If you’re responsible for marketing, you’ll be well aware of the importance of a great content management system (CMS) for digital products like your website, mobile apps, staff portals, and so on. You may even need to create bespoke digital processes or systems unique to your business, such as internal training platforms or communications channels.

WordPress is the most popular CMS available today, powering almost 45% of the world’s websites. That popularity is on the rise, too, as more and more businesses realise the vast potential of the platform and the benefits it can deliver.

However, there’s still a misconception that WordPress isn’t suitable for large businesses. That’s no more than a myth, though. In fact, some of the biggest companies in the world use WordPress for their CMS.

But what are the specific reasons why that popularity has spread into the enterprise market over the past decade or so? To answer that question, let’s take a detailed look at the benefits and advantages WordPress offers large businesses:

1 – Scalability and Agility

WordPress is famous for its high level of scalability. However large your company, or the size and complexity of your site – as well as the amount of traffic passing through it – WordPress won’t have any problem managing that load.

Scalability is one of its most prominent advantages for large businesses, because it’s also agile enough to easily evolve and grow alongside your changing requirements.

The platform is more robust than most realise as well, with enterprise-grade performance and speed. This great performance also means user adoption and retention will always be high, helping you drive strong return on investment (ROI) on all the digital products you build.

2 – Flexibility and Customisation

WordPress is equally renowned for its flexibility and customisation, which are particularly useful for complex or bespoke development projects. You can use its flexibility to build bespoke features and functionality into your website or create an entirely unique system from scratch.

In large organisations where company-specific processes and workflows are common within your sites, this makes WordPress a highly beneficial option.

3 – Fast Time-to-Market

Thanks to its simplicity and intuitive usability, WordPress is a very efficient platform to build with. That gives you the advantage of delivering development projects with a very fast time-to-market. This is a significant benefit of any CMS, as it helps you save time, reduce costs, and provides more opportunity to test, iterate, and innovate.

4 – Integration

WordPress is very easy to integrate with other systems. Because most large enterprises have a lot of legacy technology to consider when implementing new systems, this is a huge benefit WordPress has over more cumbersome CMSs.

WordPress also integrates very well with back-end systems that are vital to your daily operations, such as HubSpot, Salesforce, PowerBi, and so on. This minimises disruption to your business while integrating WordPress into your existing tech stack.

5 – Low TCO and Strong ROI 

WordPress comes with a very low total cost of ownership (TCO) when compared to other options. Unlike most CMSs, you won’t need to invest heavily in adding new features or capabilities, and you won’t need to worry about expensive extra work to manage upgrades or updates from the platform.

Because WordPress is so agile and rich with dynamic capabilities and features, it’s also proven to deliver strong ROI in both the short and long-term.

From a long-term value perspective, your initial projects won’t just stop at initial implementation, either. As your project or requirements evolve and your business grows, WordPress can seamlessly adapt and grow with you.  

Other Points to Consider

It’s important to remember that every business, and every project, is different. While the benefits listed here do make WordPress an excellent CMS, you should still carefully evaluate how well it aligns with your specific objectives, requirements, budget, and other needs.

It’s also important to understand that most businesses will need the support of an agency with platform-specific skills and expertise to help you leverage a CMS to its full potential. As is the case with all platforms, it will be vastly easier to achieve your objectives and gain greater ROI, if you have the support of an experienced specialist partner to guide you.

If you’d like to learn more about WordPress, or need help deciding whether it’s a suitable option for your own requirements, we have a comprehensive guide to evaluating and selecting the enterprise options for a CMS here.

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Penetration testing, often abbreviated as pen testing, is an essential process to ensure you maintain a safe and secure website. But what exactly does pen testing involve, and how can you rest assured your agency partner is covering all potential vulnerabilities for you? 

This article will provide a detailed guide to penetration testing, helping you minimise your security risks and ensure your website is fully protected. 

In a recent series of articles published in our resource library, we provided an in-depth explanation of the end-to-end process of building a high-performance, enterprise-grade website. (If you’d like to read that series first before learning about pen testing, you can start here). 

After you’ve worked with your agency partner to successfully build your website, you’ll also need to ensure your site is protected from cyber security threats.  With that in mind, you should understand the important role that pen testing plays in effective website security and maintenance. 

What is Penetration Testing? 

Penetration testing is a form of website testing that’s used to identify security vulnerabilities When conducting pen testing on your site, your agency will simulate a range of cyber attacks that could be used by cyber criminals or malicious software (malware). 

The purpose of this is to identify security weaknesses within your site and take action to prevent them from being exploited in the real world. This approach goes beyond basic tests, as it doesn’t just list the vulnerabilities, it examines how they could be exploited and helps to prevent that from happening. 

Why is it Crucial for an Agency to Conduct Penetration Testing? 

Website security is critical in today’s digital business landscape. Cyber security threats have become highly intelligent and sophisticated, now capable of penetrating even the strongest security networks. 

For instance, global technology giant Acer was the victim of a cyber security attack that demanded a ransom of $50 million USD in recent years. 

The outcomes of a cyber attack on your website could be catastrophic, either through sensitive data being stolen, lengthy losses of business continuity, or even reputational damage. 

Remember, your site’s security isn’t just vital to you as a business, it’s also something your clients need assurance with when they agree to work with you. You should be taking as many proactive steps as possible to ensure your security measures are rigorous enough to match high levels of risk. 

Covering All Bases for Robust Security (in WordPress)

It’s useful to be conscious of the common security weaknesses and pitfalls cyber criminals typically aim to take advantage of. 

Security vulnerabilities can be created when your website is running on outdated versions of your platform, or if something hasn’t been configured or integrated properly. Other common pitfalls include weak authentication measures and insufficient protection from the perspective of your users. 

With platforms like WordPress, there are some areas in which less experienced agencies could allow security vulnerabilities to creep in as well. For instance: 

• Auto-updates – When your platform’s software is automatically updated, changes in the code can cause new security weaknesses to arise. 
• Plugins – Using WordPress plugins from untrustworthy sources, or neglecting to update and maintain your plugins properly, can also cause security issues. 

This is one of many reasons why it’s important to work with an experienced agency partner who has proven platform-specific knowledge and expertise. Your agency should know your CMS of choice inside out, and should therefore be well aware of all the most common security pitfalls and targets for cyber attacks. 

What Does Effective Penetration Testing Involve? 

To conduct pen testing, your agency’s security experts will run through a process that attempts to penetrate your site’s security measures. 

This is usually done in stages, as follows: 

1 – Planning and Preparation

1. Review the results and analysis of any previous tests (if there are any)
2. Define the scope of the testing, including which tests will be performed
3. Gather all necessary data and information on the system to conduct the testing
4. Determine the criteria of success or failure for the tests.

2 – Running the Tests 

1. Use automated tools to scan for vulnerabilities and identify weaknesses 
2. Attempt to exploit the identified weaknesses 
3. Repeat the tests with different types of user roles and permissions
4. Measure the outcomes against criteria for success or failure 
5. Create a report on the outcomes and results of the tests. 

3 – Post-Testing 

1. Review the reports and analyse the results 
2. Remediate and resolve the vulnerabilities that were able to be exploited
3. Re-test the vulnerabilities to ensure remediation was successful.

The Benefits of Thorough Penetration Testing

Working with an agency partner who can support you with ongoing pen testing is a necessary step towards gaining enterprise-grade security for your website.

Technology changes so quickly today. Your platform receives updates regularly, your site is always growing, and cyber criminals are constantly finding new ways to breach your defences and gain access to your data. Penetration testing allows you to keep the pace with new emerging vulnerabilities. 

Conducting regular pen testing can also help improve client relationships and create competitive advantages as well. In certain industries, a demonstrable commitment to security will be greatly appreciated by your target audience. This can help to differentiate you from the competition and provide the trust required to attract more prospective clients to work with you.

Website Security is a Never-Ending Battle 

While every business with a website faces tremendous security risks today, this is a proven process that can help to minimise that risk and give you the confidence you need in your site’s security.

Any agency partner you work with should have the knowledge and expertise to understand the importance of pen testing, and should insist on making this an integral, ongoing part of your site’s maintenance. 

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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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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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As a business in the financial services industry, you have to navigate a range of sector-specific challenges that make it difficult to meet current user expectations with technology. This article will explain why a bespoke development project is often the most effective way to solve those challenges, and provide guidance on how to approach such a project.

For a long time, apprehension towards cyber security and data protection, alongside challenges with decades-old legacy systems, meant that many businesses in the financial services sector were a bit behind the technology curve. Banks and other financial services companies weren’t typically known for their impressive websites or sleek digital processes, at least not until fairly recently. Those days are long gone now, though, as digital transformation and technology-driven innovation have changed the financial services industry forever. 

Today, both your clients and employees alike expect a seamless digital experience when interacting with your services and processes. And meeting these expectations has become increasingly important over the past 10 years or so, as the more traditional finance businesses have faced disruption from trends like FinTech and digital banking. 

But whether you’re a long-standing financial institution, or an early-stage FinTech start-up, there’s a common priority among businesses in this industry – you simply must keep up with the pace of technology in order to stay relevant with your customers and maintain your competitive edge.

Changing Demands from Your Audience of End-Users 

The technology trends we’ve highlighted there will have caused you to shift large parts of your business model online over the past few years. Consequently, that will have created a range of new challenges for you.

Self-Service 

Whatever services or products you provide, your clients now expect the same convenient, effortless experience they’re used to with the technology they use on their smartphones every day.  

When interacting with businesses, most people want to be able to do everything for themselves online, ideally without having to interact with a sales-person or customer service rep. If you can’t enable this self-service in a simple and efficient way, your customers will be left frustrated. 

Cyber Security and Data Protection

The amount of data passing through your business is mind-blowing. All that data can be placed at risk if any technology attached to your corporate network is not secure. When you’re working with such highly sensitive financial data and strict industry regulations, all your technology must be highly secure.

Responsive Design 

Your digital systems need to be highly intuitive, dynamic, and, perhaps most importantly, simple and easy-to-use. That should ideally be the case for all systems, both client-facing and internal. 

User Retention 

If your current website feels clunky, unintuitive, or difficult to navigate, your clients will not hesitate to go elsewhere. While that may have been acceptable with cumbersome legacy systems in the financial services market 20 years ago, it’s simply not an option today.

People will leave a company’s website forever after one poor experience. This demonstrates just how important an excellent user experience (UX) is in retaining your user base.

Similarly, with internal systems like staff training portals or corporate knowledge bases, a poor UX will stifle adoption and usage of the technology. In turn, that will have a negative impact on your return on investment (ROI). 

Using Bespoke Development to Overcome Business Challenges 

In order to break down those barriers and overcome those challenges, many of the leading financial services companies have developed websites that are entirely bespoke. 

Modern enterprise systems need to be dynamic, intuitive, and user-centric. Delivering on all those attributes often requires bespoke development, especially in an industry as nuanced and complex as financial services. 

Your customers, partners, and clients must be able to interact with your services and access their data online, from anywhere, at any time. Not only that, but they also expect personalised content, tailored to their specific needs or challenges, at every stage of their user journey. 

For that reason, it’s often necessary to take the route of a bespoke development project to ensure that your business gains exactly what it needs – and that your users get exactly what they want – in terms of both functionality and capability. 

This covers all the possibilities and ensures your digital presence is tailored to your specific business objectives, the preferences of your users, and unique requirements, including:

• A bespoke website that differentiates you from your competitors
• An online portal, either for training internal users or providing a more engaging experience for your clients
• A new platform that can better integrate with your legacy systems
• A new content management system (CMS) that can provide greater flexibility and scalability 
• A way to transform time-consuming, inefficient manual processes into a unique, easy-to-use digital tool.

Whatever it is your business requires, you can follow the simple, proven process outlined below to ensure your investment in new technology is a successful one.

How to Approach a Bespoke Development Project for a Financial Services Business 

Understand the Purpose of What You’re Building

The first thing you need to do is reach a clear understanding of exactly what you’re trying to achieve with your website. Whatever you’re looking to build, it should align with, and support, your company’s strategic business objectives. 

It should also meet a specific need or solve a specific challenge for the users it’s aimed at. This will help you begin to determine exactly what you need in terms of design, usability, and any other bespoke functionality. 

Define Your Requirements in a Project Brief 

A brief is a simple written document that lists all the key ideas and details you think are relevant to the website or platform you’re looking to build. Use this to list all your functional and non-functional requirements, as that will make the project as clear as possible for the design and development agencies you speak to. 

Try to be as specific as possible to give yourself the best chance of having the project delivered on time, within your budget, and to your bespoke specifications. Without that specificity, you’ll likely be disappointed and could even end up drastically 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 Your Technology Options 

In most cases, you’ll use a content management system (CMS) to build your bespoke site. This is a type of software-based platform that allows you to create, edit, and publish digital content across a range of online channels and devices.

Every bespoke development project will be different, so you should aim to select the CMS that best aligns with your objectives, requirements, budget, and other factors.

For example, WordPress is fast-becoming the platform of choice for many forward-thinking financial services businesses, because of the flexibility and fast time-to-market it offers.

To learn more  about how to understand and evaluate the enterprise CMS options for bespoke development, read our helpful related article here.

Find and Select an Agency Partner 

Building, managing, and maintaining a high-performance website in the current technology landscape can be very complex. It requires a wealth of expertise and experience, and also takes time. For that reason, the vast majority of businesses work with a web design and development agency to bring their vision to life. 

The choice you make about which agency to partner with will have a significant influence on the success or failure of your project, so approach this decision with a great deal of care. 

When you’re dealing with such a high volume of sensitive financial data, you must find an agency that understands and respects the critical nature of the work they’ll deliver for you. 

You should consider the following qualities as non-negotiable for your an agency: 

• Proven financial services sector experience and success 
• A strong track record with complex bespoke development projects 
• A long-term partner who can advise and guide you to make the correct decisions
• Certifications and accreditations 
• Compliance with financial services industry regulations
• Secure hosting, with back-up, disaster recovery, and risk mitigation plans
• Security built into the core of every project 
• Automated monitoring, maintenance, and support services
• Ongoing updates and optimisation for your platform
• Training and learning to help you gain maximum value from your investment. 

What Are the Key Components of a Successful Bespoke Development Project in the Financial Services Sector?

There are some key components of a web development project that you can specifically include in your requirements before you speak to any agencies. These will ensure you minimise your risks and mitigate potential problems, both during and after the delivery of the project. 

You should use these as criteria when assessing your agencies and your technology platform, as they should all be non-negotiable for any business in the financial services sector.

Hosting and Performance 

Hosting refers to the physical and virtual data centres used to house your website. It’s crucial to ensure your site will be hosted in a secure environment, with an experienced, trustworthy provider, because this will have a significant influence on things like security and performance. You’re likely expecting to deal with a high volume of data and a large audience of users, so it’s crucial to ensure your website or platform can handle that. 

Enterprise-Grade Security 

Security is not an after-thought, it’s a critical priority. From your choice of hosting services, to your data back-up and disaster recovery, right through to the frequent testing of your live site. Always place this at the very top of your list of questions when speaking to an agency or a technology provider about developing something bespoke.

Personalisation

Providing your users with personalised services and content is another crucial capability for modern financial services companies, but not all platforms can facilitate this. 

In order to ensure your end-users are having their experiences tailored to each individual, some bespoke functionality could be necessary.

Scalability and Multi-Site Development

As business growth is likely one of your key strategic objectives, your site must be able to support that. A scalable platform will allow you to seamlessly expand your online presence as your business grows and your needs change. 

Integration with Back-End Systems 

Like most financial services companies, your corporate network probably includes a variety of old and new systems and applications across all your different departments. If you’re going to have something new developed, you’ll need to build it on a technology platform that can seamlessly integrate with all those relevant systems. 

Ease-of-Use 

Whether or not a technology solution is a good investment or a bad one often depends on how easy it is to use, both for your team internally and your end-users. Usability is a key criteria 

Time-to-Market

One of the great advantages of developing a bespoke site is that you can continue to iterate and improve it based on user feedback. However, you’ll want to ensure you’re able to do so quickly and efficiently. 

Working with an agency, and a technology platform, that enables a fast time-to-market with your development projects is an important part of the process in terms of achieving positive ROI.

Ongoing Development and Optimisation

Following on from the previous point, your web development project shouldn’t stop at the delivery and deployment of your solution. Once your site is live, measure and analyse its adoption and usage. You can use that feedback to continue optimising its capabilities and functionality for the best possible results.

The Business Benefits of Bespoke Development  

While technology does create its fair share of challenges for businesses that are unprepared or unwilling to adapt, it also presents a vast range of opportunities to those who embrace it. 

A bespoke development project delivers something entirely unique and specific to your business, giving you a range of benefits and advantages, including: 

• Improving your internal UX, creating greater operational efficiency
• Improving your external UX, providing more convenient, intuitive services to customers 
• Streamlining mission-critical processes to reduce costs 
• Building enterprise-grade security into the core of your systems
• Enabling real-time interactions with data 
• Increasing customer retention and loyalty 
• Achieving competitive differentiation
• Accelerating business growth. 

In Summary

Financial services has always been a highly competitive industry, but with recent technology trends and changing consumer behaviour, it’s now more important than ever to have a strong, user-centric digital presence.

Not only do your clients and partners demand their data be handled in a secure, compliant way, they also expect a seamless, consumer-grade performance from all digital processes and services they use. Unexpected down-time, poor UX, or any similar frustrations will leave your customers unsatisfied and may put their loyalty in question.

In order to avoid these challenges and minimise your risks, it’s important to find the right agency, with the right technology, to create a website tailored to meet your strategic objectives and exceed your clients’ expectations.

To learn more, read our comprehensive guide to understanding and evaluating the enterprise options for bespoke development here.

Discover how global private equity advisory firm, Rede Partners LLP, transformed a time-consuming manual process into a game-changing client-facing online portal here.

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