It’s been said that the best way to learn a new skill is to teach it. The same is true of your users: the more you try to understand what they want, what they’re good at, and what keeps them from achieving their goals, the better off your web application will be. So if you’ve got a failed web app in your past—or even just one that didn’t take off as quickly as it should have—here are some lessons learned:

Don’t get too ambitious.

You should be careful not to get too ambitious when designing your application. If you want the best results, it’s important to focus on what’s most important and leave out anything that isn’t essential.

For example, if you’re working on an e-commerce website and want users to be able to make purchases online, then making sure that feature works well should be your top priority–not adding … Read the rest