Category Archives: Projects

We previously launched the new website for APD Maintenance. They provide comprehensive property maintenance services and are trusted by leading management and estate agents throughout the UK.

APD wanted to entirely update their online presence and achieve a website which better reflected their business. The new single page site is designed to give an immediate overview of their services and high standard of delivery, as well as an introduction to their dedicated team.

The site uses custom interactive micro animations based on a user’s scroll progress through the site, as well as custom mouse cursors and mini videos which trigger on hover. This creates a unique aesthetic and aims to reflect their high standards and service commitment.

The form delivers enquiries to their internal systems for processing, and Google Analytics (GA4) allows for tracking, reporting and analysis of visitor traffic.

Like all the websites we design and build, it is fully responsive across devices and screen sizes, and has a full CMS (Content Management System) based on a modular approach for greater flexibility.

The build was also optimised for SEO and performance, and comes with strong security measures, as is standard for our websites.

APD were extremely pleased with the results, and you can see the site here at apdmaintenance.co.uk.

We are pleased to announce the launch of one of our recent projects – the London Lettings Network, a new platform developed to simplify the search for rental properties in London that accept Housing Benefit. Built in collaboration with our client, Housing Justice, it aims to provide a centralised, user-friendly resource for both clients seeking housing and caseworkers who assist them.

The London Lettings Network is an online tool that collates property listings across London that accept Housing Benefit. It currently covers 25 locations across Greater London, and has an inventory of properties that is regularly updated to ensure users have access to real time information. The site is designed to be accessible on both desktop and mobile devices, making it easy for users to search at their convenience.

A key feature of the platform is its ability to serve both individuals seeking housing and the caseworkers who support them. For clients, it provides a single, centralised website to find properties that meet their needs, eliminating the need to navigate multiple websites or email lists. For caseworkers, it helps them assist their clients more effectively by providing a comprehensive view of available options.

In addition, users can apply for funding for the properties listed on the site but also any suitable property that they may find elsewhere. By offering funding for properties not listed on the site, the London Lettings Network extends its support beyond its own listings, ensuring broader access to housing.

The technology behind the platform utilises the Google Maps API to automatically find and embed maps of each property and its location (based on address), which speeds up and streamlines the process of listing properties. The platform also provides a map of all currently available properties so users can search by location first, as well as a sortable listings approach. Property listings can be managed via the CMS and via a large Smartsheet-style spreadsheet, which makes editing multiple properties at once far easier. As part of the many proprietary solutions for this platform, we wrote a custom process to sync this data to the platform; updates are live as soon as the sync request completes.

Since its launch earlier this year, the London Lettings Network has already made a substantial impact – it recently won the London Homelessness Awards in recognition of its innovation and contribution to the sector.

You can view the platform at lettingsnetwork.housingjustice.org.uk

We are proud to present our latest project – Investuary, an inward investment platform driving growth in the Thames Estuary Region, created for the Thames Estuary Growth Board.

Investuary was built alongside our creative partner, Your Brand Matters, who were responsible for the branding of the new entity, design of the platform itself, and the visual assets throughout.

Launched by the government’s Thames Estuary Growth Board at UKREiiF 2023, this innovative online platform aims to drive more than £18 billion of investment for the South East region, and offers the “UK’s biggest investment opportunity” as reported by Property Week. The platform provides a centralised portal for all 21 Local Authorities in the Thames Estuary area to drive investment potential and deliver growth.

The platform includes a full CMS (content management system) to enable editing of all investment opportunities, showcases, reports, downloads, and entity information such as partners. Opportunities are organised into categories, which themselves each have showcases to provide further insight on the industry/sector. Each opportunity can be set as ‘current’ or ‘coming soon’, with appropriate layouts and calls to action according to its status.

Users can access content initially and are invited to register on the platform for further information and deeper functionality – such as downloading reports, sending messages, and requesting meetings. Each registered user can choose the sectors they are most interested in to receive updates on these sectors and relevant opportunities as soon as they are released.

The platform also features dynamic content to aid users in using and navigating – for example, if a report is requested but the user is not yet registered, or is not signed in, then a context-sensitive message is displayed to guide the user as to how to proceed. Users’ activity within the platform is also tracked for their benefit, so their profile stores ‘liked’ opportunities, downloads, notifications, etc.

Visually the platform features a variety of custom animations, controlled in different ways – for example, looped animations, animations triggered by user scroll, and timed animations. These are achieved via a mixture of HTML5 videos, including use of WEBM to deliver high quality video in very small files for performance benefits, as well as utilising the Lottie framework and custom coded animations.

The portfolio team managing Investuary receive notifications on all appropriate user actions – such as registrations, messages, meeting requests, downloads, etc. These notifications are stored in a database within the platform but are also sent to relevant parties via email and instant message (eg Teams). This is in the process of being integrated into a CRM to facilitate management of the investments being made and reduce micromanagement for the portfolio team.

You can view the recently launched platform at investuary.com.

We are pleased to present the new website for Twenty7tec, built in collaboration with our creative partner, Metric, who designed the site following a complete full rebrand for Twenty7tec last year.

Twenty7tec is a leading B2B Fintech business in the UK, providing technology to mortgage advisors and lenders. Their aim is to identify and remove real-world obstacles and speed up processes for their clients to make their working practices simpler, faster, and more efficient.

The new site uses an innovative approach to responsiveness for different screen sizes and mobile devices – by using scaling to resize fonts, images, and other components so that the layout stays consistent across desktops, laptops, and standard tablets. The site then adapts further to mobiles and smaller tablets. This was a key consideration in designing and building the new site, and, since Twenty7tec’s brand involves providing customised solutions, we were pleased to be able to reflect this by using an innovative approach.

The site has a full CMS (Content Management System) which uses a modular approach to pages that is modern and forward-thinking – further reflecting the Twenty7tec brand. Rather than using templates which have predefined layouts, editors can create new pages using any permutation and combination of the 20 varied content modules, in different orders and collections.

The forms on the website are also fully integrated with both Salesforce (for CRM — Client Relationship Management platforms) and Pardot (for EDM — Electronic Direct Marketing), providing a streamlined service for Twenty7tec to deal with new enquiries and existing customers on both service and marketing levels. The forms also include multiple layers of security, including reCAPTCHA version 3, for advanced anti-spam protection and minimal user interaction.

You can view the newly launched site at www.twenty7tec.com.

We recently created a solution for a client to integrate Donorfy (CRM) with QuickBooks (Finance).

Many organisations struggle with interconnecting and interoperating systems and platforms, particularly with different standards, formats, and types of data. The issue was that Donorfy is a partner with Xero (a competitor finance platform), and therefore does not offer real functionality for QuickBooks, other than basic manual transactions exports. These exports did not contain the correct source fields nor were the fields in the correct sequence or formatted correctly for the client’s requirements.

We created a custom web app which uses the Donorfy API to pull the required fields and data from Donorfy, format it correctly, and output an IIF file. This can then be imported directly into QuickBooks.

The web app works in the following way:

• Queries the Donorfy API for all sets of data and lists these
• User selects the appropriate data set and a sort option (eg data, reference, etc)
• Fetches data from the Donorfy API based on these criteria
• Formats data into QuickBooks format and using the client’s schema
• Displays a preview of the reworked data
• Offers a download of the finalised IIF file for QuickBooks

This solution not only solves the problem of incomplete data but also removes all the lengthy micromanagement of manual reformatting in spreadsheets.

We can offer tailored solutions to integrate Donorfy with QuickBooks or any other platform that you might require. You can contact us to discuss a custom solution and read more about our Donorfy Integrations service here.

The UK Creative Festival this year ran 6–8 September 2022 at Dreamland, Margate, celebrating the best of the UK creative industries, whilst creating pathways for aspiring young creatives.

This year’s festival also hosted the Creative Circle Awards for 2022. Profits from the festival were donated to the Creative Foundation to help support young creatives. Speakers included Rankin, Nils Leonard, Chaka Sobhani, Scott Morrison, LA Ronayne, Toby Allen, Sue Higgs, Tiger Savage, Wayne Hemingway, Ete Davies, James Morris, Ben Bailey Smith, Adah Parris and many, many more.

We previously created this site using Squarespace in order to meet a very quick turnaround requirement. The site holds information for visitors and attendees of the festival, as well as ticket links and the full schedule (both online and download).

The site has now been expanded to showcase in-depth content including full-length videos of the talks and workshops and thousands of photos from the last couple of years’ events. We developed custom integrations for Squarespace using two different APIs, in order to host and deliver this amount of media, which Squarespace does not natively support. You can view the 2022 sessions here and the photos from 2022 here.

We are proud to announce the website for ListenApp, supporting and protecting victims of abuse.

ListenApp is building a native mobile app in partnership with Direction Forward, which can automatically send alert messages and discreetly record in the background for those suffering from domestic abuse.

The site is simple to use, featuring branding and custom icons by Metric. As well as a questionnaire and registration of interest form, both with back office integrations and security features. The site is being used to seek partnerships with applicable charities as well as gather feedback for the app, to best fill the gap in service provision for the protection of victims of abuse.

To read more about ListenApp and view the site, please visit listenapp.org.

Last year we were tasked with building a secure file transfer system for a client, to add to their infrastructure. Their principal need for this system was for transferring files externally, i.e. between their staff and their clients, in a secure manner and environment. This would solve requirements for both general security when sharing data externally as well as specific compliance, e.g. the GDPR and enterprise service agreements.

The industry-standard solution is to use SFTP – this is where files are transferred securely using the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), which uses the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol. This means that the file transfer connection and the file contents are both encrypted.

Typically organisation-level SFTP solutions are enterprise grade, meaning they are costly to implement and use – for example IBM’s ‘Sterling Secure File Transfer’, which has obfuscated tailored pricing but starts from around £4,000 per month.

Furthermore, SFTP can be used via CLI (command line) or via FTP (file transfer protocol) software. These approaches usually require technical knowledge and would not be considered standard software for everyday users. So a more user-friendly interface would be preferred – even better if it is web-based, so external users do not have to download or install any software outside of their own organisation’s environment.

Therefore there were three challenges for the required solution:

• Ensure a secure (i.e. encrypted) environment for both transfers and data stored.
• Avoid enterprise level entry costs and maintenance.
• Provide an easy-to-use interface for both internal and external users.

We developed a custom web app to meet all these requirements, which uses SSH over SFTP, and is hosted on the client’s private cloud in London UK. The Fileshare is discreetly branded and located at a subdomain of the client’s main domain, e.g. ‘share.companyname.com’. It works using a secure isolated application which communicates via a secure proxy to the web interface. All interactions with and transfers to/from the Fileshare are encrypted at all times. Internal and external are assigned login credentials with appropriate permissions – all clients and users are isolated from one another for data security.

Access is granted internally and externally only upon request. All access requests are reviewed internally, and access is removed once no longer required or after a defined expiry period. We also helped develop the internal processes for the client to help facilitate such access requests and removals, using Microsoft Power Automate.

Contact us for a demo of this solution or to discuss your own requirements.

The images shown are from the demo environment, not the client platform, for security reasons.

We are proud to present the new website for Hill Robinson – developed in collaboration with our creative partner, Your Brand Matters, who are responsible for creative direction, updated branding, and design.

Hill Robinson was specifically created to manage the operational complexities of the world’s largest yachts, while bringing technical excellence to a full spectrum of services that yacht owners require most. With Hill Robinson’s operational management, they work to ensure every element functions with precision including: safety, security, operational, accounts, crew, maintenance and environmental concerns.

This site features modern design and strong usability, both deeply integrated with Hill Robinson’s updated branding by Your Brand Matters – we particularly like the revised flag and racing stripe in the brand colours.

The site beautifully showcases Hill Robinson’s services and Charter Fleet, neatly displaying a depth of information without overwhelming the user. Custom animations, cursors and an animated menu have been built into the site, and all details are easily editable via the fully featured CMS. We have also ensured that all content, images and galleries dynamically adjust to cater for different devices and sizes.

Hill Robinson are based across the globe with multiple teams and locations – which are presented in a user-friendly display and search of all the different locations, teams and contact details for each. Dynamically integrated forms for enquiries on all services, for each team member, and for each Charter Fleet yacht are also included. This is integrated with Pardot and thereby Salesforce, for CRM assignment and management.

The site also comes with Google Analytics and strong security measures, as with all our sites. It will also optimised for SEO and performance, achieving 99% Performance and 93% Structure on GTmetrix.

Visit the site here: hillrobinson.com

We are pleased to present the new website for 36Zero.

36Zero use inventive solutions to create connected workplaces and thereby healthier, safer workers. 36Zero strives to improve efficiency, safety, and well-being for all construction site workers. 36Zero provide four solutions as part of their integrated platform. Budy360 monitors heart rate, location and emergencies. Data360 assesses worker health, site-wide improvements and safety. App360 gives health scores, real-time safety records and operational tools. Health360 provides occupational health services to all employees.

Their new website features animated, interactive isometric scenes to display 36Zero’s solutions. These custom assets, scenes, and animations were made specifically for 36Zero, to add a unique aspect to the website.

We also created narrative style animations which cycle through pinned images as the user scrolls a page, somewhat similar to Apple’s website featured products. And there is a custom progress indicator, to reflect a user’s progress reading through a page and its content.

Forms have been built for the ease of both 36Zero (for data collection/analysis) and their clients (for getting in touch/requesting demos). These are integrated into the site as well as with comms tools for instant notifications. As with all our sites, the 36Zero site features fully responsive design, a full CMS, and integrated Google Analytics.

A Google Ads campaign is also running in parallel with the launch of the new site, to drive traffic and help raise brand awareness.

This site was designed, developed, and built with our partner, Metric, who are also responsible for the excellent rebranding of 36Zero from fuseAware.

You can find the site at 36zero.io.