3 Ways to Pimp Your Web Application

Guess who’s back, back again…?

Is your application a hooptie? Could it stand a ghetto-fabulous makeover of MTV-sized proportions? Chances are, even if it is washed and waxed, it could probably move on up to the big time by following a few nuggets of kind reflection.

I’ve been kicking around some thoughts and observations of various social media sites and APIs. And guess what? My eyes have seen the glory of the pimping of your app. That’s right — just follow these golden rules and you, too, can go from limp to pimp.

1. Make it easy to use.
   • Think simple like Google’s home page.  Users do not want to be overwhelmed with pointless Ajax wizardry.  But Ajax can enhance the experience if used appropriately.  Also remember to solve the fewest problems — maybe just one. But do it well.
   • Make the use of your application effortless, like driving a big, comfy Cadillac with power steering and dreamy suspension.  And, yes, you can have some fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview.  Seriously, though, it must require very little thought and only easy decisions. It should be self-guided and prompting.
2. Make it easy to extend or customize.
   • Get it out there — with a clean, robust API just dying to be some developer’s beeyatch. Encourage community-developed plugins.  The neighbors love to pimp your app, too. Use open standards — CSS, JSON, REST. And don’t forget the bling.  Make it irresistibly easy to add your latest self-promotional widgets into your users’ blogs or other life-streams.
   • Don’t go overboard under the hood.  Users tend to get bogged down with minutiae on the settings screen and developers often go overboard with functionality.   It’s your job to educate them softly with simple, customizable defaults that encourage and foster experimentation.
3. Make it fit into the user’s online life.
   • Give ‘em a chance to flash their grill.  Users expect profiles, galleries, avatars, and the trappings of social networks nowadays.  Don’t let them down — in fact, it would rock if you can fuse their various social networks together.
   • Don’t isolate in the realm of input or output; clear the two-way street. Consume feeds, produce feeds. Connect to the social application space through open APIs. Build a clean and robust API as a sign that you are a friendly neighbor. The sit back and REST.
   • Be user-centric. Instead of the user being a part of your web application, make your web app a part of the user’s online presence. If they have a domain, allow your application to be piggybacked on it (e.g., yourapp.theirdomain.com vs. theirsub.yourapp.com). At very least, give users a memorable, easily accessible URL. Subdomains are groovy, too. But, please Gawd, no http://holycow.net/user/17539?name=bigdawg. Ugh.  I think I just puked a little.

Walk this way and keep your pimp hand strong.  Can you Digg it?