Jul 1, 2025
Why the UX of business apps is often so incredibly poor (and why that really needs to change)
Daan Brittan
Managing partner
Pro Tips
Let’s do a thought experiment.
Picture an app you use in your personal life. Spotify, Netflix, your parking app, whatever... Now imagine clicking through it in your mind. Feels smooth, right?
Now do the same with an app you have to use at work.
Feeling that frustration bubbling up?
Why is it that business apps almost always feel slow, ugly and inefficient?
Let’s take a step back first
What exactly is a business app? Simple. They are the apps employees use to do their work. The apps that keep your organization running smoothly.
Think of:
The expense app where employees upload their receipts
The scheduling system where team leaders create schedules
An app where service technicians fill in their work orders
The HR system where vacation requests are made and approved
The CRM system where the sales team keeps track of customer data
All those systems? Those are business apps. And their user-friendliness usually leaves a lot to be desired.
The main reason: UX design gets hardly any attention
In consumer apps, teams of designers carefully think through every screen, every button and every flow. User experience (UX) is key.
With business apps, this step is often completely skipped. Most of the time, no designers are involved at all.
There are a few reasons for this:
Consumer apps have many more (potential) users
Business apps often have only 10, 100 or at most 1,000 users, while some consumer apps have millions. That creates a completely different business case. Budgets for business apps are much smaller, so UX design often gets cut. The thinking quickly becomes: as long as it works.
Expectations among colleagues are low
Inside companies, people are used to mediocre or even downright bad software. They see it as the norm. So they say things like, “This is just how it works here” or “It’s not ideal, but we manage.” It doesn’t help that employees often only have two choices: use the software or leave the company.
UX design is seen as just ‘making things look pretty’
Many think UX design is only about ‘making pretty screens.’ It’s understandable not to invest in that if your budget is small or only 10 people will use the app. They don’t realize UX is not just about how the app looks, but more importantly about how it works.
Change is scary
Companies often come to us asking: can you rebuild our old software, but better? They’re afraid to take a completely different approach because that means changing their whole organization. And not everyone sees the point of change. “It works now, right?” But just because it works now doesn’t mean it couldn’t work much better.
Why this can’t go on
“But Daan, if users don’t mind and we’re not selling this to millions of people… why bother improving the UX?”
Let me tell you why.
Every company is becoming a tech company
Technology already forms the backbone of our society. Soon, every company will be a tech company. If you don’t keep up and stick with software that’s worked the same way for the past ten years, you’ll lose out to competitors who do.
A well-designed app pays off
A good app brings huge savings over time. Everything runs faster and more efficiently, with far fewer mistakes. The money you invest in your app? You usually get it back quickly.
You don’t want disengaged employees
Your employees may have accepted slow and clunky systems for now. But should you be happy about that? Wouldn’t it be better if they were excited to work? If they thought along about how to improve processes and took initiative? That’s what happens when you listen to them and give them what they deserve. I see it all the time. As soon as the first boring process is automated, the fire in your employees lights up again.
Your employees won’t put up with this much longer
Frustration is growing. The apps they use in their personal lives keep getting better. Even their fridge app works better than their work software. The contrast is huge, and it’s eating away at them. Before you know it, your best people will have left for competitors who get it right.
It’s time to switch gears
Time to give business apps as much love as consumer apps.
It starts here:
Do user research to find out where the pain points and frustrations are
Have an experienced UX designer create the design of your application
Use a prototype to test your app with users
Only then start developing the app (I’m a fan of low-code for this because it lets you develop quickly and test with users along the way)
Trust me: that extra attention pays off big time: in happier workdays, better results, and yes, financially too.
