In an interview with TheWebAppMarket, Brannan Coady, CEO of Netsells reveals the reason why Laravel has been their development framework of choice over the years.

Let’s check his journey!

Q1) Tell us about your background and your journey with the company. What are the key services offered by your company?

Netsells is a digital product consultancy working across web and mobile. We help organisations transform through technology, turning commercial strategies and new ideas into clearly defined digital products.  

I founded the business in 2009 with my co-founder, Sam Jordan, while we were both at university in Scarborough here in the UK. I was initially the graphic designer and driving force behind sales and client liaison, Sam brought deep technical expertise and development knowledge.

By combining our skills we managed to quickly outpace the competition when it came to the quality and speed of development.

After we left university the businesses expanded extremely quickly, which enabled us to move from Scarborough to York, a larger city, in 2014. We’ve doubled in size every year since and were recently named the 9th fastest growing technology company in the north.

We now work with a range of global clients, from innovative startups to large household names, using cutting-edge technologies to solve critical business challenges and drive sustainable growth.

Q2) The tech industry keeps on changing, for instance, the current COVID-19 situation leading to mass adoption of remote working? How have you prepared your company for these changes? 

Luckily we already had a number of systems and processes in place which allowed us to quickly transition to a successful remote setup. 

Like many companies, we use tools like Jira, Slack and Zoom to facilitate collaboration and communication. 

One of our biggest concerns moving to a fully remote setup was how to preserve our company culture and the mental health of our staff.

To help with this we’ve introduced all-hands meetings to keep people connected with news in the business and also run regular remote social events where the team can get together, blow off steam and have some fun.

We have also invested in training Mental Health First Aiders and schedule regular mental health check-ins between trained staff and all team members to ensure everyone has someone to talk to about any issues they are facing.

Q3) Laravel is globally recognised as one of the best PHP frameworks for web development. What do you think are the key factors behind Laravel’s recognition in the web market?

Laravel has long been our development framework of choice because it combines both speed and versatility. It’s also well documented and has a massive community around it, which means that Laravel applications are easier to maintain and get regular security updates.

Laravel also comes with a number of out-the-box features, like a complete authentication system and automated testing. These allow us to build highly performant platforms quickly, which is a win for our clients who are looking for rapid development without compromising on quality or security.

Q4) According to you, what are the most helpful technological platforms and tools to use for app development? Have you implemented them in your company?

Over the last few years, we have been heavily investing training and development resources into Flutter, Google’s new cross-platform SDK. We’ve built a number of client projects using it and the feedback has been fantastic.

Our developers have actually taken this one step further by building their own server-side rendering framework powered by Flutter, called Glider. 

Glider represents a serious innovation as it in provides a way of defining mobile apps using JSON and allows developers to make server-side changes to live mobile applications (currently not possible without packaging a new release). This could have dramatic ramifications for global mobile app development as not only would two native apps only require one code base to be written, they could both be updated live from this single code base. Currently, developers have to write two different code bases for two versions of an app, one for iOS and one for Android and then release any changes in a new version of an app.

Q5) What do you think is the role of SEO in increasing user conversion rate? We would like to know what platforms are your go-to options to optimize the app for higher search engine rankings?

Recent changes to ranking algorithms have shown that Google and other platforms are placing much higher importance on user experience across web and mobile. 

This means that ranking on the app store and within the SERPs will become much more reliant on the overall quality of your application, including everything from UI/UX to the speed and performance of the back-end. 

Good SEO and ASO therefore no longer purely about improving search engine rankings, it’s about making better digital products and platforms.

For example, Google’s new focus on Core Web Vitals will measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page or application. Google now clearly stipulates that websites and apps should be made “more delightful for users”. 

In terms of tooling, we are big fans of App Annie for ASO and Ahrefs for SEO.

Q6) Can you elaborate the key points why Netsells stands out amidst thousands of other app development companies?

We consistently get feedback from our clients that we stand out because we take the time to really understand their business model, competitors and opportunities. We never want to build a new app or platform for the sake of it, we want to know exactly how it will help their business move forward and why it’s worth their investment.

In order to take this consultative approach, we’ve had to seriously invest in talent. When you work with our team, you’re working with the best people in the industry, from our consultants and business analysts to our designers and developers. 

The benefit of working with people with deep expertise is that they can steer you away from costly mistakes and help maximise hidden opportunities. A number of our clients have found this insight so beneficial that we now act as an extension of their own internal teams.

Q7) Over the years, Netsells has successfully delivered hundreds of projects, can you share one of your favourite case studies that you can say as your claim to fame moment?

In terms of impact, I would have to say YourParkingSpace. When we got involved the business was in its infancy as a startup, and were operating as a web only business. We introduced the mobile applications and the business skyrocketed, from thousands of pounds per month to millions in revenue. Being so instrumental to the early days of a business now worth in excess of £60,000,000 has been a real privilege

Q8) What major opportunities do you foresee for your brand? How do you plan to handle them?

The biggest opportunity we have is expansion into the United States. Our skills are perfectly transferrable to the US market, which is a much larger market than the UK, and with the added benefit of no language barrier we believe this is a logical next step. The challenges will be significant in terms of setup and attracting our first US clients, but we are geared up and ready to take the challenge on before the end of the. year.

Q9) What do you think will be the biggest challenges the industry will face after the COVID-19 situation gets under control? Would you like to share some tips that can benefit small-scale enterprises that are just hitting the app development scene?

I’m very interested to see how remote working impacts hiring and the availability of talent globally. There will probably be a mix of people staying put for fear of moving to an unstable situation alongside potentially an influx of quality candidates to the job market. Employers will need to think carefully about how they attract and retain talent in this environment.

My advice to any small-scale developers is to focus on the client and make sure that you’re adding tangible value to their business with whatever you build.

Q10. Lastly, any word of advice for our users?

Don’t forget the end user, and don’t miss out on incredible insight by not taking data seriously.