That’s right, at Girls Who Web, we also develop apps (both web + mobile) and Bubble.io is quickly becoming one of our favourite tools. Let’s talk about our latest project and how we used it to make a client very, very happy.

The Starting Point

James Abraham, founder of Mindright Asia, has developed an innovative way to deliver EAP services to corporates, where the login of each employee is completely anonymous. Unfortunately, after spending months and tons of money on trying to customise existing tools, he had to give up. There was no ready made software that allowed him to handle anonymity just the way he wanted.

We met when he was looking for help for his Wix website, which we were able to provide. We soon discovered he had been trying to find a way to implement his innovative booking workflow, but no tool could provide the right features.

So naturally, we went scouring the internet and the forums to try and find a tool that could fit the description. But after a few weeks of research, we had to admit defeat!

You see: our mission is to provide simple solutions to small business owners, so that means using ready-made tools instead of insisting on custom development, complicated Webflow sites, and 6 months projects.

We’ve witness far too many entrepreneurs being burned by agencies who over-sold them custom solutions which were expensive, lenghty to develop, and ultimately not user friendly at all!

Custom Development and No Code Tools: the happy compromise

James needed a custom solution, there was no way around it.

But we have a special skill that will make the development of this custom, fully personalised solution 10x faster and 5x less expensive than traditional custom development: no-code tools.

Bubble.io is a no-code tool, which means you can create a custom app even if you don’t know how to code thanks to the visual builder and pre-made “elements”. We know how to code, but this is the perfect solution to develop custom web apps quickly and effectively.

Step 1: translating what James wants

The first step of every successful project is being able to translate James’ wishes into technical requirements. This means understanding what features have to be there, and what features are instead “nice to have” because of priority or development cost.

In this step, our role is to advise James on what the best way is to achieve his goal – even if it might look different than what he had in mind.

There are so many things that sound easy but when it comes to development, they actually take weeks and many many buckets of sweat. So unless they are a priority, our advice is to skip until you’re sure your users really really need that.

This phase usually takes 3-4 hours.

Step 2: developing the Bubble app

The fun begins! Our technical team, led by Silvia, started working on creating the Bubble app. Thanks to Bubble pre-made components, it was quite easy to put together the pieces, and after a week we had a ready MVP (minimum viable product).

An MVP is an initial version of your app. The colors may not be perfect, some buttons may be broken, but the goal is to test that the most important features are there and the workflow makes sense.

Once the MVP was reviewed with James, we then spent another week fixing the bugs and adding the finishing touches – like matching the branding colors, refining the transactional emails, and adjusting the error messages.

Step 3: the app is ready to go!

All is done! Well, not all. This is when James takes over and starts using the app in the wild. The reason why launching an MVP is so important is that it allows you to get real life data from real users, instead of spending months doing useless surveys – where everyone lies anyway!

We know that the app will need more work in a few months from now to add features and make it even more complete, but we’re proud that we were able to help James solve his issue quickly and within a reasonable budget.

Here’s what James had to say about working with us

“I would 100% recommend Girls Who Web! The undertaking of this task was no small feat and to create something from scratch must have been extremely arduous. In the end, to see on screen what I had only previously seen in my head, was incredible! I’m grateful for their dedication and hard work! I can’t recommend these girls enough.”

If you are looking for help with your IT strategy or website, please book a call with us to see how we’re able to help!