2023 - A year in review

Morning Peter, thanks for taking the time out after peak before a busy January kicks off, how has peak been for team Cygnet?

Last year was a whirlwind of activity for us – definitely our busiest ever. We got to work with some fantastic brands, but as usual there was a lot of work to do before the November Sales. Thankfully both Cotswold Co and Bearabeara were ready just in time for the big day. One of the challenges we faced was getting the team up to speed with the new architecture of Next.js 13. It is a really different way of working, but React Server Components has already paid dividends for us.

It is fair to say that Next.js has gone through some pretty radical changes this year. For many teams App Router is pulling them away from Next.js; however we have found it to be a breath of fresh air. Server components directly address some of the most fundamental issues we had with older versions of the framework. Specifically, reducing the time it takes to build experiences which score in the 90th percentile for core-web vitals.

Interesting, how are you and the team adjusting, are there any other frameworks developers should consider or those you are keeping an eye on?

Astro and Remix are certainly on our radar, it's important to keep an open mind, always matching the right problems with the right tech. That said, it is fair to say that a fair few of our developers have been using Remix in their personal development projects and we’re interested to see it develop in 2024.

Cygnet’s core beliefs are around openness, proposing best of breed solutions and platforms, so it is important to consider all relevant frameworks we can for the future.

2023 has been a tumultuous year for many, how have retailers fared? Have you noticed any trends from discussions with clients?

It has been a tumultuous year for many, we’ve noticed retailers becoming increasingly focused around cost and return of their products and platforms, and this has certainly been a focus on our projects, ensuring that every platform makes a significant return.

First hand we’ve seen a lot of challenger Open Source Software (OSS) SaaS succeed. A great example of this is Typesense, who last week passed over 10M pulls on Docker. Retailers are keen to explore options and unafraid to replace expensive internal systems with tenuous links to ROI.

Regarding trends, surprisingly, many merchants we’ve spoken to have been doing better this year than during lockdown. We always expected a ‘correction’ to occur, as more shoppers could return to physical locations once restrictions eased. Interestingly it seems to be more of a permanent shift, it’s arguably too early to draw a definitive trend, however it is a reason to stay positive 2024!

What initiatives have Cygnet (or your clients) been most successful with, and why?

I spoke earlier about Typesense, another great example of value saving across our org is replacing legacy tech stacks with challenger tech and OSS. Since legacy platforms are often hugely maintenance heavy, with high ongoing development costs if you want to make changes, in fairness, this is due to often having been sought for a different requirement at a different time. Within the NGO space, we’ve seen a massive appetite for our “Phased Headless” migration strategy. Put simply, we are adding a ‘proxy’ in front of a client's existing infrastructure, migrating the site to ‘Headless’ one page at a time.

This massively de-risks the migration process, as clients can strategically focus on migrating their most important pages to Headless architecture first, and spending extra time making sure that business critical tasks like SEO aren’t forgotten about.

Take the BBC website for example, maintaining page consistency across thousands of pages would be hugely challenging, especially for legacy articles and pages that are no longer relevant for the vast majority. The organisation is a great example of a phased transitionary approach, which prioritises the most popular location for users, de-prioritising legacy pages that are no longer a priority to overhaul, and better allocating their resources.

What tech have you been most excited about or are looking forward to for 2024?

We’re excited to see the indirect and direct application of machine learning and AI, applying these tools has already significantly improved development efficiency here at Cygnet. It’s helped us increase our output, with tests showing efficiency gains of about 30% from 2022. Developers are able to scale up faster than before, since the AI suggests patterns they might not have otherwise considered. It’s akin to having a senior developer, more familiar with the codebase, constantly ‘pair programming’ alongside them. The pressing question is where things move next of course, AI is likely to improve and mature. For now, AI has facilitated the ability to take on larger projects and deliver to tighter deadlines than we might have been able to in the past.

How has 2023 been for your partners? Which Partners have been most significant to your work?

Outside of our NGO work, (and the large up and coming project we can’t yet talk about) Storyblock (CMS) and BigCommerce have been incredible partners, the project will set a new benchmark for our work and future direction around headless builds and solutions for retail.

For our NGO customers, the standout partners have been React Bricks (CMS), Everfund and Beacon (CMS). All of these platforms are challengers in the market, sharing the same values while solving complex client needs. They offer platform value and care deeply about customer and client success, we’re privileged to share the same values and have completed some amazing work together.

One final mention has to go out to our partner, Vercel. Who supports the vast majority of not all of our headless projects. The team have collaborated brilliantly with us throughout 2023, we are hugely proud of our partnership and the work we have completed alongside one of our most key partners.

What have you got to look forward to project wise for 2024?

A lot we still can’t talk about yet, I can say that we started the longest running tech project Cygnet’s ever undertaken in the Retail Apparel space, and that we’re currently onboarding 200 local branches for Parkinson's UK. It’s been an amazing project so far and both teams have been fantastic, we have a lot more planned for 2024. We’ve integrated an events platform integration, and have been scaling sites across the UK using the Federated Headless model, seeing the project progress has been really rewarding. Driving efficiencies for NGO’s is part of our core values, and it’s been great to see Parkinsons UK succeed over the coming months.

How can retailers make the most of quieter trading months in the New Year to improve their stack? What are the key things they can start to change or evaluate?

The biggest hurdle to our work is that clients arrive with us before asking their customers “what they really want” from a UX and design perspective, this must be front of mind for clients, as unpacking this ahead of a project deadline can be hugely disruptive. We’ve noticed that the clients that heavily invest in the wireframe stage of a project, evaluating exactly what they ‘should’ build from a User experience first, will always get more back when it comes to renewing or replacing their tech stack. Our most successful clients and projects take full ownership of their UX, UI and branding before re-platforming, as well as investing time evaluating their internal process’ in a thorough way. This allows us to focus on the key development principles to realise their goals alongside their designs.