulate.
Integrations and Process Automation
If data lives in several tools and someone has to move it between them by hand, that work can be done by the systems themselves, reliably and without the errors that copying introduces.
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