The moment Marti joined us at SoBold, we were excited and eager to see how she would translate her enthusiasm and energy towards development towards real life projects. We were not let down and she hit the ground running.

2 years later, largely hampered by COVID, we now are getting the absolute best out of Marti. She is incredibly reliable, diligent and talented and she is involved in all of our biggest projects.

Marti has never been one to code for the sake of coding, and she always makes sure she understands the bigger picture before diving into a project. 

⅓ of the Italian SoBold Office crew, we are very fortunate to have Marti and we truly can’t wait to watch her skillset improve and see her continue to work on the biggest and best projects!

We caught up with Marti to find out more about what she gets up to in her day to day life.

At what point in your life did you decide to become a developer?

Having studied Foreign Languages and Literatures, since uni I had a dream to become a successful translator. I came to London to fulfil this dream but I wasn’t sure which field to specialise in yet. So I started working at a restaurant, and in my spare time, I would translate articles for online media sites and magazines, and also produce subtitles for tv series.

Later on, I started a course in software localisation, and this opened up the dev world to me as I had to put my hands on the software source code. When it was time to search for a job, reality had a massive hit: competition was high, work was difficult to find, it was clear I had to invest more time and specialise furthermore.

I felt stuck and didn’t really know what to do with my life. So I went backpacking around the world for a few months, and I decided to dive more into that dev world that I found so interesting. Time wasn’t really a problem while travelling, so I read a lot about web development and took a lot of online courses. I devoured so many online resources, I just couldn’t believe they were all a click away! Since my first “Hello World” project, I’ve found the process of coding and building a website from scratch a beautiful mix of creative problem solving that never disappoints. Long story short, that’s when I knew I wanted to become a developer.

Describe your typical day

I wake up at 6:30am, I feed Coco and Lucy (my cats), I put some tunes on while having breakfast, quick shower. Then it’s checking the weather time: if it looks cloudy and rainy I’ll take the tube, otherwise, I’ll most probably board my Brompton and off we go to the office! Ideally, I like to conclude the evening by doing some form of exercise, usually rollerskating or a walk/run.

What’s your favourite project to date

I really enjoyed working on the new SoBold website, it’s been a huge team effort and the result it’s simply amazing!

What is the best advice you have ever heard?

I once read this quote: “If we all threw our problems in a pile, we’d grab ours back.”

I think it’s a beautiful sentence, it makes me appreciate life every day and makes me very grateful for all I have.

If you had to change careers what would you do instead?

Not sure what but surely something related to sport.

What was your most recent challenge and how did you overcome It?

When you’re a developer, every day there’s a new challenge. You just have to learn how to tackle them. In general, I think talking with a colleague helps a lot. Also “rubber ducking” can be a useful method for debugging code. In both cases, they’re powerful methods that consist in taking a break and articulating the problem in plain language.

What’s your favourite thing to do outside of work?

I’m a big ramp skate fanatic. https://www.instagram.com/martymcroll/

What 3 items would you bring to a desert island?

🇨🇭 🔪  🎸 and  🛌🏽

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Approaching a website development project can be daunting if you’re unfamiliar with the process and unsure what to expect. In this article, we’ll provide a detailed overview of the web development process to help you understand what’s involved, making it easier for you to approach a project yourself and avoid any pitfalls.

Your Role as the Client 

If you read our recent series of in-depth guides through the end-to-end process of web design, you’ll know that process will usually involve a lot of collaboration between you, your team members, and the agency you’re working with. 

Once you’ve been through that process and your design is complete, you’ll need to move to the development stage of the project to bring your designs to life. 

You’ll likely have less involvement in the development stage, and less collaboration will be required, so your role will primarily be to sit back and relax while a team of skilled developers do their thing.

Depending on the project size, complexity and project management approach, you may have some touch-points with your agency partner throughout the process. If you are taking an Agile approach, this may include sprint retrospective meetings, or if you are working in a different way, this may just include short demonstrations, walk-throughs of certain pieces of bespoke functionality, or it could just be allowing you to start familiarising yourself with different features as they’re being built. 

A Smooth Handover from Design to Development 

One of our core qualities here at SoBold is ensuring the design and development processes work closely together. That’s achieved by not only having a very integrated design and development team in the office, but also ensuring we hold a thorough, detailed handover meeting between the designers and the developers at this stage. This serves as a key aspect of every project we work on. 

The purpose of this is to give the developers a full understanding of the website or platform they need to build before any work begins, reducing the risk of error and accelerating the delivery time.

Every agency will have their own approach to this. It should usually involve the project designer(s) and project manager(s) walking the development team through everything that took place during the design process and explaining the thought process behind the decisions they’ve made. They’ll also give suggestions and guidance for how the design might be best approached from a development point of view. 

Any questions the developers have about their task at hand can be answered during the handover meeting, and at any time throughout the development process, allowing the development work to flow efficiently and effectively. 

The Benefits of Working with a Full-Service Web Design and Development Agency 

It’s so important to align your web designers and developers, because, more often than not, there are fundamental differences in how they think and approach their work. If you decide to work with an out-and-out web design agency to design your site, with a separate development agency building it, you may encounter gaps in understanding between the two processes. 

Working with an agency partner that has specialist expertise for both disciplines in-house will ensure your website is delivered on time, within budget, and directly aligned with your requirements. Having designers and developers in the same team who can share knowledge throughout the processes will almost always result in the delivery of a higher quality project too.

Building Your Website

With the handover complete, the developers will begin building your website. 

Most development agencies will likely start with setting up the base. This involves setting up the base styles of the site which includes and is not limited to default colours, typography styles and global components – including button and link styles.

Once the base is set up, your developers would typically move onto the navigation and footer set up before moving onto building out all the page templates and blocks in the design should they be taking a block based approach. 

Part of this process will often involve integrating certain components of your site with other systems you use within your business. 

Peer Reviews and Testing to Maintain High-Performance Standards 

It’s important for your agency to review and test internally all the elements that have been built, so any bugs are identified and rectified as early as possible.

Again, different agencies will have differing approaches to this. Here at SoBold, we leverage the size and experience of our team to conduct a thorough peer review process on every single component we build.

Following this internal review process, you’ll usually be given a link to your site in a staging environment.

All your content will have likely been carried over from your existing site and redirects should also be in place so that when you push the site live, any old redundant links will be redirected to the appropriate page on your new site. 

If you have any live marketing campaigns running, it’s important to ensure your development agency and your marketing team (or agency) are in regular communication prior to this, so they can keep your campaigns updated in line with your new site’s launch. 

Smooth Sailing Post-Launch 

Once your new website is live, you’ll likely have a period of time whereby your agency will be on hand to fix any bugs that relate to the content on the new site. Here at SoBold we work with our clients for a period of 30 days following the launch of their sites, and any ongoing support beyond this 30-day bug-fix window will require a separate maintenance agreement. 

Your agency should also go through the back-end of your platform with you, so you know exactly how to make changes to your website. For the most part, agencies will understand how important it is for you to be able to manage the site yourselves internally, and this is something we believe is crucial for you to be shown in detail at the end of the development process.

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Many businesses in the healthcare sector require some form of bespoke web development in order to remain competitive today. But entering into a bespoke development project can be a daunting challenge, with plenty of risks attached to it. 

This article will answer your pressing questions about bespoke web development, and provide you with a step-by-step guide to set yourself up for success when approaching your own project.

In recent years, modern healthcare has been driven forward by great advances in technology. Organisations in the healthcare sector have leveraged cutting-edge digital technology to transform the way healthcare services are delivered for the better. 

But with that positive change comes a shift in expectations to improve technology across the board. 

Whether you’re a practitioner or a healthcare solution provider, you now must deliver your services to your end-users through the latest digital channels if you want to keep up with the rest of the industry. 

If you’re unable to meet modern expectations for an effortless consumer-grade user experience (UX), your clients and partners will be left unsatisfied and may look elsewhere for a more convenient alternative. This can also apply to your internal systems and processes, as your employees also want intuitive digital tools in order to do their work efficiently and effectively.

To achieve this, you need a sophisticated website that serves your users in a way that’s specifically tailored to their needs and preferences, while also supporting your strategic business objectives. Given the complexity of the healthcare sector, that will likely require you to develop a website with bespoke features and functionality. 

Of course, any website you develop also needs to be secure and compliant, and flexible enough to adapt as your business grows or healthcare technology trends continue to evolve. 

Going Beyond the Basics with Bespoke Development 

While a more straightforward, simple website may be sufficient for small and medium-sized businesses, such a limited approach will prevent companies in the healthcare sector from retaining clients and staying competitive. 

If you’re struggling to deliver exactly what your clients or other users are looking for, particularly in an industry as technical as healthcare, you may need to build a bespoke website. This could include anything from: 

• A bespoke client-facing website that represents your brand and provides direct access to your products or services 
• An internal web portal, either for training employees or for networking and sharing of information
• A bespoke intelligence platform with powerful data and analytics capabilities 
• A new content management system (CMS) that can provide greater flexibility and scalability for a portfolio of multiple sites 
• A unique tool to transform inefficient manual processes into a simple digital platform
• A bespoke website that integrates directly with a wide range of other back-end tools and technology, such as your CRM system.

With a bespoke development project, the possibilities – and opportunities for innovation and growth – are virtually endless. You can discuss your current business challenges among your team, and then create something purpose-built to solve those specific challenges.

Of course, coming up with an idea for an exciting new site is the easy part. For many businesses, it’s an additional challenge to know where to go next. To make that easier for you, we’ve provided a simple, proven process here to help you plan and launch a bespoke web development project that will set you up for success.

A Process for Approaching Your Bespoke Development Project 

Start with the “why” and think about what you’re trying to achieve 

As touched on above, it’s important to have a specific reason for building a bespoke site. Whether it’s to achieve a strategic business goal, like customer growth, or overcome a prominent challenge, like inefficient processes, you need a clear purpose. 

Determine exactly what you’re trying to achieve with your website and why it’s being developed. A big part of this will also relate to delivering on a specific need or solving a specific problem for your users as well. 

Thinking of how it will help your users in a valuable way will make it easier to understand what sort of features and functionality you’ll require. 

List all your requirements and use them to create a project brief 

Once you’ve completed that first step, you’ll already see a list taking shape, with requirements for design, usability, capabilities, and so on. 

Note down all those things your website needs to do and use that to create a project brief. This is a simple written document containing all the ideas you think are relevant to your site, including both functional and non-functional requirements.

The purpose of this is to make your request as clear as possible for the design and development agencies you speak to. 

The more specific and detailed your brief is, the better, and that includes things like your initial ideas for cost and timelines. This will help ensure your agency will deliver what you’re asking for on time, within your budget, and matching your specifications. Without a clear, specific brief, you could wind up disappointed and maybe even over-spending.

For a comprehensive guide to creating a brief that will set you up for a successful web design and development project, read our useful article here. 

Evaluate the options for a technology platform to build on

Most websites on the Internet are built using a content management system (CMS). This is almost certainly the type of platform you’ll want to use to create, edit, and publish all the content on your website and manage things behind the scenes. 

Every business is unique, and every bespoke development project is different, so you need to use the work you’ve done in the previous two steps to help you select the right CMS. 

By this point, when you’re evaluating platforms, you should already know your objectives, your requirements, your users’ needs, your budget, your existing technology stack, and so on.

Take all these factors and use them to determine which CMS is the best suited to deliver exactly what you want. 

Something that’s important to note is that integrating a new website with other systems can be complex, particularly if you’re building your site on a new platform rather than an existing one. 

When planning a bespoke development project, you’ll need to consider how easily your new platform will integrate with your other systems. 

We recently produced a helpful series of articles comparing some of the leading CMSs for enterprise website development. You can read those here: 

• WordPress vs Sitecore
• WordPress vs Drupal 
• WordPress vs Umbraco 

Find the right agency partner to design and develop your site with you

As mentioned earlier, you’ll likely need to find a design and development agency to partner with in order to create a bespoke website. 

Building, managing, and supporting a high-performance website in the current technology landscape is extremely difficult, especially in a strictly-regulated industry like healthcare. 

Not only should you look for a partner with a proven track record of delivering bespoke websites, you should also try to find one with healthcare sector-specific experience as well. 

Which agency you choose will have a significant impact on whether your development project is successful, but also on whether or not your new website is successful in the long-term as well. It’s a decision that mustn’t be taken lightly. 

Some of the qualities and capabilities that are important to look for when assessing your options for an agency partner include: 

• Experience working with businesses in the healthcare sector
• A strong portfolio of successful bespoke development projects 
• The expertise to guide you and help you make the best decisions for your project
• Certifications and accreditations 
• Compliance with healthcare sector regulations
• Security and data protection built into the core of your project 
• Secure hosting supported by back-up, disaster recovery, and risk mitigation plans
• Ongoing support services to maintain, update, and optimise your site
• Additional advisory services to help you gain as much value from your technology as possible.

What Does a Bespoke Website Require to be Successful? 

Once you’ve found a CMS and an agency you’re comfortable with, the next step will be to design and develop your bespoke website. 

This will involve working to the requirements you noted in your project brief, but there are also some essential qualities and characteristics of a successful website in the current digital business landscape: 

Enterprise-Grade Hosting 

Ensure your agency can provide enterprise-grade, secure hosting, ideally with managed services, from a trustworthy provider. Not only is your hosting environment responsible for the security of your site and protection of your data, but it can also influence the speed and performance of your site. 

If you’re in a position to build a bespoke website, you’re likely going to be dealing with a high volume of data and a large audience of users, so it’s important that you have a hosting service that can manage that without any disruption to your services. 

User Experience 

Whatever services or products you provide to companies in the healthcare sector, a great UX is the foundation of any successful website. People working in almost all industries now expect the same convenient consumer-grade experience they receive from the technology they use in their personal lives. Your website needs to be as quick and easy-to-use for your visitors as apps like LinkedIn and Amazon. 

This also applies if the sites you’re looking to build are internal-facing for employees. Workforces now also demand a seamless experience with company systems, and providing this will create gains in efficiency as well as competitive advantages. 

A great UX usually leads to a strong ROI. 

Performance and Functionality 

Your website connects you directly to your clients. Flip that to your client’s perspective, your website is a direct reflection of the quality and professionalism of your services.

If your website is slow, or doesn’t give your users what they need in terms of performance or functionality, they won’t hesitate to look elsewhere. 

Security 

Businesses today run on data. The data of your clients, partners, and your own critical data will be at risk if any technology attached to your network is not secure. 

As mentioned earlier, you need to make sure your site is hosted in a secure environment with robust data protection measures in place. But security isn’t just about hosting. Security also comes down to a wide range of best practices, like regularly testing your site and updating your platform.

When your clients and partners are working with highly sensitive medical data, all your technology must also be highly secure and compliant with industry regulations. 

Again, these are all critical things that your agency partner should be experienced enough to handle for you. 

Personalisation

Personalised user experiences are becoming increasingly important for businesses to deliver to their clients and employees these days. One of the key advantages to a bespoke website is that you’re able to provide each of your users with personalised content and services, tailored to their needs, at each stage of their user journey. 

Scalability and Agility 

More often than not, a bespoke website is a key point of differentiation and an enabler of business growth. When you begin to achieve that growth, your requirements will evolve and your website will need to be agile enough to adapt easily without disrupting business continuity. 

When planning and building your new site, ensure it’s developed with long-term growth and seamless scalability in mind.

The Benefits and Advantages of Bespoke Development  

If you’re able to follow this process and incorporate some of these qualities into your new bespoke website, you’ll have something completely unique to your business. This should set you on the right path to accelerated business growth. But a bespoke website, once built and deployed, can begin to deliver a range of additional benefits and advantages too. These include: 

• Boosting engagement with customers, with an outstanding UX and personalised services
• Increasing customer retention and loyalty 
• Enabling real-time interactions with data and greater analytics capabilities 
• Higher adoption rates of internal systems and improved business performance 
• Reducing costs by streamlining inefficient processes and removing outdated technology
• Strengthening your corporate network with enterprise-grade security 
• Achieving competitive advantages in a highly competitive market.

The Healthcare Sector Runs on High-Performance Websites 

As technology continues to evolve and drive more disruption, it’s becoming increasingly important to keep up with the resulting trends. A bespoke web development project allows you to reach beyond the limitations of a basic website and give your users exactly what they need from your services.

It also enables you to create a high-performance website that’s entirely unique to your business, differentiating you from your competition. 

In the current healthcare sector, it’s easy to appreciate why this is quickly becoming a necessity, rather than a “nice-to-have” for many leading businesses. 

To continue learning, read our comprehensive guide to understanding and evaluating the enterprise options for bespoke web development here.

Discover how global healthcare group, Clanwilliam, used bespoke design and development to take their brand to a new level and transform the capabilities of their marketing. 

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A fresh-faced Leo joined SoBold in August 2019, with a big booming smile and speaking in broken English. It was immediately clear how driven he was to learn and pick up new skills and it was a no-brainer to offer him a job to join our development team.

For much of his first year at SoBold, Leo was glued to Google Translate to try and properly understand the tasks he had been set, but each and every time the output of his work would be the same, outstanding.

As Leo’s English picked up, as did his confidence and skill-set and he made it clear that he wanted to focus on Back-End Development and he really wanted to take SoBold forward. Leo championed innovation in our development approach and much of the workflow we do today has been driven by Leo’s desire to set the highest of standards.

He is a key figure at SoBold and we are very fortunate to have him.

We caught up with Leo to find out more about what he get’s up to in his day-to-day life!

At what point in your life did you decide to become a developer?

During middle school, I tried to learn how to make games, which led me to development. I started exploring different languages and realized I really liked learning the syntax of as many languages as I could. Eventually, I got into web development, and since then I have tried to expand my knowledge of web development languages, trying out new frameworks, and both front and back end sides.

Describe your typical day

As of now I’m trying out double gym days, which means an early wake up (5.30am), gym at 6am, and finishing at around 8am. Then I go to work, have my day, and when I finish I go home and back to the gym. When I get back home it’s circa 8.30pm, so I have dinner, watch something on Netflix (not too much otherwise I end up snacking), then go to my room, and if there’s time and I’m not too tired I play piano, otherwise I go to bed ready to do it all again. 

What’s your favourite project to date

Favourite project to date is Rede partners

Any advice for junior developers?

Never stop learning, be curious, and be always ready to challenge yourself, and question what you do. Change your way of doing things if someone else out there is doing it better.

If you had to change careers what would you do instead?

Theoretical Physicist or Volleyball coach

What was your most recent challenge and how did you overcome It?

Hit a plateau in terms of motivation, but managed to overcome it by getting less on my plate, and focusing on meaning, eventually, it became better.

What’s your favourite thing to do outside of work?

Workout, play music (piano, guitar), play video games (fav ones are Skyrim, Horizon Forbidden West and Fallout)

How do you think the designer/developer relationship could improve?

The main thing is communication and chemistry, once those are there the relationship improves by itself.

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SoBold are delighted to announce that we have obtained a sponsor licence in order to sponsor international skilled workers to come and work at SoBold.

SoBold have always put heavy emphasis on hiring the best global talent for our needs, and we have strengthened our ability to do this by obtaining a Skilled Worker Sponsorship Licence. 

With all sponsorship licences that the Home Offices grants they need to be reassured that the sponsors can live up to the “significant trust” that the department places in them. The Home Office further made checks that SoBold is a “honest, dependable and reliable” workplace, and capable of meeting the responsibilities that it expects from sponsors.

Since being granted our Skiller Worker Licence, we have been fortunate enough to put it to use to hire two new team members. 

Anna de Moraes, joined SoBold, from Portuguese company, SpringParrot. Anna had been able to work remotely, and was living and working from the UK, when she got in touch with SoBold. Anna, who is natively from Brazil, said of the process: 

“​The steps were pretty clear and the whole process was quite simple. I’ve had friends waiting years for their visas to be approved while we were able to complete everything in a short period of time! I was already excited to start and, in a blink of an eye, I was finally part of the SoBold team!”

More recently, SoBold hired Santosh Gajera as a Back End WordPress Developer. Santosh has relocated from India in order to provide his services to SoBold. When asked about the process behind him getting his Skilled Worker VISA granted, Santosh said:

“To keep my IT career moving forward, I needed sponsorship from an organisation that sponsored my visa. SoBold has been an invaluable help in obtaining my Tier-2 (Skilled worker) visa. I am very thankful to their hard work and professionalism. My documents were handled very scrupulously by them, and they provided full support throughout the whole application process . I got my visa approved in two days, which is amazing, and they handled everything for me.”

SoBold worked with all-in-one digital platform, Nation Better in order to achieve our sponsorship licence and the process was streamlined, affordable and transparent.

SoBold already have a diverse talent pool, with staff from all over Europe, and with the help of Nation Better, we have been able to improve the way in which we hire international talent and open up opportunities further afield. We look forward to continue growing our team with exceptional overseas talent and have access to a wider talent pool.

SoBold Managing Director, Will Newland said:

We are absolutely delighted to welcome both Anna and Santosh to the SoBold team. Without our Sponsorship Licence we would be missing out on a large pool of talent that is the future of our business. We very much look forward to continuing to use our Sponsorship Licence to our advantage and giving skilled employees the opportunity to come and work here at SoBold.

For more information on what current vacancies we have, please visit our website careers page.

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