Customer portals and online services
Customer portal and online service development for products people use regularly. We answer for the technical side and for giving the business clear figures: where a person stops, whether they reach payment, whether they come back tomorrow.
An online service differs from a website in many ways, and the main ones are accounts, pricing and the processes inside. A website or landing page is only the entry point here: a person arrives, looks, thinks it is worth a try. After that the product itself begins, and that is where the impression forms that brings them back or does not.
Online services vary widely. One may do a single simple thing: turn a wav into an mp3, compress images, generate a document. Another may cover a composite process involving several departments and dozens of people, like technical support at a provider. In the second case most of the work sits in the back office, and it is done so that a person in their account simply enjoys how it all works and never notices how many people stand behind it. The neighbouring subject here is business process automation.
About money we are straightforward from the start. We are a technical team and we do not take on obligations for someone else business: a product may fail to take off for reasons that have nothing to do with development. What we do answer for is the technical side and making sure you have clear figures to decide on. Where people stop, which step takes them longest, whether they reach payment and whether they return. That is collected by analytics, and the conclusions about your business are yours to draw.
Pricing is built into the architecture from the beginning, even if you switch it on later. In some cases we go through the options separately and hand over a document: how pricing could work, whether the service should be paid from day one, whether a demo or a trial period is needed, how retention and refunds are arranged. This comes from our experience in business consulting and IT consulting, and the decision on it is yours. We discuss this at the introduction and specification stage.
Growth is architecture too, along several lines at once: roles and permissions, the set of features, load, and also infrastructure and its maintenance. Knowing in advance what will grow and where is cheaper than rewriting a year later.
All of this is built by design, frontend and backend inside one team. You can start with a prototype or an MVP, and if the service is for employees rather than clients, see corporate systems. Our online services run in Silent Notary, SignItNow, the wallet, the staking platform and the exchange.
What the service covers
Any combination of the items below can be taken on its own.
Profile, documents, transaction history, support requests, notifications. Everything a client would otherwise phone you about.
Plans, subscriptions, trial periods, plan limits, renewals and refunds. Plus an invoice a person can understand rather than a line item on a statement.
From a single operation such as converting a file to a composite process involving several departments and dozens of people.
When ready systems fit only halfway, we build your own around your process. Before taking it on, we honestly work out whether that is cheaper than the ready product.
If a ready banking solution is enough for you, we connect it along with subscriptions, invoices and failure handling. If you run fintech or are building it, we build a layer on top of your own payment side.
Registration, access recovery, two-factor verification, roles, permission boundaries, audit logs and sensible handling of personal data.
How we work
Audience, scenarios, roles, points of payment and obstacles. The output is a specification and an estimate.
The key screens as a clickable prototype, including the path to payment. This is the cheapest place to see that the path is too long.
Two-week iterations with a demo, each of which can be opened and walked through as a scenario.
A small group, observation, quick fixes. Driving traffic makes more sense after this rather than before.
Metrics, feedback, new scenarios, on-call duty and support.
Stack and tools
Cases for this service
Frequently asked questions
It depends on the number of roles, scenarios and external systems. A portal with a profile and transaction history and a portal with plans, payments and documents differ several times over. We give an estimate by stage after the discovery.
If the process is a standard one, a ready system is cheaper, and we will say so. Building your own is justified when the ready product fits only halfway, when licences are counted in hundreds and thousands of workplaces, or when the process itself is your advantage.
Build an MVP with one key scenario and show it to real people. That is weeks instead of a year, and the product itself often changes as a result.
In some cases yes: we go through the options for pricing, trial periods and refunds and hand over a document with proposals. The decision is yours, and we either build the chosen model into the architecture or leave room for it later.
Growth is planned for along several lines at once: roles and permissions, the set of features, load, and infrastructure. The last of these is DevOps work, and we discuss it before development starts.
Everything is set by the contract, and we put it in writing at the specification stage, before the work starts. During the project the team works either on our infrastructure or on yours: the choice depends on the complexity of the project and on whether you already have infrastructure in place. Every approved stage is transferred to your servers and your repository, so the work accumulates on your side rather than ours. Once the project is closed, all code, materials and documentation are handed over to you together with the rights to them.
Yes, under a separate agreement: on-call duty, monitoring, development and new scenarios.
Related services
Shall we discuss your task?
Tell us what needs to be done and we will come back with an estimate, the team composition and a plan for the first two weeks.