Creativity and the democratisation of web development

An industry made up of skeleton workforces, disenfranchised talent and clients with far more options and far less appetite for spending big with big brands.

With every passing week under pandemic lockdowns, big agencies are finding the going tough. Every client demands more specific support online, and the platforms to deliver it are providing more technical debt and fatigue than digital empowerment.

Many of Adlands brightest front-end design talent have experienced first hand either the dull pain of furlough or the firing squad.

So with the industry dynamic shifting from big brand business to simple survival, what opportunities does this present to the agencies that are left standing and the talent they once relied on?

Post-Covid 19 looks like this.

A village.

A village where humans appreciate each other like few other times in history. From a societal standpoint the impacts of the disease are brutal and indiscriminate - now more so than any time in the past 50 years attitudes are shifting back to village life, we want to look after the wellness of our immediate communities, people and businesses both online and off.

If you’re an agency you’ll want to pivot to support your digital clients online with efficient tech that won’t dig you into a hole of technical debt or require additional operational overhead.

If you’re a front end designer or developer you want to pick up high value work and build a client list that will see you prosper as a digital brand.

When we started building Blutui in 2018 there were no thoughts of pandemics, lockdowns or remote working arrangements. The idea that agencies and front end devs needed the tools to win at web development was our guiding principle. We built out our platform to challenge the idea that the supposedly straightforward heavily templated plug-in reliant development was a sustainable model for commercial site production. 

We knew that as businesses mature they would push at the constraints of drag ‘n drop DIY web builders as their early stage requirements move from poster sites to more comprehensive data driven online businesses with unique logic powering their user experience. Sure everyone wants web design to be quick and easy but when it’s at the expense of effectiveness, performance and being downright vanilla - there’s room for a professional approach.

Blutui is the product of years of digital agency and front end web development experience. It has been built to let front end developers and agencies not only build sites for their clients but build their digital capability and business at the same time.

The freedom to introduce the right talent to a project without having fixed overheads makes agencies agile, the freedom to use whatever tools and build whatever they want both functionally and creatively makes front end web developers more relevant to their clients. The ability to build directly on Blutui without needing backend, database or infrastructure expertise makes for a lower cost of entry for bespoke design and build meaning a win for developers and the website owner alike, cutting time and cost out of traditionally heavyweight builds.

Then there’s the speed of delivering uniquely compelling user experiences that perform with lightning fast load speeds as only Blutui can, shipping only the code required for your specific instance.

The idea that a web development platform built by a digital agency at the very bottom of the planet may seem only mildly interesting until you factor the underlying business logic into the package.

Blutui is more than a site builder and a content management system, a database management and a managed hosting service. When agencies, studios and front end web developers realise the full potential of Blutui as providing a fully brandable web business in a box that manages all back end tasks, infrastructure, hosting and multi-tenant site management the lightbulb moment is worth the exploration.

The Blutui team want to see the creative industry set apart and elevated from the mass produced sameness of generalist and DIY site builders and have committed to supporting creative professionals with a professional platform. It’s the way agencies, studios and freelance talent can build certainty back into their lives in an uncertain market.

All this from a digital studio in Aotearoa New Zealand - home to Crowded House, Steven Adams, the All Blacks, America's Cup and now the creative industries most progressive web development hub.