Exploring a different path — Bending Spoons and the web

Bending Spoons is known mainly for our mobile apps. Makes sense. It’s what we started with and how we grew as a company: building and improving new and existing apps. An unwavering focus on creating amazing experiences for mobile users became our core strength and helped us become one of the biggest app developers in Europe. And, of course, we’re thrilled about that!

But for years now, we’ve been exploring new technologies. Web technologies. Constantly searching for ways to improve what we offer. At first, the goal was just to serve our mobile apps, to help more people discover them. Not anymore.

Much to the delight of us web developer Spooners, Bending Spoons is now fully embracing the web as a powerful and promising platform for our existing digital products… and for exciting new projects!

By Alessandro Verardo, designer and frontend developer, and Federico Tibaldo, web software engineer

Why web? For starters, it’s the best platform for exploration

Building and experimenting with the web has some major advantages compared to our mobile technology workflow. For example, it’s got all the following going for it:

• It’s faster. Creating and publishing something on the web is much faster than publishing an app on the Apple or Google stores. No review process, no strict guidelines to follow, and no risk of rejection with every new update.
• It’s more discoverable. Building a web app and sponsoring it is easier. There’s no friction of downloading something on your phone, for example.
• It’s adaptable. You’re not chained to any specific device. Want to build something that works on both mobile and desktop? No problem. Want to build something just for one or the other? Still no problem. The only things the user needs are a browser and the internet.
• It’s cheaper. There’s no need to build both an Android and iOS version of the project. If we need to test something quickly, we have both platforms (and others) to test it on, getting as many users on it as possible.

So the web was the obvious choice as our primary platform for exploration projects. Small, focused teams can build quick minimum-viable products that help us gather data on our ideas. And that data helps us decide whether to go ahead and invest in these ideas, or reject them in favor of finding more promising ones.

Building the right tech stack foundation

The web is a fast-moving place. Exciting new technologies emerge every week, bringing lots of hype with them (a classic case of shiny object syndrome). As a team of web engineers, we have to do our best to keep things organized and platform engineer what we can. We’ll often build our own libraries and utilities and keep external solutions to the bare minimum.

When first starting, building your own tools can become expensive and even negate one of the main advantages of the web platform — speed. So we decided to choose a technological stack and try to stick to it as much as possible. We went for React + Next.js bundled with TailwindCSS as a CSS framework. Everything else we try to build ourselves, unless the cost strongly outweighs the benefits. Now, this doesn’t mean we’re stuck using only these options. Every project needs to be evaluated case by case, and our culture encourages us to always be open to and strive for improvements. But it does mean we need to make sure that when we change our approach, it’s worth the cost.

The mission: Expand, explore, and grow

Our web engineering team has grown a lot in the past year, and with it, the challenges we face and the number of projects that are now partly or fully web-based. Bending Spoons has adopted the web as the third main platform for our projects (after iOS and Android). And not just for testing the waters and building fast prototypes and MVPs, but also for full-fledged projects in their own rights.

Increasing the potential of our core apps

Having a web or desktop counterpart is one of the most-requested features from our mobile app users. With web engineering, we don’t have to build (or deal with the complexity of) native applications for desktop operating systems. Instead, we can use in-browser experiences that work just like (and sometimes even better than) the app itself.

We first approached this with our AI-powered photo enhancer, Remini. What started as a test is now a fully working product, with many additional features in the works and a community of happy users behind it. It also enables our subscribers to pay one single subscription for multiple platforms, freeing them from being limited to a single device.

Testing out bold new project ideas

Not only has the web become a viable avenue for improving our existing apps, but it has also proven itself to be the perfect platform for iterating on new ideas. That’s why today, within Bending Spoons, the web is often the ground zero of new products and services.

For the teams dedicated to project exploration, speed is critical. There’s no point in developing the perfect web app if the market fit isn’t right. We need to be able to fail fast to make sure our efforts aren’t wasted. So it’s kind of like working at a startup… without the pressure to secure external funding to keep on doing what we love.

Collaborating across the Spooniverse

When exploring new ideas, it’s crucial for all team members to have a clear understanding of the objectives and to be involved in every step of the process. So the lines between product management, data analysis, and engineering get blurred as more people join the conversation. As a result, being a web engineer at Bending Spoons is also great for developing cross-functional skills, gaining new perspectives, and becoming a better contributor.

Reaching more people around the world

There’s something else the web is excellent for: growing our reach and our audience. From a simple landing page to a full-blown website, the right web touchpoint offering a seamless user experience can do wonders for the discoverability of our existing and new products, as well as for our conversation rate. So it’s excellent for both paid and organic user acquisition. And that’s not all.

At Bending Spoons, we value hiring incredible talent as much as acquiring new customers. The visibility from our web presence gives us more opportunities to reach potential new Spooners. Meaning our event pages and branded websites need the polish, visuals, and content that’ll make them stand out.

Basically, by building great-looking and intuitive websites, we can help our products be easily discovered on organic search, ensure they’re appealing to the audiences of paid targeted campaigns, and demonstrate the kinds of things we Spooners get to work on. Now that’s impact.

Finding your place in the Bending Spoons web function

Not all web developers are the same. Some of us prefer the challenge of working on complex logic problems and finding the optimal solution. Some of us prefer developing fun and creative UIs with exciting interactions and animations. And some enjoy both, while others haven’t discovered their preference yet!

But no matter what kind of web developer a person may be, they’ll find fulfilling projects to challenge them and get them excited about their work at Bending Spoons!

We’ll go ahead and provide a general idea of what the day-to-day work as a Bending Spoons web developer could look like, depending on the scope.

Solving focused, complex problems as a product developer

Product-oriented developers get to work on new features for web-based products and on brand-new web applications altogether. If you’re a product developer, you’ll thrive in complex problems that require interaction with the backend and will spend less time on the visual aspects. This doesn’t mean you’ll never style components or work on animations, just that it’ll be less often and according to the product needs and your own preferences.

Working on a product usually involves being a part of a more structured and focused team. There’s more platform work and communication involved, as millions of people around the globe will be interacting with the deliverables. You’ll be engaged in many discussions on feature proposals, feasibility studies, and feedback and data analysis. It’s an exciting yet demanding environment.

Growing our user base as an acquisition-focused developer

Acquisition-focused development is all about providing stunning deliverables that usually resemble the design in a pixel-perfect manner. It’s a more visual-oriented approach, with a lot of work on websites, landing pages, and in-app views. Here, making an animation as smooth as butter with the most natural easing is more important than solving complex logic problems (which are far less common in this kind of development).

If you’re an acquisition-focused developer, everything you’ll do will be something the end user sees, so it has to be polished. Data and content are the main drivers, and you’ll communicate with our growth and marketing teams a lot. It’s a dynamic area, with moving targets that vary depending on the need or push of the moment. Sometimes you’ll be working on our flagship product, sometimes on a just-built MVP, sometimes on something that doesn’t even exist yet (to gather early data).

What’s certain is that you’ll never get bored, whether you’re testing different acquisition strategies, building a landing page that perfectly fits a commercial campaign, or creating an entire website to improve organic user acquisition.

Bending the web

The web platform is still young inside the Spooniverse. But even though it’s just a toddler compared to Android or iOS, it’s growing fast. Exciting times are ahead for us web developer Spooners!

The journey so far for both of us has been thrilling and fulfilling. Bending Spoons is a place where you feel stimulated, challenged, and inspired every day, with more than 350 incredible Spooners supporting you as you’re all growing together.

We can’t wait to see what the future holds. And we can’t wait to bend the web along the way!

Ready to bend the web with Alessandro and Federico? Head over to our careers page to start your own journey with Bending Spoons!