TheDevTeam

We are bespoke software developers with over 22 years experience of making things work, we have a wide range of Web Development tools that we can rapidly bring to bear on any problem and are confident of delivering on our promises In many cases we have worked with our clients for over 10 years covering East Sussex and surrounding areas
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    Web

    Web Development

    Web Development from The Dev Team The websites and web applications that we build are more akin to bespoke software applications than traditional websites. They incorporate complex business logic and processes from stock control and fulfilment to CRM functionality and data manipulation tools.

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    Software

    Software Development

    Software Development from The Dev Team Whether it's websites, web applications, PC based software, services or server based software we've got tonnes of development experience going back more than 20 years.

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    PM

    Project Management

    Project Management from The Dev Team Project Management is all about having good tools to collaborate and a team able to deliver

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    Mapping

    Dynamic Mapping

    Dynamic Mapping from The Dev Team It's quick, easy and inexpensive (if you know how). One of the biggest advances over the last few years has been the ability for anybody to gather longitude and latitude information and then plot it onto maps. If you're not already doing it then contact us to find out how you can.

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    SEO

    Search Engine Optimization

    Search Engine Optimization from The Dev Team For most websites, being accessible to Google is probably the most important requirement. The only way that this can be done is to make it carefully thought out and integrated part of your website. If anybody phones up offering to get you to the top of the search engine rankings for a few hundred pounds, don't believe them.

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    Data Visualisation

    Big Data & Data Visualisation

    Big Data & Data Visualisation from The Dev Team The amount of data that we, as humankind, are collecting is increasing exponentially. If you know what to do with the data, as we do, it can also be turned into a vital competitive advantage and business critical information that makes a real difference....

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    E-Commerce

    E-Commerce

    E-Commerce from The Dev Team Shopping carts, online shops and taking payments online is one of the more standard implementations in a website but the choice available to you is huge. We can help you implement your online shop whether it's a 3rd party plugin or built from scratch. We've done it all!

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    Collaboration

    Collaboration Tools

    Collaboration Tools from The Dev Team The ability to work on the same documents, build specifications together, build projects together, share ideas and collaborate are essential for modern business. Effective collaboration is at the core of every project that we work on and we use a variety to tools and skill-sets to facilitate this.

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    Construction

    Construction

    Construction from The Dev Team Denaploy has been deeply involved in may aspects of the construction industry since its inception and has worked with Main Contractors, Sub-contractors, Architects, Surveyors and CDMCs. We understand the pressures of the industry and its sometime arcane vocabulary.

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    Property

    Property

    Property from The Dev Team There are over 22 million homes in the UK and we move once every six years on average throughout our lifetime. That's a lot of data and we deal with a good proportion of it.

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    NFP

    Not for Profit & Charities

    Not for Profit & Charities from The Dev Team We do a number of different projects for Charities and Not for Profit organisations. Most of the problems needing to be solved are still the same and it suits our skillset to have a more hands-on approach to the project management.

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    Publishing

    Publishing

    Publishing from The Dev Team We have been working with magazine distributors since the earliest days of the Internet to sell British magazines both locally in the UK and around the world. If you're after a fully integrated stock control and automatic ordering system or something as simple as data feed integration then look no further.

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    Blue Chip

    Blue Chip

    Blue Chip from The Dev Team We've worked with many blue chip companies over the last 20 years and continue to receive work on a regular basis underlying the fact that we are competitively priced and possess a skills that are hard to come by even for companies with thousands of employees.

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    International

    International

    International from The Dev Team The World is getting smaller by the day and the ability to work at a desk thousands of miles away is something we've been doing for years. Why let the logistics of getting from A to B get in the way of getting the software solutions you need when everything from meetings to deployment can be done remotely?

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    Mininingware

    Eclipse Mininingware

    Eclipse Mininingware from The Dev Team Our Eclipse Miningware Solution is a cost effective solution for any startup mining company.

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    Small Business

    Small Businesses

    Small Businesses from The Dev Team Even if you've got a small business then you can afford a big IT department because you'll be hiring our skills and services for a fraction of the time and therefore cost compared to hiring permanent staff.

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    Joint Ventures

    Joint Ventures

    Joint Ventures from The Dev Team One of the downfalls of working in IT is that everybody and his dog has an idea of how they're going to make a fortune with the Internet. They usually have no money to invest but they do know somebody in the industry who might listen. Sometimes they do listen....

The continuing evolution of the internet creates many business opportunities needing specialist IT skills.

That's where we fit in. We are a highly skilled collective who are more than a match for most blue chip companies internal IT departments.

We're here to make IT and the Internet work for you.

Written on 22 October 2021

Unique Magazines

TheDevTeam has been working alongside Unique Magazines for several years as part of their core development team, to build and strengthen their online magazine distribution business.

Unique Magazines is a distributer of UK magazines to a worldwide market. It currently stocks thousands of magazines, available for same day dispatch. They offer both magazine subscriptions and single copies of specific issues, enabling the end customer to flexibly choose which issues they are interested in receiving.

As any company who maintains their own bespoke software will know, technology continues to progress at an astonishing pace, and constant development is required to keep on top with technology changes, security, minor bug fixing and future feature development. It is important to not become complaisant, otherwise you could find that your bespoke software becomes dated, new bugs creep in and user work arounds start to become the norm where a simple development would have eased the burden before problems set in.

When this starts to happen, the development of basic features can start to balloon in cost if not managed correctly, as unintended features can clash with the dated backend software and things can start to feel out of control or ‘broken’.

To stay on top as one of the leading subscription and single copy services within the UK, Unique magazines realised the importance of continual development to grow their business. They decided that TheDevTeam, with experienced software developers in the magazine industry and a track record of growing a variety of different online businesses, would be a great match to get their software back on track to meet their desired growth targets. TheDevTeam uses Agile development processes in order to offer flexible development and change of directions with minimal impacts.

Before we got stuck into developing all the excellent new features which subscribers to magazines would love to see, we knew that to capitalise on any growth going forward, any problems with the user experience had to be addressed first; after all, you would not want to lose sales through bugs or clunky navigation – especially when launching any new developments, anything putting customers off need to be addressed first to ensure returns on investment are maximized.

Today after several years of collaboration the results speak for themselves with increased sales and reduced costs. Consistent attention to incremental improvements aligned with a few major project upgrades, and the benefits have been impressive. Everything from improvement in Google ranking and email communication with customers, through to integration with the Royal Mail API shipping V3 Pro Shipping system to streamline the fulfilment process.

Features which TheDevTeam have designed and implemented

TheDevTeam have implemented the following software features to improve magazine distribution and features for subscribers:

  • Improved checkout and renewal process to minimise checkout abandonment.
  • Flexible subscription models, allowing subscribers more options for their budget.
  • Creation of a customer credit system, enabling customers to cancel and purchase another magazine or subscription with ease.
  • Various SEO work, including improving the site to pass Core Web Vitals, and important SEO metric with Google.
  • Implement Royal Mail Pro Shipping API into the existing Unique Magazines distribution system, to improve fulfilment efficiencies such as grouping magazines together for the same person with multiple subscriptions, and overseas customers to automatically print the customs form alongside the address labels.
  • Implement IOSS, a system which charges and collects VAT for customers in Europe up front, rather than leaving customs to apply these charges upon receipt of the packages with handling fees on top. For a magazine subscription service, having fees for every issue sent to your door would simply be crazy!
  • Implementation of our own in-house Eclipse Email system, enabling highly targeted emails to be sent to customers based upon their intreset. This reduces unsubscribes, the total number of emails sent out, as well as increasing conversions - all by emailing smaller subsets of customers interested in the content you are writing.
  • Automation of various in-house repetitive tasks, freeing up people who can then become more productive in other areas such as customer service, marketing and distribution. This increased productivity not only improves customer service, it also increases profit margins and sales growth.

Doing so has enabled them to handle a substantial increase in sales without the extra load on staff for the fulfilment of each order. And next? Now we are working on a whole set of top-secret innovative features that will be rolled out during 2022.

If you would like any of the above implemented for your business, just send us a message and we will be happy to have a chat.

Written by David Radley, Project Manager and Lead Developer for Unique Magazines

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Address:
TheDevTeam
8 The Lawn,
St Leonards-On-Sea,
East Sussex, TN38 0HH

Email:
enquiries@thedevteam.co.uk

Phone:
+44(0)1424 442400