Polcode

Building Alongside Digital Marketing CTOs

Fast-tracking Software Development

Our cooperation began within weeks of analyzing SiteVibes’ product and development needs. The initial code was written by the SiteVibes CTO, but they needed additional dev resources to accelerate the product development side of things. Polcode’s eCommerce expertise, paired with our track record of building digital marketing platforms, turned out to be the perfect fit.

Polcode’s developers fleshed out the product by migrating to a high-performance Laravel framework, and building additional features alongside the SiteVibes team. The goal of the project was to leverage user-generated content from Instagram or Facebook, giving customers a more engaging experience when shopping online. Our partnership remains ongoing, but we provide fully-featured product developer teams which include the following services:

Frontend Development

With the Vue open-source framework, we built the SiteVibes ecommerce widgets for flexibility and speed. Showcasing social content requires a more nuanced setup than typical content management systems, which requires a more custom approach to serving content to each visitor.

App Development

Using fully-featured Laravel packages for eCommerce development, we were able to build eCommerce experiences that help to make brands’ images and videos increasingly shoppable. This can include social content streams, product galleries, and other formats customizable based on a brand’s needs.

eCommerce-specific Development

Developing apps for a particular eCommerce store app requires levels of expertise that helps feature development move faster. Our experience working on platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and BigCommerce allows us to quickly integrate and build features with eCommerce-specific uses.

Building the Visual Marketing and Social Engagement Platform

The SiteVibes Visual Marketing and Social Engagement platform helps eCommerce brands step up their product discovery and customer engagement tools. Their in-house CTO worked alongside Polcode product developers to help rapidly build and launch a visual marketing platform, which boosts conversions by up to 20% and motivates shoppers to purchase based on social proof.

Today’s software providers are increasingly benefitting from outsourced software development teams as a catalyst for faster growth. SiteVibes CTO, Cristian Pina, collaborated with Polcode’s remote product development teams to quickly get the new platform launched, all while retaining full control over the development process.

With any remote collaborative work, Polcode strives to become more than just an outsourcing coder. We aim to build a real partnership, offering our expertise to fill in any talent gaps that an agency needs, while becoming a trusted team through quality communication and code.

Extending Developer Reach

Team Extension is an ongoing cooperation model between a core team (in this case, the SiteVibes team) and the extended team offshore (Polcode). There are a number of benefits to working in this model, namely:

• Predictable Scaling - Outsourcing developers can help in-house teams meet tight deadlines and reach milestones in reliable time frames.
• Talent Access - SiteVibes had immediate access to their developer, without needing to recruit, hire, onboard and maintain roles which are ‘temporary’.
• Rapid Development - From the early stages of creation to a market-ready product, team extensions are built for no-hassle setups and fast operations from day one.
• Saving Time & Money - Team extension means that the software developer partner, like Polcode, handles the team organization, project management, salaries, payment, termination, promotions, etc.
• Maintaining Control - One important aspect of our cooperation with SiteVibes was to ensure that the CTO stayed in full control of the project’s progress and developer tasks.

SiteVibes Project Outcomes (So Far)

With our combined efforts, SiteVibes was able to rapidly ideate, build, and launch the new app to commerce stores, allowing them to increase:

• Time-on-site
• Average orders values
• Conversion rates
• Pageviews
• SEO positions
• Customer Data Richness

Deliverables & Results

• New app launched in the Shopify marketplace
• Increased integration options for ecommerce brands
• Acquired first customers with SiteVibes shoppable content
• Increased conversions by up to 20%

Our apps help increase a business’s ecommerce potential with the power of social media. To do that, we need reliable developers who understand how to code at the intersection of design, ecommerce, social media APIs, and frontend and backend management.

Polcode offers talent we need on demand, and they’re always eager to build new and exciting features alongside us.

Yes, Avocados Now Have Their Own Website and App

Do you like Avocados?

Polcode helped develop the Avocado Nation marketing platform, combining big data, social media content and personalized AI to engage avocado lovers in new, digital ways.

Avocados From Mexico (AFM) represent the #1 selling brand in the United States. They are a not-for-profit organization responsible for coordinating the marketing activities for the Mexican Hass Avocados Importers, who sell over 1.7 billion pounds of avocados each year. People love Hass avocados because they’re soft, creamy and densely full of nutrients, and primarily come from Mexico – the only place in the world where avocado trees naturally bloom four times a year!

Building The Avocado Nation

Avocados From Mexico wants to transform the traditional produce industry with big data and personalized AI. They needed a platform that could engage avo-lovers online, helping them share home-made content, and earn rewards for purchasing avocados through AFM’s new loyalty program.

Polcode’s product & web developers came together to create Avocado Nation, an engagement platform which promotes a healthy lifestyle, encourages people to buy avocados and gets users interacting with the AFM brand identity. Through this process,

AFM can also gather customer insights and observe interactions on the platform.

The Avocado Nation platform offers several ways for consumers to engage with AFM. Polcode developed AFM’s new loyalty platform which is comprised of the following elements:

• Studios – User-generated Content Stream
• Shop – Purchasing Avocado-inspired clothing with virtual Avocado
• Rewards – Exchanging real-life avocado purchases for Avocado Dollars
• Administrative Panel – Enables AFM to manage everything in one place
• Receipt Scanner – Users scan their receipts to earn Avocado Dollars

The Avo-lover’s Digital Experience

Avocado Studios

Content managed by AFM is displayed in the Studios section, which contains photos, recipes, short videos and GIFs. Users can create playlists or browse categories, which can be personalized based on their interests. AFM can manage Studios from the admin panel, removing or adding content, and creating new campaigns around it.

Avocado Shop

A visually stunning, virtual marketplace where Avocado Dollars can be exchanged for rewards – the shop isn’t your typical ecommerce store. Instead, users can acquire Avocado Dollars by showing proof of purchase through the app.

The virtual currency can be exchanged for Avocado-inspired clothing. Additionally, the shop can be easily updated with new products whenever the AFM team wants to run new campaigns or release new product lines.

Avocado Rewards

The Rewards system uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, allowing users to scan their receipts and receive their rewards. We integrated the OCR scanner tool to automate this process, so that AFM campaign managers don’t have to manually verify or award each user.

Administrative Panel

AFM also needed a way to easily manage the new marketing platform. With a dedicated admin panel, AFM’s marketers can create campaigns, manage users and company brands. They can also add or remove user-generated content, and process the submission of receipts for Avocado Dollars.

Receipt Scanner

We also integrated the ecommerce API into their marketing system, which is responsible for managing content in the store, online magazine and product selection.

Global marketing agency finds their “Dream Team” with Polcode’s developers

HPM Business Benefits

When Hidden Profits Marketing needed to find custom software developers for their digital agency, Polcode’s CTO personally stepped in to help them create a development roadmap. Within a matter of weeks, Polcode’s senior developers were helping HPM rewrite website code and migrate to a more stable, secure server architecture. Today, Polcode and HPM are trusted partners and continue to build web and mobile applications at the forefront of digital marketing growth.

• Communication between teams remained at a fast clip between the scoping session and project kickoff phase. With so many moving parts, it’s always important to make sure every stakeholder is on the same page; everyone should have the same expected outcomes for each sprint. While it’s our job to rewrite old code with new high-quality code, and maintain clean code principles, it’s even more crucial to keep communication flowing so that no one is left confused.

• Trust was one of the key outcomes of our business relationship with HPM. The level of reliability and level of trust between teams has grown over many months. Our developers treat their company’s product like their own, and in-turn HPM is excited to grow and deliver new and exciting challenges.

• Data protection and compliance with GDPR was also achieved with AWS data centers, as it offers the world’s top protections over secure information and personal identifiable data. By switching to AWS, we improved HPM ability to meet compliance and regulatory criteria, such as data locality, protection, and confidentiality.

The need to unlock hidden profits with a modern technical team

Hidden Profits Marketing, based in the Netherlands, delivers digital fitness marketing expertise across Europe. Through their Marketing Formulas, web apps and innovation centers, they generate leads for gyms, health clubs, personal trainers and boutique fitness clubs. Their services help fitness entrepreneurs achieve long-term profit-growth through digital solutions and they operate primary on Dutch- and German-speaking markets.

HPM’s core value to their clients is the ability to generate a constant stream of leads, appointments and membership subscriptions for gyms, studios and clubs in the fitness industry. To ‘unlock hidden profits’ they replace traditional methods of marketing engagement with proven digital methods—a feat which requires a modern technical team.

Missing the Perfect IT Department

Digital marketing agencies know that finding developers and technical talent can be a challenge. Even world-class agencies spend a great deal of resources on finding an IT team that fits their business perfectly. Without a technical team, marketers are left to rely only on the SaaS tools available to them through vendors. These out-of-the-box solutions will only get digital marketers only so far, until they realize that they need to begin developing custom solutions on their own to remain competitive.

Thankfully, HPM and Polcode had the opportunity to join forces and create a holistic developer team, essentially taking over the role of HPM’s technology department.

Polcode’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) personally stepped into the project to create a roadmap, test scenarios and project guidelines, so that project kickoff went smoothly.

Building a Lead Management System

The greater challenge for the Amsterdam-based digital agency, was building out their lead generation platform that is responsible for connecting fitness entrepreneurs with new leads all in one place, in addition to all other online marketing services that they provide.

Our teams took a deep dive into their existing advanced code, planning debugging projects and establishing a checklist of critical features that would be included in a quick-launch scenario. At the end of our scoping session, we settled on the following goals for their Lead-Generation Management System:

• Open API (to connect with more CRM systems)
• More data visualization
• Admin dashboards
• Automated email sequences to leads based on the ‘status of a lead’
• Additional landing page templates
• Integrated secure payments systems
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) server migration

Hear from our client:

We’ve grown to value reliability from Polcode. We feel that we can fully trust Polcode with any project. From writing new code to advising on new server setups, we are really happy with the level of expertise and experience inside the company.

- Maxi Stoiber, Product Director at Hidden Profits Marketing

Rebuilding a powerful online fitness appointment booking platform

AppyBee Business Benefits

AppyBee is a bespoke online booking platform for personal trainers and athletic entrepreneurs to save 80% of their time spent managing their business. With an ever-growing system of reservations, payments, scheduling, and automated reminders, they reached out to Polcode to overhaul their website, mobile apps and codebase. Polcode extended the AppyBee team with up to 10 specialists to make their online booking platform a relaunch fit for success.

• Scaled quickly and met rapid development growth targets after AppyBee received an influx of new signups and customers.

• Rescued development project by switching agencies to Polcode who redesigned the booking platform and rewrote their codebase.

• Outsourced project management to Polcode which allowed AppyBee to focus more on building their business and driving better business outcomes.

• Satisfied appointment-based businesses through integrating powerful online booking features that attract and retain their customers.

• Improved revenue generation for their customers by reducing no-shows, eliminating rescheduling conflicts and unlocking lead

Restarting a Fitness Journey from Scratch

The AppyBee project started as somewhat of a rescue mission. The previous agency responsible for the project had been unable to deliver a platform that worked at scale, and the old platform couldn’t handle more signups, or deliver customer-centric experiences beyond the basics.

The best online booking solutions are designed to be fundamentally scalable. New features are often added regularly, and each of those features must be integrated seamlessly with one another. Ultimately, the underlying technology and architecture must be robust enough to handle constant adaptations without breaking itself.

Defining the definition of done

In AppyBee’s case, achieving this goal meant running a complete revamp project while keeping costs low. Polcode and AppyBee established 5 key goalposts together:

• Rewrite the entire application from scratch using React Native from the previous app which was written in Swift and Java
• Managing bookings all in one place
• Redesign and rewrite the AppyBee Widget that works on their clients’ dedicated channels
• Redesign the Admin panel using Progressive Web Apps
• Refactor backend codebase to enable new functionalities

Surrounding Yourself with Fitness-Minded People

Polcode has a detailed audit process that looks at a client’s software ecosystem or any markers that could indicate a ‘legacy’ codebase, bugs or software architecture issues.

After the auditing process, our product development teams created a roadmap for AppyBee. This roadmap was carefully designed to move them swiftly from redesign, all the way to market relaunch. At the height of cooperation, Polcode extended AppyBee’s core technical talent by up to 10 developers and designers. Key members in the project were chosen for their seniority in building booking management systems, or expertise in refactoring codebases.

Polcode’s project managers also stepped in to ensure that all stakeholders were on the same page, informed about progress, and moving towards the same goal.

Polcode chose the best fit for a backend environment, using PHP and Symfony as the framework. By raising productivity for developers, this setup saves money for AppyBee by cutting down on feature request timelines.

Symfony allowed Polcode to further extend AppyBee’s feature offerings and leverage web services, APIs and microservices.

AppyBee was able to offer more nuanced capabilities to their clients, some of which included:

• Group training sessions
• Scheduling local fitness events
• Automatic recurring appointment bookings
• Bundling package deals and integrating them with bookings
• Employee schedule management
• Google and Outlook calendar synchronization with AppyBee features

A Healthier Business Model

With the help of Polcode, AppyBee is set to become a leading booking management provider for fitness organisations in their market. Their website and mobile apps have been able to provide better key advantages to their clients.

• Reducing no-shows to appointments and better rescheduling by syncing calendars in real-time with all parties involved.
• Improving the overall productivity and time-savings of themselves and their staff, which in turn provides greater revenue generation.
• Attracting new clients and retaining existing clients by making scheduling online a user-friendly process.

Hear from our client:

We moved from another agency to Polcode. They have a good track record and reviews, their sales process was great, and the audit was impressive. There’s no doubt that Polcode saved the project.

We continue to be really pleased with our results. The project is really big, and there’s a lot of technology inside. We make progress easily and new features keep coming so the code quality is really satisfying.

- Jan Donmez, Founder & CEO at AppyBee

Canadian firm trusts Polcode with their core product development

Business Benefits

impak Finance trusted Polcode’s product development services to transform their offline, early-stage concept into a market-ready online platform. Instead of hiring a dedicated costly internal team, Polcode’s flexible team models allowed them to scale developer talent and hours as needed. After a successful product launch, Polcode remains their remote technical team—entirely replacing an internal IT department.

• Slashed potential developer costs by 50% by offering scalable, highly flexible, remote developers that work under budget, but act as impak’s own developer team.

• Increased back-office efficiency by aggregating data views into one place.

• Successful market entry with the IS2 platform launch. Moving business from offline to online within less than a year, bringing impak’s digital footprint forward.

From Early-Stage to Startup

impak Finance holds a very special vision and mission statement. Through its impact assessment and scoring solution, they aim to channel capital towards businesses with a positive social or environmental impact. They hope their technology shifts the mindset of capital in society, while still offering insights into growth, gains and profitability.

There was just one small problem. Armed only with a vision and offline proof-of-concept models, impak had little visibility into their online market entrance. Thus, it was initially financially impossible to hire a dedicated internal IT team just to validate the idea.

Facing the Challenges of Fast-Paced Startups

What they needed was lightweight solutions and flexibility—the power to shrink or extend a developer hours on-demand with a tightly controlled budget, yet rapid development timeframes.

Polcode is a trusted developer-partner for these exact scenarios, able to develop and design a digital product under tailored constraints. No matter the challenge, we knew that we would be able to deliver the rapid prototyping that impak Finance needed, along with developing and designing their app under budget constraints.

Realizing The impak Online Investor Platform

Polcode designed and developed the majority of the impak online experience. Development is currently ongoing on multiple fronts: their website, impak scoring visualization tools used by investors, and administrative panels for impak’s internal back-office staff.

In terms of team, impak Finance works with a wide array of Polcode’s core talent roles, including UX designers, frontend & backend developers and our dedicated project managers.

A quick summary of our services for impak Finance includes:

• Frontend Development
• Backend Development
• Impak's CMS Site
• Google Sheets Integration

Hear from our client:

We were so happy with Polcode’s initial work that now the entire product is driven by Polcode’s development team. Immediately after launch, their work helped us successfully land the first set of clients, bringing our proof-of-concept platform to market readiness.

I still find it amazing to this day that our teams work so well together. Polcode, just over the last year, has offered us flexibility, extra resources, extra help on the frontend side, and a team that adapts to changing requirements. We think of them as our own team now.

- CTO at impak Finance