Fueled by technology

Drupal is a Content Management System which allows for easy administration of your site’s pages. Due to its adaptable architecture it is generally more suited to ambitious web projects where CMS’s like Wordpress have difficulty going.

We're big fans of Drupal and the Open Source community. You'll find us regularly speaking at Drupal meet-ups and lecturing at conventions.

If you're looking for a company that knows Drupal inside and out, you've come to the right place.

ReactJS is a JavaScript library developed specifically for the creation of mobile apps and interactive elements.

We love it for its dynamic nature, eliminating repetitive screen loading and ability to cross compile to both iOS & Android - effectively cutting app development time in half.

If you’ve got a great idea for a progressive web app or want to create deep levels of engagement in your website we can help.

Laravel is an MVC framework with an expressive, elegant syntax. It’s perfect for building digital platforms which transform day to day business operations.

We regularly use Laravel to develop integration layers between accounting software, maps, email campaigns, CRMs or data of almost any kind.

If you’d like to automate processes, streamline sales or gain valuable insights between people and data - talk to us about our API Integrations.

A heavy hitter in the e-commerce game, Shopify offers a world of plugins to support businesses big and small.

Communica can help with site design, strategy and the implementation of any plugins you need. And if you need something custom - we can help you out there too with a full complement of back end developers.

One of the worlds most popular Content Management Systems, Wordpress offers a huge library of templates and plugins for purchase.

If you don't require complex content management, but do require a fresh engaging website at a competitive price, speak to us about Wordpress.

Squarespace is a simple, intuitive website builder which also offers blog and shopping cart facilities. We often find it's the best platform for start up businesses who need a quick fix to promote themselves online.

If you've got a business you'd like to bring to life online, the Communica team can support you with marketing strategies, website design, content writing, photography, and custom code..making your Squarespace build swift, painless and impactful.

PHP is an general-purpose scripting language especially suited to server-side (back end) web development.

JavaScript is more of a client side (front end) scripting language used to create visual elements and animate them.

Although these are gross simplifications, both languages are a backbone of the web industry and as such our developers are like fish in water when it comes to coding in them.

Python is a cross-functional, object-oriented programming language with a very strong following in the data science community. It's data-oriented feature packages speed up and simplify data processing, making it perfect for our machine learning projects. Plus, it's open source making it free to install and use - what's not to love?

If you're after a custom prediction model, Python is a great choice.

GraphQL is an open source query language for APIs which excels at returning complete and understandable data descriptions.

Unlike typical REST APIs, GraphQL APIs return all the data an app needs in a single request. A GraphQL query takes a fraction of the time compared a REST query and can remain quick even on slow mobile network connections.

Due to the control we gain over the data query, our apps using GraphQL are fast, stable and easier to evolve the over time.

Git is an open source Version Control System which allows us to compare files, identify differences, and merge multiple developers work without breaking a sweat.

With Git in place, any new functionality deployed to either the Staging or Live environments (which isn’t to the satisfaction of key stakeholders) can be quickly rolled back, creating an additional layer of safety in the overall development process.

Google offers an array of tools to analyse and fine tune your organic page ranking. Below are a few of our favourites:

Google Ads - Easily target potential new customers through Google's paid advertising solution (formerly Adwords).

Tag Manager - Tweak and evaluate changes to your marketing, content and products through just one console.

Analytics - Gain a deep understanding of your customers and business as seen through the eyes of Google.

Search Console - Dive into the details with tools which help you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site's search results.

PageSpeed Insights - Use Google's simple and effective recommendations to make your site shine in Google Search results.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & WeChat have changed the way we interact online.

For businesses, social media marketing offers an array of opportunities to engage with customers on a more personal level, through common interests and story telling.

Our team of content creators and designers can help you identify these touch points and tap in to the platforms most used by your target market - both in terms of paid advertising and organic content.

The Communica team is fluent with many marketing platforms and will happily work to your preference:

ActiveCampaign is a step up from your run of the mill email marketing platforms - a great CRM with excellent automation tools. We are ActiveCampaign partners, and can help you get the most out of this powerful tool - a cost-effective alternative to Salesforce & similar solutions. 

Hubspot CRM has powerful forever-free tools, that are further enhanced by their Sales and Marketing packages. We've helped businesses integrate their in-bound marketing pipeline into this comprehensive CRM & marketing tool. 

MailChimp's suite of tools make it easy to create and analyse your marketing campaigns. Offering free accounts for contact lists under 2000, Mail Chimp is huge value for money.

Campaign Monitor - Everything you need to run beautifully-designed, professional email marketing campaigns to grow your business. 

Drip - The name says it all - Drip is an expert at creating drip feed campaigns and automating responses based on your customers clicks.
 

AWS offers a broad set of machine learning services and supporting cloud infrastructure to facilitate and accelerate algorithm production. 3 services we use frequently are:

Amazon Rekognition - Identify objects, people, text, and activities in both images and videos, for classification and comparison. Great for user verification, counting, and sorting.

Amazon SageMaker - Build, train, and deploy machine learning models quickly which can predict behaviour, outcomes and identify opportunities.

Amazon Comprehend - Use natural language processing to extract insights and sentiment from unstructured text. There is a treasure trove of potential sitting in customer emails, support tickets, product reviews, social media that can be put to work for your business.

The 3 applications from the Adobe Creative Cloud we use most often are:

Photoshop - Edit, composite, and create beautiful images, graphics, and art on desktop and iPad.

InDesign - Design and publish content driven layouts for print and digital.

Illustrator - Create beautiful vector art and illustrations.

A design software developed specifically for digital products, Sketch allows us to create component driven interfaces which automatically scale, flow and update throughout the design in a click.

In complex designs where imagery can’t express the full user journey, its prototyping features allow us to create interactive shells where the client can gain an emmersive online experience before signing off.

An online commenting tool, BugHerd gives stakeholders a simple point & click method to document feedback on a project.

Each time a sticky note is added, the comment along with an automated screenshot and locative data is added to a kanban style task board.

As the task is fixed we redirect the customer to that page event for acceptance testing.

Google’s G Suite is where our project managers document; user journeys, milestones, create information architecture and scope estimates - but more importantly, its online nature allows us to foster transparent collaboration with key stakeholders.

Central to this are the: Docs, Sheets and Diagrams apps.

Akin to Jira, YouTrack is our project management software that allows us to plan features, assign tasks and accurately track development.

Integrated with Xero accounting, we can extract a project’s approved tasks & associated dev time ready for billing.

This method results in transparent and highly detailed invoices that clients love.

Docker is a technology which allows us to take a website or application and break it into microservices. This approach allows us to protect the individual application layers from vulnerabilities across the stack.

For organisations who care about security, improving stability and generally managing risk this is an important factor towards choosing a professional hosting environment.

We take advantage of Amazon’s extensive cloud hosting infrustructure through the Lagoon.io managed hosting platform.

Our tailored hosting encompases;

• Nightly Backups (per site, not per server)
• A CDN (Content Delivery Network to reach your customers locally)
• Caching Layers (speed up your site with Varnish, Redis & Drupal)
• Version Control (tracking and rolling back deployments)
• Multi Environments (Dev, Stage & Live but also per feature)
• Scalability and Load Balancing (Providing stability for those moments of heavy load)
• Microservices (See Docker)

To learn more, read Communica’s blog post on amazee.io.

Cypress is an open source end to end testing software which allows us to automate integration, functional and regression testing.

Using Cypress we can build up a suite of tests to cover the most crucial functions within your digital platform.

Each time a new piece of functionality is deployed, Cypress can automatically test our code to ensure your critical functions remain intact.