Web Application Development
Web applications that are still fast a year after launch.
Customer platforms, portals and internal tools, built with the years after release in mind. Performance is measured in CI, and the codebase is one your own team can keep shipping.
What you end up with
- Give customers a platform that works on any device with nothing to install
- Meet the performance and accessibility standards that affect conversion and search ranking
- Cut support tickets with self-service flows people can get through on their own
- Keep shipping quickly, on a codebase your team can maintain
Most projects start with a fixed-price discovery, so you have a scoped plan and an estimate in hand before you commit to a build.
Overview
What a production web app needs
Most business software now lives in a browser: portals, dashboards, marketplaces, booking systems, admin tools. Users have got used to instant loads and live updates, and they expect a screen to work as well on a phone as at a desk. A framework on its own won't get you there. It takes early decisions about how pages render and how data is fetched and cached, and then someone checking the numbers afterwards.
We build with React, Next.js and TypeScript, and put performance budgets, automated tests and monitoring in place before the first feature. Pages render on the server where that helps and run in the browser only where they need to. The component library is documented, so your team can add screens for years without the codebase getting away from them.
What's included
The kinds of work this covers.
- 01
Customer platforms and portals
Account management, onboarding, ordering and document handling. This is the front door to your service, so it's designed to convert and to keep people coming back.
- 02
Dashboards and data-heavy interfaces
Tables, filters, charts and live views that stay responsive when the dataset is large, with the keyboard and screen-reader work done properly.
- 03
Marketplaces and multi-sided platforms
Buyer, seller and admin sides on one shared core, with payments, messaging, search and moderation built in.
- 04
Progressive web apps
Installable web apps that keep working offline, for field teams and customers who shouldn't have to go through an app store.
- 05
Performance and Core Web Vitals
Performance budgets, image and font handling, caching and edge delivery. Slow pages lose sign-ups and rank lower, so every build gets checked against a budget.
- 06
Design systems and component libraries
A shared, documented UI kit, so designers and engineers are working from the same parts on every screen and every feature that comes later.
Is it right for you?
A good fit if
- You're launching a customer-facing platform, or replacing one that's slow and looks its age
- Your internal tools are stuck behind a front-end nobody wants to touch
- Performance, SEO or accessibility are written into the requirements
- You want a codebase your own team can take over later
How we approach it
The steps between a first call and go-live.
Product discovery and UX
Work out who the users are and what they need to get done. Map the flows, prototype the important ones and test them with real users before any production code is written.
Architecture and foundations
Choose the rendering approach, data layer, auth and hosting to suit the product. The design system, CI, tests and performance budgets go in during the first sprint, before anyone starts on screens.
Iterative build
Ship a complete slice of the product every sprint. Every pull request gets a preview environment, so stakeholders can review and comment on real screens.
Hardening and launch
Load testing, a security review, an accessibility audit, analytics and monitoring. Then launch and keep an eye on the numbers.
Deliverables
What you'll have at the end.
- UX flows, prototypes and a documented design system
- Production web application (front-end and API layer)
- Automated unit, integration and browser tests
- CI/CD pipeline with preview environments
- Performance, accessibility and security reports
- Monitoring, analytics and runbooks for whoever is on call
Typical stack
The tools we tend to use for this.
Related work
Projects that used this service.
Questions
Questions about this service.
Do you build the backend as well as the front-end?
Yes. Most of our web projects include the API and data layer. If you already have back-end services, we build the front-end against those and help pin down the contracts between the two.
Why React and Next.js?
They let us render on the server for speed and SEO, and add browser-side code only where a screen needs it. There's also a large pool of developers who know them, which matters when you're hiring in three years. If your team is standardised on something else, we'll talk through the trade-offs.
How do you handle performance?
We set Core Web Vitals budgets at the start, check them in CI and treat a regression as a bug. Images, fonts, caching, code splitting and server rendering are decided up front. Bolting them on later costs more and works less well.
Can you take over an existing web application?
Often, yes. We start with a review of the codebase and infrastructure to work out what's safe to build on and what needs fixing first, then agree a plan before we take on delivery.
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