Weekly news

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 🎄 Our team at abz.agency wishes everyone happy holidays! We wish everyone good health above everything else, the rest will come along with it.

Santa always comes to those who worked hard all year long 🙂 Recently, a courier arrived at the office with a huge box and a greeting card. You have no idea how nice it is to receive gifts from clients! All the guys immediately ran to check out what’s inside and we quickly got the tree from the warehouse to properly put all the gifts under. One of the boxes which stayed closed was keeping a great surprise for us! When we opened it up inside was an HDMI Super Nintendo Classic edition with 20+1 golden age 16 bit games. You should have seen the joy on the guys' faces when they found it! They Immediately checked what games were included and how to set it up. Naturally, a test run was scheduled after work 🙂 It does not matter how good a developer you are or what are your skills and how old you are. When Christmas comes everyone is a child deep inside, and all kids love presents! Thank you so much Jean. We will continue doing our best!

Today we would like to tell you about high-fidelity wireframes and why it is important to have them for your project. Perhaps each of you has ever painted something or at least can imagine how professional artists produce their paintings. So, the process of creating a painting always starts from making a sketch. Artists put simple shapes, outline objects therefore prepare a foundation for a future masterpiece. The purpose of sketching varies but in simple words - it helps to mould the final artwork. High-fidelity wireframes serve the same purpose - they help to mould the final structure of each project. Wireframe, by nature, is a static representation of your product. In the world of web and mobile design it is a basic guideline of your web-application for both designers and developers to follow. Wireframing is a first mandatory step forwards creating great UX and UI experience, they represent every page of a desired application as well as location of elements on them. First and foremost, high-fidelity wireframes allow you, the investor, the development team and other project participants to receive a tactile response of the project. They also help to fill in the real volumes of the upcoming work at an early stage of the project design phase.

We quite often find the copies of our logo and its pattern on the internet. Commonly there are flipped and stretched versions of various kinds, but recently we found the most curious and amusing one. Our logo was used as an Icon on a bluetooth speaker for pairing multiple speakers as a one system. It is always a flattering experience to be copied by someone, we always consider it a compliment to our work. But using our logo as a button to create a pair of devices is symbolic of our values and made us smile. As a result we bought this speaker for the office 🙂 If our logo makes the devices work together, then it will also bring us together with our clients. Join us and you will receive a full charge of energy. You will make a loud statement with your projects which will be developed with utmost attention to quality and top tier performance. UX tests, which we recently introduced as mandatory, will make your projects even more attractive to potential users. Click the button to make a first step towards a joint project!

Lately we’ve discussed a lot how we can bring your project Idea to life and help guide you through all the necessary steps to get a result that you had in mind. Today we want to touch on the other important aspect of launching a new project that may be overlooked. Development costs are usually only a fraction of the actual budget of any successful project, even more so for SaaS and marketplaces. Let’s list two most commonly overlooked costs of launching a project: 1. Marketing costs. Regardless of how fresh, original or even revolutionary a new offering is It won’t succeed if no one has heard about it. Behind any explosive success lies a deliberate marketing strategy that will drive the customers to you, unfortunately you can’t count on just the word of mouth to propel it forward towards success. Usually the marketing budget is many times bigger than the actual development costs.
2. Operational costs may vary greatly depending on the actual idea. Great examples will be: staffing for technical support and moderation, legal expenses, server infrastructure and other more specific operational costs. This is one of the main reasons why you shouldn’t cut corners on the quality of your project! Problems with the product itself can waste all the other expenses.

This is our 50th post since we started sharing our thoughts with you! And it feels like it was yesterday when we wrote the first one. I hope that our posts were helpful and insightful to you. Sure, we don't get thousands of likes and reposts, but we have our niche audience of loyal clients. We can say that these posts are intended for the inner circle. We recently celebrated our company anniversary on November 8th and to mark the occasion we bought air hockey tables for all three offices. You have no idea how fun it was, we are always happy to give gifts to the team and our long term clients. But receiving gifts is as fun as giving. Thanks to all the guys! P.s. But the play time is only after work 😉.

Last week, on November 8th we celebrated the anniversary of our company (we work since 2005). I would like to say a few words about our guys. Each company consists of people, but we employ only the best. If you talk to each one of them personally, you’ll notice right away they are unique strong personalities. The guys manage to work, develop, learn new technologies and English at the same time while having the time left for their families and children. I would like to separately thank each and every one of our guys for learning to be proactive and to do their job in the office with a high quality. For trying to always stay in touch even after hours, answering questions from our clients and working with them sometimes as reverently as with their own children. We wish you to live and prosper too.

November 8 is the abz agency's birthday. Long ago in 2005 the first office of the company was opened. First keystrokes, first lines of code, first PSD mockups… time flies fast and now it’s 2020. During these years, our company survived the 2008 and 2012 crises, 2014 which was the most difficult year of the war for Ukraine. And we prosper to this day At the moment, we have 2 offices in Kyiv which house 35+ guys. Nowadays we focus solely on working with foreign clients from Israel, USA, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland and many other countries. Over the past 4 years, the company has firmly established itself in the market of design (PRD), development and maintenance of custom web applications, websites and browser extensions. Currently the main focus of the company is the development of complex web based management systems. We employ the technical stack including PHP Laravel, node.js, react.js, vue.js, Angular.js and cloud hostings based on AWS, DigitalOcean, Heroku. We grow and develop, while preserving the authenticity and qualities of a small company, which our clients value as much in us. Detailed approach in the form of a PRD, delivery of each project on time, clear and honest estimate with accuracy of +/- 20% and a piece of soul in every project.

In one of the offices of our company, a team member warned us that his test for COVID-19 was positive. We immediately sent all of the guys home and made sure to deliver all the necessary equipment to their homes so they can continue their work. The next day, the company paid for the full test package for all of our guys and waited for the test results. Based on the results we split everyone into three groups: healthy, carriers and sick. The good news is that almost everyone turned out to be either healthy or carriers. All offices are being completely disinfected twice a day (15 minutes during the day and 30 minutes at night). After a few days, everyone who was categorised as healthy returned to the office. The rest remained in self-isolation to work at home. We will wait for 2 weeks and then repeat the full test again at the full expense of the company. We wish you all to be healthy! The rest will come later.

We heard many times from our clients that they were duped by their previous team and left with an unfinished project or the project that is just so bad that it’s nothing like they imagined. Does this sound familiar to you? This is exactly why our company has chosen a more honest but difficult approach to always aim for the best results. We always develop the project strictly in accordance with a PRD (detailed technical description of the project) and HF WF (high fidelity wireframes) without any compromises on quality and deadlines. I'll tell you it's tough, the team is always working to the limit of their capabilities. There are always crackling sparks of labor energy in the office. And you know what? Many of our clients have been working with us for 3-5 and even 7 years. And our guys have been working with us for 2-6 and up to 11 years. Our guys love doing challenging projects to improve even further and our clients love receiving good quality solutions right on time. Is everything always so smooth and perfect? No, not always. We make mistakes too, but we always do our best to admit them and make everything right. There are cases when clients can be dishonest and try to scam us, in these cases we let them go. This is how we work, we invite you to try it out too. You'll like it!

It is very common for people outside the industry to complicate things that can be done within 15 minutes while underestimating complexity of some features thinking that something which takes 2-3 weeks will take only 15 minutes. I think that this is common in any industry, but only in IT the client is eagerly ready to object to high estimations when he thinks that everything can be done quickly. For example, a client will never object that replacing pistons in a car engine is a labor-intensive process which takes 3-5 days instead of 15 minutes. Or when it is necessary, for example, to make a storm drain or a ground loop with lightning protection, an ordinary person often does not even think about these architectural details, but at the same time, they will agree that this task also needs 1-2 weeks of work. If you are negotiating with a company or developer, do not hesitate to ask open ended questions to get detailed answers. It is worth delving deeper into the issue to understand how much time and effort is actually required to implement certain functionality or features.

Those who work well always know how to kick back and relax. When playing paintball the team split between two camps: black and white. But in the end there were no losers in the game, friendship won the quest! We try to work as hard as possible on weekdays, so we can have a great time on weekends without any worries. To achieve this, we utilise various planning approaches and productivity techniques. For example, when developing a project from scratch, Scrum methodology is more appropriate, however for the maintenance stage of project lifecycle or continuing development of an already launched project, Kanban methodology suits more. Regardless of the methodology that we have chosen, careful preparation is the key to success. This is exactly why our project managers strictly adhere to our detailed company regulations. They always pay special attention to maintaining project documentation and keeping it up to date. This approach is the key to our success in any project.

Imagine that your project has a good detailed PRD (Product Requirements Document) - in a nutshell, this is a combination of a complete technical description of the project and High-fidelity wireframes. Now you have started development and suddenly you need to add a new project participant (assistant, project manager, product owner etc.) to the project from your side (as a client) or you want to speed the project up by adding another team. You have been working for over a year with the current development team, so you understand each other. But the new team members are not on the same page. Why does this happen? Even in simple projects, often with a long history of communication, a single conceptual apparatus is developed, so to speak. In simple words, all participants are well aware of the specifics of the project. This is not about technical or industry slang, which are also important, it’s about a set of concepts specifically related to the project itself. To avoid problems like this we recommend dedicating a specific section of PRD for the new participant onboarding process. In this section, you can describe all the terms, features, best practices and everything that can help to get a new participant up to speed.

Who works hard, plays hard - we always keep this principle. One of our internal teams recently had an interesting party. The guys took turns at the wheel of the БРДМ2 (Combat Reconnaissance Patrol Vehicle). Guys had a great time outdoors as they sailed along the banks of the Dnieper river. What's next, riding a tank or construction vehicle? Time will show. But this will already be in the next summer season. In the coming winter, we will choose something in a more cosy setting. Work with us. We work fast and clean, so we have plenty of time to rest!

It is vital to keep your projects up to date. Many of our clients turn to us with their existing projects so that we can study them and make revisions or adjustments. But most of them turn out to be in pretty dire state technology vise, some of the common problems include: - Lack of up-to-date technical documentation;
- No database migrations, seeders and data generation;
- Project is built utilising jQuery, which is an outdated technology;
- PHP and Laravel version thai is used in the project was deprecated several years ago;
- Large technical debt. Working with an old project like one that we described above will turn out to be much more expensive than expected. In some cases it is even cheaper to make the whole project or some modules from scratch using modern technologies. Another huge problem is that it is virtually impossible to meet modern industry requirements and standards of performance in the project using old technologies. We recommend all our clients to ask their development team to conduct a code review every six months on current projects, the main goal is to check the relevance of technical documentation and update the versions of main technologies used in the project to the latest versions.

Time to make the chimi-f***ing-changas! We congratulate all IT professionals with our professional holiday on the 256th day of the year and wish you healthy eyes, strong immunity, interesting projects and great clients. Live long and prosper! In all seriousness, happy Day of the Programmer to everyone related!

We would like to share with you the pain of the clients who come to us and brag at the same time. Over the past six months, perhaps due to the crisis, many clients have asked us to remake their new project from scratch. Clients were unhappy with the quality of the work performed by previous team, namely: 1. The performance of the website is poor, it loads in more than 7-10 seconds, while should take 1-3 seconds.
2. Google Pagespeed and WebPageTest grades are poor.
3. Lots of UX mistakes.
4. The project has bugs in the main business logic.
5. Email notifications for important actions come too late, only after 5-10 minutes.
6. Old and outdated technologies were used in the project.
7. Technical documentation for the project is missing.
8. There are no mockups whatsoever.
9. All rights and access to the source code, domain name and server are left with the developer. When developing a PRD (Product Requirements Document) , we immediately take into account the above requirements and industry standards. Our recommendation is to be wary of any developer company that is not aware of the latest industry standards, does not warn you about the need to start with PRD and develop technical documentation for the project in conjunction with HF WF (High Fidelity Wireframes) and mockups.

This week we are wrapping up our article cycle and summing up all the information that we gave. This is a high level overview of everything we discussed so far which can help to get a full picture of the whole development cycle. You can read the final article. Our main goal was to make the process clear and transparent for you without understating the underlying complexity. We hope that we were able to achieve it and now it will be a lot easier for you to make informed decisions. If you haven't read the articles yet or want a refresher on topics that we discussed previously we invite you to take a look at finalised article list and read all the previous articles.

This week we invite you to glance into the future. In our article we will discuss what awaits you and your future project at the finish line and beyond. This part is the culmination of our common efforts and it is very important to get it right. We dive deep in all that we do once we get the project up and running so you can get the full picture before committing to the whole process. Also we explore important topics of updates and adding new features. Nowadays users expect every website or web app to get a steady stream of updates, otherwise they may consider it abandoned. This means that we need to have plans for the future at the very moment we launch the project You can read more about post production phase in project lifecycle in our latest article.

This week in our article we dive even deeper into the topic of development and get more technical, but do not be afraid - we laid all the information in a way that can be understood by anyone. This is the same approach that we use in our documentation and when working with clients: we make hard things more simple for you by breaking them down into pieces and explaining each piece. We cover the topics of development server deployment and steps that each task goes through before being delivered to you. This will help you understand what steps we take to ensure that our deliverables are of the utmost quality. You can read more about our Development process in our latest article.

Time flies. Technologies come and go faster than new startups show up. Projects start and finish. But our strong relationships with our clients stay constant throughout many years, due to our stable and consistent approach which stands the test of time. We want to give a special thanks to our clients who keep their business relationships with us for 3, 5 and even 7 and more. Our clients grow and we grow alongside them, we mature as a company and become even more accountable than before. We accumulate more expertise which we are more than happy to share with our clients. Join the ranks of our clients, we have always been on-line since 2005 and plan to keep this track record, but only during our hours 🙂.

This week we can have a glance behind a curtain to see how a well established company works like a clock to deliver you steady and consistent results. There’s a tried and true recipe - well established processes and workflow. You will have an opportunity to understand our workflow a little bit better and imagine how we will approach your project. We “divide and conquer” the project by breaking it into smaller parts, which we break into even smaller functional blocks. This allows us to not only to move to the final goal one step at a time, but also deliver you tangible results regularly. You can dive in deeper into our Workflow in our latest article.

People say that the best way to get good guys is nurture them yourself 🙂. Over the years, our company has introduced a mandatory two-month internship for new team members. It doesn't matter what experience or skills our future team members have when they join us, you still need to complete the internship. During the internship, each new team member first of all studies the company rules and regulations. We have well thought out and detailed regulations on writing reports, self testing and working with the QA team, working in a team, technical regulations, standards, best practices, development methodologies and other regulations. An internship involves working on a certain number of specially developed tasks. The purpose of the tasks is to allow the trainee to study the necessary theoretical frameworks and immediately apply this knowledge in practice. The internship takes place under conditions close to the actual work environment. The internship project involves a full team: PM (project manager), QA, a code review from technical lead and a designer (if necessary). We take everything into our own hands by teaching, developing and raising our own specialists.

This week in our article we will discuss how we approach design in a way that helps us achieve good looking UI and cohesive branding throughout your web project. Design and brand identity are among most important factors in getting a good first impression and helping your long term clients feel comfortable and welcomed. Both help achieve trust, so clients would have no doubts and worries that your website or application is legitimate and truly representative of your company. We invite you to read more about our views on design and brand identity in our latest article.

Today we want to talk yet again about the importance of the Discovery phase and why needed PRD (Product Requirements Document). Imagine that you are building a house and the first thing you start with is a roof, then you move on to walls while thinking that you should lay the foundation later. Suddenly you also remember about pipelines and communications and sporadically start digging trenches for them. It sounds rather absurd, doesn't it? Obviously, building and house starts from the architect and master plan. The architect will visualise how the house should look from the outside and inside. Master plan will describe all the standards, building materials, specifications and infrastructure. And only after approval of all can you get a final estimate and begin. The same goes for web development. We need high fidelity wireframes to show you how the frontend part of your website will look like and how the admin panel will work. Technical description of the project is necessary to describe every user interaction and how it works server side. It should also describe all background processes, server infrastructure, specifications and best practices. All the notifications and admin panel should be taken into account too. This list can go on for very long. And all this details are the PRD. And same as in the analogy, when you have a PRD you can get an accurate quote from any developer. You can read more on our website: Discovery Phase.

This week in our weekly article we explore a very popular topic among all of our clients: estimates. It is very hard to argue that estimation is the turning point for the early stage of any project that determines if you have sufficient resources to achieve your goals or not. We discuss our approach of giving a detailed work-plan estimate and how it can help you to be flexible and decide what matters the most and what can wait among the features of your future product to fit your tight budget and deliver an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that will be your first step to success.

Like we mentioned last week we set out on a way to post an article every week that helps our clients understand how we approach the process of design, development, deployment and support of web application. This week’s topic is an invaluable tool that we have in store for clients with limited information on their projects: the Discovery phase! Whether you just have an idea, you want to make a copy of an existing application or you want to grow your own SaaS startup — you need a solid plan. Building a custom web application is not unlike building a house, before buying any building materials you start from a blueprint to know exactly how much you need of each to complete the construction and whether you are able to finish it at all with your current resources.

We are proud to announce that we are launching a new section on our website specifically dedicated to helping our clients understand what is necessary to start the website development. To kick things off we will publish a cycle of connected articles which will help our clients to understand our thought process a little better when it comes to the process of design, development, deployment and support of web application. Expect to see our first article next week! It discusses three most common cases of clients who come to us looking for web development services. When reading an article you can identify yourself with one of the discussed cases (clients who come with just an idea, clients who want to make a copy of existing solutions, startup clients) and find an initial direction to move in. Later articles will help you with understanding your next steps along the way better. We hope we will help to clarify this complex subject for some of you!

Lately we decided to make a small internal refurbishment in one of our offices. When we discussed how we should decorate walls we decided to pay a tribute to the great artist, designer and futurist of our time Syd Mead. His vision inspires our team and we can discuss his works for hours, he really is "the artist who illustrates the future". You can marvel at his work for hours and hours thinking about infinite possibilities that the future holds. Now guys can stroll around the office and enjoy his work. The depth of thought, the palette, which the author limits to the minimum of colors, intentionally creates restrictions that spur the creative thought. We ensure that our team is surrounded and inspired by the works of the best, so they see the possibilities of endless improvement and strive every day to be better than yesterday!

Despite the summer heat our BDM managed to make the best out of relaxed quarantine measures and gathered a small group of guys from one of our departments to have some active fun outside. This time it was a off-road quad bike rally, everyone had a lot of fun. We’ll make this a recurring event for sure! We manage to build strong connections of friendship and teamwork in the office when working on the projects for our amazing clients, so when we go out together it’s just for the sake of entertainment and active lifestyle. We keep to the saying “Work hard, play hard”. Our guys work on the projects for 40 to 45 hours a week, and even up to 56 hours in case of ASAP situations. Everyone’s satisfied because hard work is always rewarded, all extra hours are paid and we have a quarterly bonus system based on KPI in place to motivate the best among us. We are always happy to tackle new interesting and challenging projects and eagerly wait to see us among our clients.

It’s sometimes easy to lose track of importance for soft skills while being heavily mentally invested in the IT industry, that’s why we have our best friends to remind us - our books. We used to have a digital-only book library in our company, but lately we decided to expand to printed copies because they just feel much better. In the near future we plan to buy more than 60 bestsellers. When you dedicate just 15-30 minutes to reading every day you can read around 1-2 books a month - this will be a huge investment into your own development in the long term! That’s why we invest heavily in developing not only hard skills in our team but soft skills too. It always pays back.

All around the world countries begin to slowly relax quarantine limitations. Summer has come and everyone just wants to rush outside. Some of our guys are already planning their vacations. But even in this case we never forget that work comes first. We hope that your business is as good as ever! We are always open for cooperation, just share your ideas with us and we’ll help you develop it into a PRD (Product Requirements Document) In our Discovery Phase. PRD (Product Requirements Document) is the great point to start your project, it should contain all necessary technical documentation and high fidelity wireframes (simplified black and white representations of UI). 1. Technical documentation should contain: project brief, description of business logic, project structure which describes each page and each user interaction in detail, user type and role descriptions, notifications admin panel, background processes, server infrastructure and tech stack. 2. High fidelity wireframes both for desktop and mobile (if necessary) should describe each screen of user interaction in detail. From description it may seem overwhelming, but we will be happy to guide you through the process from start to finish and answer all the questions that you may have along the way! You can read more at Discovery Phase.

In the near future Google is planning to update their search engine in a way that leans even more towards user experience (Source). This means that loading speed will be even more essential than before. Website quality and search rating will be based on a new tool: Core Web Vitals which is going to be added to Google Lighthouse. You can already check if your website fits new standards using Web Vitals Extension. Even now you can feel that changes are starting to be implemented with the update 6.0.0 to Google Pagespeed Insights. we advise you to recheck your website to see if your grades suffered. If you encountered any problems or your website speed evaluation deteriorated, our team at abz.agency will be happy to consult you on how to get them back up.

Have you ever thought about doing regression testing on your live website? Regression testing is running your website through all QA checklists and test cases, in a nutshell it is a full testing of your website. Generally, the more often regression testing occurs, the more issues can be discovered and resolved. If you continuously add new features to your live website, we advise you to do regression testing at least once a month. If your project is live, but you are not adding any significant changes or new features you can consider regression testing as a visit to the dentist for yourself or regular maintenance for your car. A good preventive measure to perform once every 6 months, so any unnoticed problem won’t go out of hand. There are some problems that can crop up even without making any changes: search engines can change their evaluation standards (Example) and lower your rank, new browser updates and new standards can cause problems etc. In some cases, update or discontinuation of support of some libraries and REST API can outright break some website modules. If you need any help or have any questions you are welcome to contact us at abz.agency!

Nothing connects people more than a common goal! That’s why our team believes that the most effective team building exercise is simply working every day as a team on challenging tasks that arise every day in front of us. That’s why when we decide to spend some time together we don’t call it team building, we just simply have fun. We look back fondly on one of such gatherings that we had before quarantine when we visited Laser Tag arena and had a very tactical shootout between two project managers.

A website must load within 1-3 seconds. Did you know? Let us tell you why it’s important for your business. First, it’s about UX and performance. If visitors have to wait for a website to load any longer, especially, on a mobile device, they tend to leave it immediately (according to research by Google). If the website takes more than 5-7 seconds to load, 60% of visitors quit – even before the scripts of a counter load, so you don’t even see these people in the statistics. 90% of users will probably abandon your website if it takes more than 10 seconds to load. Second, performance and page speed are important factors of SERP ranking. They influence the position of your website in search results. Slow websites go at the end. If you want to drive organic traffic to your website, it should load within 1-3 seconds. Third, your website should load fast not only on the devices of users located physically close to the server where your website is situated (in the same city or state). To achieve this, optimization, CDN, and several levels of cashing are necessary. Otherwise, users from other regions would have to wait for your website to load very long. If you have any questions, we’re glad to assist! Don’t hesitate to contact.

An outsourcing company abz.agency has been targeted to providing top quality services in web development since its foundation. Thirty guys put their efforts in order to achieve this goal working in two offices in Ukrainian cities. The company has proven to be a reliable partner working as a subcontractor in B2B segment. It develops complex and customized web applications, web sites and browser extensions while providing a full cycle of works from developing technical documentation to support. The main stack of development includes PHP Laravel, Node.js, React, Vue, and Angular frameworks and platform. What regards user interface / user experience, it applies wireframing and mockuping. The company keeps improving together with its guys by embracing new versions of the current technical stack, learning new technologies, applying best practices and using technical specifications. All of this ensures a high quality product delivered to the client.

What are High-fidelity Wireframes? Why do you need them? Why start with wireframes and not with mockups? We would like to tell you more about it. High-fidelity wireframes are black and white layouts that outline features, size, and placement of page elements, navigation, users’ interactions with the website. With high-fidelity wireframes, you understand how your future project will look and feel and what structure it’ll have. At the same time, development and making changes to wireframes takes considerably less time than building and changing mockups. High-fidelity wireframes of one screen are created, on average, within 1 hours. The mockups of the same level of complexity will take about 4-8 hours. So, wireframes allow you to try several concepts without spending much time. This reduces project costs. In addition, when high-fidelity wireframes are approved, designers can quickly prepare mockups. This approach on average allows you to save 30-50% of the budget for the design part. We recommend creating high-fidelity wireframes as a first step in creating the product requirements document (PRD). Mockups can be made later on.

Many companies recently intensified their digital transformation efforts. Businesses that have been mostly offline are going online. Those who had established some online presence need more functionality, automation, etc. Often, the owners and management, in a haste, try to solve their problems using the solution from templates. Or order web development services from the providers who promise to complete a project very fast. But this is Sisyphean labor. Such projects often take progressively more time and money, are harder to maintain and give rise to new problems. The companies just waste their budgets and, what even worse, get a bad web development experience. It’s especially discouraging for small businesses who pin great hopes on their new website and then find that they have a poor UX, load too slowly, have low conversion and high bounce rate. And the websites made in a rush usually are indeed below the standards. We recommend making well-reasoned decisions. It’s much more effective to invest in the creation of a Product Requirements Document (PRD), go through a Discovery phase, and get an accurate plan-estimate. Then, have a project developed accordingly to all the company needs, timely, and get the best results. Surely, the conditions are such that businesses have to evolve as soon as possible. But you have to approach wisely to digital transformation. If you start it wrong, with a faulted basement, you risk getting everything falling apart at the first strain.

Quarantine is going on, and we keep working. We already have a busy schedule for the next 2-4 weeks. Our clients and we are planning the workload till the end of spring and for summer. Unfortunately, some of our client companies are directly affected by quarantine limitations, so they had to put the projects on hold. But we’ve made an agreement to continue development in August or September. We take the best vitamins – our work. When you’re busy and you know other people need your expertise, it keeps up! We look at this photo from abz.agency archive and motivate ourselves to be strong these days. And what keeps you motivated?

We highly value teamwork, and the majority of our team members don’t want to stay home. The daily routines and set-up processes help abz.agency to provide our clients with high-quality web development services. To protect our guys, we added new procedures. We regularly disinfect common areas at our office and provided everyone with hand sanitizer. Also, we added to our daily plan mandatory exercise to enhance our guys’ fitness and boost their immunity. We take steps to reduce stress, harmful to the immune system: we stay connected and communicate our plans to all guys, including a contingency plan. Everyone is educated about the infection and instructed to stay home if they feel sick. And what does your company do to protect guys? Share with us how your business is coping with the situation!

What are your plans for April? We are going to work, work and work again. Our guys’ families’ stability depends on abz.agency. It makes us work even harder to plan the projects in advance and complete them in time, with usual impeccable quality. When you’re responsible for your family’s well-being and stability, you get a powerful impulse. And abz.agency guys are a family too. When someone has work to do and feels in charge, they are charged and full of energy. Their glands also work at maximum allowing them to stay well, healthy and feel strong and confident. They have great immunity. We wish everyone to stay well and work with joy!

We continue doing our job, with the full workload. Some team members can’t get to the office fast because of closed subway and some just feel more comfortable and safe at home. We provided them with a routine working environment. We moved all the necessary equipment to their places: a 4K screen, MacBook Pro and the accessories, the favorite abz.agency-branded mug. The static IP is provided, the time tracker is running to ensure stable work. Together with the team members who are at the office, the guys keep working productive and providing the required quality within the deadlines.

We care about our guys and do everything necessary to protect their health. Here’s abz.agency experience in reducing the number of sick people in our office by 4 compared to the previous year. - We equipped each cubicle with antibacterial lamps which automatically switch on for 30 minutes at 10.30 pm.
- We created a schedule and started to ventilate air regularly (three times a day).
- We added immune-boosting herbal teas to our tea selection.
- There are all commonly used hygiene products in the office kitchen and bathroom. Now, when the Coronavirus disease is rampant, we added some personal hygiene measures and placed reminders around the office. And the team is fine. We wish good health to everybody!

At abz.agency QA, BDM, CFO, HR are talented and beautiful women who contribute a lot to our success. They are focused on the efficiency of our teamwork and professional growth but still find time to look fantastic! And even here, ladies are so fond of our company that they used abz.agency logo in their manicure for International Women’s Day! We wish them to feel special and unique on the top of the world.

You all know, how good it feels to give presents! We have a tradition of pleasantly surprising our loyal clients. And sometimes, they surprise us back. This time we sent a company a 3D pen as a souvenir, and they used it to reproduce our logo in plastic. We couldn’t believe they have spent their time creating this reply! The guys explained that they were inspired because our team was such a pleasure to work with. Our clients choose to work with us for 1..3..5 and more years. Join us - we care about or partners. Our efficiency will surprise you even more than our gifts.

There’s nothing more bonding than moving together to the same goal. Great bonds of friendship are forged inside our team especially in times of urgency when everyone needs to work together to meet demand of our clients. Our team gifted an acrylight with company logo inside to abz.agency which shows our appreciation for the place that brought us all together. It now shines in one of our offices.

We’ve discovered a secret to success in any business. It sounds like “Surround yourself with a supportive and dedicated team which shares your ideas and cares about your company as much as you do”. Today our BDM has amazed us with her new manicure with a company logo. It’s not a part of a dress code or something... just a true symbol of loyalty. Maybe it’s going to become a new fashion trend in our office, who knows?

Even when working under a constant 90-110% workload to deliver quality projects on time our team finds time to have fun on the paintball field and build strong connections. Kudos to BDM for organising this event, and for their tasty pizza too 🙂

Only people spending whole days sitting in front of the computer can understand the real value of a comfortable chair. Working in uncomfortable conditions can be a real pain in the neck in every sense of the word. It made us think of upgrading our office chairs in both offices to make everyone feel at ease working eight straight hours or sometimes more. The new stylish chairs are suitable for the body shape, completely adjustable providing stability and support to the back. Now the guys will be even more passionate about their work.

We are paranoid freaks of team games, as they make our cooperation even more efficient. We know our strengths and take advantage of them both during time off and work. Last Friday we attended a lasertag club to recharge the batteries at the end of the work week. Designed as a fortress, it is a sort of zone of obstacles where we had to survive relying on our team work. We constantly sharpen our skills to make sure our clients will be equipped with the latest technologies in web development to beat their competitors in all areas of business.

The more we give the more we get in the end, don’t we? Our team’s been presented a full box of small presents, such as new cups and T-shirts with company’s logo. This courtesy is to show our appreciation to the team’s hard work and loyalty. In recent years we’ve developed a ton of amazing projects. Among them is our own development enhancing cooperation with our clients. The Maquetter is aimed to visualize client’s ideas in ready mockups, all in correct order, having unique number each, easy to keep track of all changes etc. We are devoted to making our interaction with clients smooth and efficient.

Our guys in the office were so impressed with the new 3D logo that decided to take a photo with it. And they were carried away with the process so much that were about to break it apart. Luckily, it’s safe and sound. That’s not only logo that we care about of course. Our biggest concern is making the best use of our skills and knowledge to make our clients’ businesses grow and develop. Have you already taken advantage of the latest digital marketing techniques? We know how to make it improve your users' experience and sufficiently increase your customer retention rate.

Now you can take a look at our logo at its finest, it has been put in a 3D model of considerable dimensions; three meters wide and the same height and length. Our Lead Designer was unbelievably happy to see his own creation turned into reality. This is how we bring to life astonishingly audacious solutions of our clients helping them to make an impact. We have been developing robust customized web applications, web sites and browser extensions for years to get expertise that our clients can benefit from.