What a year its been! So much has changed over a short period of time in business and personal life. I’ll be going over the main things that have changed at Developer Rocket, what’s worked well and what hasn’t! We started getting bigger clients from the beginning of 2020 and 2021 we have a few more even bigger ones lined up so we are really excited for the future. Developer Rocket will be going into its third year of business in 2021 and we have some massive plans.
At the beginning of the year, we got a few big clients, landing a big contract with a local business as well as a few smaller start-up businesses. This was an amazing start to the year allowing us to get a huge amount of experience in different areas of website design that he hadn’t tackled before.
We got hands-on with Shopify website development
Normally at Developer Rocket, we use WordPress to develop websites. WordPress is a flexible easy to use platform that offers a huge amount of customization, it’s also the most used CMS in the world. However, this project was a large eCommerce business that needed a much bigger focus on selling online which is why Shopify is a better choice when it comes to dedicated online stores. It has a much easier to manage backend (with a shorter learning curve) that allows customers to manage stock and sales easier. After completing this project we had a much better understanding of how larger online stores should operate and run, as well as how to increase the number of sales for online stores, which would come in handy later on in 2020 and 2021.
We moved away from Freelance platforms
From starting Developer Rocket we used Freelance platforms like PeoplePerHour (if you wanted a review of this platform this is a good read, click here) and Upwork (read a review here), to find more work and grow our list of happy customers. However, it’s time to start moving away from these platforms.
Freelance websites work by allowing buyers to post jobs and freelancers apply to them, kind of like a job application. The buyer will then look through the applicants and choose who they trust, who is most qualified and has the best reviews, then award them the job using the websites escrow system. This is great however buyers have a tendency to disappear when you have completed a job for them meaning that you only get paid the deposit that they paid. Another big issue is that it’s very hard to tell if a buyer is trustworthy, we had many examples of buyers going way beyond the brief and kept asking for more work to be done. When we refuse they got aggressive, ask for a refund and then the platform always sides with the buyer and we end up doing work for a buyer and not getting a penny for it. This, however, doesn’t happen all the time and we have worked with a lot of amazing people, some have turned into regular clients outside of the platform.
Long story short, we have had a lot of great customers from these platforms but where we can, we try to move clients away from it and build up a relationship as we normally would. We still use them sometimes if the job is right but we are very selective when it comes to using them and will only continue with a client if they are happy to not use the platform.
The Virus hit
At the beginning of the year there were some hints of the virus but around no action was being taken, we were still working in Starbucks sometimes and going about our normal lives! Of course, at the end of March, we got hit with a national lockdown which was a crazy experience for everyone. Fortunately for us we do all of our work remotely and don’t have any place specifically for work, we were still able to continue as usual. We did lose a few clients because they had to cut back on expenses but overall it hasn’t been too bad. A lot of people wanted to start their own business online and we started getting a lot of enquires about online stores, SEO projects and new websites as more business realised the importance of having an online presence.
We feel very lucky that business has been able to grow despite the virus hitting. The only real difference is working from home with everyone else in the family around can be distracting, and having no real space to work is difficult. This is why we wanted to get our own place as soon as possible.
With Developer Rocket being fairly young in business (2021 will technically only be its second full year of business) it was important to look out for new business opportunities. In 2019 we started hosting our own websites which gave us the opportunity to have much more control to help our customers. Being able to host our customer’s websites allowed us to have full access to the website files, and servers which allow us to offer more help and give free stuff like SSL certificates, which many hosting providers charge for. It also means we have another source of income which is more stable has customers pay us monthly. This also opens new doors to offer maintenance packages which many customers want so they can have updates to their sites and more help for them to grow.
More focus on SEO for customers.
SEO or search engine optimisation has always been a big part of Developer Rocket. Making websites and SEO come hand in hand. As we started working with bigger businesses, they have a more demanding set of requirements compared to smaller business that just wants a website the get their foot off the ground. We started helping more businesses build their presence online by offering monthly SEO to a number of websites. Pushing our SEO services has been a much bigger part of our business this year and it’s been great fun and also a learning experience.
Increasing websites traffic over time is a very satisfying job as the results are plain to see.
New websites and cool new features
We had a huge amount of new websites we made this year, more complex than ever. From large e-commerce businesses with stock management systems to car rental businesses in Barbados with a complex car rental systems. It was great to work with these clients and we’re proud of all the website’s we have made.
Car Rental Website
Developing a car rental website was both challenging and fun. We used a software called HQ Rental Software which we integrated with the WordPress site, this is a great system and it allows complete control over every aspect of the car rental business. They also have great customer service and helped us along the way. The website needed to look exotic and tropical, something that shows off the fact the business is based in Barbados. So the site is filled with bright colours and nice images of cars, as well as beautiful landscapes of beaches and tropical trees.
Larger Ecommerce websites
We developed a number of larger eCommerce websites in 2020, it was a great experience as it allowed us to get to grips with larger quantities or stocks, higher prices, more sales and traffic. With Starbrite, they wanted a completely revamp their website. Their site was old and they wanted a more modern one that would attract more customers and increase sales. Previously they were more focused on large bulk orders from other business, but they now wanted to open up the business to customers that want one-off purchases. They are also a large supplier in hand sanitiser so this project with very topical.
The result was is a great website that continues to make lots of sales online. They are very happy with the site and we continue to work with them now for updates and everything else they might need.
Learning more and future plans: Plugin Development
WordPress development has always been a passion for us at Developer Rocket, there are so many moving parts to WordPress that we learn more about every day. Sometimes we face the same problem over and over again without a real solution apart from adding custom code and way too many plugins, which can be a pain. So we have started the process of developing our own WordPress plugin that will solve some issues that we keep facing. We hope that it can help other people that are having the same issues, solve them too. There will be more on this in future posts, but it will be an exciting new chapter for Developer Rocket.
Growing our hosting platform
We have been hosting website for our clients for over a year now and it’s been amazing so far. Continuing to host our websites through our sister site Developerrocket.host our own hosting site will be a bigger focus of 2021. Our prices are super affordable and we made this because we felt a lot of our clients were paying too much for their website hosting and paying for services that should be free, like an SSL certificate.
Moving into our new home
At the end of 2020, we moved from our respective parent’s homes into our very own! We purchased a two-bedroom flat in Rochester, turning one of the bedrooms into an office. Ella needed more space for her other business quinnspins.com, which is an enamel pin and other accessories store. She has been seeing massive growth recently, in both her graphic design business and quinnspins.com. Dan needed more space to work and to have a specific area for him to work that wasn’t his bedroom! We both love our new home and we continue to grow all of our businesses!
How Covid has affected us
It’s been a tough year for everyone, but even more so for small businesses. Although it’s been a great year for the both of us, in terms of business growth, profit and getting a new home, it’s hard to imagine how much better it might have been if Covid wasn’t around! There was a number of clients that had to drop out of work because they were experiencing a huge loss of business due to this virus, but we had more than enough to keep us going. Luckily we can work online, and remotely with anyone so we picked up jobs from all over the country and some other parts of the world, thank god for the internet! We are very grateful for all the business we have received this year and even more grateful that we have been able to work pretty much as normal.
Thanks for reading
Overall it been an interesting but amazing year, the business has boomed, we have started new things, gained tonnes of happy customers and moved into a new home. Thanks for taking the time to read this lengthy post, you should have a better idea of our life in 2020 but this post will also act as a kind of time capsule for us to look back at over the next few years.